(C) Daily Kos
This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered.
 . . . . . . . . . .



We Need a Different Kind of Tough Love to Secure All Our Children’s Education [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2023-09-07  

Writing for a NY Times Opinion Essay, Thomas J. Petrilli, president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute and a visiting fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, argued that it is time to get tough again with teachers and students. It is time to get tough but instead on the system that produces inequity.

To improve the learning of all students we need tough love, but not the punitive blame-the-victim kind that drove federal and state education polices of the last five decades.

It’s no big secret or brilliant research revelation: Students who lead secure lives with a solid roof over their heads, eat healthy food, have reliable quality health care parents with steady, well-paying employment experience more learning in school than students who don't. Socioeconomic status and the level of parent education explain achievement differences among students more than any other variable. Insecurity in children's lives undermines their learning. That is not news.

Here's another non-shocker: Some schools and some teachers are better at promoting student learning than others. However, after over thirty years of work to support teachers to become more effective elementary and middle school science teachers, I've concluded that lack of teacher will is not a factor in student achievement. Lots of love is needed but making it so-called tough with the threat of consequences is contraindicated. Little bits of love include small class sizes, time for professional learning and collaboration, supportive school, and classroom culture, and administrators who give teachers room to grow and engage students with high-quality instructional materials that include formative assessment practices. Of course, educator beliefs about how race and class affect learning matter too. These variables explain the differences between classrooms and schools. But the love that makes the most difference demands limiting inequity in children's lives.

Too many politicians and their appointees continue to lament the "achievement gaps" while steadfastly refusing to address the biggest culprit: inequity and associated insecurity in the lives of families. Still, the decades of name, blame, and shame live on. Teacher rewards and firing, strict discipline for students, school closing, charter schools, vouchers, or even tutoring do not impact the gap. They can't and never will.

Why do policies continue–when tried over long periods–they fail to achieve stated goals? Where’s the accountability for that? It is time to assign blame to ideologically driven and self-interested politicians and profit-seekers.

What should parents– rightly desperate for their children to get a decent education–conclude when the cause is obvious, but the solution is ignored? Maybe, just maybe, the policymakers don't want things to get better. Being a bit more generous, maybe they accept that the inequity that causes some other people’s children’s learning to suffer is predestined. Or, maybe these policymakers are just arrogant and think if other people's children were as smart as theirs or just tried harder everything would get a little better. Or, maybe only a little better is good enough for other people's children. It shouldn’t be for the rest of us.

Or, maybe not enough of us have fathomed a better way to live and then organized and pushed hard enough to bring it into being. Inequity might be ubiquitous, but it isn't inevitable. It is only normal when the haves amass enough power to get and keep more than they have a right and the decency to claim. It is only preordained when the rest of us accept our life circumstances and powerlessness as fate rather than an alterable arrangement.

It doesn’t have to be that way. Love for our children means getting tough in the fight for the decent, secure life they need to learn.

Arthur taught and led science professional learning and curriculum and assessment development projects for 50 yrs. He writes about education and social justice. He loves spending time with friends and family, hiking, and gardening.

Follow him:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/arthurcamins

Substack: https://arthurhcamins.substack.com/

[END]
---
[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/9/7/2191969/-We-Need-a-Different-Kind-of-Tough-Love-to-Secure-All-Our-Children-s-Education

Published and (C) by Daily Kos
Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified.

via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/