I cannot blame educators for feeling unfairly blamed for all of the ills of struggling schools. I do not believe that the old paradigm of exclusively blaming students and parents is just either, but the problem of struggling schools is too complex to hold only the school system accountable for student success. In fact, the Educational Testing Service (ETS) reveals a report that validates the concerns of many educators. The report provides the following explanation for gaps in student achievement:
The ETS researchers took four variables that are beyond the control of schools: The percentage of children living with one parent; the percentage of eighth graders absent from school at least three times a month; the percentage of children 5 or younger whose parents read to them daily; and the percentage of eighth graders who watch five or more hours of TV a day. Using just those four variables, the researchers were able to predict each state’s results on the federal eighth-grade reading test with impressive accuracy. (Winerip, 2007, p. A7)
Identifying educators as the sole cause of low student performance (or high student performance, for that matter), is not only inaccurate, but it makes the job of developing positive school culture even more difficult. Schools located in areas where risk factors for low achievement are highest are struggling to maintain a good, dedicated workforce of teachers, and negative external critiques and commentary from the public make this difficult job even more challenging and create additional problems that we must address and overcome.
The reform approach of NCLB and ESSA sends the message that schools are broken, and they need to be fixed. This message sets up a natural conflict. In Finland, the approach is cooperative and integrated, which sends the message to educators that we need each other if we hope to get better. I seek to prove in this book that schools don’t need to be fixed, they need to be transformed, and the transformational process is complex.
What About Student Outcomes?
The organizational mechanisms of schools were not designed to judge proficiency based on student outcomes. A look at nearly any teacher-performance evaluation proves that the school, as an organization, has concerned itself with evaluating the effort, process, compliance, and intentions of teachers rather than evidence of student learning. Decisions about lesson content, student evaluation, and classroom procedures have always been left up to each individual teacher. The leader’s ability to create the conditions through which classroom teachers could exercise their autonomous endeavors defined his or her role. Student learning was a result of students’ efforts, and, conversely, student failure was a result of students’ lack of effort.
The era of accountability has made school systems take an honest look at student outcomes and the conditions that guarantee higher achievement. District leadership has begun to demand information that more accurately and more frequently gives feedback on student performance. Consequently, teachers are challenged to analyze the effectiveness of their classroom instruction in ways that are much more objective than letter grades. What effect has this had on school culture? A focus on meeting mandates and minimum performance indicators has, in many cases, taken focus away from the individual student and his or her holistic development. Many schools are strategizing to avoid embarrassment and public humiliation for not meeting minimum student achievement goals and legislated mandates. I call this phenomenon the compliance mentality. This mentality has caused school systems to achieve an acceptable rating by any means necessary, including cheating on tests and excluding students with a high probability of failure on high-stakes assessments.
A Rice University study on the Texas school accountability system and its relationship to student dropout disclosed some startling revelations (Barr, 2008).
• In Texas’s public high schools, 135,000 youth drop out prior to graduation every year, resulting in an overall graduation rate of only 33 percent.
• The exit of low-achieving students made it appear as though test scores rose and that the achievement gap between white and minority students was narrowing, which increased ratings.
• There was a correlation between schools’ increasing number of dropouts and their rising accountability ratings, suggesting that the accountability system allows principals to retain students deemed at risk of reducing school scores. The study finds that a high proportion of students retained this way will eventually drop out.
These findings are troubling because, according to the study, “The longer such an accountability system governs schools, the more school personnel view students not as children to educate but as potential liabilities or assets for their school’s performance indicators, their own careers or their school’s funding” (Barr, 2008).
In cases like this one from Texas, the accountability movement actually resulted in the students in need of the most assistance being excluded instead of helped. This certainly was not the legislation’s goal. It is important to look at student learning outcomes—but not at the expense of creating a group of disposable students for the purpose of favorable performance ratings.
Predetermination
Like any organization, schools are the sum of their parts. Educators, students, parents, and society as a whole add a component to school that is equally as challenging to deal with as the governmental laws and regulations we have just discussed. The human experience of education plays a major role in how school culture forms and ultimately how well a school operates. The unique human experiences individuals bring into the school are called predeterminations. There are three major forms of predetermination: (1) perceptual, (2) intrinsic, and (3) institutional.
Perceptual Predetermination
Perceptual predetermination involves an educator’s own socialization and the impact of that socialization on his or her practice in the classroom, including expectations for student performance. Robert L. Green (2005) defines teacher expectations as “inferences that teachers make about the present and future academic achievement and general classroom behavior of their students” (p. 29). Green (2005) goes on to find that these expectations for student success have a two-fold effect in the classroom:
Teacher expectations affect student achievement primarily in two ways: first, teachers teach more material more effectively and enthusiastically to students for whom they have high expectations; second, teachers respond more favorably to students for whom high expectations are held—in a host of often subtle ways that seem to boost students’ expectations for themselves. (p. 29)
So the experiences and perceptions that an educator has before he or she becomes an education professional play a powerful role in how he or she perceives and serves students. Thus, the educator’s socialization is as important as his or her professional preparation. Green (2005) points out teachers generally develop positive or negative expectations around the following set of student characteristics: race, gender, social class, disability status, limited English proficiency, student history, physical attractiveness, handwriting, communication, and speech pattern. If educators have developed negative opinions about people in regard to these characteristics, students may start each class period with strikes against them.
We might assume that this problem could be eliminated if a teacher’s experience or background was similar to that of his or her students. If the achievement gap is most prevalent in communities with high-minority populations and homes with high poverty, perhaps we should simply hire more teachers with the same backgrounds. Unfortunately,