Clearly this is in part news because of an element of intellectual schadenfreude and because it plays to a not uncommon cultural stereotype: Those unworldly academics just don't know how the real world works. Still, kudos to Stanford for making the effort to trial their ideas. I believe that one of the enormous strengths of the US is its federal system of governance which enables such enormous latitude to experiment. Had this worked, the kids would be advantaged and the basis for broader improvements would have been laid. Given that it did not work, the kids are somewhat more disadvantaged than they were (even in the wretched schools they were in they would have made better progress), but there are lessons to be learned (or in some cases confirmed once again).
What I take away from these articles is the confirmation of what seems to be continually being proved but which we seem to refuse to acknowledge - poor performance is primarily a function of culture. In this case, a school with plenty of money and investments in state of the art facilities, enthusiastic and committed teachers (though it is not clear that they were experienced teachers which might be a contributor to the poor outcomes), extensive environmental support (foundations, Stanford University, etc.), and progressive pedagogical thinking was not only not able to materially improve results but actually produced worse results in terms of measurable academic achievements than had the children remained in the sub-performing schools they had been in.
As the articles make clear, the conclusion is not that the students are incapable of being helped - other charter schools drawing from the same population pool and focused on objective academic achievements actually did achieve improvements. But none of them were achieving the sorts of absolute outcomes necessary for success in a modern society. Clearly the resources thrown at the problem and the approaches taken can either make the problem somewhat better or worse but neither resources or approaches (at least with these evidence points) are either necessary or sufficient to achieve the desired outcomes.
The bullet I believe we have to bite, if we are to achieve the absolute goals of specific academic outcomes, is that schools cannot solve the achievement level deficits unless the issue of the culture from which children come is also addressed. This is an extremely delicate and potentially contentious issue, and one that is easily manipulated and abused, but, I suspect, the thorn we will have to eventually grasp if we are to really open up opportunity to all our children. (Oh dear, a metaphor attack.)
It is easy to mock Stanford and the East Palo Alto Academy's goals for making their children "global citizens" when they can't even teach them to read or do mathematics at grade level. It is also easy to read into some of the statements a misplaced set of priorities:
"It's a risky business," Dr. Stipek, said before the meeting. "We rolled up our sleeves and opened a school in a financially and socially-challenged environment so that we could prepare teachers and leaders for the real challenges they will face."
It is not unfair to ask, was the goal to teach children or prepare teachers?
It is also easy to see some of the sponsors as dissociated from reality:
Ms. Darling-Hammond - who told the board that the school "takes all kids" and changes their "trajectory" - was angered by the state's categorization of the charter as a persistently worst-performing school. "It is not the most accurate measure of student achievement," she said, "particularly if you have new English language learners."
If the school is in the persistently worst-performing category, you better have a clear argument that the measures that put you there are not related to real-world outcomes. There is no such argument reported in the articles. This smacks of Daniel Patrick Moynihan's adage "You are entitled to your own opinion, you are not entitled to your own facts."
At least one participant gets part way to the right conclusion:
"Maybe this demonstrates that schools alone cannot solve the very deep problems kids bring to school," said Diane Ravitch, the education scholar and historian. "You cannot assume that schools alone can raise achievement scores without addressing the issues of poverty, of homelessness and shattered families."
I think the part about not expecting schools alone to raise achievement scores is right. The still questionable part is whether you have to address the underlying poverty, homelessness and shattered families. Clearly there is an element of truth but it is not the complete truth or even sufficient truth. We have too many instances of impoverished emigres from Africa and Asia coming to our public schools and achieving astonishing results to accept that impoverishment and homelessness alone are the causative agents for poor performance. From the article it is apparent that the school was undertaking efforts to mitigate some of these issues:
High school students have one teacher/adviser who checks that homework is done, and when it is not, the teacher calls home. Teachers know students' families and help with issues as varied as buying a bagel before an exam to helping an evicted family find a home.
And still they could not move out of the bottom 20% of schools in terms of performance. Actually, most recently, the bottom 5% of schools.
So what do we learn? I think that among the lessons are:
1) Good intentions alone are insufficient.
2) Money and resources alone are insufficient.
3) Numbers can deceive but they do not lie. If you are making incremental improvements but after nine years are still in the bottom 5%, something is not working.
4) Focusing on objective results that are at least marginally predictive of later success is better than focusing on subjective results that have no correlation to success.
A noble experiment that reminds one of the old, old adage: If wishes were horses, beggars would ride. As King Canute knew and his court unsuccessfully denied, the world has its own reality that we would be best to address rather than wishing it were different.
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