Enough About Finland, What About Canada?

According to data released last week, students in Shanghai are the best in the world when it comes to math, reading and science.  This is no surprise.  For years, Americans have conceded that Asian nations such as China, Japan and South Korea simply do a better job of educating their students.  This concession is typically accompanied by references to the cultural differences that we feel result in an unhealthy dose of over-education. Otherwise stated, we are quick to dismiss applying the successful education strategies of many Asian nations on the grounds that they are simply too different from us. 

On the other hand, injecting Finland into any conversation about fixing American education is now the trendy thing to do.  Finland fascinates because it is more similar to the United States than the aforementioned Asian countries. Nonetheless, its lack of socio-economic and racial diversity makes Finland an easy target for naysayers who wish to explain away its success and avoid generalizing its strategies in a global context.  But what about Canada? 

As a nation, Canada spends less money on education than the United States (in terms of both portion of GDP and percentage of total government spending), yet it has managed to routinely place itself as the other top non-Asian country ranked by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) through their Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) - the same organization that ranked students in Shanghai as first in the world.  Furthermore, Canada is just as diverse as the United States, according to a study conducted by the Harvard Institute of Economic Research.  So why isn’t anyone talking about the Canadian education system as we search for solutions to the flaws in our own? 

 To be clear, Canada is a relative newcomer to the top of the international rankings.  It arrived only after taking two very specific steps to ensure that its populace is among the best educated in the world.

First, Canada has adopted a high degree of selectivity in choosing and credentialing teachers; becoming a teacher in Canada is relatively difficult.  It is, therefore, no surprise that this selectivity has yielded a unique culture around the education field, wherein teaching is among the most desirable and revered of occupations.  Widely cited scholarship on Canadian education notes that applicants to teachers colleges are usually in the top thirty-percent of their university cohorts.  Ironically, those who are not granted admittance to a Canadian teachers college often seek their training in America, where seemingly anyone can get credentialed in an a field that is haunted by the philosophy, “Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach”.

 Second, Canadian success in education is very much a function of equalized and equitable funding. The OECD notes that Canadian provinces retain a certain amount of money to equalize funding in poorer districts with insufficient tax bases. Furthermore, equitable funding from provinces to districts also comes in the form of grants provided to meet district-specific challenges in special education. This is the opposite of many states in America, where unequal and inequitable funding schemes are the norm.  For example, in the United States, the spending on students at predominantly white, wealthy schools is sometimes two times that of schools attended primarily by students of color from low income families.

So enough about Finland, why isn’t anyone talking about Canada?  We are separated from Finland by a great expanse of water, and our socio-cultural differences seem to further divide us – both of which make it easy to  explain-away their educational gains as inapplicable in the United States, just like many of the previously discussed Asian nations.  Canada is much harder to explain away; America is arguably more similar to it than any other country in the world.  Yet implementing the strategies utilized in Canada would require a cultural shift regarding the status of teaching as a profession in this country, as well as a significant reorganization of priorities. This is why no one seems to be talking about Canada.  This is also why we should be.

Something a bit different...

While conversations with Fulbright Scholars and award winning writers from the Washington Post have found their way onto this blog, I recently discovered that Hall of Fame football player Mike Singletary also has something to say that is worth sharing on the topics of teaching and education.  I had the chance to speak with Mike for about an hour on February 6th, 2014.  Some of our discussion was one-on-one while some of it came during a Q & A session with students from the school at which I teach.  Most of our conversation centered on what it means to be a male student in the 21st century. The audio of that conversation is here:

In a subsequent conversation on the same day, I also had the chance to ask Mike, “What is one thing that every good teacher does?”  This may seem odd to ask a football player, but keep in mind that he is also a coach - which makes him a teacher.  With that said, I think his response is worth hearing.  He shared a story of an English teacher from his college days – a teacher that everyone disliked.  After submitting his very first assignment,  this particular teacher called Mike out in front of the entire class by demanding aloud, “You will never turn in something this poor again.” For most students, this would have been humiliating. But not for Mike – instead, it propelled him forward in a very powerful way.  In reflecting on this experience, Mike says, “I realized that great teachers do three things. They don’t let you off the hook.  They set high standards. And they walk alongside you as you seek to reach those standards."

My conversation with Mike got me thinking about the relationship between standards and success.  The debate on standards (who should set them, what they should include and how they should be used) has been raging in recent years.  Some argue that standards suffocate the teacher, while others argue that standards are necessary to insure equity in our schools.  Some argue that the states should be autonomous in their setting of standards, and others point to those states with very low and poorly written standards as evidence that the state-model is broken.  Whatever one thinks about standards, I wonder if we could agree on this: As Mike alluded to, the "alongside" relationship (teacher-student or parent-student) that develops in the pursuit of meeting a standard needs more of the spotlight, for it is likely more powerful than any state or federal mandate could ever be.

