It's Not an Either-Or Proposition: lmproving Our Schools

"Teachers' Leader Calls for a Return to Tradition." "Educator Urges Return ... to Basics." "Older Ways in Education." People who have seen these headlines describing a talk I recently gave have been asking me if -- after I0 years of thinking and working -- I've given up on school reform. Or have I finally decided that they had education figured out right in the good old days?

I still believe that we need to look at and question all the things we take for granted about the way schools are organized. And we need to create a radically new model for our schools. We can't achieve this by returning to a so-called Golden Age because it wasn't so golden. At that time, a large majority of kids dropped out long before they completed high school.

People who say that U.S. schools are performing better than ever in most respects are correct. Today, our schools are educating more students and more difficult students to levels that once were attained only by a small and favored group. The trouble is, these levels are below what we need to maintain or improve our standard of living. And they do not compare well with the achievement of students in competitor nations. We are still very much a nation at risk.

Creating a new model for our schools is chancy, and it may take a very long time. We are unlikely to develop it by encouraging 100,000 experiments in 100,000 schools, but there's no reason why we have to proceed in that way. When General Motors experimented with a totally new method of production for the Saturn car, they didn't close down the factories producing their regular models. Over tile years when they were perfecting Saturn and its production process, they went on working to improve their other cars. That is the way most organizations make radical changes. They understand that any institution resists change. They also know that radical change does not work quickly and may not work at all.

Why shouldn't we do it this way? While we are developing a new model that is different from our current schools -- and eventually a lot better -- why not put equal emphasis on improving our traditional schools? The best way of doing this would be to look at the schools of our competitor nations. All of them follow what we call the traditional model of schooling, but all are more successful with students at every level. So we are not talking about modest improvements in traditional U.S. schools; we are talking about big improvements and a radical change.

Here are some of the important differences between their traditional schools and ours:

• Schools in these countries are run by professionals, with relatively little interference by lay persons.

• Schools are financed nationally or regionally. As a result, the disparity between wealthy and poor schools that is so destructive and shocking in the U.S. does not exist.

• For the most part, there is a national curriculum. Teacher training, textbooks and assessments are geared to this curriculum. If students move from teacher to teacher or school to school, there is continuity.

• Assessments are curriculum-based and challenging. Teaching to the test is something positive when you have really good tests.

• These countries produce a higher percentage of students at top levels of achievement. Also, teaching is a relatively prestigious - in Japan, very prestigious - profession, so they can guarantee that all classrooms have teachers who have attained high levels of excellence.

• Like us, these countries track their students. However, we begin as early as first grade and they hold off until later. This means that all their kids get a more or less equal start. Ours don't.

• All these countries have clearly visible consequences for student performance. There are strict college-entry standards and clear employment standards. Students work hard, and their teachers and parents push them because success is rewarded in all tracks.

• Schools are relatively safe and free from disruption because the legal system supports school regulations needed to maintain a proper educational atmosphere.

We'll need some radical changes if traditional U.S. schools are to adopt or adapt characteristics of schools in other countries. But the educational reforms of the past I0 years will make some of these changes easier than we might think.

A year or so ago, school districts looking for a curriculum would have had to choose between creating one-with their comparatively limited resources- or picking up one that was not very good. Now, they can find excellent curriculums or curriculum frameworks, like that of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics or like Civitas for civics. Some, like California's outstanding curriculums in history and language arts, come with their own assessments. And these examples of promising work are not exhaustive. The issue of school governance seems a lot harder given our tradition of local school boards. But here again, recent thinking, stimulated by the school reform movement, is helpful. I'll discuss in a future column how we can bring the idea of schools run by professionals in line with local lay control of the schools.

Improving our schools is not an either-or proposition: Either we create a dazzling new model or we stick to the traditional model. We need to do both, and there's no reason why we can't.