Think back on your earliest recollection of American history as it was taught to you in school. The Founding Fathers didn’t earn that moniker by following alongside all the other young men in their schools, colleges and career paths. On the contrary, these men had dreams that lived outside the Colonial box and they aimed to make them reality, no matter what the personal cost. This story form repeats itself throughout American history, too. Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr., women’s suffrage leader Lucy Burns – they all took the road less traveled and broke out of the mold of their times to make a positive impact on the future and move the country forward.
Every country has its folk heroes, of course, and these figure heads serve as reminders that you should always, always stick by your belief systems even if they run contrary to everyone else’s. In America, though, everyone is entitled to follow in the footsteps of these leaders – these heroes that paved the way. In large and small ways, everyday Americans shape the future of the country just by tapping into their natural talents and personal stances. It’s why we have bifocals, and fire hydrants, and swivel chairs. Without American innovators, the world would have never been able to enjoy cupcakes, or graham crackers, or baseball. Had inventors like Henry Ford, Robert Fulton and Wilbur Wright walked the line and focused on the career paths and learning options their government deemed a priority, they may have never had the mind to attach an engine here, or a motor there, or a wing up there.
Innovation is what has always driven Americans, and continues to drive us all today. It’s what has simultaneously given us the labels of crazy and genius. Frankly, it’s what makes Americans a global force to be reckoned with. Without the many Americans who have stepped outside the lines to better their own ways of life and those of their fellow citizens, this nation would not be considered the greatest on the globe.
That innovation, that creative spirit, is born in our public schools. The students who will dream up the next generation’s major inventions, and come up with plans to improve the American way of life, and fill every job in between are in our K-12 classrooms today. Despite more choices than ever when it comes to the childhood learning years, public schools remain a steadfast reminder of all that is great, and inspirational, and smart about the American way.
As America has grown in its nearly 250 years of existence, its public school system has also adjusted with the times. Different theories on properly educating our next generations have been introduced, tested, established and thrown out. Each new evolution of the public school systems in the U.S. have built upon the lessons of the ones before – both good and bad – and have culminated to bring us to the current state of U.S. education today.
So what do our school systems look like, really? If you base your knowledge of the nation’s public schools on news headlines alone, you likely have a bleak perception of what exactly is happening in the K-12 classrooms funded by our tax dollars. A report issued from the U.S. Department of Education in April of 2014 showed that high school seniors did not show any signs of improvement in math and science scores from 2009 to 2013. When compared with other developed countries, U.S. students lag seriously behind in areas like math and science, too. The students who are bringing down the national averages are not just from underprivileged areas, either. Among students from households where at least one parent has a college degree, or the family is considered “affluent,” the U.S. ranks as number 27 on a list of 34 countries in math capabilities. A Washington Examiner report also finds that more than half of 15 year olds from homes with well-educated parents are not proficient in at least one of three areas: reading, math or science.
Despite these and numerous other reports that are similar, U.S. seniors are graduating at a record rate of 80 percent. It is a happy statistic, no doubt, and one that should be celebrated but it does leave some room for speculation: how are so many U.S. students lagging behind in so many vital academic areas, yet graduating from our schools at record rates?
The truth is complicated. Standards for exactly what students should be learning at every step of their educational journey have never been more stringent. The No Child Left Behind legislation enacted in 2001 heightened educator accountability systems and put more stringent assessment processes in place to measure the true learning outcomes of students. These requirements were not suggestions, but were (and are) tied to federal funding. So a school district doing exceptionally well based on the set-forth standards receives its federal funding while another that is struggling, and is arguably in greater need for the money, is left to flounder in its failures.
Teacher accountability was in place before NCLB, and so were state assessment tests, but the legislation thrust both on a pedestal that schools are still reeling to accommodate. By setting blanket benchmarks for the entire nation, based on limited tested materials, teachers were essentially stripped of their free will when it came to educating and were forced to begin “teaching to the test.” For many educators, NCLB was a marked end to learning for learning’s sake in classrooms, and even meant dumbing down materials to be sure all students scored well on those vital assessments.
Fast forward 12 years to the recent enactment of Common Core Standards in 44 states and the District of Columbia, and accountability and assessments have even more to contend with. Tied to President Obama’s federal funding program Race to the Top, Common Core benchmarks were determined by the National Governors Association. States could choose to opt in or out, with pressure to conform enhanced by the promise of good old fashioned American money. Like NCLB legislation (which still exists alongside Common Core requirements), the new set of initiatives seeks stronger student outcomes in areas like math, science and technology.
Which is a good thing, right? If our students are lagging in these areas then it makes sense to raise our standards when it comes to learning them, doesn’t it? In theory, Common Core Standards work. Place more focus on the subjects where American students need extra help, attach some money as an incentive and then watch the test scores rise. The true effectiveness of these standards remains to be seen, but it is hard to imagine that placing greater concentration on a narrow range of subjects, at the expense of others, will end up boding well for this generation of K-12 students.
Assessments and teacher accountability tied to funding are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the issues holding back the actual process of learning in our public schools. Issues of overcrowding, and inequality of resources, and a cultural shift towards anti-intellectualism weigh heavy on the schools within our borders.
