Is the Education Crisis a Myth?

From teachers and school administrators to politicians and pundits, the message is clear: the education system is in dire straits, and something earth-shattering needs to be done about it. It’s no secret that teachers are being laid off in droves, college is more expensive and selective than ever, and student achievement is, as a whole, nowhere near where we’d like it to be. But is the education “crisis” actually real?

Nicholas Lemann, dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University, thinks not. In the forthcoming Sept. 27 issue of  The New Yorker, Lemann argues in that instead of recognizing what works, we are falling prey to a facile narrative which embraces heroes and villains while diverting our attention from real problems and solutions.

Lemann suggests that the system is no worse than it’s ever been in the past: enrollment is growing, college graduates continue to do better economically and student achievement is holding steady. But a narrative of systemic failure nevertheless holds the public in thrall. “In the current school-reform story,” Lemann writes, “there is a reliable villain, in the form of the teachers’ unions, and a familiar set of heroes, including Geoffrey Canada, of Harlem Children’s Zone; Wendy Kopp, of Teach for America, the Knowledge Is Power Program; and Michele Rhee, the superintendent of schools in Washington, D.C. And there is a clear answer to the problem—charter schools.”

It’s undeniable that the uncompromising and iconoclastic Rhee and the cinematic, underdog success story of the Harlem Children’s Zone make for easy touchstones in the discussion over education reform. But I’m not sure that there’s anything wrong with that. Discussions over problems in education tend to stick to two arenas: the practical, wherein teachers worry about what’s going on in their own schools and classrooms and parents worry about their own children, and the political, wherein policy-makers trade in theory and abstract solutions. Figures such as Rhee, who appeared on a now-famous 2008 cover of Time magazine grimly clutching a broom in a classroom that was, we were to assume, about to get the sweeping of a lifetime, help make arcane debates over matters such as teacher evaluation metrics, performance pay, and tenure more accessible to a wider audience. And more attention to the issues endemic to the education system is, I think, not a bad thing.

In a live chat hosted by The New Yorker, Lemann clarified his position. “I think the reform narrative is so popular more because of the eternal power of narrative than because of anything particular to education. In journalism, especially, we tend to deal with large, complex systems by finding especially interesting people and story lines to focus on … But it becomes perilous when the narrative thread seems to carry a broad systemic policy implication, that then is not tested as such.”

Lemann is right to point out that certain clear-cut “solutions”, such as the creation of more charter schools, are emotionally appealing but not empirically proven to be any better than their alternatives. His point is not that schools don't need help. It's that in declaring a "crisis mode" we are, in essence, relinquishing measured thought in favor of expediency, and creating villains and heroes where none exist. Slaying the dragon would be simple; real reform is going to be a lot more complicated.

Photo credit: Lel4nd