Education Reforms Don’t Work
Education Reforms Don’t Work: We Must Rethink Everything and Redesign Education Completely
(Edited from my dissertation)
Introduction
Adequate improvements to our education system in the United States are impossible because, essentially, our education institutions are doing what they were designed to do. New thinking enters as a challenge to rather than progress toward its fundamental goals and purposes. Our current education system has been designed to exclude people, and our desired outcomes for a new education paradigm focus first and foremost on including everyone. The goals are diametrically opposed.
Designed to Exclude People
Our education system, mirroring our society, was designed from the start to exclude people. The nature of this exclusion has evolved in some ways over time, but fundamentally has not changed. Our history is filled with legal and other battles which have striven through constitutional amendments, Supreme Court decisions, federal and state laws, and other mechanisms to require education to be more inclusive, more equal, and more accessible. And these same mechanisms have resulted in repressive reversals. Steps forward have been made, as have steps backward. More battles are fought, and more laws are passed every year. Yet our education system remains exclusive. I discussed this ongoing exclusion in education within my screenplay’s running commentary, and presented examples: grades, GPAs, grade levels, tracking, sorting, ranking, promotions, graduations, suspensions, expulsions, diplomas, entrance exams and other requirements, prerequisites, auditions, program costs and money, English-only instruction, good and bad neighborhoods, specially designated schools, and more. The extent to which these and other exclusionary practices are racist, classist, sexist, ableist, homophobic, transphobic, xenophobic, and other is important, but will not change the fundamental principle of exclusion at education’s core.
Designed to Serve and Preserve an Exclusive Society
Our education system has been designed from the start to serve and preserve an exclusive society (R. Collins, 1971; Davies, 2003; Durkheim, 1956). The root of the word “education” (educare) may mean “to draw out,” but our education system serves more to control than to invite, more to transfer knowledge (e.g., Freire, 1970/2018; hooks, 2010) than to generate knowledge (e.g., Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2009; Freeman, 1998), more to tell people what to think and do than to ask what they think and would like to do, and more to preserve the status quo than to challenge it. The importance of all people contributing to a harmonious and healthy society seems self-evident. Yet, society, like all systems and institutions, is “grounded in the status quo” (Shields, 2018, p. 14), and engages in self-preservation (e.g., Heifetz & Linsky, 2002) and “reproducing itself” (Allsup, 2003). Our society wants exclusion, like racism, “to be accepted as an immutable given in the fabric of your existence, like evening time or the common cold” (Lorde, 2018, p. 28). Our exclusive society educates itself. Our exclusive society has created the education system that educates itself. Wrongfully, our exclusive society transmits incorrect, outdated thinking to each new generation. In so doing, how can an exclusionary society, its government, and its leadership, produce anything but an exclusionary education system?
Children provide answers and possibilities because each upcoming generation has the potential to reimagine society. Yet children are uninvited, silenced, and made to conform (e.g., Appadurai, 2006; Dyson, 2013; Fine, 1991; Giroux, 1988; McLaren, 1986/1999). Traditionally, society has taken the position that the older generation must train the younger generation in its ideas and conform it to its ways. In this manner, society's ways are retained. My theory of change for education suggests new ways of thinking, 180-degree alternatives, and dramatic shifts of vision: that we include each and every student, that we attend to the needs, desires, and interests of each and every student, that we respect and honor each and every student. My theory of change requires society in some sense to step aside, to do less talking and more listening (for example, to children), and to trust in teachers and the teaching profession to create a space in which younger generations are encouraged to bring new thinking into it, a space where society might be transformed. Steiner (as cited in Avison & Rawson, 2019) wrote,
The question to be asked is not: what does an individual need to know and be capable of doing so as to fit into the existing social order? but rather, what potential does an individual have and what can be developed in him or her? When this is taken into account each new generation can bring forces of continuous renewal to the social order. In the social order there will then live all that the fully mature human beings in it cause it to be. For the existing social order to mold the coming generation in its own image is something that must not happen. (p. 14)
And Freire (1970/2018) concurred:
Students soon discover that in order to achieve some satisfaction they must adapt to the precepts which have been set from above. One of these precepts is not to think… A rigid and oppressive social structure necessarily influences the institutions of child rearing and education within that structure. These institutions pattern their action after the style of the structure, and transmit the myths of the latter. Homes and schools exist not in the abstract, but in time and space. Within the structures of domination they function largely as agencies which prepare the invaders of the future. (pp. 154-155)
Children should not so much be molded by society but, in fact, should be taught and encouraged to mold society: to participate in collective social transformation (e.g., Fine, 1991; Giroux, 1985; McLaren, 1986/1999; Mirra et al., 2016; Shor, 1992). Children bring funds of knowledge, assets, and new thinking to their communities and society as well as to school (Moll et al., 1992), even as they are learning and developing. And the actualization of teachers learning alongside and from their students would demonstrate, too, that students can be not only collaborators with teachers but also teachers of teachers.