By identifying the major problems that hinder the effectiveness of the public schools of our nation, we can start a journey that will lead us toward better outcomes for future generations. It is not a task that is reserved for educators alone. To really experience the changes needed to raise the quality of what we offer our children when it comes to their educations, it will take every parent, business owner and community member. Change won’t happen overnight but with concentrated efforts and societal support, it can be enacted. It’s important first though to understand the exact history of our public schools and what has taken place over the past two centuries to bring us to where we are today. The role that our public schools have played in shaping our modern society is a large one and the importance of its influence on our future should not be underestimated. To really create the type of society we desire as Americans, we must start with our public schools and understand how they are, and always have been, an integral piece of our future patchwork.
Collaboration is, without a doubt, a positive and important part of academic life. Scholars benefit enormously when they’re able to develop teamwork skills for conducting research jointly or in partnerships.
Scholarly alliances can lighten the heavy burden of publishing in high-class international journals. It makes investigative ground work and funding procedures far less intense. It enables more scholars to share in successes. It is also crucial to identifying and grasping seemingly intractable social problems. All of this can benefit entire regions and even nations.
But there are also pitfalls and problems. Scholars from the global north still tend to dominate such “partnerships”. With more capital in hand, they often call the shots. Over the past decade or so, there have beensome attempts to change these power dynamics.
The South-South Educational Scholarly Collaboration and Knowledge Interchange Initiative – or S-S Initiative – fits into this mould.
I am among those who initiated this endeavour. Over the past 18 months or so, its work has yielded some valuable lessons, insights and results. We’re a small group of academics with a shared focus on rural education. We all come from areas in the global South: Africa, the Caribbean and Latin America. Together, we’ve set up good, effective working engagements.
A history of oppression
In 2014 I started developing a national data base of rural education researchers. My goal was to boost general awareness of, and possibly create linkages between, local scholars dedicated to producing new and improved knowledge of a globally neglected yet crucial area of public schooling.
This culminated in the S-S Initiative. Current participants and collaborators are from Cuba, Zimbabwe, Democratic Republic of Congo, Argentina, Mozambique, Rwanda, and South Africa. Scholars from Colombia, Mexico, Kenya, Malawi and the Ivory Coast have also expressed interest in getting involved. It’s clear, then, that participants have something in common beyond their interest in rural education: they all come from countries that have historically been the victims of acute colonial oppression, marginalisation and underdevelopment.
This history continues to negatively impact on the provision of good, quality education, particularly in the realm of rural schooling.
There are many potential approaches to the global problem of rural education. There currently exists a range of secluded, often insulated remedial measures and strategies concerning this sector. These must be shared to develop and increase knowledge that ultimately is mutually beneficial. It is important to create suitable spaces where such prospects can be presented, engaged, and eventually applied where feasible.
Broad goals
The initiative has several key aims. With appropriate interest and support, these will be expanded and developed over time.
First, we’re reaching out to rural education scholars from the global South to join the membership data base. This provides opportunities for the exchange of ideas and experiences, as well as the possibility of launching partnerships in future.
It also sets the groundwork for conference presentations as well as the constitution of review boards. The selection of postgraduate supervisors and external examiners are further opportunities under consideration. In this way, experts can come together and apply their insights and work in a collective manner. Such a course, we hope, will offer suitable prospects to initiate and advance meaningful change in the broader S-S educational field.
We have launched a call for book chapters on the topic of rural education. It is hoped this will eventually lead to the formal establishment of a South-South Educational Journal, with a duly-appointed international review board. There is a dearth of academic journals collectively or especially devoted to learning and teaching practices in the global South as a whole.
It is not a question of expertise: scholars in this initiative have deep knowledge and experience of academic publishing. While some occupy leading positions on editorial boards, others have played key roles in actually establishing and administering academic and scientific journals.
We also hope to merge DVD documentary production with educational field research. This has the potential to reach a wider audience, thereby bringing parents and communities more decisively into the research fold. Schools and children thrive more when parents are more engaged in education.
Together with a dedicated, supportive team, I have already produced one DVD of this nature. A second is close to completion. And, with a colleague in the S-S Initiative, plans are underway for a documentary about rural schooling in the Republic of Cuba.
Small, steady steps
Funding will always be an issue for academics, particularly those from less developed territories. Fortunately, the S-S Initiative was enriched and boosted with funding I received from South Africa’s National Research Foundation. This allowed us to organise a symposium hosted at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology’s Education Faculty.
This gathering brought together a range of educational research scholars from the global South. Established, emerging and postgraduate scholars presented their work with special attention devoted to rural education. It was, as such spaces can be, fertile ground for the exchange of ideas and knowledge. It also allowed us to discuss possible future collaborations.
At their best, these kinds of initiatives don’t just benefit individual academics. Our hope is that by drawing together experts from the neglected global South, rurally-based school children’s educational development can take centre stage.
And the list of what teachers “should” or “could” be trained in is now very long. But while each call for training has a justified and reasonable argument behind it, we cannot escape the fact that initial teacher training cannot deliver fully trained, for every eventuality, teachers.
The general postgraduate route into teaching in the UK is 36 weeks long. Of those weeks, 24 are spent “on the job” in school – which leaves 12 weeks for all the rest. This isn’t a great deal of time when you consider those 12 weeks are when students will largely learn the skills required to actually be a teacher. This includes classroom management and lesson planning, along with how to deliver practical demonstrations and organise activities for pupils as well as subject knowledge for teaching.
Of course, there are also the fast track teacher training programmes like Teach First. Under these types of training programmes, high-flying graduates are placed in difficult schools with minimal initial training and ongoing support.
