Live the Trinity

Having a family member who teaches in a public school gives one a new perspective on the debate over how to reform public education in America.

Can we agree on the following generalizations regarding how politicians on the left and the right propose to improve our public education system?

1. We need to make teachers and schools accountable by using scores to measure their effectiveness.
2. Schools that are not measuring up to these scores need drastic change.

Let us start with the first. How do we measure teacher performance? By looking at scores. There are several different scores by which reformers suggest we make teachers and schools accountable. One is standardized test scores. The other is some sort of composite score (which may include such things as standardized test scores but also attendance and graduation rates). The common assumption is that if a class is not achieving a certain score then that teacher is ineffective. And/or if a school is not achieving a certain score then something is wrong with that school.

Conservatives of all people should know better than to accept uncritically this method for measuring teacher/school performance. Why? Because there is an unspoken and unexamined assumption that if one simply applies the correct methodology then it will produce the desired behavior. Think about that for a moment. That assumption fails to take into account what in my opinion are two principles of conservatism.

• Human beings have free will.
• Human beings are flawed.

Children are human beings. They have free will. And they are flawed. So just because one applies the correct stimulus (teaching method) that does not guarantee the desired outcome. One of the great insights of the apostle Paul (which theologically we would say is inspired by God the Holy Spirit) is that the law (and yes I am aware of the problem with interpreting torah as nomos) does not make people good. Too often Christians and conservatives (the two groups overlap but are not necessarily the same) fall into the trap of thinking that people will do the right thing if we just pass the right laws. Or that students will perform if we just employ the right methods. It is not that simple. Ultimately a child has the freedom to say “no I will not cooperate”. And because children are not exempt from human nature there is always the real chance that they will choose not to do the right thing.

Do we really think that good parents always produce good children?

Do we really think that good teachers always produce good students?

One thing I have learned from being married to a dedicated and excellent public school teacher is there are many more factors involved in how a student performs academically.

The principal. The administrative staff. The school district. The families.

Let us say you have a disruptive student. Makes it difficult to teach a lesson. But the principal does not back you up (allows that student to remain in the classroom with no discipline or consequences). (That is not the case where my wife teaches but one hears of this at other schools.)

Let us say you have a child with learning difficulties. You try to get that child extra help. You do all the administrative paperwork and jump through all the bureaucratic hoops. But the administrative staff will not follow through. Or the parents refuse to work with you (and they have the right to refuse special intervention). Then you have a child who drags down the scores of the class and of the school.

Let us say the child comes from a family that is struggling to get by. So the family moves to a new apartment every few months. Which means the child moves to a new school every few months. And if that child has learning difficulties it becomes not difficult but impossible to provide that child extra help.

Let us say the school district has magnet schools which only the best students attend. That will naturally pull down scores in regular schools that now have only average to poor students.

I could continue but you get the idea. There are limits to what the best teacher using the best teaching methods can accomplish. There are several factors involved in student performance over which the best teachers using the best teaching methods have no control. And conservatives of all people should be sensitive to the effect the bureaucracy can have on rank and file teachers!

Do not misunderstand me. I do not deny there are such things as poor teachers who teach poorly. I do not deny that good teachers who employ good methods will generally see better results. Nor am I arguing one should have no standards or no accountability. But it is deeply problematic to impose a score and assume that if a class or a school fails to measure up to that score then there must be something wrong with the teachers or with the school.

Let me address briefly “generally see better results”. During the season of Lent I have been leading a series of Bible studies on the book of Ecclesiastes. Ecclesiastes would have something to say about all this.

Human beings are finite. The ultimate futility of human effort. The ultimate futility of human knowledge. No one knows the future. No one knows what God is doing. Everybody dies.

Which means there are no guarantees. You can have wisdom and live righteously and still lose everything in a moment.

But Ecclesiastes does recognize the relative value of human effort and human knowledge. Wisdom is better than folly. Righteousness is better than wickedness. Perhaps that good teachers are better than bad teachers. And good teaching is better than bad teaching.

It is in light of the above I would address the issue of consequences. Charter schools and school takeovers.

Yesterday I heard on the radio that President Obama is proposing some new efforts to improve public education. The kernel of which is “schools that fail to produce a certain score will be taken over and turned into charter schools”.

Lest it sound like I am picking on President Obama let me point out that this stand is hardly new and hardly the exclusive domain of leftists liberals and/or Democrats. Can you say “No Child Left Behind”? Can you say the state of Louisiana? Governor Jindal? Education Superintendent Paul Pastorek?

For the last several years we have seen many schools declared as “failing” then put on probation then taken over and turned into charter schools. In some cases there has been no improvement. (In New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina there has been although it is fair to ask if the improvement the result of handing control to charter school organizations.) Schools that are taken over and turned into charter schools have a mixed track record.

One middle school here in Baton Rouge was taken over. This year all students at that school were given A’s. Seriously. All students. Why? Because it looks good and encourages nervous parents not to remove their children from a school that has just been taken over.

And now Education Superintendent Paul Pastorek has raised the stakes. Now schools have to have overall passing scores in science and social studies in addition to mathematics and language arts (English). The passing score is now 75. There is no longer a probation period. Failing schools will be taken over and turned into charter schools immediately.

There was a school in Shreveport with a very low score that was not taken over. Because there were “extenuating circumstances” beyond the control of teachers and administrators. Which may be entirely true. But why does this school get a pass and a dozen schools in Baton Rouge do not?

You know what one African-American parent said about the then impending takeover of these Baton Rouge schools? “This is just one more way to keep black people down”. At the time I thought “Oh come on you’re being paranoid”. But then I thought about the pattern of takeovers. About which schools. Where. With what population. And I looked up which state school board members voted for and against this. And even which were white and which were black.

Hmm.

President Obama yesterday mentioned making available $900 million in “turn around grants” including to outside organizations that would take over failing schools and turn them into charter schools. Again lest it sound like I am picking on President Obama the same thing is true within the state of Louisiana. Tens of millions of dollars to school management companies to take over failing schools and turn them into charter schools.

Dare we ask who is making money from this?

I do not deny there are such things as failing schools. That should be taken over. That should be turned into charter schools. By outside organizations. In return for fair and reasonable amounts of money. I am not arguing that “charter schools are (always) bad”. I understand the conservative fondness for consequences and competition. And I recognize that at least in some states teachers’ unions bear large responsibility for problems with public education.

But liberals and conservatives alike are jumping onto this bandwagon too easily. Conservatives of all people should be suspicious of the “politicians give large amounts of taxpayer money to some outside organization to do something locally and not bound by the usual rules”.