Charting the Wrong Course: Obama, Educational Reform, and the False Hope of Charter Schools
Charting the Wrong Course: Obama, Educational Reform, and the False Hope of Charter Schools
“Senator McCain and I actually agree on charter schools. I doubled the number of charter schools in Illinois.”
- Barack Obama (Third Presidential Debate, October 15, 2008)
Like so many professional educators, I followed the last presidential election with great interest and hope. I had hoped that a radical change in Washington might bring with it radical change in our nation’s approach to public education. Having worked in impoverished inner-city schools, I had first-hand knowledge of the myriad ways that, despite many teachers’ best efforts, our schools fail to educate an ever-growing segment of the American population. Our educational inadequacies appeared all the more abhorrent to me because I had spent long hours researching effective instruction and curriculum—basically “what works”— at the doctoral level; I knew that an abundance of research exists that shows what is possible when schools have the resources and freedom they need to teach diverse students effectively. In short, after eight years of educational neglect (and even misdirection) at the federal level, I was reasonably confident that a democrat in the oval office would prompt a renewed focus—and investment—in our schools.
These hopes, and those of many other educators, were not unfounded; then Senator Obama made education a major part of his platform long before he was a viable presidential candidate. During his Illinois Senate run, he acknowledged the need for a renewed focus on public education: “We have an obligation and a responsibility to be investing in our students and our schools. We must make sure the people who have the grades, the desire and the will, but not the money, can still get the best education possible” (Barack Obama, October 7, 2004). As candidate Obama’s presidential campaign picked up steam, countless beleaguered educators throughout the country did indeed have the seeds of hope. Though his educational plans were relatively vague (see: www.barackobama. com/issues/education), most professional educators nonetheless hoped that his election might bring an end to (or at least a major change of) the No Child Left Behind fiasco. They hoped for a renewed focus on reasonable standards and reasonable accountability. They hoped for more freedom in the classroom—in pedagogy, in curriculum, and in assessment—to meet their students’ diversity of needs. They hoped to be treated as trained professionals who are best able to judge students’ needs and to create a means toward teaching to these needs. They hoped for a renewed focus on adequate funding for all students and adequate pay for all teachers. In short, they hoped for improving the schools we have by using research-based ‘best practices,’ by throwing off the stranglehold yoke of NCLB and the myriad testing practices that go hand-in-hand with it, and by giving teachers the freedom to teach. Instead, they got charter schools.
As Rethinking Schools has recently pointed out (Arne Duncan and the Chicago Success Story:
Myth or Reality?, Spring 2009), at the core of President Obama and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s plan to improve America’s schools is to implement even more charter schools on top of the roughly 4,000 that already exist. The official White House website says of the President’s educational plan that “The President believes that investment in education must be accompanied by reform and innovation. The President supports the expansion of high-quality charter schools. He has challenged States to lift limits that stifle growth among successful charter schools” (www.whitehouse.gov).
Adding force to this challenge has been the tying federal stimulus funds to “press states on charter schools” (Wall Street Journal). Secretary of Education Arne Duncan recently stated that “States that don’t have charter school laws, or [that] put artificial caps on the growth of charter schools, will jeopardize their application [for upwards of $5 billion in federal grant money]…Simply put, they put themselves at a competitive disadvantage for the largest pool of discretionary dollars states have ever had access to” (Wall Street Journal, June 12, 2009). President Obama has even broken with most other democrats—and certainly the major teachers’ unions—in his belief in the promise of charter schools. Through Secretary Duncan, President Obama has sent subtle but clear messages to teachers opposed to charter school expansion that such opposition will result in negative consequences (possibly the loss of experienced teachers’ jobs to lesser qualified teachers in charters). President Obama is, it appears, sold on charter schools.
Though the President has accomplished much in his first few months in office and is undoubtedly a major improvement upon his predecessor, his education plan is, I believe, headed in the wrong direction and does not represent the kind of “change you can believe in.” My judgment is based both on the scant evidence that charter schools are superior to traditional public schools (and recent reports of corruption in numerous charter schools) and upon personal experience: I spent two years working at an inner-city charter school for at-risk youth. Both sources of information highlight the need to examine charter schools much more closely before employing the model more broadly.
