Slaying the Two-Headed Dragon of Education Policy

Recently, I posted a chart highlighting that current “No Excuses” Reform (NER) claims and policies are no different than traditional problems and policies in public education.

The great ironies of NER include that NER perpetuates the inequities of society and the current education system and that NER does not seek a reformed and revolutionary public education system but a dismantling of public schools for private interests (See Ravitch, Flanagan, and Cody).

The problem in education reform parallels the problem in our two-party system: While the competing ideologies and policies have successfully masked their being different sides of the same corporate coin, the many and varied alternatives outside the either/or norm remain hidden and silenced.

Part of the success of NER, historically (before such a phrase as “no excuses” was in vogue) and currently, lies in falsely positioning progressive education as widely implemented and failed (see Kohn) and falsely positioning status quo policies as “reform.”

So let me offer another chart I use with my introductory education course that builds on the parallels (and minor differences) between traditional and progressive agendas while including a critical alternative to the two-party education reform agenda. This chart examines the need to change theoretical and philosophical assumptions about a wide range of aspects in teaching, learning, and public education if our reform agendas seek to revitalize a public good (universal public education) for goals that include democracy, equity, and agency:

	[Traditional Practices]	[Progressive Suggestions]	[Critical Lens]
	Behaviorism	Constructivism	Critical Pedagogy
Role of TEACHER	Authoritarian	Facilitator/ Mentor (Coach)	Authoritative (teacher-student)
Role of STUDENT	Receptive (passive)	Active	Empowered (student-teacher)
Role of CONTENT (ends v. means)	Ends (goal)	Means	Means
Nature of REASONING (inductive v. deductive)	Instructional decisions = Deductive	Instructional decisions = Inductive	Not primary over affect; Instructional decisions = Inductive
Assumptions about student thinking/ learning	Analytical (part to whole)	Global (whole to part)	To be monitored by teacher and learner
Responsibility for learning	Primarily the teacher	Primarily the student	Teacher-student/ Student-teacher
Central source of CURRICULUM	Traditions of the field	Student needs and interests	Discovered and defined during process
Nature of ASSESSMENT	Selected response/ serves to label and sort	Created response/ performances	Authentic/ integral part of learning
Nature of learning conditions (individual v. social)	Individual	Social	Social
Nature of QUESTIONS (open-ended v. closed)	Closed	Open-ended	Open-ended (confrontational)
Attitude toward ERROR	Must be avoided	Natural and even necessary element of learning	Sees “error” label as dehumanizing and oppressive; function of normalization
Assumptions about MOTIVATION (intrinsic v. extrinsic)	Extrinsic	Intrinsic	To be monitored by teacher and learner
Role of psychology (behavioral v. cognitive)	Behavioral	Cognitive	Postformalism (Kincheloe)
Names associated with theory	Pavlov, Skinner, Thorndike, Watson	Piaget, Dewey, Vygotsky	Freire, hooks, Vygotsky, Giroux, Kincheloe, Apple
Attitude toward standardization	Appropriate goal	Flawed expectation	Dehumanizing
Goal of instruction (answers v. questions)	Answers (correctness)	Questions (possibilities)	Questions that confront norms, assumptions
Perception of the nature of the mind	Blank slate	Jungian (Collective Unconscious)	Cognitive and affective both valued, evolving
Nature of Truth/truth	Truth (absolute)	truth (relative)	Truths as normalized assumptions (oppressive)

NER narratives argue that school-based reform alone can somehow revolutionize U.S. society, that social inequity can be overcome by the force of public education.

That narrative is false on two fronts: (1) We have no evidence public schools have ever been revolutionary (see Traub), (2) because public schools traditionally and currently have reflected and perpetuated the inequitable norms of the society they serve.

The privileged will never lead the revolution because the privileged benefit from the status quo.