Random Musings on Education/Policy

Why Do Failing Schools Fail?

Having taught for five years at high-poverty Brooklyn public schools -- schools where far less than half of the students could read and do math at grade level -- I've spent a lot of time pondering the dynamics of failing schools. I now teach at a much more successful school, where more than 90% of the students are meeting or exceeding standards (according to state tests). So I feel I'm in a good position to consider the question: what is the difference between a good school and a bad school? Why do students at some schools fail while others excel?

At my new school, the successful school, we ran out of funds to finish the floor of the new science lab. The parents conducted a phone and email campaign to the City Council, ultimately pressuring the local representative to take action. The new science lab is now completed, and it's beautiful.

At my new school, the PTA provides "gift certificates" to the teachers, which they can use to buy classroom supplies. During the book fair, teachers fill out wish list cards for their classrooms, and parents buy the desired books. When budget cuts forced the school to cut back after school activities, the PTA raised enough money through donations and bake sales to restore the full after school program. But it's not just a matter of money -- far from it. At this school, parents call me when they have a question about the homework. Every single family shows up at parent-teacher night (at my old school, I'd be surprised to get half). Parents volunteer in the school, helping out in the classrooms and monitoring the lunch room and playground.

At this school, there are no fights. Children never curse in front of (much less at) teachers. If a student is repeatedly late or absent, the attendance office calls his or her home. Persistent cases are automatically referred to the guidance counselor. My students do the work that they're assigned, and very rarely openly disobey a teacher.

Are the teachers at my new school more qualified than at the old schools? Are they more competent, or harder working? On balance, no. Is the budget higher? No -- quite the opposite; schools with poorer students get federal funds which this school doesn't qualify for. Is the curriculum different? Nope. The curriculum is actually identical.

The truth is that the main differences between the miserably failing schools and the shining successful one are the students, the parents and the school leadership. But mostly the first two.

I know this is an unpleasant truth for most people to face. It flies in the face of our liberal values and our egalitarian impulses. We want to believe that all children possess equal potential to succeed, regardless of race or socio-economic status. We want to believe that education is the door to opportunity and equality, open to all. We want to believe that unacceptable educational outcomes can be rectified through public policy reform. But I fear that the problem is far more complex than the public discourse (right now) will allow.

Education policy reform can not make parents more involved. It can not grant them the time, the knowledge nor the skills needed to be active in their child's school. Public policy can't provide parents sufficient education to assist their children with academic work. It can't make them read to their preschool-aged children, or teach them the alphabet, or count with them, or talk to them in standard English, or help grow their vocabularies. Public policy can't even compel parents to get their children to school on time and it certainly can't force them to discipline their kids when it's needed.

The sad truth is that a child's academic success is largely determined before he ever enters school, and his progress from there is affected by a thousand factors and influences which are well beyond the classroom teacher's or the school's control. Teaching poor children is simply harder than teaching their wealthier peers. Poverty presents real and unique educational challenges. Take any failing disaster of a public school in the worst area of the Bronx and switch it with a top-notch, elite private school on the Upper West Side. Swap their students, but leave everything else exactly the same -- same administration, same teachers, same facilities, same budget, same curriculum. You will soon see a drastic improvement in the shitty public school's performance, and a corresponding shameful drop in educational outcomes at the "better" school. In fact, it's quite possible that the good school will serve the poor students even worse than the bad school did, because the faculty will surely be unprepared for the issues and challenges specific to teaching a poor, urban population of students.

It's time we stopped pretending that the difference between failing schools and successful schools is located primarily the schools themselves. Poorly performing schools are not failing to do some mysterious "thing" which succesful schools are doing right. In reality, schools which serve at-risk and underprivileged students will not be improved by trying to make them more similar to suburban or private schools. They need to be so much more than that. They must reach above and beyond what we traditionally think of as a school's purview. They must be given the tools and the freedom to compensate for the numerous, significant, and fateful lacks in their students' lives.