Oh, What Might Have Been (In Praise of President Kennedy and His Vision for American Education)

In both 1961 and 1962, President John F. Kennedy sought to pass a general aid package for schools, which included federal subsidization of teacher salaries and building construction.  At the heart of this legislation was Kennedy’s desire to provide money for urban students affected by poverty in under-resourced American schools. 

Kennedy took a keen interest in solving the problem of inadequate preparation and unequal funding for economically deprived students in urban areas.  As previously mentioned, he twice sought to push legislation through Congress to fund these programs and address the disparity of resources between urban and suburban districts.  Relative to the disbursement of this aid, Kennedy wanted to steer it directly to municipal governments and away from state agencies that tended to allow federal resources to flow disproportionately to suburban areas. This mounting emphasis on poor students in urban areas reflected not only the Kennedy administration's pursuit of urban renewal, but also the growing influence of the civil rights movement under the leadership of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Unfortunately, the legislation was defeated by southern democrats who feared that Kennedy’s push for urban renewal and educational equality might hasten the desegregation of schools in their states.  And when Kennedy died on that fateful day in November of 1963, so too did his vision for providing federal aid to municipal governments with the expressed purpose of addressing the opportunity gap in poor urban districts.

Kennedy’s successor, Lyndon Johnson, made a deliberate effort to carry this banner of equity by way of his “Great Society” domestic policies.  However, the legislation that made its way through Congress during Johnson’s time in office (specifically, Title I) was easily manipulated by suburban districts and used to fund already affluent and successful schools.  This was because, in order to win congressional approval, Johnson’s legislation was written in such a way that nearly ninety percent of all schools in America qualified for the aid.  Title I distributions, therefore, became the antithesis of Kennedy’s vision for addressing the opportunity gap in urban schools.

Fifty years later, we are still greatly in need of the broad implementation of Kennedy’s vision.  One need only look at the manner in which twenty-first century education dollars are spent in America in order to justify this conclusion. Just as it was in the 1960s, those with less money still have fewer tax dollars spent on their public education than those with more money.  In fact, spending on students at predominantly white, wealthy schools is sometimes two times that of schools attended primarily by students of color from low-income families. This is because many states operate under the notion that while a basic level of funding is a fundamental right of all students, that right does not require equality of spending among districts.  Therefore, wealthier districts with significant amounts of money (much of it derived from property taxes) have better schools while students in poorer areas helplessly find themselves in under-resourced districts. Inequality has become an acceptable component of our country’s policy for funding education.

Had Kennedy been given more time to cast his vision and see it through to reality, the American educational landscape may be far different today. Instead, we are having conversations about educational equity in under-resourced schools that should have ended in the 1960s.  Kennedy knew that allowing the states to determine their own educational funding schemes was a recipe for inequity and sought to address the issue by bypassing the states altogether.  Oh, what might have been if his dream had not been permanently bound in eternal sleep?

Voting Equality as an Analogue for Education Equality: A Conversation with Jay Mathews from the Washington Post

While you may not recognize his name, you likely know his work: Jay Mathews authored the book on which the film “Stand and Deliver” would later be based. Additionally, Jay has been employed by the Washington Post for over 40 years and has won several awards for his education writing.  Needless to say, Jay has a deep and rich understanding of American schooling.

Recently, after he took the time to read one of my blog posts, I began corresponding with Jay; I greatly admire his ability to synthesize the ongoing, sometimes disparate dialogue about education in this country into a coherent narrative.

However, in one of our recent exchanges, Jay wrote something that I found questionable.  I asked Jay, “Why do you believe that education is so cemented as a state’s rights issue?”  He responded, “Education [is] not a federal responsibility.  And I don’t think it has done us much harm.”

Respectfully, I would like to push back on the notion that the absence of education as a federal responsibility hasn’t done us any harm.

Like education, the framers of the Constitution also left the power to set suffrage requirements and voting qualifications to the states.  Yet because of injustice and inequality, the federal government had to step in at a certain point - primarily with amendments to the Constitution, but also with legislation like the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Is education any different?  Left to states and the democratic processes employed therein, inequality abounds.  One need only compare the amount of money spent in certain districts in poor communities in Maryland or California (compared to their wealthier counterparts with higher property tax bases) to see the inequality firsthand.  Much like the right to vote, don't we suffer when the federal government is restricted in their ability to step in, level out, and dare I say outlaw those practices (much like literacy tests and poll taxes) that create disparity in American education?

If voting equality is an appropriate analogue, relative to education equality, then I see it this way: Putting our hope in state-based and market-based education reforms is akin to hoping that Mississippi and Alabama would outlaw literacy tests or poll taxes without federal pressure and national support. 

Though I very much respect his work, I have to disagree with Jay’s views on this topic.  It seems clear that we have suffered much by leaving the states to set their own standards and funding schemes.  Doing so has been an open invitation to inequality.

