Race to Nowhere, the film/movement, is righteous. But high expectations cuts kids at least two ways, like a Roman sword: strugglers stress to keep up; those who bring the skills into the age-based classroom bleed boredom.

Even this story is simplistic; we have an education problem due for lack of a better phrase a “lack of work” problem. We have McDonalds requiring college degrees to get a job flipping burgers. When there was manual work available, there was less of an education problem. Now, as we ship all the work overseas, those who cannot sit through an Econ 200 class are left behind. Not all students as the article points out are advanced placement students. Even if they have a good work ethic in school and good study habits, they are not cut out for four years of college. When they realize that they have no future after high school, it becomes a question of why am I wasting my time here anyway? Young people are smarter than many think, they ask those questions. We are listening on the radio this morning to people like this in England as they riot. No foreseeable future is a root cause for dropouts in school. Society if it does not allow for all skill levels will fail. Right now, it appears we are sliding down that slippery slope.

seattlelifer makes an important point. Nevertheless, a good article, one of the better ones on education "reform" Crosscut has run.

I'm not so sure we should be calling it "reform" anyway. Follow the money and look at who profits from it, and more to the point, who profits FIRST, and it's not hard to conclude, as many of us have, that Bill Gates, Wendy Kopp, and all the testing companies have all asked themselves the existential question that Kammerer poses so well here: "What's in it for me?" Seen in that light, what people call "reform" is nothing more than a ripoff of public funds to make the already rich even richer.

Interesting piece. Some observations:

"The example we set is: why study math or science if you can get elected to public office or you can play ball?"

I'd take this a step further. Schools CANNOT do it all. They cannot solve or make up for all the social ills that beset our kids. I support many social services in schools but with the recognition that, at the end of the day, kids will go home. And if home isn't working, the schools can't change that.

To go further, how did we get to the place in our society where being dumb is okay? How did Jackass become popular or the MTV show about being a dumb teen mom? How is it that politician after politician can act out in terrible ways and yet we reelect them and even revere them (see Bill Clinton)? It's okay to forgive but when we show kids that you can behave in the worst possible ways and still make money, you don't exactly inspire them.

In short, is there a mixed message here about "stay in school kids" and then we overpay sports figures and movie stars and hey, anyone can get 5 minutes of fame on YouTube and every kid get a gold star for showing up?

"Three themes have monopolized current thinking. One is a strategy to halt the excessive high school dropout rate. Another is to have all kids ready for college. The last is to put emphasis on math and science."

I'm not sure I think there IS a strategy to halt the drop-out rate - at least not in a uniform way. Seattle Schools has a very piecemeal type of intervention in high school whereas in Everett and Tukwila, they have a focused district-wide intervention program (and their grad rates have soared).

Kent is right about this issue of "being ready for college and career." What does that really mean and can a student graduate high school and find a career without going on to college? Were the classes and supports there in high school for this to be true and will it be true after they leave high school?

"You can put teenagers in a multimillion dollar school, equip them with the latest in computers, curriculum, and teachers with graduate degrees, but far too many kids will still not score well in math or will even drop out."

Absolutely true. There's this new push to have iPads in elementary schools because it will stimulate those children to learn. Why is a new electronic toy going to do better than a teacher? It goes to the idea that education has to be fun, fun, fun rather than the work it is. Education should be interesting, not entertaining.

"But, remember, Gates was a university dropout and his schooling wasn’t in public schools. He had great parents who nurtured curiosity as part of his growing up. If we look at what made him a success, it isn't changing the curriculum and method of teaching in public schools."

Bravo Kent and spot-on. Even Mr. Gates misses this point.

The third rail of education is families and, to a larger extent, society. Those are things education can't change and yet they could be its biggest challenge.

You say that kids aren't test scores, but aren't test scores the reason the No Child Left Behind is so maligned?

I don't share the pervasive sentiment that the NCLB Act was such a colossal failure. It was intended to address the opportunity gap for students in low income schools and I believe it has done that in some schools. A principal I spoke with over the weekend concurs. They missed their AYP by one student, a Native American student, and as punitive as the NCLB Act might seem, she credits it with the progress her school has made, unfortunately she has to be careful who she says that to. This is a principal who knows her data, period.

Did you talk to a principal of a low income school for your report? Or a student? Do they feel hopeful, are they getting attention and support they didn't previously receive?