Designed to Safeguard an Exclusive Authority
While many may intend to and strive to pass down the values and ideals of democracy in schools today, few schools “live” the values and ideals of democracy (e.g., Gatto, 1992/2017a, 2002, 2017b; Gray, 2013; Greenberg, 2016; Shields, 2018). We may teach it using the banking method of education (Freire, 1970/2018), attempting to fill our quietly awaiting students with knowledge about democracy. And we might add an emotional component, promoting patriotism through texts, stories, music, holidays, and celebrations. But our education system rarely models democracy or operates democratically or in an emancipatory way from a student perspective (Kahne & Westheimer, 2003), and often not even from a parent, teacher, or community perspective (Kirshner & Boberson, 2015). Rather, school is mostly an authoritarian, top down, command and control, and compliance-focused experience for students and others, which “increases the climate of oppression” (Freire, 1970/2018, p. 154). “Am I modeling the behavior I want to see?” “Is it just because they’re being forced into compliance?” “What’s built into the system is regiment.”
As such, are students learning democratic principles, or authoritarian principles, in school? In my experience, there is little that most students experience as democracy, or choice, or due process, at school. Authoritarianism is an exclusive (and oppressive) practice, not an inclusive one. Students are told what to do and when to do it, they are expected to be obedient, their voices are rarely heard, they are silenced, and they are detained, suspended, and expelled when they become too much trouble (e.g., Fine, 1991). “Just keep these kids under control and pass out the information that you need to pass out.” “One of my goals as a teacher, especially along the lines of social justice and equity, is centering the marginalized voices in my classroom.” Students carry their experiences and attitudes into society as adults and reinscribe them (e.g., Freire, 1970/2018). In an education paradigm that centers inclusion and student interests, there might be more opportunities for students to participate in actual democratic life, and for their voices to be heard. Perhaps these experiences will lead to a more meaningful experience of freedom and democracy, and a more thorough understanding of and appreciation for these ideals as youth develop and mature.
Designed to Intensify Competitiveness – Another Exclusionary Mechanism
Our education system has been designed, and more recently honed and refocused, to intensify competitiveness. Especially since the publication of A Nation at Risk in 1983 (Gardner, et al.), the United States Department of Education has striven toward what might be called nationalist – even imperialist – and corporatist objectives that center global competitiveness, achievement, and “excellence” (United States Department of Education, n.d.): “to produce the nation’s workforce” (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2009, pp. 1-2). Short of a reversal, it seems unlikely that our current education system will be able to start working toward new outcomes that center students’ needs, desires, interests, respect, and honor, and move away from longstanding, entrenched goals that prize student expectations of achievement, “excellence,” and corporate, state, and national service to “the economy.”
New Education System
“Some of those older teachers feel things are exactly the way they should be, and it’s always been this way.”
“If [our current education system] already has these inherent qualities, and operates like a business or factory, are we digging ourselves further into a hole trying to fix the system, or should we rework a different system?”
