The Theory of New Orleans…
Friday, August 15, 2008Written by: Alexander Ooms
It is simply impossible, Pastorek has come to believe, for a traditional school system, run from the top down by a central administrator, to educate large numbers of poor children to high levels of achievement. “The command-and-control structure can produce marginal improvements,” he told me when we met last month at a coffeehouse on Magazine Street. “But what’s clear to me is that it can only get you so far. If you create a system where initiative and creativity is valued and rewarded, then you’ll get change from the bottom up. If you create a system where people are told what to do and how to do it, then you will get change from the top down. We’ve been doing top-down for many years in Louisiana. And all we have is islands of excellence amidst a sea of mediocrity and failure.”
This is from probably the best article I have read on Education in the general press this year. Balanced enough to include the perspective of Diane Ravitch (with whom I personally disagree):
“The fundamental issue in American education — I say this after 40 years of having read and studied and written about the problems — is one that is demographic,” she told me. Poor children, Ravitch said, simply face too many problems outside the classroom. “If you don’t buttress whatever happens in school with social and economic changes that give kids a better chance in life and put their families on a more stable footing, then schools alone are not going to solve the problems of poor student performance. There has to be a range of social and economic strategies to support and enhance whatever happens in school.”
ALL OF IT is worth reading.
August 15th, 2008 at 8:30 pm
Diane Ravitch, Paul Hill and Rick Hess are all knowledgeable scholars with many insights to share. But they have all been outspoken advocates of school choice. In that respect, the article is far from balanced.
Having said that, the article is indeed interesting and informative, and I would also recommend it. Rick makes a good point, near the end of the article, about charter school opponents jumping on a failure to meet unreasonably high expectations. But I think one of the weaknesses of the Times article is that it’s built on anecdotes. Notwithstanding the very positive picture it paints of the current N.O. reforms, I didn’t notice any real evidence of success. (The only numbers presented tell us very little.) So while Rick is correct about unreasonable high expectations, certainly we should have some expectations. Let’s give the reforms and the reformers some time, but let’s also not declare the reform a success with little or no evidentiary basis.
One thing that was particularly telling for me, btw, was the statement from Pastorek to the effect that while he signed onto the “Education Equality Project” document, he actually agreed with the core of the “Broader, Bolder” document (full disclosure: I’m a signatory to the “Broader, Bolder Approach” document). But he didn’t want to give the appearance of making excuses.
It seems sad — and the basis for poor policy-making — that we have to move forward under the “it’s all the schools’ fault” pretense even when we’re aware that the issue is much larger.
August 16th, 2008 at 7:31 am
I’m not convinced Ravitch is in the choice camp - certainly not in the past year given her open disagreements with Klien and the New York reforms.
There is minimal evidence of anything long-term in the short-term. But if you are not impressed by the increase from 34% to 43% percent of fourth-grade students at or above grade level on the state English test, I trust you are likewise skeptical of the “historic” increase of 3.6% for DPS reading on this years CSAP, and frankly anything less than a several-year trend. Traditional public schools have a long track record. In contrast, one is clearly now getting individual charter schools with impressive results with FRL kids. This is true both in Denver and nationally, and New Orleans is unique given the scale of the efforts. The open question is how to scale these efforts, not if they work at the school level.
I don’t believe anyone is saying it is “all the schools’s fault” - no one blames schools for poverty, lack of health care, etc. I would be in the same camp as Pastorek - there is clearly a correlation between social factors and educational success, but to claim that one should not hold schools accountable for educating students in light of the other social factors is both incorrect (at the individual school level) and inho bad policy.