But the danger is that such an approach promotes a view that subject knowledge combined with altruism and social justice is all that is needed. And it is probably with this in mind, that Teach First has recently extended its training to a two-year postgraduate diploma model. Previously, their model included a one year Post Graduate Certificate in Education (PGCE) followed by a year studying educational leadership.
The 21st century teacher
The length of initial teacher training varies from country to country. In Finland and Portugal, for example, it is a master’s level programme taking about five years in total. While in Japan, teaching qualifications are graded, with the highest grades needed to teach in higher secondary schools – this also takes around five year’s of training.
As a teacher trainer, I also regularly get fresh demands that teachers must be trained far better in classroom management and behaviour management. Related issues are also highlighted as special cases requiring training for teachers. This includes dealing with time-wasting in classrooms – such as children using mobile phones. Or the more serious issues of how to deal with bullying, as well as knowing how to deal with racism.
Then there have been calls to train teachers in how to exploit computer technology and games. And to cap it all off, apparently teachers should also be trained how to teach left-handed children. All this, on top of the day job of actually teaching their subject, marking papers and setting homework.
Time for a rethink?
So although many of the above calls and demands may have good reason to be implemented, exactly how and when they are introduced needs a lot of further thought – because trying to cram it all into 36 weeks just won’t work.
Teachers can’t be all things to all people. Pexels.
Of course, teachers should be trained – it is just a case of figuring out what else “should” and “could” be included in this initial training. Although that said, for Michael Gove it wasn’t that obvious – he changed the law to allow untrained teachers to be hired in academies and free schools. Still, it could be worse. In the US, there were genuine calls for all teachers to carry guns, and to be trained to shoot in order to protect the children – some states already legally allow this to happen.
Perhaps in the UK, then, it is time we looked again at the demands of teacher training, and rethink how long it should take, along with what exactly initial training should cover. Because things can’t carry on as they are.
And by working out how we want future training to look, we can decide what “core initial teacher training” must involve – and at the same time work to ensure there is an entitlement for, and ongoing provision of, training for all qualified teachers.
The charter school debate is getting even more heated. Recently, charter opponents launched a campaign from the steps of the Massachusetts State House to warn that charter schools were “sapping resources from the traditional schools that serve most minority students, and creating a two-track system.” Similar opposition has been voiced by critics across the country as well.
So when it comes to educating kids, are charter schools good or bad?
Differing views
Minnesota authorized the first charter schools in 1991. Charter schools are public schools that are independent and more autonomous than traditional schools and typically based around a particular educational mission or philosophy.
Charters’ governance structure – who can operate a charter and what kind of oversight they face – varies by state. For example, while charter schools in some states are managed by nonprofit organizations, in other states they are run for a fee by for-profit companies.
Regardless, over the years, an increasing number of students have been enrolling in charter schools. At present there are more than three million students enrolled in 6,700 charter schools across 42 states. Nationally, charter school enrollment has more than tripled since 2000.
The response to charter prevalence is varied: proponents say these schools provide a vital opportunity for children to attend high-quality alternatives to traditional public schools. Especially when those traditional schools are struggling or underperforming.
Opponents, like those in Boston, say charter schools are threats to the very idea of public schooling – they weaken neighborhood schools by reducing enrollment, capturing their funding and prioritizing high-ability students instead of those most in need of educational improvements.
What’s the evidence?
As a researcher who studies school choice, I know that many of these arguments are reflected in evidence. But, the truth is, when you look nationwide, the effects of charter schooling on student test scores are mixed – charters in some states do better than traditional public schools, worse or about the same in others.
Research has been less ambiguous when it comes to educational attainment. We know that kids from Boston charter schools, for example, are more likely to pass the state’s high school exit exam “with especially large effects on the likelihood of qualifying for a state-sponsored college scholarship.” Charters also “induce a clear shift from two-year to four-year colleges.”
What’s more, a new study published in the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management (the top peer-reviewed policy journal in the country) has shown that students from charter schools not only persist longer in college than those from traditional public schools, but also earn more in income later.
But critics charge that charters achieve these kinds of effects by pushing out kids with learning disabilities or problematic behavior – or avoid such children altogether.
Critics say that charter schools tend to push out underperforming children. Neon Tommy, CC BY-SA
There are also concerns that charter advantages are rooted in new patterns of racial/ethnic segregation because white and minority families may choose schools with more children of the same race or ethnicity.
Then there is the understudied issue of teachers in charter schools. Most of these teachers are not unionized, which remains a source of major tension between charter and traditional public school advocates.
We know, for example, that charter teachers tend to exit schools at higher rates than other public teachers, which, all else being equal, could be detrimental to student outcomes.
But we also know that charter administrators may prioritize teacher effectiveness and other attributes in making staffing and compensation decisions. This differs from traditional schools, where teachers’ pay and job retention are not usually linked to their classroom performance.
What do parents think?
Public opinion about charter schools varies along with this evidence.
A recent national poll indicated that 51 percent of all Americans support the idea of charter schooling. Only 27 percent actively opposed charters, which means almost as many Americans either don’t like or don’t have an opinion about these schools as those who do and support them.
Respondents in these urban areas were far more supportive of school choice generally and charter schools in particular than the national average: no less than 83 percent (in Tulsa) and as much as 91-92 percent (in Atlanta, Boston, Memphis, New Orleans and New York City) agreed that parents should have more school choices.
No less than 58 percent (in New York City) and as much as 74 percent (in Atlanta, Boston, Los Angeles and New Orleans) believed that overall, charter schools improve education.