Who is it For? Shining a Light on the History of Educational Inequality in America

One might argue that there is nothing more enlightening than the study of history.  If that is true, then the history of American education may illuminate the way toward solutions to modern day academic ills as much as it may explain the very existence of any perceived scholastic anemia.  To be clear, the educational foundations of the United States rest on one very basic yet difficult question: Who is it for?  The answer to this question has dictated the course and consequence of public schooling in America and should, therefore, be regarded as the fundamental gateway to any and all conversations that seek to lay bare the historical roots of education in this country, as well as diagnose the malady that has left the tree of American education in a state of questionable health.

Before investigating the aforementioned question, however, it is important to first make note of the fact that public schools were virtually non-existent in the United States prior to the beginning of the nineteenth century (because women were charged with educating their children at home).  Those tax supported schools that did exist were scarce because such institutions had the odor of pauperism about them.  Otherwise stated, the wealthy did not need the assistance of public schools, and therefore their necessity was debatable. 

However, a shift occurred in the early nineteenth century as middle and upper class Americans realized that if the poor were not educated, they might become a dangerous, ignorant rabble, armed with the vote. Quickly, taxation for the purpose of education became an insurance premium that the wealthy paid for stability.  Young women, considered uniquely disposed to teaching because of their innate tendencies toward appropriate behavior were employed in one-room schoolhouses across the country to inspire virtue and morality in the youth, lest they turn into the unstable horde that the wealthy so feared. Additionally, considering the significant influx of immigrants from southern and eastern Europe at that time, many people saw a desperate need to instill "civilized" values in these alien newcomers in order to preserve American democracy and morals.

With all of this said, for some groups of people the end goal of public education seems to have been, historically speaking, to produce a subservient lower class. Arguably, this brief summary of the origins of American public education ignores the valiant efforts of many well-intentioned pioneers and reformers.  Nonetheless, this summary is indeed rooted in history, and therefore must be seriously considered as an explanation for the all-important question, “For whom was public education in America created?”

As illustrated above, recent years have seen historians seek to remind us of the embarrassing and shameful nature of the origins of public education in America, as well as the unhealthy fruit that it has borne.  This movement has been met by serious opposition, specifically from individuals such as Diane Ravitch (2010) who argue “that the public schools [were not] devised by scheming capitalists to impose ‘social control’ on an unwilling proletariat or to reproduce social inequality.”  Instead, Ravitch and her counterparts adopt a much more idealistic and romantic perspective, positing that public education is “a primary mechanism through which a democratic society gives its citizens the opportunity to attain literacy and social mobility.”

While historians might disagree, such disagreement illustrates the first of three ideological paradigms fundamental to understanding the foundations of education in the United States.  Specifically, education will consistently teeter on the precipice of failure when it does not define its stakeholders in such a way that engenders equality.  When a question such as “Whose history should be taught?” are both legitimate and necessary, and when systemic reform is stunted because textbook and exam publishers are considered primary stakeholders, then one might justifiably conclude that the foundations of education are eroding; indeed, they were not firm to begin with.

This conclusion is not shared by the now infamous report, A Nation at Risk (ANAR).  On the contrary, in its opening lines, ANAR claims that the integrity of America’s public education system is the product of “a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a Nation and a people.”  While the attribution of failure as a product of mediocrity is an interesting (albeit semi-circular) argument, the more fascinating claim is the connection that A Nation at Risk makes between a healthy educational system and the health of our nation. As previously noted, from the beginning of public education in America, pioneers and reformers in the field of academics implied a significant connection between democracy and education, citing such foundational ideologies as “a free vote cries aloud for free education.”  This is perhaps one area in which many historians and educators would agree – education certainly must prepare individuals for the responsibilities of democratic citizenship in a complex society.  From the beginning, American education sought to spread uniform cultural values and combat ignorance, especially ignorance that would stall the political process.  This serves as the second of three noteworthy points regarding the foundations of American academia: Insofar as education is so closely connected to citizenship in a democratic society, the discussing of education will forever be a political endeavor.

Considering the historical proposition that education has, in the past, been a tool of the upper class used for controlling the American proletariat and is therefore inherently political, one final significant conclusion regarding the nature of educational foundations in the United States seems appropriate: Standards are now a necessity of the highest order.  Federal standards can strive to create the egalitarian movement this country has historically lacked, yet so desperately needs.  Leaving such a task to the individual states is a confederate notion rooted in semi-ancient ideology, wherein individual states feared the tyranny of a strong central government.  Such a confederate approach has engendered inequality and therefore degenerated into a situation where standardized test based accountability (not standards) has become our educational policy. 

As it now stands, individual states determine their own benchmarks for proficiency.  In turn, each state has been left to determine what classroom content is valuable and not valuable, resulting in incredible discrepancies and deficits in learning from state to state within the union.  Particularly, the study of American History has been at the center of this ongoing debate.  It seems critical, therefore, that each state voluntarily submits to national standards.  Only then is it possible that the politicizing of education fall prostrate to the goal of equality.  Only then is it possible for the answer to the question, “Who is it for?” be answered with a resounding, “Everyone!” And it seems appropriate that history teachers lead the way.