Two Schools of "School Reform:" The Conservative and the Progressive
by Frederick M. Hess • Sep 2, 2014 at 8:33 am
Cross-posted from Education Week
Cross-posted from Education Week
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Hidy, all. I'm back. My thanks to August's stellar guest bloggers. Meanwhile, I've been working to finish The Cage-Busting Teacher and doing my best to reflect a little. One of the things I've been reflecting on is that a number of people have been asking me (sometimes in a puzzled tone, sometimes in an annoyed one), "Rick, you're a reformer. How can you think X?" I think a lot of the confusion is due to the way "reform" gets defined. As readers know, the education debate today is generally framed as "reformers" v. "anti-reformers." That divide contains much truth, but it is crude and can be misleading. In particular, what I want to talk about today is how the term "reform" has been hung over two very different schools of thought: one progressive and one conservative.
Progressives have been historically been wedded to a technocratic vision of "progress" and a belief that the right policies and programs can cure society's ills. Progressives have hailed school reform as the key to erasing the effects of poverty and ensuring social justice. They speak in terms of newly discovered rights (e.g., "education is the new civil right," "every child has the right to an 'effective' teacher"). And they adopt an ethos of "by any means necessary," remaining untroubled if their ambitions require dramatically expanding the federal role or the role of the courts. The progressive caucus dominates the ranks of school reformers. (If you're thinking, "Hold on, I can think of Republicans like this," well, that just shows you're paying attention. There's no rule that bars Republicans from having progressive tendencies.)
A conservative perspective is less convinced that the right education policies will fix the world and more attuned to the limits of social engineering and the risks of unanticipated consequences. It holds that schools can help provide students with knowledge, skills, and better lives--but doubts that schooling alone can "erase achievement gaps" or immanentize the eschaton. It is nervous about the energetic proclamation of ambitious new rights. And it rejects the "by any means necessary" ethos, knowing that federal and judicial involvement has done more to promote compliance, paperwork, and bureaucracy than to improve schools. (For those interested in a deeper explication, check out my essays "Our Achievement Gap Mania" and, with Andrew Kelly, "A Federal Education Agenda," or my chapter in the recent compendium Room to Grow.)
I think it goes without saying, I'm in the conservative reform school. Now, this wing of "reform" doesn't get a lot of attention. To be fair, there are not that many of us. I usually estimate that 90% or more of those in the world of "school reform" are Democrats and self-proclaimed progressives. Indeed, the desire of conservatives to find allies and raise funds in a left-leaning community has made it all too easy for them to wind up sounding a lot like progressives and abandoning simple principles to which they usually hold fast.
Up until the past few years, it was pretty hard to tell the two strands of reform apart. After all, the two schools agree on a lot. Both have long supported charter schooling, alternative teacher licensure, differentiated pay, overhauling tenure, Teach For America, and much else. There have always been some differences--Two Schools of "School Reform:" The Conservative and the Progressive :: Frederick M. Hess:
