Did The Pandemic Fatally Damage American Public Education?
No--disinvestment in schools as institutions for cultivating democracy did
Hello, readers! I am so happy to be with you during possibly one of the most convulsive moments in recent global history. The conflict in the Middle East is not just important, it is personal to so many people who have connections in the region. But my job today is to give you some relief by providing other food for thought. Don’t forget the special October incentive to subscribe (see below), and if you know other people who could use this too, please:
The crises that are afflicting domestic and international politics have pushed other, equally critical, and highly structural, problems off the front page. Some topics are particularly vulnerable to being overwhelmed by the news, and education is chief among them. In fact, I think it is fair to say that Americans tend not to think about school as a feature of social and political life unless we are pointed to a crisis: book bans, pandemic learning loss, affirmative action in college admissions, and the critical understaffing of secondary schools among them.
There is no question that American public schools are in crisis. But critical race theory, diversity initiatives, subversive books and online learning implemented during the pandemic are only the most recent chapters of the story in which politicians speak the language of school reform while draining actual schools of needed funding.
Instead, state and local governments rely on the private sector to address the changing needs of students. Charter schools, high stakes tests, surveillance and rote curriculum devised by consultants divert public funds to private entities. And the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives that have become so controversial in recent years? Even they are provided by for-profit consultants.
Since none of these developments are reforms, it’s no wonder our schools folded like a house of cards when faced with a pandemic. I often wonder: what would a real reformer, like John Dewey, think?
A philosopher trained at the Johns Hopkins University, Dewey believed schools were the foundation of democracy. At a time when secondary schools featured rows of unmovable desks, and classrooms were dominated by rote memorization, Dewey proposed the radical idea of learning by doing. Reasoning, making choices and experiencing the world as it is prepared students, he said, for a modern, democratic society.
This influential turn-of-the-century scholar founded the University of Chicago Lab School to test his theories and, in 1919, my own university, The New School in New York City. Dewey believed that a school was a model community, where students and teachers cooperated in the learning process. The function of school was not to turn out students as quality products, but to cultivate individual creativity and, most importantly, incubate citizens capable of life-long learning and cooperation with each other.
While Dewey’s ideas were implemented in their most literal form in private, progressive schools, over time they had an impact on public education as well. Whenever students complete a chosen research project, go on a field trip or reorganize moveable desks into small groups to thrash out a problem, it’s an idea derived from Dewey.
But there is less and less room for students to learn by doing, and more pressure for teachers and students to consume rigid curricula that prepare them for standardized tests. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the charter school movement that began in the 1970s, and that was first enacted into state law as educational alternatives in 1991, promoted selective schools created by entrepreneurs as more accountable than mainstream public schools, a comparison that could not be gauged by how happy the students were, or whether they had become more curious and critical thinkers, but by testing how much content they could regurgitate.
The idea that private entities could provide a public service cheaper, and more efficiently, than the government (a theory otherwise known as “neoliberalism”) had a particular impact on education in the late 20th century, as Republicans and Democrats both bemoaned the decline of public schools and refused to tax Americans to fund them properly.
Instead, school reform, historically an intellectual project focused on cultivating citizenship, came to mean demanding accountability: from students, parents, teachers and principals. Pedagogies that emphasize discipline, mandatory curricula and grading overwhelmed teaching that cultivated critical thinking and information literacy. This was particularly true after Congress passed George W. Bush’s “No Child Left Behind” legislation in 2002, which threatened to (and did) close “underperforming” schools. Not inconsequentially, the NCLB formula, and its reliance on testing, has remained the template for American public education, even as the dissemination of misinformation, hot takes, lies, and conspiracies on internet and social media intensify the centrality of critical, independent thinking to democratic citizenship.
When most public charter schools showed little improvement under NCLB, politicians and policymakers blamed it on failed parenting and uncontrollable students. Thus, many charters began to promote orderliness as the key to learning. For example, New York’s Success Academy, prided themselves on imposing rigorous discipline on both students and parents, pointing to their high test scores as proof that regimented classrooms work.
But regimented classrooms are not democratic: they teach children to take orders, not think for themselves. And as we learned during the pandemic, regimentation does not prepare students to learn on their own, nor does rote learning thrive in an online learning environment in which students must be curious and motivated to succeed. Despite the fact that public secondary schools doubled down on rigid rules, requiring students to adhere to school dress codes, sit up straight and show a neat, utilitarian workspace – student performance steadily declined.
Worse, schools couldn’t replicate community in a virtual environment. While substance abuse among teens dropped in 2021, depression and anxiety accelerated as students experienced school without any moderating influence from teachers or friends. The National Institute of Health (NIH) measures average learning loss from school closures at 20 percent, but that number rises to 60 percent among the most disadvantaged students. Up to 3 million students simply vanished.
Now, at a time when students need good teachers more than ever, they are in short supply. A pre-pandemic shortage, fueled by low pay that pushes one in six teachers to hold a second job, is intensifying. Two out of every three Colorado teachers are contemplating a new career, and Minnesota is reaching out to retirees.
And it’s not just the pay and the working conditions. Teachers often don’t have tools allowing them to do their jobs. Stories about teachers purchasing supplies for their students that school systems won’t, or can’t, budget for were back in the news in 2021 when a video featuring eight South Dakota teachers scrambling for cash in a hockey arena, money intended to supplement classroom budgets, went viral.
Perhaps you would be surprised to learn that a kid has the best chance to be in an excellent public school if they have one or both parents in the military. Last week, New York Times reporter Sarah Mervosh revealed that public schools run by the Department of Defense outstrip all other public school systems, and report no learning loss, have gained ground since 2013, and show a shrinking achievement gap between white students and students of color. Why? “Defense Department schools are well-funded, socioeconomically and racially integrated, and have a centralized structure that is not subject to the whims of school boards or mayors,” Mervosh reports.
And it isn’t because the military is all about discipline. Instead, the DoD actually invests in families and students, in a way our larger society does not. “For starters,” Mervosh writes, “families have access to housing and health care through the military, and at least one parent has a job.”
“Having as many of those basic needs met does help set the scene for learning to occur,” said Jessica Thorne, the principal at E.A. White Elementary, a school of about 350 students.
Her teachers are also well paid, supported by a Pentagon budget that allocates $3 billion to its schools each year, far more than comparably sized school districts. While much of the money goes toward the complicated logistics of operating schools internationally, the Defense Department estimates that it spends about $25,000 per student, on par with the highest-spending stateslike New York, and far more than states like Arizona, where spending per student is about $10,000 a year.
“I doubled my income,” said Heather Ryan, a White Elementary teacher. Starting her career in Florida, she said she made $31,900; after transferring to the military, she earned $65,000. With more years of experience, she now pulls in $88,000.
This is what education intended to cultivate democracy could look like.
The pandemic did not cause our school systems to break; it simply accelerated the process. It exposed the fact that schools’ fragile capacity to support students has declined. Not surprisingly, so have their buildings, a factor that has inhibited a full-scale return in many places. In 2020, the Brookings Institution reported that 36,000 schools were in need of new heating, ventilation and HVAC systems. Over half of American schools needed approximately $197 billion in upgrades to return them to a good condition.
To be sure, the pandemic was a sucker-punch to education at all levels. But culture-war issues, which occupy hours of broadcast time on cable news and endless social media outrage, only hide what is really wrong with our schools: long-term managed decline and disinvestment. But the crises that are constantly promoted by politicians—crises of ideology, sexuality, and behavior— do succeed in distracting voters from policymakers’ repeated failures to reimagine curriculum, invest in infrastructure and create incentives that will recruit and retain talented teachers.
This, as John Dewey would remind us, is how education supports democracy.
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Short takes:
What’s the Democrats’ brand? More democracy! In Pennsylvania, this means two Democratic bills advancing in the legislature that would repeal the closed primary system and allow the 15% of registered voters who are unaffiliated to vote in primaries. “The bills were largely approved along party lines, with all but one Democrat voting to advance the bills, and all Republicans voting against them,” writes Justin Sweitzer of City and State Pennsylvania. “Proponents said during Tuesday’s committee meeting that the bills would strengthen the state’s democratic ideals by allowing more voters to participate in elections.” Only seven states, including Pennsylvania, still have a closed primary, only two of which are Republican-dominated. (October 17, 2023)
The reality show known as The Speaker continues in the House of Representatives. Steve Scalise (R,LA-1), the election-denier known as the reasonable guy was quickly shot down. Now Jim Jordan (R, OH-4), the unreasonable election denier, is going for the gavel again today (at last count, four members of his caucus are confirmed no votes.) There is one other problem, of course: lingering accusations that Jordan, as a wrestling coach at Ohio State, knew that the team doctor was sexually assaulting his athletes and did nothing. In case you were wondering, this is why some people call him Gym Jordan and then giggle. But then there is the other thing: the man is a flaming asshole, and to quote Madison and Jefferson in Hamilton, Jim—you don’t have the votes: as of yesterday, he was 14 short. In addition, Jordan has mobilized a troll army to bully members into voting for him. “Can Jordan steamroll reluctant Republicans into becoming Speaker? Maybe?” Molly Jong-Fast writes at Vanity Fair. “Jordan can still only afford to lose five votes in order to get to the magic number of 217. But remember that means that at least 13 of the 18 vulnerable House republicans will have to vote for his Speakership.” And then there are other political concerns. As Jong writes: “Could voting for right-wing bomb-thrower like Jordan scare off potential GOP voters in swing districts and risk the House in 2024?” Uh—yeah. (October 16, 2023)
In case your day is not bright enough, Donald Trump is now under a second gag order, this time from United States District Judge Tanya Chutkan. It’s a narrow order, and specifies that Trump cannot conduct a "smear campaign" against the prosecutors and personnel in the Washington, D.C. courtroom where he is being tried on a number of charges related to overturning the 2020 election. “The order may end a line of attack that Trump has made central to his campaign for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination,” Associated Press reporters Michael Kunzelman, Lindsay Whitehurst, and Alanna Durkin Richer write. Indeed, Trump’s lawyers made the argument that slandering court personnel was part of his campaign, probably the first time that has happened in American history. “In a social media post shortly after the hearing in Washington’s federal court, Trump vowed to appeal.” (October 16, 2023)
Claire, #RightOn
Hi Claire,
Thank you for all your endeavours. I especially enjoyed this post. ALthough I graduated high school 40 years ago, I went to a high school, John Dewey High School, which was modeled on Dewey's philosophies and notions. There were no grades, no competition, a ton of eclectic offerings attempting to inspire learning and engagement/ownership and partnership between teachers and learners. We selected all our classes, they changed every 6 weeks, they were predominately eclectic (Herstory, Japanese Mind, Kennedy Years, Sociology of Sports, etc.), there were no grades, competition or sports, we decided how much of our days were going to be free, lots of opportunities for independent learning, etc. among the offerings and how this philosophy manifested. Previous to high school, I was a poor learner and this experience catalyzed a life long passion for learning; instructors truly knew, somehow, to activate our curiosities.