25 Years After "A Nation at Risk"

I don't often agree with George Will - though he is an incredibly articulate writer and one often has to pay careful attention to avoid getting sucked into baloney with him. But his reflection on the state of education the other day is worth reading.

I disagree with much of his rhetoric, but he dares to go where good liberals (myself included) fear to tread, noting that a 1966 report concluded that "the qualities of the families from which students come to school matter much more than money as predictors of schools' effectiveness." (Note the work qualities, not quality. That's important.)

A cursory glance around any school community will confirm this. In general, when parents insist that students do well academically, they do well. When parents do not push, students do not accomplish as much. Occasionally, a student fails or succeeds in spite of their parents, and that's the nature of America. But educators know that, as a group, in general, students will meet our expectations.

(This is why I tell my friends with small children to stop using "or else" - it signals that you don't really expect them to do what you've asked.)

Soo... Will blames schools for focusing on teaching and funding (the things they CAN control) rather than the percent of students born to single parents or poverty - which is not only unfair but pointless. It's unfair because the family is not the purview of the schools. It's pointless because the family is not the purview of the schools. Blaming families is handy, but accomplishes nothing.

It's not a matter of helping parents understand that their kid needs a desk with a light in a quiet place, and needs to sit there for an hour a day, in order to get homework done. That we can do. It's a matter of finding housing for the friends & relatives who are staying in the home and giving kids no privacy. Of keeping the electricity turned on. Of providing a meal - even without the family gathered around one table for dinner. Of convincing folks that Dr King's dream did not die with him, much as it appears to have when viewed through the lens of poverty.

So while Will brings up a point that is relevant to discussions of academic achievement, it is not helpful in terms of improving schools. The spin-master strikes again.

Misusing statistics to push an agenda is not a conservative thing - people from all points of view do that. I was joking with a friend in my stats class today that we can use statistics to prove just about anything. Correlations don't necessarily even show relationship - they certainly don't show cause.

For example, Will implies that the unionization of teaching is the cause of a decline in the average SAT score. That's crap. The first teachers union was created in 1962 and America's highest average SAT scores were posted in 1964. Cause? Of course not. Correlation? Hardly. Relationship? Maybe - both were reactions to the fact that America was asking its schools to do something never before attempted: educate everyone.

Schools do what they can with what they have. Some are racist places that create barriers for kids who don't have well-educated parents. Can't deny this. But the system is a reflection of America - and the many people who think like George Will. We who are working in schools know that we have much work yet to do to accomplish the goal of educating everyone. But unlike the pundits, we're in there fighting the good fight.