Is it about test scores or not? Are test scores just a part of the whole picture? You can't say it shouldn't be about test scores and then accept the premise that NCLB is a failure because of test scores.

@KarenLee--Your anecdote about the principal you know seems to assume that the metric used to measure progress has anything more than superficial usefulness. If the assumption is that higher test scores correlate with increased learning, that's questionable, to say the least. The most important things that happen in a school are qualitative and cannot be measured quantitatively.

Do you want teachers who are motivated by fear to be in the classroom or teachers who are motivated by the desire to help each kid reach his or her developmental potential--whatever that potential might be for that particular child? Teachers who are motivated by fear are primarily concerned about their own jobs and not about their kids, and when those jobs are threatened if their classes in the aggregate don't pass the high-stakes test, do you think that they're going to spend more time caring about what the kid needs or more time drilling their kids to meet what the test demands?

So you might say, who cares, so long as the kid learns? But that's precisely the point--teaching to the test does not produce much learning, especially when out of fear teachers neglect subjects that are not tested. This mentality of high stakes testing is driven by thinking that only a bureaucrat who measures all the things that don't matter can love--anybody who knows anything about education and what kids really need despises it.

This technocratic/bureaucratic mentality is slowly destroying the humanistic base on which our education system is founded, and in the long run it will drive all those who enter teaching for the right reasons out of the profession. And eventually we'll find that all this testing has not produced better learning or higher achievment; it can't, because its premises about why and how kids learn is fundamentally flawed.

--Jack Whelan

@Jackwhelan, I failed to mention that not too many years ago, that principal was a special education teacher and reading specialist who did not believe in testing, any kind of testing.

Could it be that the problem with reform and its debate is the participants' inability to evolve or question or modify their opinions and beliefs. Our inability to learn anything new? Our closed minds?

I don't agree with everything coolpapa says on this blog, but I've been enlightened several times by his posts.

Perhaps that's the problem with education reform. You have your opinion and I have mine and never the twain shall meet.

This is a measured, searching piece, and brings up a point that I would appreciate hearing more about--that the increase in science curriculum standards engendered by helped accelerated tracking--and sounds a note that we need more of, which is that most calls for education reform are based on goals of perfection, not adequacy. But there is disturbing undertone, which is that there is a sharp divide between education for employment and education for smart people. Nowhere stated, but definitely implied, is that the first should not be required to take a "college prep" curriculum, since it erodes their confidence. As a the grandson of a single mother who taught "the mill kids" chemistry so they could go to Clemson and Georgia Tech (and occasionally get a PhD and go to space), I have real concerns about introducing different curriculums in K-12, based on what the family or the student believes is appropriate. What we should not do is expect everyone to perform like a Feynman or Gates in science and math in high school. We should not reserve calculus for the "fit though few" since it is not "needed" in the "real world." The trap is expecting everyone to perform the same way, rather than the curriculum. A farmer's daughter and a CEO's sun both need to know about Newton and Whitman, especially as we enter an age when everybody must be a little bit technical.

RobCrowe,

If I indicated that we do not need to educate our children completely, I did not make myself clear. A well-rounded total education is critical, it teaches one how to think, something sorely lacking in today’s world if appearances are correct. Plato, Whitman, Descartes, Pythagoras, Gertrude Stein, anybody or anything that can make a person think is important, even if you do not like what they say. Young people do need to know that there is a future for them, lack of future and limited education allows despots like Hitler and Teabaggers to come to power, which is a long-term disaster for any society.

Very good piece, Kent, as usual. I think what you are saying, in part, is that it's largely a parenting problem but families are outside the reach of conscious public policy. Mothers work, fathers work and TV takes care of the rest. Looking back many years I remember people who clearly could have had better lives and a better education if they had been blessed with intelligent, thoughtful and caring parents (or just responsible parents). As you say, it has to be both good teachers and good parents.

If a kid wants to drop out, why not let him? There's no reason why every last American citizen has to know algebra or have read Shakespeare.

If a kid doesn't have the interest or aptitude to succeed in a traditional high school curriculum, offer him an alternative education focused on a trade or practical skills such as basic accounting and computer usage. The last thing we should do is spending more and more of our limited educational resources trying in vain to turn these kids into something they are not.