EducationNews.org

By Marty Solomon
Columnist EducationNews.org

Why do so many educational reforms that are intended to improve education in America turn out to be worse than the problems that they were intended to cure? The reason is that most reforms are not based on research or facts. Instead they are based on the hunch of some politician or business leader. Since everyone is an expert in education, our public schools have been bombarded by literally hundreds of "silver bullets" based on a hunch.

Take for example, the concept of "mainstreaming." Many years ago, schools employed tracks based on the abilities of children. A fast track would allow better students to move ahead faster. For those who could not keep up with this pace, there were tracks that went slower so as not to lose students who needed more time to absorb material. And kids who were good at math but behind in English could be placed in tracks that were fast in math but more relaxed in English. But somewhere along the line, people decided on a hunch that slower children would benefit from being mixed in the same classrooms as their better-performing peers. The result of that was to provide an educational pace that often bored the best and brightest kids, and, at the same time, was too fast for the less capable. It created a hodgepodge which was not ideal for either the top or the bottom.

But in 1994, two insightful young teachers, Dave Levin and Mike Feinberg, decided that underserved poor and minority students needed something different. Guess what they discovered? They needed a track system---but a track on steroids called Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP) schools. Two hours of homework every night, 9.5 hours of school per day, Saturday and summer school. Teachers are available via cell phone 24/7, parents must stay intricately involved and children must do the work and behave. The success of the 57 KIPP schools in 16 states appears to be amazing, lifting kids who were failing in the 5^th grade to above average by the 8^th grade.

Take for example, the notion that everyone needs to go to college and thus make the curriculum more demanding and advanced for all. What has that produced? A world of dropouts. This is because there are huge numbers of kids who, for whatever reason, cannot or will not succeed in a traditional college-bound environment. Yet many of these same youngsters find it exciting to see immediately the results of their efforts in fields like auto mechanics, heating and air conditioning, computer networking or criminal justice. . But somebody had a hunch that technical education was not to be encouraged and college was for all.

Another bad hunch was No Child Left Behind which has transformed our schools into testing factories and has often dramatically reduced attention to important subjects such as art, music, civics, literature, PhysEd and problem solving. This hunch that testing factories would benefit poor and minority students has turned out to be dead wrong. After 7 years of humiliating teachers and traumatizing students, the poor and minority kids are generally still at the bottom of the scores but in addition, they are told they are inferior.

Another bad hunch being floated today is to pay teachers a bonus for high student test scores. The unintended consequences of that would be severe. Middle-class children, on average and in every state, score better than poor or minority children. This is because middle-class kids start school far ahead, having normally learned letters, numbers, some words, some reading and writing, whereas poor kids seldom have. So poor youngsters start far behind and most can never catch up in a mainstream setting. Thus, to pay teachers for scores would encourage the best teachers with the most seniority to teach in middle-class schools and avoid the poorer schools where they are needed the most.

The bottom line is that we need to stop allowing educational policy to be based on hunches of politicians and business folks. We can see clearly how badly legislators and businesses make a mess of their own fields and create national disasters. We should not allow them to also muck up public education.

Dr. Solomon is a retired University of Kentucky professor and can be reached at mbsolomon@aol.com

Published August 11, 2008