What Is a 'Failing' School?
Posted: 09/03/2013 9:00 am
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Two years ago, Kevin Kosar, a former graduate student of mine, conducted an Internet search for the term "failing school." What he discovered was fascinating. Until the 1990s, the term was virtually unknown. About the mid-1990s, the term began appearing with greater frequency. With the passage of No Child Left Behind, the use of the expression exploded and became a commonplace.
Kosar did not speculate on the reasons. But I venture to say that the rise of the accountability movement created the idea of "failing schools."
"Accountability" was taken to mean that if students have low test scores, someone must be blamed. Since Bush's NCLB, it became conventional to blame the school. With President Obama's Race to the Top, blame shifted to teachers. The solution to "failing schools," according to Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, is to fire the staff and close the school.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo recently took this idea to an extreme by saying that he wanted a "death penalty" for "failing schools." He believes that when schools have persistently low test scores, they should lose democratic control.
They should be taken over by the state, given to private charter corporations, or put under mayoral control. In fact, none of these ideas has been successful.
Low-performing school districts in New Jersey have been under state control for more than 20 years without turning them into high-performing districts. Mayoral control in Cleveland and Chicago has been a flop. And private charters typically do no better than public schools,