Myriad research has questioned the effectiveness of charter schools. For example, a recent RAND study (2008) of Chicago’s charter schools—schools that Senator Obama claims to have helped create—shows virtually no academic gains or benefits compared to Chicago’s traditional public schools: “Consistent with similar studies in other locations, we found only small differences in average achievement gains between charter schools and CPS schools, and these differences do not point in consistent directions” (pp. ix-x). Instead the report acknowledges a major problem with charter school research: the lack of longitudinal data (though charter schools began in 1991 in a very limited fashion, they have grown exponentially in recent years). Other reports have begun to highlight the corruption and number-fudging that comes with many charter schools due to pressures to perform mixed with lax oversight (Orlando Sentinel, March 25, 2007). There can be little doubt that the research on charter school success is limited and ambiguous. However, I also base my judgment about the problem of promoting charter schools as a major school reform upon personal experience as a teacher in a charter school. I experienced first-hand how charter schools can skirt accountability, corrupt the educational process, and fail their students.
My experience with charter schools began shortly after I had finished a post-doctorate fellowship in education. I took a job teaching English in an inner-city charter school designed to serve ‘at risk’ youth. Many of my students had not only struggled academically in traditional schools, many had either dropped out or had been expelled from such schools; still others had been incarcerated or had become teen mothers. Because of the school’s targeted population and its mission statement, I naively came to the job with the notion that my school was there to serve those who had not been well-served by other schools and that we would employ the best practices toward getting them caught up to their age-group peers. I was, after all, very familiar with research that had clearly demonstrated that ‘at risk’ students need caring teachers who also challenge them with rigorous curricula. Though I deplored almost all that President George W. Bush stood for (including NCLB), I couldn’t help but agree with his sentiment that that minority and low-SES students in our public schools were too often victims of “the soft bigotry of low expectations.”
What I quickly discovered, however, was that the original intentions of the school’s creators–as expressed in its mission statement–were not at all congruent with the practices we employed, by the outcomes we expected of our students, or by the operating principles of the school. Instead, I found that the often lax enforcement of standards on charter schools and the competing need to raise funds resulted in the perpetuation of failed educational promises for these vulnerable students.
One of the most problematic things I discovered at my school was a lack of quality control (at all levels). None of our teachers was state licensed and only one (the author of this paper) had any significant educational training. The school’s teachers were not knowledgeable in culturally-relevant pedagogy, in differentiating a curriculum, in formal or informal assessment practices, or even in pedagogy itself (they didn’t even know what the term ‘pedagogy’ meant). The subject area teachers were not, in most cases, even majors in their content area when in college. They had no formal training in working with different cultures or at-risk youth; rather their training came from on-the-job experience. As a result, and after the repeated frustrations that are inherent to working with troubled youth, they too often ended up buying in to the very stereotypes that formalized teacher education programs seek to dismantle. The only true requirement for teaching at the school was to have obtained a college degree and have the toughness (or the lack of other career opportunities) to return to the classroom every day. Longevity and adhering to the principal’s philosophy transcended teaching quality.
Similarly, the school had no set curriculum or learning goals for any of our classes; teachers were free to teach what they wanted when they wanted to teach it, regardless of whether or not students were ready for such content or if such content was academically rigorous. The school avoided mandated statewide testing by being categorized as an “alternative” school; this ambiguous categorization immunized us both from the pressure of meeting any kind of reasonable learning goals and from being held accountable for student learning. Thus teachers could—and often did—water down their curriculum to be easier to the students. It was not uncommon for a teacher to focus on learning to play guitar or teaching the game of chess in lieu of more formal instruction. Concerns about a lax curriculum, low standards, and a lack of enforced discipline–when raised–were met with threats of dismissal (rationale: complainers not participating in the school philosophy!).