In that survey, there was a direct correlation between respondents’ perceptions of surrounding public school quality and support for charter schools: the worse parents believed their traditional schooling options to be, the more they favored charter schools.
Charters are here to stay
So, where do we go from here?
Scholars like me tend to conclude our studies by saying “we need more evidence.” And on charter schools, that’s true: we need to know more. But on the big questions of public policy – and education certainly is one of these – research tends to go only so far.
Rigorous evidence can tell us about differences between charter and traditional schools. But it cannot solve a more fundamental and subjective disagreement about whether public education should or should not continue to exist largely as it has for the last century.
This is especially true whenever we add the caveat – “it depends.”
Whether charter schools are better for kids than traditional public schools appears to depend on which charter schools we are talking about, and in which states.
So too does the question of whether charters exist to help all kids or to provide a specialized education to a few. And whether parents see charters as a positive force in their communities appears to depend on their sense that traditional schools will provide what they need for their children.
In my view, one thing seems certain: charter schools are here to stay. Already, there are more of them every year.
So, it’s time to move the debate away from “are charters good or bad for kids” and to a more careful consideration of the strengths and weaknesses of the charter approach in many different places.
Charter proponents can and should recognize that not all charter schools are superior to the traditional public model. Charter critics should note that traditional public schools have failed many families – especially poor families and families of color – and there are reasons many have turned to alternative education providers.
More evidence is needed, to be sure, but these basic realities are likely to remain.
Kindergarten classes at Ernest R. Geddes Elementary School in Baldwin Park, Calif., are taught primarily in Spanish as part of the school’s bilingual program. Photo: Sarah Garland)
As the election results were rolling in across the country signaling that Donald Trump would become the 45th president of the United States, nearly three-quarters of Californians had voted to restore bilingual education in California.
The Trump campaign had been overtly anti-immigrant, while the restoration of bilingual education was an affirmation of the valuing of the children of immigrants. How could California and the nation be at such great odds?
In 1976, California was one of the first states in the nation to pass legislation making it a requirement for schools to provide bilingual education to its English learners (ELs). The rationale for these programs was that such instruction would combat discrimination against immigrant children and support development of a stronger self- concept, in addition to providing instruction in a language the children could understand, thereby avoiding school failure.
While there wasn’t a large body of research on any of this, it made intuitive as well as logical sense. This remained the policy in California until the passage of a voter initiative in 1998 entitled Proposition 227, or “English for the Children,” effectively prohibited bilingual instruction in most cases.
The seemingly slow acquisition of English and the low achievement of EL kids were blamed on bilingual education, even though no more than 30 percent of ELs were ever provided bilingual instruction, mostly because of a lack of credentialed bilingual teachers.
The solution was to immerse the students in a cold bath of English, eschewing instruction in a language they could actually understand.
The snake-oil salesman who convinced the voters in 1998 that with English-only instruction ELs would become proficient in English in one year and raise their academic performance at the same time was not unlike Donald Trump. Even at the time, there was sufficient research to suggest that the first of these promises was unlikely, and the second simply impossible.
Ron Unz manufactured statistics that could never be verified: “The majority of English learners are in bilingual programs,” “hundreds of thousands of these students languish in classes where only Spanish is taught, not English.”
These remarks aren’t dissimilar to the claims of Donald Trump that Mexican immigrants are “rapists and criminals,” that he will build a wall to shut out our neighbors to the south, or that he will rescind the program that allows young “Dreamers” (young people brought to the U.S. as children) to go to college or work without fear of deportation — no verifiable facts, no specificity about how the proposals would actually work.
The ban on bilingual instruction passed with more than 60 percent of the vote – mostly by voters who had never seen a bilingual program (as was the case with Unz) or even understood how they worked. After five years, the state’s commissioned evaluation of the impact of Proposition 227 found no significant difference in outcomes for English learners as a result of the new law, but it did “conclude that Proposition 227 focused on the wrong issue.”
Bilingual education was not the problem. Nonetheless, California, home of more children of immigrants than any other state, continued to live with the virtual ban on bilingual instruction until this year.
Proposition 58, “The Multilingual Education Initiative,” lifted the ban and expands access to bilingual (usually targeted to English learners) and dual-language programs (that incorporate both English learners and English speakers wanting to learn a second language).
During the last 18 years, research has been conducted that shows significant benefits to multilingual instruction. Canadians have long been researching the cognitive benefits and concluding that learning in more than one language effectively made students “smarter” – they demonstrated a greater capacity for focused attention and avoidance of distractions. However, this research never had a major impact on policy in the U.S., perhaps because we have always considered our situation to be very different from Canada’s.
In recent years, longitudinal research – following the same children over their entire school career, from kindergarten to high school — comparing those in bilingual and dual-language programs to those in English-only classrooms, has concluded that while the bilinguals start slower, they end with superior outcomes in English, and Latino students perform better in both English and math when enrolled in bilingual programs.
Other research has shown that the children of immigrants who attain literacy in their home language actually earn more once in the workforce, and, again, in the case of Latinos go on to four-year universities at higher rates than those who lose that language ability.
Over the last two decades, too many children have been denied an education that could have conferred real benefits, and too many have been left behind. But perhaps equally important, California’s classrooms have been emptied of bilingual teachers. Although the demand for these programs continues to grow, less than one-third as many young people prepare to become bilingual teachers today as did in 1998. Why prepare for a job that doesn’t exist?
