The ends of education reform

Mike Petrilli with some VERY good points:

I would bet that your own views fall somewhere in between. You acknowledge–privately at least–that it's unrealistic to expect all kids growing up in poverty to be able to "beat the odds" and graduate from college. (That's why we call them odds.) You recognize that for most middle-class families, the path from poverty to prosperity was a multi-generational journey.

But you also believe in the promise of social mobility, and can point to examples of schools–even mediocre ones–that have helped some kids escape the ghetto or the barrio or the reservation. To accept the status quo is to accept perpetual injustice for decades to come.

So let's get specific. Assuming that these 1 million kids remain poor over the next 12 years, what outcomes would indicate "success" for education reform? Right now the high school graduation rate in poor districts is generally about 50 percent. What if we moved that to 60 percent? Right now the reading proficiency rate for 12th graders with parents who dropped out of high school is 17 percent. What if we moved that to 25 percent? The same rate for math is 8 percent. What if we moved that to 15 percent?

To my eye, these are stretch goals–challenging but attainable. Yet to adopt them would mean to expect about 400,000 Kindergarteners not to graduate from high school 12 years from now. And of the 600,000 that do graduate, we would expect only 150,000 to reach proficiency in reading (25 percent) and just 90,000 of them to be proficient in math (15 percent).

90,000 out of 1 million doesn't sound so good, but without improving our graduation or proficiency rates for these children, we'd only be taking about 40,000 kids. So these modest improvements would mean twice as many poor children making it–9 percent instead of 4 percent.

And what about the other 91 percent of our Kindergarteners? We don't want to write them off, so what goals would be appropriate for them? Getting more of them to the "basic" level on NAEP? Preparing them for decent-paying jobs instead of the lowest-paid jobs? Driving down the teen pregnancy rate? Lowering the incarceration rate?

Is this making you uncomfortable? Good. If we are to get beyond the "100 percent proficiency" or "all students college and career ready" rhetoric, these are the conversations we need to have. And if we're not willing to do so, don't complain when Diane Ravitch and her armies of angry teachers complain that we are asking them to perform miracles.

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The ends of education reform

Posted by Mike Petrilli on June 7, 2011 at 10:33 am

www.educationgadfly.net/flypaper/2011/06/the-ends-of-education-reform