Why education reform keeps failing students

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JUDY WOODRUFF: Finally, a conversation about
education reform and some of its shortfalls.


It is the subject of a new book by a familiar face, who joins
Jeffrey Brown for tonight’s Making the Grade.


JEFFREY BROWN: For close to two decades now, or
even longer, depending on your perspective, education reform has
been on the agenda of Democrats and Republicans alike, school
leaders around the country and major philanthropists who have
influenced the debate.


It’s all led to big changes, new laws and programs, tougher
requirements and additional funding, lots more testing, and
occasional school closings and teacher layoffs. But what has it
all brought?


Our former education correspondent John Merrow chronicled these
efforts for our program for many years. He now looks back and
into the future with a critique and with prescriptions in his new
book, “Addicted to Reform: A 12-Step Program to Rescue Public
Education.”


And, first, hello again, John.


JOHN MERROW, Author, “Addicted to Reform: A
12-Step Program to Rescue Public Education”: Nice to see you,
Jeff.


JEFFREY BROWN: Nice to see you.


Addicted to reform means what?


JOHN MERROW: Well, reform are attempts at
changing that really don’t change things.


What I’m saying is, for many, many years now, we have been
tackling small problems which are really symptoms, not the real
issues.


I can give you a quick example.


JEFFREY BROWN: Go ahead.


JOHN MERROW: The Obama administration focus was
on raising graduation rates, to get it from 70 percent way up.


Four things happened. One was good. People came in and tutored.
They identified failing kids. They gave them help. And those kids
did well.


Three other things happened, all of which were bad.


One was credit recovery, which is basically a computer scam. You
sit in front of a computer for a week and you get a semester’s
credit. And almost every school district in the country relied
heavily on computer — on credit recovery to get kids to graduate.


The second thing that happened, schools, officials would say,
Jeff, I think you could do well if you got a GED. Why don’t — you
don’t have to — just go get a GED.


And so you or I, not doing well, would be helped out the door. We
wouldn’t be dropouts. But the graduation rate would go up,
because I’m gone, but the school wouldn’t see that I did the GED.


The third bad thing, adults cheated. They gave kids answers. They
had erasure parties, all to get kids over the bar.


JEFFREY BROWN: Yes.


JOHN MERROW: That’s a superficial reform,
because the problem wasn’t graduation rate. The problem was much
deeper.


JEFFREY BROWN: I mentioned Republicans,
Democrats alike, so many different players involved in this.


And I was wondering, as I was looking at the book, is it even
agreed upon what we’re after anymore? Do people kind of go back
to first principles like that?


Do we know what we’re trying to do?


JOHN MERROW: No, we don’t have that
conversation. We needed that conversation.


And I thought Barack Obama would lead us down that road, but it
didn’t happen. I mean, look, the fundamental purpose of school is
to help grow adults.


And if you look at the three words, help is — it’s a team effort.
And grow, it’s a process. You can’t just take a test score and
say we’re done.


And then adults, that’s the key issue. What do we want adults to
be — what do we want our kids to be capable of doing as adults?
Fill in bubbles or engage in debate and so on and so forth?


JEFFREY BROWN: So, take one big issue that you
have covered a lot, testing, right?


It does look as though there’s been some — even some of the
people who have been pushing that over the years, the Gates
Foundation, Arne Duncan, the former secretary, they’re perhaps
stepping back a little bit, or feeling like perhaps it was
overemphasized?


JOHN MERROW: Yes.


JEFFREY BROWN: What do you see there?


JOHN MERROW: I think they have pulled back
little bit, but nowhere near enough.


We’re still basically the only country in the world that says
let’s use test scores to judge teachers. Most countries test kids
to see how the kids are doing.


So, we have a kind of test and punish. What we should do is
assess to improve.


JEFFREY BROWN: You have got 12 prescriptions,
which we can’t go through all of them.


But what is the main idea?


JOHN MERROW: It’s a paradigm shift.


Right now, schools — we think of school, where the teacher is the
worker and the kid, the student, is the product.


I’m saying, no, no, no, students are the workers, and knowledge
is the product, which means they will work on real projects, they
will work — they will create knowledge. They will learn, figure
out stuff that they don’t know, that the teacher may not even
know the answer to.


The second goes back to Aristotle. And I’m not an original
thinker. I have stolen a lot from Maria Montessori and Aristotle
and so on.


JEFFREY BROWN: Well, stealing from Aristotle is
allowed, right?


(LAUGHTER)


JOHN MERROW: But we are what we repeatedly do.


Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit. So, what do our
kids repeated do in school? Well, in an awful lot of poor
schools, kids do test prep. But if kids are actually the workers,
creating knowledge, that’s what they — and they repeatedly do
that, they will be ready for life in a democracy.


They will be ready to be workers, to participate, be good
citizens.


JEFFREY BROWN: But how practical is that? That
sounds great, but how do you do it economically strapped schools?


JOHN MERROW: I don’t think this will cost more
money.


I think a judicious use of technology will help. I think there
are 100 schools doing this. We have 10,000 schools — 100,000
schools. So, we have a long way to go.


But it’s not going to be easy. But there are 12 steps. You have
to acknowledge that these reform efforts have been superficial.
You have to say — look at each kid and say, how is this child
smart? What can we do to bring out that kid’s strengths?


We have to measure what matters.


JEFFREY BROWN: Let me just ask you finally a
more personal question, because you covered these things for so
long. Right?


So when you went back to look, are these things that — these are
things you were feeling at the time? Did you — did it kind of
bubble up for you to look at, you know, I want to now take a
big-picture look at all the problems I have seen?


JOHN MERROW: I think it bubbled up toward the
end of, you know, the 41 years, most of which were with you guys.


JEFFREY BROWN: Yes.


JOHN MERROW: I don’t think I — I was committed
to hearing everybody, and giving everybody — even if I had had
strong feelings, the “NewsHour” would never have let me put them
on the air.


But I don’t think I really had them until I started toward the
end thinking about all the marvelous people who have worked so
hard to try to change things, and then seeing things had not
really hadn’t changed.


Why was that? And then I started analyzing, well, maybe we’re
just going at superficial problems, you know, raising test
scores. That shouldn’t be the end of schooling.


JEFFREY BROWN: Right.


JOHN MERROW: You know, people talk about the
achievement gap.


Well, first, we should say, wait a minute, there’s an
expectations gap. There is also an opportunity gap. If you close
those two gaps, the outcomes will take care of themselves.


JEFFREY BROWN: All right, the new book is
“Addicted to Reform.”


John Merrow, thanks very much.


JOHN MERROW: Thank you very much, Jeff.


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