The dearth of prepared teachers will be a significant impediment to mounting these highly desired programs even as they have become once again legal.
Meantime, we have to hope that false promises and unverifiable claims made by presidential candidates do not tear at the fabric of this nation, a nation of immigrants.
Patricia Gándara is Research Professor and Co-Director of the Civil Rights Project at UCLA. She is also Chair of the Working Group on Education for the University of California-Mexico Initiative.
The signature issue for Betsy DeVos, nominated to be the next U.S. Secretary of Education, is giving parents freedom of choice, either to choose charter schools or to use vouchers to buy an education at any school they like, public or private. The logical extension of such policies – permitting students to take individual courses wherever they wish, by using online options – has already begun to take root in about a dozen states.
It’s called “Course Access” or “Course Choice.” Under such plans, the funding for a course taken by an individual student goes to the school or online company offering the course, often away from the student’s local district. In Nevada, in fact, parents can spend state education dollars any way they please — on private, public, online, part-time and full-time schools, on tutoring and extra books — through education savings accounts, which an advocate for them calls “the purest form of educational freedom.”
As they have emerged in some states, these programs have been assisted by conservative groups such as Jeb Bush’s Chiefs for Change and the Koch Industries-backed American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). It remains to be seen whether a Trump Administration will boost them further, using federal policy.
The growth of “Course Choice” initiatives in various states was chronicled in depth by The Hechinger Report last year, in this story from our archives.
— The editors
Thanks to a relatively new state policy, all spring Clarke went to the school library during second period for an online sociology class.
“It was very cool,” said Clarke, noting it lived up to his psychology teacher’s description: “It was a very interesting topic with some things that will tie back to psychology.”
This initiative, often called “Course Choice” or “Course Access,” is, as one proponent described it, like “school choice on steroids.”
Proponents count at least 10 states that have adopted a collection of policies they began promoting as Course Access — policies that allow students to take classes part-time online (and sometimes in other off-campus classrooms) by choosing from a variety of providers, including charter schools and other districts, instead of being limited to their local course offerings or to one state virtual school. And the Course Access movement is gaining momentum as it expands across the country, with eight states adopting or considering such laws in just the last four years, according to a comprehensive report on Course Access sponsored by the conservative group the Foundation for Excellence in Education and the lobbying firm EducationCounsel.
For Clarke and other students, online schools mean options, but for school district officials, they can mean less revenue, as education dollars flow toward charter schools or other districts that offer the online courses.
And, not unlike what often happens with charter schools and vouchers, the Course Access policies can set up a competition for limited education dollars.
States generally allocate money per student to districts, but in states with Course Access, districts have to share that funding based on the number of courses a student takes elsewhere. Much of the money can end up in the hands of for-profit companies that supply the curriculum, directly provide the classes or run the online schools in which students enroll part time.
“What is possible is the exploding wiring — if you will — of money across district lines or even state lines,” said Patricia Burch, associate professor of education and policy at the University of Southern California. “That can have a very immediate funding implication for a district.”
“It is a significant cost,” said Randy Paulson, Chatfield High’s principal. His school, with 400 students, can manage it partly because no more than 40 students a year are taking an online class. In Chatfield’s case, nearly all the classes are provided by the Minnesota Virtual Academy, run by the Houston Public School District about 40 miles away, with help from the for-profit company K12 Inc.
“What we want to do is serve our own students the best we can,” said Paulson, noting that adding an online class or two sometimes helps keep students in school. “We don’t want to lose students. If we lose students, we’re not able to provide students those opportunities.”
Similar to efforts to open charter schools or offer vouchers for private schools, Course Access aims to allow students (usually in high school) and their families to make choices — in this case, about where to go for individual classes. Advocates believe that the programs have the potential to appeal to all students, even those who would never consider leaving their local schools or don’t have the option of a charter school.
“We think the market is infinite,” said Mary Gifford, senior vice president of education policy and academic affairs at K12 Inc., the nation’s largest virtual school operator, which provides the curriculum and some management for the school where Clarke and his classmates enrolled. She said that although no more than 1 or 2 percent of U.S. students will ever enroll in virtual schools full-time, the company is now working closely with districts to help them start online programs as part of Course Access policies.
So far, only a tiny fraction of eligible students have enrolled for online classes. For example, in Minnesota, which began allowing part-time online enrollment in 2006, roughly 1 percent (5,520) of the state’s secondary school students enrolled during the 2013-14 school year, according to the Minnesota Department of Education.
But the policy has powerful backers, including at least three Republican presidential candidates — former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal and Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker — along with conservative groups such as the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC, the Koch Industries-backed association of state legislators and businesses), not to mention allies in the for-profit education business.
“If you rewind and go back to the last election cycle, you had at least two governors campaigning on Course Access,” said John Bailey, vice president of policy at the Jeb Bush-founded Foundation for Excellence in Education, referring to governors Bruce Rauner of Illinois and Greg Abbott of Texas.
And the reform-minded group Chiefs for Change, also founded by Jeb Bush, is pushing to include a provision in the update to the federal No Child Left Behind Act to set aside 5 percent of Title I dollars to be used, among other things, for Course Access. (The House version of the bill already sets aside 3 percent, or roughly $410 million, mostly for outside tutoring services; changes could be made when the House and Senate versions are reconciled in conference committee.)
Many of these backers prefer the term Course Access to Course Choice, to distinguish it from school choice and the controversies surrounding it, and also as a way of indicating its focus on addressing many schools’ lack of course offerings.