My theory of change for education does not recommend fixing, improving, or reforming the current system. The current system cannot be repaired, because as an institution responsible for sorting, classifying, segregating, and excluding people, it is not broken; it cannot be reformed, because as an institution rooted in racist, classist, sexist, ableist, corporatist, statist, and nationalist objectives, it is working effectively toward those objectives; it is doing what it has been designed to do (e.g., Gatto, 2002, 1992/2017a, 2017b; Gray, 2013; Shields, 2018). The core qualities of exclusion are embedded within its structure and are fundamental to its purposes. Laws and lawsuits are required to gain even modest movement toward access and inclusion, hoping to bend the system against its will. Ironically, parallel laws and lawsuits move us in the opposite direction, at cross purposes, reinforcing exclusion. Reforms, ultimately, equate to “rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic” (e.g., Shields, 2018), or worse, attempts to thwart firmly established objectives. The essential character and destination of our education system remains. Thus, my theory of change does not seek to add more items to the very long list of things we should do to fix education, to make it more equitable, to raise test scores, to improve graduation rates, to get better jobs, or to become more globally competitive. The list already has no end in sight, has too few items checked off, and has too many items added every year. Not to mention that many of the items are wrong for so many people. “It is a really unnatural environment, and it works really well for a handful of people, but for the most part, no, it doesn’t.” People argue about what should be on the list, what should not be, and how to tackle even the ones that are agreed upon. “It feels like we just keep adding more and more work with minimal results.”
Neither does my theory of change involve “burning it down” and starting over. While this approach ultimately may be more effective than reform approaches, it is likely too risky, and surely dependent upon an intermediary situation between old and new. What would we do during the period when the old system collapsed, and the new system was built up? Although the metaphor of a “phoenix rising from the ashes” is poetic and alluring, it is likely not the metaphor I need for my theory of change for education. The ashes and death language recalls the aggressive language of “defund the police” (a strategy for which I remain a proponent), in that it comes across to some as disparaging and antagonistic toward the many good people who work hard within and unselfishly devote their lives to the present system. Abolishing (dismantling) the system of oppression (Freire, 1970/2018) is imperative, yet requires approaches that are both innovative and pragmatic.
My design, development, and implementation strategy for my theory of change for education is inspired by Srilatha Batliwala (2019), who in a talk on Feminist Leadership for Social Transformation quoted Buckminster Fuller, saying, “In order to change an existing paradigm, you do not struggle to try and change the problematic model. You create a new model and make the old one obsolete.” In that spirit, my theory of change proposes developing a new education model, or paradigm, which grows side by side with our existing institutions, and over time, perhaps with a sooner than later “tipping point” (Gladwell, 2000), ultimately replaces them.
To these ends, as I began backwards mapping, I treated each of the three desired outcomes separately.
1. Each and every student is included.
In order to ensure that each and every student is included, first we need to eliminate all barriers to access, and end all policies, procedures, and practices that exclude students. By definition, we cannot include each and every student if we are excluding some. This means that we must eliminate all the exclusionary practices identified earlier. Many if not all these exclusionary practices are fundamental to our current education system: grades, GPAs, grade levels, tracking, sorting, ranking, promotions, graduations, suspensions, expulsions, diplomas, entrance exams and other requirements, prerequisites, auditions, program costs and money, English-only instruction, good and bad neighborhoods, specially designated schools, and all others we may come to identify. We must delete them all. There is little doubt this idea will seem outlandish or unfathomable to some. Nevertheless, my goal is not to hang onto existing practices or to preserve existing institutions, but to let go of incorrect and outdated thinking and to define a new model that might achieve our newly thought-out desired outcomes. Here is an attempt to state this in a positive way – as an attribute of education, or as what needs to be done rather than what not to do (perhaps more as a rule or guideline than an action) – using a one-level “so that” chain:
All education offerings, activities, opportunities, and spaces will be open to and accessible by each and every student at no charge, irrespective of any student attribute or characteristic, including but not limited to all of the statutory categories, plus age, ability level, effort, behavior, language, location, household, and other circumstances, so that each and every student is included.
In addition to the implications for all the tracking, sorting, ranking, and behavior-focused exclusionary practices currently used by present-day schools, it seems important to highlight that this connected outcome will require a rethinking of delivery mechanisms, facilities, and funding, since neither location nor other circumstances can be factors used to determine accessibility.
