“Modern U.S. politics leave scant middle ground where compromise or synthesis can be forged,” says Chester Finn Jr. in this sweeping Education Gadfly article. “But it should be the job of serious education reformers to plant their policy banners – and themselves – on whatever demilitarized territory can be found.” Finn examines a number of perennial “debates and dichotomies” in American education and argues for a sensible middle ground in each one:
• Skills vs. knowledge – The Common Core standards appear at first to be skills-centric, he says, but they also “make clear that success hinges on the deployment of a rich, sequential, content-focused curriculum.”
• “Sage on the stage” vs. “guide on the side” – It’s not students’ job to figure out for themselves why the Civil War was fought or what atoms make up a molecule of water, says Finn. “It’s their job to internalize much that has been figured out by others – and to use it themselves, both for purposes of their own devising and for purposes that adults place before them.”
• Who should be in charge, parents or the state? Education is both a private and a public good, says Finn. We need to balance students’ preferences/needs/aspirations (as gauged by parents) and “a set of needs, priorities, and capacities determined by the larger society…”
• Evaluate teachers by student results or peer judgments? Each approach has serious limitations, says Finn, and the best way to compensate for them is to use a blend of both approaches, augmented by student surveys and other data.
• Assess achievement via test scores or pupil “performance”? Standardized tests, for all their deficiencies, can gather important information, he says, but performance assessments go deeper, measuring creativity, understanding, and the ability to apply knowledge and skills. Use both, says Finn.
• Gauging pupil progress by grade level or competency? Instructing students at their assessed levels seems more efficient, but it wreaks havoc with the traditional structure of schools and is confusing to many parents (my child is at fifth grade level in math and seventh grade in writing?). Finn advocates working toward an amalgam of both.
• Learning with technology or humans? Online education seems efficient, “But what about socialization?” asks Finn. “What about music and phys. ed.? Basketball and Christmas pageant? How about children’s relations with adults and other kids – and the teacher’s role not just in answering their curricular questions and helping them understand the lesson but also seeing what excites their minds, how they’re behaving, and what may be going awry in other parts of their lives?” Yet the traditional model is expensive, depends heavily on the quality and character of individual teachers, tends to be boring to fast learners and frustrating for those with learning difficulties, and harms students who are stuck in subpar schools. Once again, a blend works best.
• Diversity vs. uniformity? Finn is for a body of shared knowledge, with reasonable variations for the marvelous diversity of America.
• Is education run best by professionals or laypeople? “We need them working in tandem,” he says. Political leaders need to set broad parameters, but shouldn’t be micromanaging at the classroom level.
• Local or centralized control? Finn believes governance needs a “top-to-bottom renovation” to bring a 19th-century structure up to speed with a 21st-century world of geographic spread, increasing diversity, charter schools, and more.
“Education’s Endless, Erroneous Either-Ors” by Chester Finn Jr. in The Education Gadfly, March 6, 2014 (Vol. 14, #10), http://bit.ly/1qcNo5L
Stephen Anderson
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