As states around the country try to prepare more students for college and careers, they are working to provide more students with access to advanced classes, particularly in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). The widespread lack of access to some key courses — only half of all high schools nationwide offer calculus and just 63 percent have physics — has become a rallying cry for Course Access supporters.
“Having a high-quality education must no longer depend on location,” wrote Jeb Bush in the introduction to last year’s Course Access policy brief. “For the next generation of students, the international stakes are too high to restrict access to great courses based on ZIP code.”
Yet at least so far, the program may not be living up to its promise of creating greater access for the very kids who might need it most. The students using the program in Texas are wealthier and whiter overall than the public school population as a whole, suggesting that gaps in access persist online. Data on the Florida Virtual School show a similar trend; in Utah, a stunningly low 6.15 percent of students participating in the state’s Course Access program are officially listed as poor enough to qualify for a fee waiver, though officials said course providers might not be filling out the information correctly.
Utah — the model legislation and its aftermath
When Utah passed the law creating a Course Access program in 2011, school districts panicked over what it would do to their budgets.
“We were fearful because those who were pushing it were pretty intense,” said Ken Grover, now the principal of Innovations Early College High School in Salt Lake City, describing billboards that advertised free online courses.
The program — officially called the Statewide Online Education Program — has been phased in over time. High school students this fall will be able to take up to five classes online during the school year while remaining enrolled in their local high school. This past school year, when students could take four classes online, it cost districts up to $366 per student per semester, according to the Utah State Office of Education.
In the fall of 2016, students will be able to take up to six online classes (usually considered a full load of coursework) while remaining enrolled.
Utah’s Course Access legislation also allows kids in private schools and home-schooled kids to participate through a separate funding stream.
The Utah policy was the model for what conservative backers of the program had imagined. In fact, Utah’s legislation is one of two officially approved by the Koch-backed ALEC. (The other, which contains two possible funding options, is based on a law passed in Louisiana, though later overturned by its state court, and on the law passed in Texas.)
The disaster that public school districts in Utah anticipated never materialized — partly because, within a few months, many districts in the state had established online schools to compete for dollars with the online charter schools.
Canyons School District, for example, went from having no online students in 2011 to 1,900 this past year. They are all enrolled part time, and all but 400 come from within the district, said Darren Draper, who runs what he’s been told is the largest of the district’s part-time schools, the Canyons Virtual High School.
“That’s huge,” said Draper. “If we didn’t build CVHS, we would have many students going elsewhere, without question.”
In fact, just 1,367 students in the entire state took an online class outside their district in 2014-15, according to preliminary state figures, meaning district budgets were largely spared.
In the end, advocates of the change and public school officials who balked at the measure can both claim victory in Utah — at least so far.
Course Access backers, however, claim credit for creating the competition that spurred the public schools to change.
“We changed the landscape in the state entirely,” said Robyn Bagley, board chair for Parents for Choice in Education, a Utah group that advocated for the law locally. “The amount of options skyrocketed in some form or another.”
Bagley maintains that the program has already grown dramatically in its first four years and will expand further.
But Grover said he doesn’t expect to see a spike in numbers. “Most parents want their kids to go to school,” he said. “They want them at school learning. It’s their identity.”
(In perhaps a reflection of where online learning is headed, both Bagley and Grover now run blended-learning schools that they say offer the best of both worlds — the personalization of an online school with the in-person interactions of a traditional school.)
Although rural Texas districts depend on Course Access, statewide its enrollments have dropped
Rural school districts across the state of Texas are using its version of Course Access to offer courses to fulfill basic high school requirements and even to save money.
In the tiny Dell City Independent School District, with fewer than 100 children enrolled in kindergarten through 12th grade, every single middle and high school student was enrolled in an online social studies class after the district’s teacher left mid-year. Algebra II and Spanish classes were also offered virtually, said Veronica Gomez, a physical education teacher who doubles as the liaison to the Texas Virtual Academy Network, as the statewide program is officially called.
“We live in a rural area; it’s out in the middle of nowhere,” she said. “We don’t have the staff. Because we don’t have the staff, we have to go online.” The district hadn’t found a good candidate to teach Spanish, she said, but added that the online program has other advantages: “It’s cheaper for us. We don’t have to pay benefits or anything like that.”
Most Texas districts, however, appear to be taking a different route — they are opting to spend money on their own schools and teachers instead of paying for online classes.
When the state originally started up the Texas Virtual School Network Course Catalog, in 2009, students could take courses online without the districts having to cover the costs; the state had allocated a separate pool of money for the program.
But after the state stopped covering the cost, the number of spots filled in the semester-long online classes dropped precipitously, from 22,899 in 2010-11 to 5,757 in 2013-14. The wording of the state law may have been a major factor.
The law says that districts can turn down a student’s request for a state-vetted online class only if their school offers a “substantially similar” class. Backers of Course Access said they think many districts are using a generous interpretation of that concept (they tried unsuccessfully this spring to get the legislature to close that loophole).
Louisiana’s new source of funding for college and career classes
In a striking innovation, Louisiana adopted a program, officially called Course Choice, that includes not just online courses but off-campus classes as well. As the law was originally written in Louisiana, for-profit companies and other outside groups could compete to directly provide the online or in-person classes, with parents and students choosing among them and funding going to the winners.
