Here is an essay that I've crossposted at Educator Roundtable. I'll be coming back soon enough to add the proper hyperlinks, but in the meantime enjoy! This essay critiques an article by Ron Brandt from 2001 that appeared in Phi Delta Kappan. Brandt argues for a market approach to schooling, advocating the emergence of chain schools as a means of presenting more school choice to families. The entire concept is, of course, anathema to my own.
In Ron Brandt’s article, No Best Way: The Case for Differentiated Schooling educators are faced with more shortsighted conclusions from an expert who should know better. In his defense, however, he looks more foolish now than when he wrote this essay in 2001. At that time No Child Left Behind was yet to level its glowering eyes at public schools and there was still some semblance of democratic debate over educational options. Education discourse, of course, is now straitjacketed by this law’s bullying approach to reform and Brandt’s proscriptions may well prove prophetic. Brandt opens with a personal statement in favor of diversification of schools, “I wouldn’t want all schools to do things my way, because that would inevitably foreclose other possibilities.” (p. 153). He then briefly discusses a school differentiation program in Edmonton, Alberta where site-based management has been taken to the next level. Schools in Edmonton have multiple programs by site according to “need and parent demand”. Such a system could work in the U.S. he suggests, despite the failure of site-based management in American schools. “American education’s short-lived affair with site-based management was doomed by confusion with participatory management.” [brackets mine] (p. 154). This obtuse statement ignores the internal and external political pressure against site-based management, resulting from the intensifying demands of the standards movement through the 80s and 90s. Under NCLB that pressure has metastasized into a frontal assault even on local school boards as corporations jockey for lucrative contracts with “failed” school districts that the government has taken over on their behalf. Prime examples are the mayoral takeovers of troubled districts in New York and Los Angeles, as well the recent reorganization of the St. Louis public school system. So, while Brandt was suggesting that teachers and administrators were incompetent at running their own affairs, he failed to see the gathering economic and political storm against their autonomy. What must come first and foremost in any discussion of differentiated programs in public schools is the issue of equity. Brandt notes that it is “an important consideration because differentiated schooling is by definition not completely equal.” (p. 154). In actuality, equity is the supreme and overriding issue here, it lies at the core of any sound teaching philosophy. How do we ensure that those families least able to advocate for themselves, least prepared, and sometimes least inclined to seek the best education for their children, get the same opportunity as more invested, better prepared families? Brandt largely skirts this fundamental question, focusing instead on his new model for “accountability”. How this new model looks is his centerpiece. “I see the possibility of a transition from one type of variation to another, following a pattern established by commercial organizations.” (p. 154). His is a utilitarian philosophy and like many educational thinkers today, he embraces an inevitable privatization of public schools with the zeal of a manifest destiny proponent in the 19th century. He is worth quoting at length concerning in this regard: At one time most hardware stores, restaurants, and motels were local; now many of the most successful enterprises are part of chains…. Schools could, and possibly will take a similar path…. In our highly mobile society, it might make more sense if schools differed not by district but by program….Just as people moving to a new community may look for the nearest Barnes & Noble bookstore or Methodist church, some parents may in the future inquire about the nearest Expeditionary Learning or Success for All school. (pp. 155, 156). The key words here are “some parents”. Ultimately his differentiated model would only serve those parents with the knowledge and inclination to seek a certain kind of program for their child. It is an exclusivist approach to education, not a fair, equal or democratic one despite the fabled impartiality of the market. The market can be as impartial as a stone crashing down a mountain side, and trade can be as free as a pirate on the high sees, but when it comes to education, where will the single mother working two jobs to make ends meet send her child? What creative program will she choose, especially if she barely made it through high school herself? Most likely choice will not be an available luxury for her and she’ll send her child to a cram school like KIPP, or to a beat down remnant of a local public school. Her miserly $5,000 voucher certainly won’t help, especially if she doesn’t know how to apply for it or where to spend it. Aside from the ugly idea of chain schools, there is also the ugliness of educator exclusion from the process. Brandt acknowledges that “many practical problems” stand in the way of his diversified schools model. He lists a series of questions to be addressed concerning funding, parental confusion, and articulation between schools. Remarkably he ends this list with the most important question of all: “Shouldn’t educators make curriculum decisions based on professional knowledge and best practice, rather than salesmanship and popularity?” He then breezes on to his conclusion saying no more than that this and the other questions pose a “continuing challenge”. (p. 156). The role of the educator in his model seems peripheral throughout the text, and always subordinate to administrative and, presumably, political authority. In his summary section, entitled “Sensible Accountability”, he indirectly reveals the place of the educator in his vision: “When educators have clarified the kind of education their school will provide and are given discretion over available resources, they can justifiably be held accountable by the responsible supervisory agency.” (p. 156). It is a statement that smacks of the apologist. Implicit here is the view that teachers are vital to the educational program, but not to its administration. A professionally aware teacher loathes his/her serf-like status in public education. Brandt’s vision offers a little more influence at the expense of genuine professional authority in the structure and administration of schools. Finally he ends by stating that a school’s “primary accountability should be to the parents who have chosen it on the basis of its particular purposes.” (p. 156). Thus the educator, like all other market players, is subordinate to consumer demand; a perverse sort of equality without freedom. Brandt’s essay is a standard exposition of neoliberal values in education, and not a very well thought out one either. He is not an articulate ideologue so much as an enthusiastic team player with the status quo. He clearly cares about quality teaching and is excited about the possibilities of schools presenting a variety of options. Building his model out of the paradigm of “merged governance” (Lemmie, 2004), however, he fails to describe an authentically educative approach. His is a multi-headed approach and no matter how much better his hydra may be compared to the monster of “standardization and enforced conformity” (p. 154), it still fails to address the fundamental issue of equity. Again the issue of purpose comes to the fore. Are we seeking schools whose success is measured exclusively by data? If so, even Brandt acknowledges, “If higher test scores are the only measure of success, diversification is probably not an appropriate strategy.” (p. 154). Or are we seeking schools that equally enable all learners “to contribute to the happiness of the society, and, by so doing, to find meaning, purpose, and happiness in their own individual lives”? (Makiguchi, 1930). Brandt’s model would only work for those people who have the social advantage, while the disadvantaged would remain so. He has only laid a veneer of differentiation over the traditional push for student uniformity and compliance within schools. His is a commercial way of thinking that has no place in the fostering of critically minded citizens. Brandt fails to see that our sense of humanity and community must supercede our roles as consumers. References (until I can put in hyperlinks): Brandt, Ron (2001). No best way: the case for differentiated schooling. Phi Delta Kappan, Lemmie, Valerie (2004). No idea left behind. Government Executive, 36, 76. Makiguchi, Tsunesaburo (1989). Education for Creative Living: Ideas and Proposals of Tsunesaburo Makiguchi. (Alfred Birnbaum, trans.) Ames: Iowa State University Press. (Original work published 1930).
__________________________