2. The needs, desires, and interests of each and every student are met, satisfied, and fulfilled.
In order to meet, satisfy, and fulfill the needs, desires, and interests of each and every student, education must have the capability first to identify student needs, desires, and interests, and then to deliver on them. This will require a reconceptualization of everything from standards, curriculum design, teaching materials, and the teaching profession itself, to the design and implementation of delivery mechanisms and facilities, to funding arrangements and capital allocations. Here is an attempt to state this using a multi-level, multi-dimensional “so that” chain:
Society/government will provide the proper funding so that teachers can do the following:
Teachers will develop positive and meaningful relationships with each and every student, and listen to, work with, study with, learn alongside, and advocate for each and every student, so that each and every student’s needs and desires can be identified, understood, and planned for.
Teachers will identify, understand, and plan for the needs, desires, and interests of each and every student so that appropriate offerings, activities, opportunities, and space can be provided to each and every student.
Teachers will provide offerings, activities, opportunities, and space, including but not limited to facilities, materials, equipment, resources, curriculum, teaching and learning strategies, instruction, assistance, tutoring, coaching, guidance, and counseling, to each and every student, so that each and every student’s needs, desires, and interests are met, satisfied, and fulfilled.
It is important to highlight that this connected outcome identifies the need for teachers to learn alongside students. Learning alongside students takes on increasing importance in our new education paradigm. We will construct another set of connected outcomes to address this need. This will be done separately to avoid too much complexity in the text of this outcome’s so-that chain. This need is also identified in the next outcome’s so-that chain.
3. Each and every student is respected and honored.
In order to ensure that each and every student is respected and honored, first we need to stop doing all the things that disrespect and dishonor students. These “things” include behaviors, approaches, content, communication, policies, procedures, practices, customs and norms, values and perspectives, and positions and attitudes that determine or play a part in how we treat students, how we treat their parents, guardians, and families, how we decide what is appropriate and inappropriate “for school” (e.g., Dutro, 2019; Motha, 2014; Yon, 2000), what is acceptable and unacceptable (e.g., McLaren, 1986/1999), what we praise and what we disdain (e.g., J. Banks, 2008/2014; hooks, 1994), what and who we center and privilege versus who we marginalize and ignore (e.g., Freire, 1970/2018; Giroux, 1981), including languages and home cultures (e.g., Motha, 2014; Taylor, 2016). Then, we need to start doing all the things that respect and honor students. A good starting point is to consider the teachers in the home context of the funds of knowledge studies (e.g., Moll et al., 1992). These teachers knew the whole child and developed reciprocity, interdependence, and mutual trust in long-term relationships. What might that look like in our new paradigm’s teaching practice? “Deficits” are now assets (e.g., Zapata, 2020). Here is an attempt to state this using a multi-level, multi-dimensional “so that” chain:
Teachers will learn each and every student's home language, value that language, and offer instruction in that language, in addition to English and any other language requested by each student, so that each and every student’s home language is respected and honored.
Teachers will learn about each and every student’s home culture, value that culture, and offer instruction in and activities related to that culture, in addition to any other culture requested by each student, so that each and every student’s home culture is respected and honored.
Teachers will learn about each and every student’s home life, value that home life, and take each student’s home life into account relative to all offerings, activities, opportunities, and space, so that each and every student’s home life is respected and honored.
Teachers will respect and honor each and every student’s home language, home culture, and home life, so that each and every student is respected and honored.
Teachers will advocate for each and every student, do the right thing for each and every student, and demand the right thing be done for each and every student, so that each and every student is respected and honored.
A student’s home language and their knowledge of that language, English or otherwise, is always an asset, never a deficit. It is something to be respected and honored. The requirement that teachers must learn the student’s language, rather than the other way around, reinforces all of this, structurally. In practice, this requirement to learn each and every student’s home language does not imply that every teacher must learn every student’s home language in all cases. The intent is that every student has teachers who can and will teach in any and all language(s) that the student requests (thus inaugurating the definitive end of English-only instruction). The implication here is that teachers (the teaching profession) must figure out how to do this. A general recognition that a monolingual society is less educated and informed than a multilingual society will help, and teachers should advocate for a more educated and informed society. Other solutions might include a) aggressively recruiting bilingual and multilingual (which often suggests more racially and ethnically diverse) teachers from within the communities they serve, intentionally overcoming certain structural and societal barriers that inhibit this today), b) aggressively developing bilingual and multilingual teachers in teacher preparation programs and ongoing teacher professional development, and c) students teaching teachers as they learn alongside and collaborate with them.
