Who does the American School System Serve?
We have an opportunity right now to focus on education instead of school
I keep hard copies of very few documents. These include my birth certificate, the deed to my house, and my diplomas. Also, a coffee-stained copy of the 2003 September edition of Harper’s with its story, “Against School, How Public Education Cripples Our Kids, and Why” by John Taylor Gatto. Ideas like Gatto’s take a long time to gestate, but if there ever was an opportunity to rethink school, isn’t it now when school has been so completely disrupted?
Instead of rethinking school in the broad context, teachers and school officials are frenzied, tasked with the important nitty gritty of figuring out how to return students to school in a COVID-19 world. They must fit a 2020’s problem into a 1920’s box.
Schools are near and dear to our hearts. We believe schools are responsible for educating every child to their full potential. In our thinking, education = schools. Getting our kids back to school may be an important short-term goal. But let’s step back and consider the larger pattern. For whom does school equal education?
Troubling Origins of System Design
Gatto is a former New York State and New York City Teacher of the Year. His views are informed by his experiences. He also looked into the origins of our public education system, designed in the early 1900’s. He writes that our American public education followed the Prussian model:
Divide children by subject, by age-grading, by constant rankings on tests, and by many other more subtle means, and it was unlikely that the ignorant mass of mankind, separated in childhood, would ever reintegrate into a dangerous whole.
In the article, Gatto quotes Woodrow Wilson, speaking to the New York City School Teachers Association in 1909:
We want one class of persons to have a liberal education, and we want another class of persons, a very much larger class, of necessity, in every society, to forgo the privileges of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks.
The bottom line of Gatto’s critique in Harper’s is that our public education system is rooted in classist and racist thinking with an intent to create manageable citizens, servile workers, and avid consumers.
Gatto’s critique raises a disturbing question: who is our system of public education designed to serve?
The Legacy of System Design
But that was 100 years ago! you might say. Vestiges of this early thinking can be found in more contemporary critiques. Sir Ken Robinson’s humorous and poignant Ted Talk (the most watched ever) faults schools for stifling creativity and independent thought. The Haas Institute report “Responding to Educational Inequality” in schools, decries “universal approaches” as well as racial biases about learning abilities.
The data have a similar story to tell.
Take a look at the chart below. Is school designed for students? The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) reports that one-quarter of 12th graders tested at “below basic” in reading, and another one-third at “basic”—defined as partial mastery of fundamental skills. In no ethnic/racial group did the average reading scores reach proficiency levels.
Math and science proficiencies are even worse (and we wonder why science seems not to matter…).
Fewer than one in seven students graduates from high school. The numbers, unsurprisingly, get worse when you break them down by race/ethnicity, disability status, and English language learners—to the point that only one in four American Indian/AlaskaNative students graduate and one in three students with a disability graduate. This is high school we’re talking about. Our system is failing so many students.
It seems that school is not designed for teachers either because nearly one in two new teachers quits within five years. Nor does it seem designed for parents. Almost half of parents (and 58% of Black parents) wish they could be more involved in their children’s education. Only half of parents say they are very satisfied with their child’s education.
How about the people who work with our students after high school graduation? Only 29% of employers and 14% of college instructors find students are adequately prepared.
The Money
You might be thinking: if only our schools had more money. Yes, money matters. In most states public education relies heavily on property taxes—a primary design feature of our system that is guaranteed to produce inequities. But money is not the whole picture.
Per pupil expenditures (adjusted for inflation) have continued to rise ever since records were first kept in 1915. Per pupil current expenditures* increased twenty percent (adjusted for inflation) from 2000-01 to 2016-17. The state/district with the highest per pupil spending, the District of Columbia at $23,500 in 2016-17, also had the lowest graduation rate (69%) in the country.
What Might We Design?
Who is our public education system serving? Our system was designed to educate a select few and we have been trying to retrofit it to serve all children for a long time. This has not worked and there’s no reason to believe it will in the future.
Maybe it’s time to focus on education instead of school. What happens when we let go of the school “box”? Close your eyes and imagine an America in which every child is well-educated. I see a very different America—socially, economically, and even spiritually.
Do we have the courage to dismantle the school “box?” Now—when parents across the country are experiencing tensions with concerns of sending their children back to school and also wanting part of their lives back—is a perfect time to experiment. School districts are deconstructing the box with part-time and online options. These shouldn’t be seen as temporary arrangements until we can return to normal. Rather, we should vigilantly monitor what works and what doesn’t, and for whom, so we can build new approaches to education.
For inspiration we can turn to teachers. For two weeks in June, a group of teachers in the North Star of Texas National Writing Project convened to discuss the challenges they face. Some of the issues they raised include:
As educators we have an opportunity to RECLAIM what we REALLY do --- How can we come together as a profession to effect the change that we constantly want to see?
In a time of uncertainty, how do we move forward with the changes in society and education to benefit others?
How do we support the development of critical teaching practices that will grow critically thinking individuals?
How can we support a shift in thinking--from the deficit model to the celebration of language differences?
How can we help facilitate an environment where our teachers and students choose literacy as the ultimate practice to enrich their lives in and out of school?
How do we help students feel better about themselves and discover and embrace the beauty and joy of learning?
Teachers know there’s something better we can be doing for our children. They yearn to move outside of the constraints that have been placed on them and their students.
What if we left behind our current system designed by ultra-privileged white men in the 1900s? What if we turned to teachers—along with parents, students, and school administrators—and gave them the freedom to design new educational opportunities fit for a complex, uncertain, and rapidly changing world? What would they come up with? I don’t know, but the very idea makes me grin ear-to-ear.
*Current expenditures exclude debt payments and capital expenditures.
photo credit: Image by Juraj Varga from Pixabay