Despite students’ very poor academic performance in these watered-down classes, we were seldom allowed to fail the students; doing so would, we were told, not only lower our numbers (and funding), it would hurt students’ morale. Leadership repeatedly insisted that teachers change their respective curricula to be easier and thus more passable, regardless of whether or not these criteria met state standards . Like many well-intentioned but culturally naive educators who subscribe to “deficit theory,” our principal did not believe that setting high standards was reasonable. Rather, she openly espoused the belief that our students couldn’t meet high standards and that school failure would damage to their self-esteem (a short-term proposition that ignores what students will experience when they get out of high school). As a result, at the end of each of my two years at the school, our ‘graduates’ read at a fifth to sixth grade level on average while some read at an early elementary level. With very few exceptions, none of my students was able to read critically. Similarly, few could write a sensible or grammatically correct sentence (much less an essay) and less than ten percent were able to pass a basic grammar assessment on noun-verb agreement. They were equally poor in other subject areas.
Also problematic was the fact that, in addition to the issues above, our school did not adhere to the best practices described in the research for operating and maintaining a school. Leadership refused to consider the basic tenets of positive behavioral support, instead allowing different rules for different teachers and refusing to uphold the few school-wide rules that did exist (regarding violence, drugs, dress, threatening language, gang representation, etc.). Punishing students would be too discouraging (another outcome of deficit theory thinking). Of course, ignoring violations of the rules led to more egregious violations—violations involving violence, threats against teachers, cheating, drugs in the school and increased gang activity—as time went on. Believing that we had to foster more trust with our students, leadership insisted that students call us by our first names, leading to serious problems in students’ perceptions of the teacher-student boundary and thus to problems in classroom management. Similarly, leadership showed no reluctance to bend or even break ethical boundaries if doing so would facilitate more “trust” or feelings of acceptance by the students (ultimately resulting in an ethical and behavioral oxymoron).
In short, our charter school’s graduates were ill-prepared for the work force, for a trade school, for college, or even to do basic functional literacy tasks. Though I take some responsibility for this dismal record (after all, I was one of the people charged with teaching these students), I feel that my colleagues and I were, by the unnecessarily generous freedoms allowed to the school because of its charter status and the corresponding lack of oversight of our school leader, seriously hampered in our educational efforts. Our charter school—from its leadership down to its teachers and ultimately to its students—failed its mission to educate the very students it was chartered to serve. Our school seriously abused the freedoms granted to it as a charter.
Though my experience is unique and should not be generalized (there are many charter schools that do a very good job of educating at-risk students), I nonetheless believe that the very freedoms given to charter schools—but denied to traditional schools—can and sometimes do result in very problematic practices. Charter schools are granted great freedom in exactly the places where they need more regulation (e.g., teacher training and quality, curriculum development, use of research-based practices). At the same time traditional schools, where teachers and administrators tend to be well-trained, more experienced, and more knowledgeable about curriculum and instruction, are denied these same freedoms (freedoms that might, when given to highly trained and supported teachers, truly benefit students). It seems ironic to me that the charter movement grants inexperienced educators with more freedoms than are granted to highly experienced (and highly regulated) educators in the traditional school setting.
The expansion of charter schools is certainly no panacea for what ails our public schools. President Obama, who is obviously attuned to nuance, needs to examine far more closely the contexts of schooling, of the students we serve, and true educational change for the schools we do have rather than promote the expansion of charter schools, an idea that is itself deeply flawed both in theory and in practice. Rather than charter schools, educators need hope they can believe in.
Booker, K., Gill, B., Zimmer, R., & Sass, T. (2008).: Attainment in Chicago charter schools (RAND Corporation Technical Report). Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation.
McClure, V., & Shanklin, M. (2009, March 25-28). Missing the grade (Parts 1-4). Orlando Sentinel.
Wall Street Journal (June 12, 2009). Obama’s Charter Stimulus: An incentive for states unfriendly to school choice to mend their ways. Review and Outlook Section (www.wallstreetjournal.com/article/SB124476693275708519.html)
The White House. (n.d.). Education. Retrieved July 6, 2009, from http://www.whitehouse.gov/issues/education/
Teaching Critical Literacy: A Critical Literacy Paradox?
