What Can We Agree On, After Atlanta?
“Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold,” William Butler Yeats wrote in 1919 in ‘The Second Coming.’ Yeats was describing the world after the Great War, but it aptly describes American education today[1]: polarized, shouting at, but rarely listening to, each other. We disagree about dozens of issues: the Common Core; whether ‘opting out’ of the Common Core tests is appropriate (or even legal); the role of unions; the effectiveness of charter schools; the federal role; the amount of standardized testing; how to evaluate teachers; poverty’s impact on children’s learning, and more.
Now, out of the blue, we have two[2] points of agreement: 1) Draconian punishment for the Atlanta cheaters is unjust, unseemly and counter-productive; and 2) students are the losers when adults cheat.
By now everyone knows that 11 Atlanta educators have been convicted for cheating and could be facing serious time behind bars. Thoughtful observers like Richard Rothstein, Robert Pondiscio and David Cohen are weighing in. Mr. Rothstein’s piece takes the deepest dive, and so I suggest you start there.
Even though everyone agrees that kids[3] were cheated, we don’t agree on what should be done. Should they be offered free tutoring? Or is an apology enough?
And we disagree about who’s really to blame for the cheating in Atlanta. Superintendent Beverly Hall was too ill to stand trial and died before the decision was handed down, but for many the buck started and stopped with her.[4] Others blame the unrealistic demands of No Child Left Behind for the cheating in Atlanta, Washington, DC, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Columbus, Ohio and Austin, Texas.
Everybody’s got a villain, whether it’s Arne Duncan’s Race to the Top; an obsession with ‘data-driven decision-making; education profiteers; greedy teacher unions; or a right wing vendetta against those same unions. [5]
Can’t we agree on something else? I suggest two big ideas that everyone who is genuine about putting kid first can support. One, expose hypocrites and hypocrisies, wherever they may be. Two, school spending should be transparent, because we are talking about taxpayer dollars, and sunlight is the best disinfectant.
Of course, the two are related, because hypocrisy often involves money and secrecy.
To me, the biggest hypocrites are those who preach, “Poverty can never be offered as an excuse” (for poor student performance) but then do nothing to alleviate poverty and its attendant conditions. What they are saying, bottom line, is “It’s the teachers’ fault” when kids in poverty-ridden schools do poorly on tests or fail to graduate.
These preachers disguise their mendacity with words of praise for teachers, calling them ‘heroes whose brave work changes the lives of their fortunate students blah blah blah.’ Sounds great, but when it comes from those who discount all the other factors that affect outcomes, it’s hypocrisy. They’re setting up teachers and schools to be blamed.
How satisfying and convenient to have a simple, easy-to-grasp analysis. And how hypocritical.
OK, poverty is not an excuse, but surely substandard housing, inadequate health care, poor nutrition, abuse and abandonment (all of which are more likely in high poverty areas) are factors in poor academic performance. So why are these hypocrites either standing by silently or actively opposing efforts to alleviate poverty and thereby What Can We Agree On, After Atlanta? | Taking Note: