Focus on teaching kids to read -- not fixing 'root causes'

Democrats "lost the plot on schools," writes Charles Barone in Education Next. He suggests a "credible, student-centered education agenda" to regain leadership.

Democrats can "rejuvenate public education," and "strengthen ties with Black, Latino, and suburban women — voting blocs that care deeply about school quality," writes Thomas Toch in the Washington Monthly. But progressives and centrists have start talking to each other -- and not just in insults.

Photo: Brooke Charter Schools

Fordham's Mike Petrilli spotlights the discussion on Schooled. In a follow-up, Vlad Kogan challenges Barone's statement that, "public education desperately needs strengthening, but policymakers must address root causes by addressing the many hurdles in students’ lives that compound their challenges in classrooms."

Wrong, wrong, wrong, writes Kogan. As he writes in his book, No Adult Left Behind, "people have been saying the way to fix urban education is to fix “root causes” since at least the 1960s."

"It’s much easier to teach an elementary school child how to read than to fix poverty, racism, and other root causes," Kogan writes. "If we don’t know how to use public policy to ensure that all kids how to read by the end of third grade, the idea that we’ll figure out how to use policy to fix much more difficult issues underlying 'root causes' is just implausible."

I agree with Kogan: "We have to fix root causes" is an excuse for failure, not a strategy for success. First, do what works -- not what feels good -- to teach reading and math effectively.

Urban charter networks that focused on academic excellence were closing racial achievement gaps, writes Steven F. Wilson in The Atlantic. Then activist staffers pushed their schools to make "anti-racism," "equity" and "social justice" the top priority. "At many networks that served students of color from low-income families, academic performance plummeted — and has scarcely recovered," he writes.

Wilson was pushed out of the Ascend charter network he founded in Brooklyn, because he questioned equity trainers' belief that “worship of the written word” is “white supremacy culture.”

In 2019, he writes, Achievement First changed “Results Without Excuses or Shortcuts” to “Lead for Racial Equity.” That meant scrapping the merit/demerit system, retiring a successful middle-school math program, promoting by age instead of achievement and discontinuing school report cards. "Discipline unraveled, and once-orderly classrooms turned chaotic." Achievement fell.

In Chicago, Noble Schools charter students used to outperform district students on college entrance exams, Wilson writes. Then Noble embraced “anti-racism” and eliminated “assimilationist, patriarchal, white supremacist and anti-black” practices such as school uniforms, demerits and lower grades for misbehavior and late work. "When Noble reopened after the pandemic abated, tardy rates soared, staff satisfaction plummeted, and violence on campus, previously rare, spiked," he writes. Noble students now score below city averages.

South Bronx Classical Charter School II was named a National Blue Ribbon School in 2019. Photo: Marta Skovro

Urban school districts and state education departments also committed to “social justice” programming, Wilson writes. They paid consultants to train teachers in anti-racist ideology. "Trauma-informed" trainers encouraged teachers "to act as therapists and relax rigor, ease grading, and lessen homework." Students are learning less and behaving worse.

Charter networks that remained focused on academic rigor have "continued to excel," he writes. That includes the Brooke Charter Schools in Boston and Classical Charter Schools in New York City's South Bronx. Nearly all Classical students are Black or Latino, and nearly all are proficient in both math and English.

"Social-justice education is harming the very students it was meant to help," Wilson concludes. "America’s most marginalized children are being left less educated, more excluded, and more vulnerable." That's not justice.