How the teaching profession, who in the new paradigm has the responsibility to do these things, gets the authority to design and implement solutions to get these things done is discussed further below, as the “so that” chain within the outcomes framework develops. Consider that what seems unlikely or impossible today with respect to language might seem more feasible as a multilingual society blossoms, grows, and begins to realize benefits. Note (again) that this connected outcome identifies the need for teachers to “learn alongside” students. I have constructed another set of connected outcomes to address this need. This is done in the following.
4. Teachers will develop positive and meaningful relationships with and learn alongside students.
For teachers to develop positive and meaningful relationships with and learn alongside students, they must have the time and resources to do so. “I think it would be wonderful if we were able to structure our day to spend more time getting to know our students, because I think it would actually be more productive during the time that we do see our students” (Sophie). Therefore, elements of learning, and investing in teacher growth and development, include providing the necessary time and resources. “An absolutely crucial condition is that we make inviolable the necessary time for substantive collaboration, time that is protected from absorption into the rituals of school life” (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2009, p. 154). Teachers will need to spend fewer hours teaching in order to have more time for developing relationships with and learning alongside students, and of course these relationship-building and learning-alongside activities will require funding. Here is an attempt to state this using a multi-level, multi-dimensional “so that” chain:
Society/government will provide the proper funding so that teachers can do the following:
Teachers will spend a portion of their work schedule teaching, and another portion of their work schedule will be freed up, so that they have time available to develop positive and meaningful relationships with, and learn alongside, students.
Teachers will request and receive money and resources so that they can develop positive and meaningful relationships with, and learn alongside, students.
Teachers will have time, money, and resources to learn each and every student’s home language, to learn about each and every student’s home culture, and to learn about each and every student's home life, so that each and every student’s home language, home culture, and home life is honored and respected.
5. Teachers and the teaching profession are trusted; teachers are respected and honored.
For society to trust teachers and the teaching profession, and respect and honor teachers, several things must happen. This connected outcome is more challenging to figure out how to implement than the others, because we have less control over it. It may be difficult to persuade or convince all of society to trust teachers, respect teachers, and honor teachers; it cannot be commanded, it must be organically attained. Society will need to come to see differently; education will need to provide space and opportunity for this transformation. For my theory of change for education, I suggest that this connected outcome is circular and iterative: the more teachers are trusted, respected, and honored, the better the outcomes of education are achieved; the better the outcomes of education are achieved, the more teachers are trusted, respected, and honored; on and on… Here is an attempt to state this using a circular/iterative “so that” chain:
Students, parents, and society will trust teachers and the teaching profession, and respect and honor teachers, so that teachers can do the following: (This connected outcome maps to everything that teachers do in the outcomes map).
Teachers will do the following (all the things they do in the outcomes map) so that students, parents, and society will trust teachers and the teaching profession, and respect and honor teachers.
6. All teachers are teachers; involve them in everything.
For education to happen, even in the new paradigm, some degree of oversight, governance, administration, and operations will be required. However, my theory of change suggests that teachers must be involved in everything. For the purposes and constraints of my theory of change within my dissertation, I think it is important to create a connected outcome for it. I propose that the outcomes for education as described in my theory of change for education cannot be successfully achieved unless teachers are not subject to external constraints but rather oversee everything themselves, with students. Here is an attempt to state this using a multi-level, multi-dimensional “so that” chain:
Society/government will provide the proper funding so that teachers can do the following:
Teachers will spend a portion of their work schedule teaching, a portion of their work schedule developing positive and meaningful relationships with and learning alongside students, and another portion of their work schedule will be freed up, so that they have time available to be involved, to the extent desired, in the oversight, governance, administration, and operations of education.
Teachers will request and receive money and resources so that they can be involved, to the extent desired, in the oversight, governance, administration, and operations of education.
All teachers are teachers, so that all teachers can be, to the extent desired, involved in everything. (No teachers are excluded.)
All teachers will be, to the extent desired, involved in everything (in addition to teaching), including but not limited to the oversight, governance, administration, and operations of education, so that teachers can do the following: (This connected outcome maps to everything that teachers do in the outcomes map).