Dive Brief:
- While education reformers would love to tear down the U.S. education system and build it back up from scratch, College of the Holy Cross assistant professor of education Jack Schneider argues the system has been steadily improving for decades.
- Writing for The Atlantic, Schneider says teachers have become better trained, the school year has gotten longer, classes have gotten smaller, and the curriculum has become more equitable for students of all races and genders.
- Schneider acknowledges that achievement gaps still exist and there is plenty to continue improving, but black and Latino students have made the greatest gains in national test scores over the last 40 years and more students go to college than ever, so instead of ripping the system apart to start fresh, advocates should champion steady progress.
Dive Insight:
The American education system has gotten a bad rap. It has remained largely theoretical, though. Parents continue to rate their children’s schools and teachers positively, even while they are increasingly likely to say the United States school system is failing. But reformers who can acknowledge Schneider’s argument is valid still argue incremental progress is not enough. Yes, students of color graduate from high school and go on to college in greater numbers than they have in the past. But in the first 13 years of the new millennium, the number of schools segregated by race and class doubled, according to data from the Government Accountability Office.
Still, the reform effort may not be separate from the segregation issue. Critics say one of the results of college prep charter schools focusing on inner city black and Latino students is highly segregated schools. Looking back on 25 years of the charter movement, Education Week found a current reality very different from the “chartering” concept originally created in Minnesota.