Reading The Word and the World: The Double-Edged Sword
of Teaching Critical Literacy
A shorter version appearing in Voices from the Middle, Fall 2009
Virtually anyone who has recently gone through a teacher education program or who has sat through in-service trainings has heard the term critical literacy, possibly ad nauseum. The very term has become a buzzword throughout literacy circles. It is a concept that has become so central to literacy instruction that teachers are, in addition to teaching students the basics of reading and writing, also supposed to foster in their students higher-level thinking and notions of social justice. Though much has been said about the importance of critical literacy—and teachers have been charged with teaching it to their students—relatively little has been said about what it actually is, how to teach it or about the problems inherent in teaching it. Certainly there is little doubt that having the ability to read critically is empowering to students; it provides them with the tools to more fully read their world (Macedo and Freire, 1987) and become more active participants within it (Gee, 1990). But with such student empowerment come any number of potentially serious issues that, so far, have gone largely unexamined.
Literacy specialists have long pointed out that students need to develop critical thinking skills in order to function fully in the world. Without deeper reflection and critical analysis of the issues that students are learning about, these future players on our national stage are likely to repeat the same mistakes as their predecessors. Critical literacy theorists take such an approach one radical step further. They call for social action based upon the deeper conceptualizations one receives through critical reading and thinking: “critical literacy is a vehicle through which educators teach for social justice. [It] interrogates texts in order to identify and challenge social constructs, ideologies, underlying assumptions, and the power structures that intentionally and unintentionally perpetuate social inequalities and injustices” (Wallowitz, 2008, 1-2). Thus, critical literacy theorists hold that critical literacy is by definition transformative while traditional literacy—sans the addition of critical literacy—is nothing short of hegemonic (Freire, 1970; Giroux, 1993; Wallowitz, 2008). Without critical literacy, students will, in essence, never break out of dominant paradigms (Kuhn, 1954); instead, they will become unwitting agents of the status quo with all of its faults and injustices (Carlson and Apple, 1998; Freire, 1970).
It is therefore teacher’s job to teach students basic literacy skills and then to help them build critical literacy on top of these skills so that they might help create a more just world. However the teaching of critical literacy is both a very difficult and a very controversial task, the results of which can easily lead to unintended and possibly counter-productive consequences. The true critical literacy educator must therefore take a critical approach to the teaching of critical literacy itself. In doing so, one finds that critical literacy is inherently a double-edged sword that can cut in many directions.
The first cut: Merely asking teachers to foster critical literacy in their students is too often akin to asking the blind to lead the blind. In my language arts methods classes, I am repeatedly reminded that these future teachers have little grasp of what it means to read critically. Far too few of them experienced critical literacy instruction in their K-12 or college experiences. Rather, many of their courses have only reinforced the idea of reading and teaching solely for comprehension. The use of detailed rubrics, step-by-step lesson plans, and predetermined measures of student knowledge/ability—in essence, telling students specifically what they need to know—have also served to deemphasize critical literacy.
Complicating the problem is the fact that critical literacy is seldom exemplified outside of the academy either. A superficial analysis of the major media outlets of our own country—sources that are by definition supposed to be critical—reveals that they present the “news” as facts and themselves as unbiased. Where and how are teachers supposed to learn to use critical literacy when there are so few good examples of it? Such an important question begs another (if not many more): Might teaching a flawed understanding of critical literacy do more harm than good?
The second cut: While teachers today are being asked to teach critical literacy, they are not told how to do so. Instead, they are increasingly required to adhere to scripted curricula, pacing guides, and norm-referenced assessments that counteract the approach critical literacy requires. Though publishers claim that their materials promote critical thinking (though they seldom claim to promote critical literacy), large-scale curricula conscripts both how and what teachers can teach and what students can learn. For example, the very questions asked within curriculum guides in some ways limit students’ ability to think ‘outside of the box’ (McGinley, Conley, White, 2000). Thus to teach true critical literacy, teachers must find the time, a sympathetic administration, and the resources to work outside of such curricula or to supplement it dramatically.
