Tougher Standards: A Flawed Proposition

Alfie Kohn’s article “The Case Against Tougher Standards,” argues against much of the rhetoric we hear from politicians in the media about how we need to attempt to reform education.  One of the quotes that struck me that appears at the beginning of the article says that:

“People from parents to Presidents have begun to sound like a cranky, ill-informed radio talk-show host, with the result that almost anything can be done to students and to schools, no matter how ill-considered, as long as it is done in the name of ‘raising standards’ or ‘accountability.’  One is reminded of how a number of politicians, faced with the perception of high crime rates, resort to a get-tough, lock-‘em-up, law-and-order mentality.  This response plays well with the public, but is based on an exaggeration of the problem, a misanalysis of its causes, and a simplistic prescription that frequently ends up doing more harm than good.” (1)

            This quote reminded me of “The House I Live In,” a documentary I recently saw at The Cable Car in Providence.  The movie is about The Drug War, which was started in the 1970s by President Richard Nixon.  Initially, he put much money towards rehabilitation for drug addicts.  But, when he was running for re-election, he started to ‘resort to a get-tough, lock-‘em-up, law-and-order mentality that helped him to score political points/votes'.  He started putting more money towards prisons and tying funding to arrest numbers, and the system has only gotten.  I found it eerie how similar the drug war rhetoric was to the political rhetoric about education.

Kohn discusses his “Five fatal flaws [of tougher standards] and the first one struck me.  Kohn writes of the rhetoric on tougher standards: “1.  It gets motivation wrong.  Most talk of standards assumes that students ought to be thinking constantly about improving their performance.  This single-minded concern with results turns out to be remarkably simplistic.” (2) Yes, I find this idea to be inaccurate to students’ motivations.  In my best estimate, they are motivated to get whatever grade they need to get and move on to the next assignment.  There isn’t much thinking being done in this process.  They think about whatever they need to for the minimum amount of time needed.

The most disturbing quote I found from Kohn was when he was discussing the negative aspects of the No Child Left Behind Act.  He says that ‘we become a nation at risk of abandoning public education altogether.’ (4)  I was taken aback by the quote because there does seem like a movement in American education towards the private sector.  This alarms me: I was publicly educated from kindergarten through college.  Public education is more reasonably priced than any private institution.  I can’t say I’m an expert on private education – charter schools, etc. – but whenever I see the word ‘private’ attached to anything, I immediately think of money, profit, etc.  These things shouldn’t go together, yet that’s how it’s been for public education, so maybe it doesn’t matter?

I suppose this is a society-wide problem: how do we gauge something we can’t easily gauge.  In business, the hard numbers reflect success and failure.  Competitiveness makes sense: whoever has the best product makes the most money.  Yet, this model doesn’t seem to line up with worlds like education and law enforcement.  How do you make statistic for ‘positively influenced lives of people’?  How can you measure ‘teachable moments that stay with a stuent for the rest of their lives?  Aren’t these the intangibles that make a good teacher?  Isn’t that what is more important?  I can see where Kohn gets frustrated with tougher standards in education, and now that I’ve reread my blog post, I can see he’s pushed my buttons, too.