Accountability on Crack

Huck/Konopacki Labor Cartoons

NCLB is not going anywhere soon, nor is our national obsession with accountability for accountability’s sake. In fact, California Senate leader Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) wants to take accountability to a whole new level. Call it accountability on crack (I’m sick of the whole “on steroids” cliché, as if steroids simply made things stronger or bigger. I think an addiction cliché is more apropos.)

SB 547 introduces a host of performance indicators to be included in high schools’ Academic Performance Index (API) in addition to math and reading scores, such as how well they are preparing students for college and work. According to Fred Jones (writing for Thoughts On Public Education), the new API would include (among other things) the number of students successfully completing college preparatory courses, as well as the academic or workforce performance of students a year after they have graduated from high school.

While it is certainly misleading to judge a school simply on its math and reading scores, virtually all accountability schemes are proxies that primarily measure the social class of the students. Schools with high levels of poverty tend to have lower reading and math scores, but they also tend to have lower numbers of students who graduate on time, as well as lower numbers of students passing college preparatory, career and technical education and advanced placement courses.  Therefore, this new API will still be biased toward middle class schools, giving higher scores to schools with wealthier clientele, while telling us very little about the quality of the teachers and the academic programs at the schools.

Jones says that API has developed an “exaggerated importance” in our society, even affecting property values near a school. However, I would argue that API should have no importance whatsoever and should be completely discarded, along with the tests and punishments that go with it. Since API is just a proxy for the socioeconomic status of a school’s students, prospective home buyers will get much more direct data on the wealth of their future neighbors from other sources like the census or real estate websites. If, on the other hand, one wants an accurate picture of the quality of a school, one should visit the school, talk to teachers, parents and students, and read the local press. More importantly, if we really want to see schools perform better or close the achievement gap, we need to close the wealth and income gaps.

Jones makes the interesting point that by assessing more than just math and reading, there will be pressure on schools and districts to fund and support other courses and possibly reverse some of the damage caused by NCLB. Steinberg’s bill places special emphasis on Career and Technical Education (CTE)—formally known as shop—which has been declining throughout the state. According to Jones, 75% of secondary students took CTE courses in 1987, compared with only 29% last year. Considering the skyrocketing costs of college, a lot of students would benefit from getting a little job training in high school. However, this is becoming more and more difficult, not only because budget cuts are decimating CTE courses, but because NCLB and API look primarily at math and reading, encouraging schools to reduce or eliminate programs to make room for math and reading remediation and support (see here and here). However, considering that California is on the verge of cutting an additional $4 billion from k-12 education, after cutting $18 billion over the previous three years, it is absurd to think that accountability will force districts to spend money they do not have on electives.

Ultimately, Steinberg’s scheme will result in more bureaucracy and costs to k-12 education at a time when it can hardly afford it, while adding little new useful information. NCLB cannot be salvaged by adding on new layers of accountability and testing. NCLB is a failure not because it narrowly focuses only on math and reading, but because it relies on student achievement as a proxy to measure school quality. Adding more proxies won’t make poor kids more successful.

The “College and Career Ready” Farce

Schools around the country are tossing out the old “College for All” slogan and replacing it with the popular Obama-school cliché, “College and Career Ready.”

However, when you get right down to it, “College and Career Ready” is really just another way to say “College for All.” Both use the same rhetoric and euphemisms: “high standards and expectations,” increasing “rigor,” and “20^th Century skills.” The same standardized exams and the same punishments for schools and teachers are applied, whether our students are training for college or for a life of physical toil.

The implicit assumption is that career-readiness and college-readiness have the same requirements, which simply isn’t true. Paul Barton, of ETS, actually did a study that showed that non-college bound students do NOT need college preparatory courses. 69% of companies reject applicants as hourly production workers because they lack basic employability skills (e.g., attendance, timeliness, work ethic), compared with only 32% who reject them for inadequate reading and writing skills. Similarly, the U.S. Census Bureau found that the top three reasons for rejecting job applicants were bad attitude, poor communication skills, and lack of previous work experience. Grades in school were ninth.

The “Career and College Readiness” cheerleaders ignore the fact that living wage jobs can be obtained through career and technical education (CTE) programs, and through apprenticeships. They also ignore the fact that highly skilled technical jobs that require college degrees are easily exportable and that the cost of higher education is quickly becoming financially out of reach for those who are academically prepared. So even as we try to prepare our students for college, they may not be able to attend because of cost, and if they do attend (and incur huge debt), there is no guarantee that they will be able to find decent-paying employment in their field (thus consigning them to years or a lifetime of indebtedness).

Great Equalizer or Just Another Tool Of Capital?

All of this debate is predicated on the delusion that Education is the Great Equalizer. Yet most people remain in the same class as their parents, despite their education. Privileged families provide privileged opportunities for their children that allow them to excel within the education system, while lower income families, despite their best intentions, are incapable of providing the same material luxury and social connections that give privileged kids their advantage. Regardless of which misguided mission statement or pedagogical slogan we adopt, school is designed to and in effect does sort kids into the future leaders and financial rulers and their employees. There necessarily has to be winners and losers in this competition. Not everyone can become a boss, nor even a scientist.

Winniped General Strike, 1919 (Wiki Commons)

Rather than forcing all students into college preparatory classes, whether or not they have the requisite skills or interest, under the false assumption that this will get them a good job and make them wealthier than their parents, why not be honest about class and power and teach labor history so when they do enter the workforce it is with less naiveté and greater class solidarity than the preceding generation.