The real world and education

Ilive in two worlds. In one of them, the education world, there are angry and divisive battles over our public schools. But in the other one, known colloquially as the real world, there’s an enormous degree of consensus about them.

Witness Hillary Clinton’s recent speech to the National Education Association, the nation’s largest teachers’ union. It was a lovefest, for the most part, as Clinton endorsed higher teacher pay and the other standard items on the NEA’s wish list. She also distanced herself from the Obama administration’s emphasis on standardized testing, especially as a way of evaluating teachers.

But one line in Clinton’s address earned her boos from this otherwise friendly crowd, and it spoke volumes about polarization inside the world of education. “When schools get it right, whether they are traditional public schools or charter schools, let’s figure out what’s working,” Clinton said.

Clinton didn’t call for more charter schools, another longstanding Obama goal. She simply said that we should use the example of successful charters to improve education for everyone. But that was too much for the NEA, which sees charter schools — most of which are nonunionized — as a scheme to break its back and to destroy public education along the way.

And that’s the way it goes inside the education world, the huge network of unions, policymakers, and researchers that surrounds America’s schools. It’s a political hall of mirrors, where each side says it cares about “the kids” and the other side doesn’t.

So if you favor charter schools, you obviously aim to enrich private entrepreneurs. If you back the Common Core curriculum, you’re a shill for testing companies. If you endorse Teach for America, you want to unleash waves of untrained neophytes on America’s least advantaged students. And so on.

Supporters of these reforms engage in the same kind of blackand-white rhetoric, refusing to acknowledge any shades of gray. The anti-charter movement puts union interests ahead of the kids (always the kids!). Opponents of Common Core want our students to remain mired in mediocrity. Critics of Teach for America fear it will show up veteran teachers and undermine the standard preparation they receive.

What’s missing is any sense that decent, good-hearted people might differ in their views about what’s best for America’s kids. But the real-world public seems to get that, even if the education world doesn’t.

As last year’s EdNext survey on school reform demonstrated, a strong majority of Americans want to continue the annual student testing requirement from the 2002 No Child Left Behind Act. Yet they also worry about the federal government’s increased role in school governance, preferring that states take the lead.

And guess what? In December, Congress passed a measure that said exactly that. Under the Every Student Succeeds Act, which reauthorized No Child Left

Behind, states will still be required to test students each year. But the new law bars the federal government from promoting any single set of standards (read: Common Core) or from requiring states to evaluate teachers via test scores.

Like No Child Left Behind, which garnered overwhelming bipartisan support, Every Student Succeeds passed by huge margins: 85-12 in the Senate and 359-64 in the House. And it was signed into law by President Barack Obama, who hailed it as a “Christmas miracle.”

But there was nothing miraculous about it, really. It reflected an evolving consensus on education, which stands in stark contrast to the partisan rancor and gridlock that typically hold sway in Washington. Schools should test kids each year, but they shouldn’t hinge too much on the results; teachers should have more autonomy, but we should find ways (beyond test scores) to hold them to higher standards; the Common Core might be a good or a bad thing, but we should leave it up to states to decide.

And what about charter schools? According to the EdNext survey, about two-thirds of Americans favor them. The support is even stronger among minorities, who often view charter schools as their only alternative to inadequate traditional ones.

To be sure, there are good reasons to question some of the claims made by charter operators — especially for-profit ones — about their alleged successes in boosting student achievement. And it’s also reasonable to ask whether charters are hurting other public schools by diverting scarce resources — and high-achieving students — away from them.

But we should be able to debate these issues without demonizing our opponents, as Clinton noted in her speech to the NEA. “We’ve got no time for all these educator wars,” Clinton calmly insisted after delegates booed her comment about charters. “Let’s sit at one table. Let’s sit and listen to each other.”

In the real world, that’s what people do. Let’s hope the education world can learn to do the same.