The political opposition to the program was initially fierce, and the law was challenged successfully. The state Supreme Court ruled that the funding approach was unconstitutional because it didn’t provide local school boards a say. Lawmakers revamped the program, removing the competition for resources, allowing schools to control what classes their students enrolled in and adding additional money — in essence, guaranteeing extra funding for the extra classes.
The revised program has expanded rapidly, according to the Louisiana Department of Education, with 19,068 semester-long Course Choice enrollments in 2014-15, just its second year. While the state has been championed as the model for Course Access policies, state superintendent John White said the program hasn’t lived up to his original vision.
The program was originally conceived as a way to bring new and inspiring classes to high school students preparing for life after graduation, White said, with “things that would not have existed without Course Choice.”
Although a welding program, an elite private college’s associates degree program and an ACT-preparation program have successfully flourished as prime examples of innovation under the revised program, schools across the state are most commonly using the program to prepare high school students for life after graduation, specifically allowing students to earn college credit through the state’s four-year universities, technical and community colleges. More than two-thirds (13,000) of the course enrollments have been in these so-called dual-enrollment classes.
“That’s an important thing,” White said, but added, “much of that would exist — not all of it, but much of it would exist without Course Choice.” (Significant numbers of students already took dual-enrollment classes before Course Choice ever started.) He had also hoped, with the initial bill, to put decision-making control in the hands of parents instead of school boards, and argues that the program now has less innovation as a result.
White, who heads the Chiefs for Change group, said federal funding of Course Access, if changes are made to the No Child Left Behind Act, could drive further innovation, with outside groups essentially guaranteed a chance at significant funds. “You’re going to attract a lot of actors that you wouldn’t otherwise attract — creative actors,” he said.
Despite the wide consensus that the program is now working, critics still aren’t happy about how it was originally conceived in Louisiana. “I think it was an ALEC-driven, an American Legislative Exchange-driven, initiative that Superintendent White felt would work in Louisiana,” said the Louisiana School Boards Association executive director, Scott Richard, who helped launch a lawsuit against the state program as it was initially conceived.
“I think it’s all part of the national reform, so-called reform, from the national think tanks,” he added, arguing that the new form of Course Choice had provided districts with resources to make important changes.
White said his inspiration was the online experience in Louisiana and with charter schools and school choice generally, but acknowledged that, because schools are happier with the revised version of the program, principals and teachers are collaborating with the state on everything from scheduling problems to reaching students who hadn’t had access to courses in the past.
Some proponents of Course Access now say that a program that doesn’t start off as competitive for funding may be best.
“I don’t see one system as better than the other; they’re just very different,” White said.
Other options besides Course Access
Of course, for many advocates of Course Access, the program represents just one possibility for changing the public education system — their goal is to put more power in the hands of students and parents to decide where state education dollars are spent.
Nevada passed a law in June that allows parents to spend state education dollars any way they please — on private, public, online, part-time and full-time schools, on tutoring and extra books — through education savings accounts, or “vouchers on steroids,” as they were called in one news story about the legislation. (Four other states have similar laws, but they limit the savings accounts significantly — to students with special needs, in foster care and/or from high-poverty households.)
“I think Course Choice is sort of evolving, just as a policy area, into what you may know as an educational savings account,” said Lindsay Russell, the director of the ALEC Task Force on Education and Workforce Development. “We’re evolving as a country, and I think students continue to need to be competitive, not only within the United States, but globally as we continue to slip. I think educational savings accounts are the purest form of educational freedom.”
Course Access in its current form, while seemingly less radical than Nevada’s approach, appeals to some of its more conservative backers because it can be set up to pay schools and other course providers only when students complete a course (or potentially pass an outside exam).
Proponents call this a step toward accountability and paying for the right thing — results, instead of student attendance, especially given the dismal completion rates for online classes. (In Louisiana and Utah, providers of courses receive half on enrollment and half when the course is completed, for example.)
“Nevada is the poster child for seeing a different way to approach this,” said Michael Horn, co-founder and executive director of the Clayton Christensen Institute. “We need to step back and start learning what policy environments work in terms of incentivizing the right behavior. Course Access is this intriguing place to play with a lot of policies that move away from seat time toward competency-based learning and measuring individual student growth and things like that.”
This story was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Read more about blended learning.
After spending a decade and a half in the field of education, and much to my chagrin, not much has changed. K-12 schools are still underperforming, losing the global war for intellectual supremacy year after year. The power to counteract this is within our grasp, but we are too busy fighting political battles over state and parental rights. Our kids deserve better.
The bottom line is that most valuable commodity that we have is our children, and the future of the United States is inextricably tied to them. Unless we provide our children with a world-class education now, we will suffer later, when they are unable to lead or compete in the global economy.
Let’s stop fighting these petty turf wars. Who cares if Common Core is tied to President Obama or not? Flawed as it may be, it has the potential to ensure that all children graduate with the skills that they need to become productive citizens. It could be a game changer, but many of us reject it because it feels too much like a nationalized curriculum, or because we simply don’t understand the potential benefits. I brought up Common Core because it’s a divisive issue, driven more by politics than practicality.
It’s funny how we say that it is all about the kids, but at the end of the day, education policy makers create laws based on what is best for stakeholders. They don’t want to upset educators, teachers unions, parents, business, etc. Who cares about what upsets kids?
Take ten minutes out of your day and talk to a high school dropout. Ask them why they dropped out? The answers that you get will give you valuable insight into what is wrong with U.S. Education system. Instead of listening to the feedback from students, we would rather do a deep dive into the data, or pay a consultant six figures.