The third cut (is the deepest): The teaching of critical literacy is itself a political endeavor; we are asking students not only to question the texts that we as a society hold dear, but also to use them as catalysts to promote social change. Critical literacy encourages students to interrogate the very texts we employ to teach them and the manner through which we do so. Ironically, if we are successful in teaching critical literacy to students, we may also be teaching them to critique—and to try to change—the very materials, pedagogy, and school structure we are using to educate them. Complicating matters further is the fact that we would also be encouraging students to critique the tenets by which their own parents live and their cultures operate. The very radical nature of teaching true critical literacy tends to prove an anathema to those whose ideals are being challenged. Thus when imagining a school full of students who have been taught critical literacy, one must envision the possible results: students dissatisfied with the very society, schools, and culture(s) we are preparing them to join. Paradoxically, when charged with teaching students critical literacy, teachers should be wary of actually achieving success in the endeavor!
None of this is to discourage the teaching of critical literacy. Rather, it is meant to show that the buzzword is itself loaded and often misunderstood. If we are to teach critical literacy to our students, we must come to this noble endeavor critically. In this sense, we must use the lens of critical literacy to examine critical literacy itself and we must, as always, be open to yet another paradox in the teaching of the language arts.
Sources Cited
D. Carlson & M. Apple (1998), Power/Knowledge/Pedagogy: The meaning of democratic education in unsettling times. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Continuum Publishing Company.
Gee, J. (1990). Sociolinguistics and literacies: Ideology in discourses. London: Taylor & Francis.
Giroux. H. (1993). Literacy and the politics of difference. In C. Lankshear & P. McLaren (Eds.). Critical literacy: Politics, praxis, and the postmodern.
Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 367-377.
Kuhn, T. (1963). The structure of scientific revolutions (3rd ed.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Macedo, D. & Freire, P. (1987). Literacy: Reading the word and the world. South Hadley, MA: Bergin and Garvey.
McGinley, W., Conley, K., & White, J. (2000). Pedagogy for the few: Book club discussion guides and the modern book industry as literacy teacher. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 44(3), 204-214.
Wallowitz, L. (2008). Introduction. In L. Wallowitz (Ed.), Critical literacy as resistance: Teaching for social justice across the secondary curriculum. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 1-9.
Obama and Duncan Short on New Ideas for K-12 Education
Posted by admin in Education Reform on May 4th, 2009
K-12 educators were, regardless of their own political beliefs, almost unanimous in their critique of the test-above-all-else approach to education that the previous administration put as the centerpiece of its reform efforts. Like a really bad hangover without the euphoria and joy that preceded it, the effects of No Child Left Behind will no doubt be felt for a long time to come. Yet with the new administration came great hope for a true change from the misguided educational approaches of Bush et al. President Obama’s campaign by example alone gave hope for a new educational paradigm; education could, like politics itself, be turned on its head. Certainly candidate Obama suggested that education as it has existed for far too long was in dire need of reform.
Unfortunately, the kinds of reform the president and his Secretary of Education Arne Duncan have proposed are largely more of the same. Neither the president nor his educational Chief Executive Officer (which was Duncan’s title as head of Chicago Public Schools–yet another overture to schools as businesses) have thought beyond the educational paradigm that first appeared well over 100 years ago. Rather, both have proposed a continuation of most of the NCLB provisions. To ‘reform’ schools, they have proposed an increase of the charter school movement (which is itself centered almost solely around a core knowledge curricula), thereby ignoring giving traditional schools the same levels of autonomy that charter schools have. They have been warm to the idea of merit pay. They have courted rather than confronted the teachers’ unions. In short, they have not been able to see beyond the traditional educational paradigm.
Now is the time–with control of both houses of congress, the momentum that the election brought with it, and huge capital investments in the economy and infrastructure–to start rethinking schools. Rethinking schools does not mean revamping a system that is simply not working as well as it should for far too many students (and a system that is, by its structure, not amenable to significant change). Rather, successful education for the new century requires a paradigm shift a la Thomas Kuhn; it calls for true critical reflection of what has and what has not worked thus far and an openness to radical change.
In the coming weeks and months, I will outline research-based strategies for improving schools and argue that if we want our children to compete in an increasingly global environment, we must re-envision what our schools do, what they can do, and where we could conceivably take them. Doing so would of course involve a tremendous amount of work and exorbitant amounts of money. But in comparison to one trillion dollar bank bailouts, maybe such radical reform is not so expensive. Reforming schools is without doubt a more certain investment!