Schools Just Can’t

Before I rode across Iowa on a bike last week, I had a chance to read an interesting article in EducationWeek. Written by Jeff Frank, an associate education professor at St. Lawrence University, the title of the article was “Want to Value Every Student? Stop Pretending Schools Don’t Pick Winners and Losers.”

Frank writes “There are at least three main ways students are sorted. The first is academic. We grade students and we rank them. The second is extracurricular. Some students play in the first chair, some are starters, some are class presidents. The third is social. Some students are more popular than others.”

Frank goes on to write “This leaves schools in a bind. There will always be hierarchies in schools, many that the schools themselves actively promote and reward. And this makes it hard when a student feels worthless because they stand at the bottom of these hierarchies. It makes the claim that each student counts or matters sound hollow, because students know whether they stand: near the middle of the class rankings, on the bottom of a team’s depth charts, not invited to the highest-status social events.”

According to Frank, schools can lessen the impact of picking winners and losers by getting “back to the idea that each student has an inherent worth and dignity that is not tied to where they stand in any established hierarchy, school-sanctioned or not.” And “schools can do more to help students listen to their unique calling and feel confident in it. We should reaffirm our belief in the inherent worth and dignity of the individual, each of whom is called to a unique purpose.”

Frank goes on to write “Schools must set aside more time for mentoring and give students opportunities to reflect on purpose beyond the obvious ways of standing out. Schools can encourage more long-term thinking and planning. While it is not the case that every student can be the team captain or valedictorian, each of us can make steady growth toward becoming the person we are meant to be. Schools should continue to reward those who demonstrate early success, but we need to make it clear that the point isn’t winning high school; it is building a foundation for continued growth in our unique potential.”

Frank ends his article by writing “Instead of pretending we live in a status-blind world or calling failure a different type of intelligence, we need to help students see that with effort they can make progress, and that in the process of putting in this effort, they will realize what they were called to become. Students are honest about their mental health challenges, and we need to be honest about the hurdles we are throwing in the way by not getting real about status and the roles it plays in schools.”

After working 35 years inside a large, urban school district and working with other districts, both small and large, I have news for Jeff Frank.

Schools, by and large, can’t do any of what Jeff Frank wants them to do in this article.

Schools were built to “sort.” The American factory model of education, which schools still operate under, was invented to “select” the best and brightest for post-secondary education, namely college, while the rest were directed toward vocational education or the military. Even though traditional educators would like us to think differently about today’s schools, the fact remains most still operate under the historical factory model. Sorting and selecting is what schools do, for the most part.

Even if schools wanted to move away from the factory model of education, the way they spend their time these days suggest that type of attempt would fail.

Most of the time spent in today’s traditional school, especially when it comes to secondary campuses, is dedicated to acquiring knowledge and skills to prepare students to do well on high-stakes state standardized tests. Jeff Frank’s call for mentoring and reflection time won’t happen because today’s teachers and principals will push back saying they don’t have time to work on such things. Instead, those teachers and principals use their time to cover curriculum, meet scope and sequence expectations, and follow pacing guides to make sure kids are ready to take “the test.”

The only way we move toward Jeff Frank’s vision, in my view, is to take young people out of these places called schools. Then, a learning plan could be developed for each one of those young learners, allowing them to celebrate their own unique strengths and improve their weaknesses. Learning plans allow for a “no shame, no blame” approach to learning to germinate and blossom, something traditional school spaces aren’t designed to do.

It’s time to stop persuading schools to become something they aren’t and, quite frankly, aren’t interested in becoming. The current educational news streams are filled with articles like Jeff Frank’s. It’s time for Frank and others to understand the traditional system just can’t do what they want it to do. And, without change, that makes for a very sad future.

I like the vision, Jeff. I just think you’re betting on the wrong horse to get you to the finish line.

Til tomorrow. SVB