Our kids deserve better. They deserve access a quality education regardless of where they live in this country. The only thing standing in our way is us. If we could learn to focus on what matters most, our children, then and only then will we be able to reform the U.S. education system and secure our children’s future.
Editor’s note: This is an updated version of an article first published on April 27, 2015
Texas college professors may soon face a dilemma between upholding professional ethics and protecting their lives.
On Thursday, December 10, a task force at the University of Texas at Austin recommended restricting guns in residence halls, at sporting events and in certain laboratories, but allowed them in classrooms.
The 19-member task force was set up following a “Campus Carry” law passed by the state in Spring 2015. The law, which will come into effect on August 1, 2016, will allow people with handgun licenses to carry concealed firearms on college campuses.
With the recommendation to allow firearms in classrooms, a question coming up for many academics is whether they would be forced to give As to undeserving students, just so they can avoid being shot.
This is not as far fetched as it sounds. In my five years as a college professor, I have had experience with a number of emotionally distressed students who resort to intimidation when they receive a lesser grade than what they feel they deserve.
Threats on campus
Here is an example of one such threatening experience: one evening in a graduate course, after I handed back students’ papers, a young woman stood up and pointed at me. “This is unacceptable!” she screamed as her body shook in rage.
She moved toward the front of the class waving her paper in my face and screamed again, “unacceptable!” After a heated exchange, she left the room, and stood outside the door sobbing.
All this was over receiving a B on a completely low-stakes assignment.
What followed was even more startling. The following week, the student brought along a muscle-bound man to class. He watched me through the doorway window for the entire three hours of the class, with his arms folded across his chest.
And if this wasn’t enough, the young woman’s classmates avoided me on campus because, they said, they were afraid of getting caught in the crossfire should she decide to shoot me.
After that, every time she turned in a paper I cringed and prayed that it was good so that I wouldn’t have to give her anything less than an A.
Learning from this experience, now I give papers back only at the end of the class or just “forget” to bring them with me.
I was lucky that the student didn’t have a gun in my classroom. Other professors have not been so lucky.
In 2014 a student at Purdue shot his instructor in front of a classroom of students. In another incident in 2009, a student at Northern Virginia Community College tried to shoot his math professor on campus. And, in 2000, a graduate student at the University of Arkansas shot his English professor.
In each of these states, carrying handguns on campus was illegal at the time of the shooting, although a bill was introduced in Arkansas earlier this year to allow students to carry guns.
Grade inflation
Despite these and other shootings, a new trend has emerged across the US that supports guns on college campuses.
We know that some students will carry guns whether it is legal or not. One study found that close to five percent of undergraduates had a gun on campus and that almost two percent had been threatened with a firearm while at school.
Allowing students to carry weapons to class strips off a layer of safety. Students are often emotional and can be volatile when it comes to their GPAs.
Who would want to give a student a low grade and then get shot for it?
Many majors are highly competitive and require certain GPAs for admission. Students on scholarships and other forms of financial aid must maintain high grades to keep their funding. It’s no surprise that some might students resort to any means necessary to keep up their GPAs.
An international student once cried in my office and begged me to change his F to an A, as without it, his country would no longer pay for him to be in the US. I didn’t. He harassed me by posting threatening messages on Facebook.
So, the question is, will we soon see a new sort of grade inflation, with students earning a 4.0 GPA with their firepower rather than brain power? And if so, what sort of future citizenry will we be building on our campuses?
Contrary to popular belief, DNA is not a child’s destiny. IQ is not fixed. Cognitive skills can change. This is critically important in K-12 schools because of the poverty gap — the difference between a child’s chronological age and developmental age.
In a healthy environment, a child’s developmental age will match his or her chronological age. In a high-risk environment, research shows that while a child’s chronological age is 5 years old, his or her developmental age is closer to 3 years old. This has a huge impact on school readiness and performance.
Today, 51 percent of all students in U.S. public schools are poor. Our public education system is designed to help students achieve a year of academic growth in a school year. For economically disadvantaged children, that’s a problem.
This problem, of course, is not new. In 1995, Betty Hart and Todd R. Risley published their groundbreaking research study that uncovered the widely cited 30-million word gap between children from low-income homes and their more economically advantaged peers. Not only does that gap still exist today, it’s becoming more prevalent as the poverty rate climbs.
A liberal arts education that focuses on a broad range of topics, and is not vocationally-centric, is a bigger asset to today’s students than other trending tracks like STEM learning. That’s according to author Fareed Zakaria in his new book “In Defense of a Liberal Education.” Zakaria argues that the central focus of a liberal arts education is writing, and that “writing makes you think.”
What a liberal education at its best does…is to allow people to range widely, to read widely, to explore their passions…I think that kind of breadth and the ability to feed your curiosity and indulge is incredibly important. It’s what, now in the corporate world, one would call synergy, or out of the box thinking, or the intersection of disciplines. This has always been a central part of what a liberal education has meant.
By having a liberal arts foundation, workers can then build on in other areas. Zakaria says that scientific thinking certainly has a place in American education but that there should be a “logical clarity and coherence to it.”
With all of the talk of Science, Technology, Engineering and Math learning as the wave of the future, Zakaria’s view and book are a refreshing reminder that writing and logic are still valuable. It goes back to the age-old concept that we must teach our students HOW to learn, and not just WHAT to learn. That’s the real way to ensure innovative and skilled future workers.
What do you think? Are liberal arts as important, less important or more important that STEM tactics?
