Friday Interview: Battling the Glacial Pace of School Reform

It’s hard to find a politician or policymaker who will shy away from touting the paramount importance of education. John Redmond, recently retired director of executive education at the Bryan School of Business at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, asks, “If grade schools are so important, then why the glacial pace for school reform?” That question served as the title for a presentation this year to the John Locke Foundation’s Shaftesbury Society. Redmond also discussed the topic with Mitch Kokai for Carolina Journal Radio. (Click here to find a station near you or to learn about the weekly CJ Radio podcast.)

Kokai: Why the glacial pace for school reform if schools are so important?

Redmond: I think the best simple answer to that question is that there’s not a simple answer to that question. Some guys named Chubb and Moe published a study several years ago under the aegis of the Brookings Institution, and their finding was that the schools were excessively political. And that political influence in the schools essentially stymied anything in the way of substantial reform. If you’re looking for a one-word answer, it’s politics. The schools are like any other organization. If they try to be all things to all people, they’re not going to be much to anybody. And I’m afraid that’s kind of the situation that we’re in.

Kokai: We’re not going to be able to get into all of the details of the presentation, but let’s hit some of the highlights. You had a chance to talk about some of the actors in this process who could be called bad guys. And there wasn’t just one. There were a bunch of different groups who, for one reason or another, play a role in blocking school reform.

Redmond: Yes. I think it’s important to keep in mind that there are two sides of each of these coins. For example, teachers’ groups get a lot of criticism, and I think much of it is justified because of their resistance to things like full accountability for their performance. Teacher evaluation schemes, for example, are routinely opposed by teachers’ groups. While I think that that kind of evaluation process and the accountability that should result from it are key to school reform, at the same time I do have a great deal of sympathy for teachers because the evaluation process is not perfect, especially in its current form.

We don’t have great ways, currently in use anyway, of evaluating student progress. And until we get that, it’s not really fair or even appropriate to evaluate teachers. It doesn’t make sense to evaluate a teacher in a classroom that’s populated by kids who are advantaged and highly motivated and highly intelligent against a teacher who may be teaching in a disadvantaged situation in another part of the state. And yet the absolute measure of student performance is what is looked at most often when we consider the quality of a school or the quality of a teacher’s performance. I would advocate very strongly that we shift over to measuring the value that a teacher, that a school, that a school system, or that an educational program, adds to the students’ experience, and evaluating those entities on that basis.

Kokai: And teachers weren’t the only group that you mentioned. You also mentioned administrators, elected school boards, and other groups that are part of this process. What are some of the other ways that people stand in the way of the reform that’s needed?

Redmond: We could say something similar about education administrators — particularly principals. I use that example. We should hold principals responsible for keeping quality instruction in their classrooms. No question about that. And we should also have a great deal of sympathy for those principals because, in the current rules, they are not free to dismiss a teacher that’s underperforming. Unless the teacher does something that is on the verge of criminal, the principal’s hands are tied. So how are we going to realistically evaluate a principal’s performance if he or she cannot have adequate control, or, much less, be able to measure the effectiveness of their individual teachers?

Kokai: We could get into the bad guys a little bit more, but instead of that, let’s take a look at some of the things that could be done to improve education. One of the first things on your list was to go ahead and get rid of the cap on charter schools. [Editor’s note: North Carolina legislators lifted this year the state’s previous cap of 100 charter schools statewide.] Why do you think charter schools are such a good idea?

Redmond: Charter schools currently provide the only large-scale alternative to the traditional K-12 public schools. The model for — the business model so to speak —for the traditional schools has clearly indicated its inadequacy from one end of this country to another. … Studies have shown that our students are not achieving to anything like the same levels that students from other countries are, and we’re creating a talent gap for ourselves that’s going to be very difficult to overcome. Charters are currently the best alternative. I do not think that charters are enough, but they are the best alternative on the street at the moment.

Kokai: What are some of the other things that you think we need to be looking at in the future?

Redmond: If left to me, I would go a step further than charters and move to a full voucher system. I think that giving parents more and more immediate opportunities for alternatives for their children could not help but produce quicker results, which are very much in need, in my opinion.

Kokai: As you look at this situation, do you have much confidence that the public education system as it stands is going to change? Are we looking at the possibility that people are going to see that it’s failing and will say, “We’ve got to change,” or is it going to just keep going the way it has?

Redmond: Well, in 1983 the report “A Nation at Risk” was published. That’s been a while ago, hasn’t it? And I’m not aware of anything that has produced the degree of change that I think is necessary to bring our kids’ performance up to world standards. “A Nation at Risk,” as you may recall, compared the effects of our public school system to an act of war. That’s pretty strong language, and I don’t think the response has been commensurate with that warning.

Kokai: What do you think is going to have to happen, then, to get us on the right path?

Redmond: What I’m hoping for is that leadership in the community, leadership at the state level — I do not see it at the federal level — but at a state or local level, I think someone will stamp their feet long enough [and] get a great deal more flexibility in the way they operate their schools. They will find ways to do a better job of evaluating student performance and therefore teacher, administrator, and system performance, and the numbers will be irresistible. I do not see an effort on the horizon at the moment, although there may be some.

Kokai: Do you see this effort starting with parents? Or is this going to take some sort of advocate in a position of power to move this forward?

Redmond: I think it’s going to take some community leadership. Very few people are deeply embedded enough in public education to have a full grasp of the reasons that the schools’ progress is limited. It will take someone with a great deal of knowledge and a great deal of political skill and a very thick skin.