Conventional Wisdom

WARNING: This post may contain observations that run counter to conventional wisdom. Don't say you weren't warned.

The trendy thing among a certain school of school reformers lately has been to point to New Orleans post-Katrina as a model of education reform.

Newsweek writes that "New Orleans has made more educational progress than any other city, largely because the public-school system was wiped out." Arne Duncan said that Hurricane Katrina was "the best thing that happened to the education system in New Orleans." The conventional wisdom says that with the New Orleans school system (and much of the city) destroyed, reformers were able to start from scratch and put in a system based on what we know works for kids. And just look at the results.

Let's look at those results for a moment. An article in the Houston Chronicle this week highlights a study that finds that Katrina kids are doing better than their Texas counterparts. In Texas. That's right, Texas. Not New Orleans. It seems that the kids who relocated to Texas after the hurricane and stayed there are doing better in the Texas school system than the kids from Texas in the Texas school system.

Here's where your conventional wisdom gets challenged. If the reason kids are doing so much better now in New Orleans is that the school system has been completely reformed, why are kids also excelling in Texas? Let's grant for the sake of argument that the New Orleans schools were terrible before Katrina. So obviously there's a lot of room for improvement with these kids. But if it's the brilliant new system that's doing it, why are the kids in Texas also making such gains? Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't often see Houston hailed as the brightest star in the education reform firmament.

Now, I'm perfectly willing to believe that there's a rational explanation that will keep the conventional wisdom intact. I know that reading a summary of research from the Texas Education Agency in the Houston Chronicle is not exactly top notch research. But I do think we need to consider all the data when we're making grand pronouncements. And I just don't quite see how this fits the narrative.

Texas Down, Cities Up

Bad news in Texas. According to the Dallas Morning News, 40% of Texas high school graduates need at least one remedial class when they get to college. And that's just the students who go to college. Imagine what the overall high school population is like. But don't worry. The Texas school board has taken strong, decisive action by eliminating Thomas Jefferson and the world "capitalism" from its standards. So ... yeah. We'll see how that goes.

In much more encouraging news, a report out of the Council of Great City Schools finds that urban school districts are making significant gains in both math and reading. This is according to data from both state tests and the NAEP. That's hugely encouraging news.

That's hugely great news. I've often written that while the nation's education system as a whole is doing pretty well, in poor and urban areas it is often spectacularly failing. If we can turn around that trend, the whole school system will be improving and we won't have to hear any more whining about places like Estonia are doing so much better than us. (Not that there's anything wrong with Estonia, I just like the way it sounded in that sentence.)

When you go a doctor with an earache, a good doctor will focus on your ear instead of trying to go over every inch of your body looking for solutions. Too often, we've gotten caught up in forgetting the ear. Now, it looks like that may be changing. And that is a very good thing.

Texas Is Not Helping

Every so often I write about a story that I come across showing how today's youth are the dumbest, laziest, most disreputable generation ever to blight this earth. You'd be surprised how often it comes up.

Readers of amNew York yesterday were treated to a story about a science poll among children that found that many named Buzz Lightyear as the first man to walk on the moon and who thought Isaac Newton invented fire. Incredible. This truly is the dumbest, laziest, most disreputable generation to ever blight the earth. (Click here for Socrates' thoughts on the matter.)

Before we transfer all this wailing and teeth gnashing into a desire to pick up torches and pitchforks and march against the teachers unions, I should point out that this study was conducted in Britain. Maybe this will be a good opening for us to finally reclaim some of that glory our education system has been lacking lately.

In an effort to ensure that we don't run up the educational score on our peers across the pond, the Texas school board has finally approved their standards and in a perverse way, it's kind of a thing of beauty. Ronald Reagan? He's in. Need to emphasize him in the history curriculum. Thomas Jefferson? Nah. I mean, what's he done for us lately? Did he singlehandedly defeat communism?

Oh yeah. And Joseph McCarthy was right all along.

I could go on, but you get the idea. Unfortunately, in this case what happens in Texas doesn't stay there. Because it represents such a large textbook market, we'll be seeing snippets of Texas standards in textbooks all over the country.

Somehow, I doubt that's going to help us when those dumbest generation researchers comes to this side of the Atlantic.

Oh, Texas

Thank god for the Texas school board. Here in New York we've all been up in arms about the fact that the state legislature didn't lift the charter cap and what's going to happen to our Race to the Top application. Out in Texas, they opted out of that whole Race to the Top thing a long time ago. Clearly. Instead, they're focusing on the important issues, like making sure that Commies don't appear in the classrooms - not even in book form. And even when they aren't actually pinkos.

In one of those too strange to be believed moments of educational reform greatness, the Texas school board removed Bill Martin Jr. (author of the Brown Bear, Brown Bear books) from the social studies curriculum list of individuals to be studied for their cultural contributions. The reason? He'd apparently written another work called Ethical Marxism: The Categorical Imperative of Liberation. Somehow I missed that one in the school library.

Turns out that not only was this a rather sharp turn in Mr. Martin's writerly MO, but he was also dead when he did it. Oops. Turns out Bill Martin isn't such a unique name after all.

And that's who's making educational policy in Texas these days.

I wrote a while back (and again here) about how things like this have to make you wonder about the efforts to install national standards. But I'm actually starting to re-think that position now. Remember, Texas with its huge textbook market in many ways sets the standards that are going to be reflected in textbooks used across the country. And you can see how they're using that clout. At this point, anything to take power away from Texas almost has to be seen as a good thing.

Also, so there's no doubt, I am not now nor have I ever been a member of the Communist Party.

More Troubling Standards

The drive to national standards is making some more headway with members being selected to start sussing out what students should know and when they should know it. Of course, you didn't think it would be easy, did you? Because as soon as progress starts getting made, in comes Texas, again, with what is hopefully cause for pause.

Last we saw the Texas standards it was because they were trying to make sure that creationism was being taught alongside evolution in science classrooms. Having worked their magic on the science curriculum, they're now eyeing social studies. Members of the Texas Board of Education are seeking to revise the social studies standards to "emphasize the roles of the Bible, the Christian faith and the civic virtue of religion in the study of American history." This extra emphasis would apparently come at the expense of such figures as Cesar Chavez and Thurgood Marshall who have apparently not contributed much to American history.

Without getting into a discussion of whether or not emphasizing the Bible and Christian faith actually contributes to a significantly better understanding of American history, you can see how this is the kind of thing that can happen should we really go down the road of national standards. Interest groups are always going to try to press their advantage and national educational standards are going to be a major platform upon which we're going to see a series of bitter fights in the "culture wars." Agree or disagree with this one, who knows what the next major thrust is going to be. Unless we start figuring out now how much ideology we're going to include in the standards (and how realistic it is to try to exclude ideology) we're going to see a string of bitter fights that are always going to undermine the standards on one side or the other.

Of course, Texas hasn't signed on to agreement to push for national standards. So maybe they can keep their cultural battles to themselves.