The frenzied media attention concerning how poor American Schools are performing may have reached new heights with Oprah Winfrey’s recent announcement that billionaire Mark Zuckerberg will donate $100 million to fix the public schools of Newark, New Jersey. Somehow, Newark Mayor Cory Booker becomes the Knight in Shining Armor sent by Governor Chris Christie to fix an ailing system of urban public education. I tend to agree with Bob Braun’s take on this one reported in the New Jersey Star-Ledger (Friday, September 24, 2010) as it’s worth reading.
Not that public education in Newark or in any other urban environment is in need of a tune up, it certainly is. In fact, schools in rural areas face similar challenges. The main problem is twofold here in my humble opinion. First, schools in America are chronically underfunded given the challenges we face and required mandates we must meet. Second, schools were designed to be a one-size-fits-all institution and society contains far too much variation for a public institution designed over a century ago to effectively respond to.
Consider that America still is singularly the most significant social experiment in the world: a magnificent melting pot of cultures that places her people in the most non-homogeneous environment ever to populate a geographic area. In other words we are replete with diversity: not one other world country can claim this fame nor rise to this educational challenge.
Its not that American education is failing students on a wholesale scale like the critics, think-tanks, pundits, and (certain) politicians would have us believe. In fact its not that we are failing our students rather we are failing to change to adjust to our students. In fact by design, we are not able to adjust to the rapidly changing global and technological society that evolves around us.
Author Jim Collins of Good to Great, demonstrated this concept with his descriptions of corporate America at the end of the past century. In simplistic terms he suggested that corporations who were lean and adaptable were the most likely to survive the forward march of time and everyone else destined to fail.
Schools as an institution are no exception. Think about the typical school calendar public schools in America follow: A ten-month agrarian design that suited the lifestyle of this country well over a hundred years ago when the family farm dictated the pulse of most communities. How predominant are family farms in 2010? The same can be said about many of the rules and mandates schools must follow in this new century: all designed for a society that no longer exists.
The “failing” label that the federal government now attaches to schools that do not meet 100% of their annual targets reaches an even higher level of improbability as all schools and children in our nation under No Child Left Behind must be 100% proficient in a few short years. A goal worth reaching for but a reality not attainable unless the natural variation in the human population ceases to exist in the near future. Our children live in conditions far too overwhelming for schools to mitigate in the little time students attend school during their youthful lives.
American schools are far too understaffed and under-resourced in order to attain this objective, especially if we consider the overwhelming number of children with learning disabilities, developmental conditions, and physiological unmet needs entering schools each day. Factor in millions of immigrant children (legal and illegal) who are part of America’s peripatetic population attending schools far less than others in their age cohort. Think about the language barriers. How can schools overcome these challenges alone?
Richard Rothstein made a strong case for the problems that manifest themselves in American public schools as societal ones. His book, Class and Schools, identifies the problems America faces and encourages us to take a more complete approach to closing the academic achievement gap. He acknowledges that schools alone cannot fix the problems endemic in American society. Government needs to stop blaming schools for America’s problems and begin the massive effort of creating a lean and more flexible institution capable of responding to the challenges existing in the heterogeneous population living in our society present to educators nationwide.
This is a challenge that money alone will not fix. That is why I remain cynical about Zuckerberg’s latest move for Newark. The Abbott districts already receive the lion’s share of state funding (Newark receives $940 million presently) and after three decades of adequacy and equity funding we still do not see a measurable difference in student performance.
I agree with Governor Christie in this area that New Jersey’s system of public education needs reform in order to survive the future (given protracted poor economic conditions). The unionism that dominates the patterns of New Jersey government may be the biggest impediment to effective overall reform. If only the educational community would embrace the necessary changes and begin the process of needed reform instead of waiting for politicians to do it for them. We must not fail to recognize that we are on the verge of a paradigm shift in public education and our success as a public institution hangs in the balance.
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