What If Schools Aren’t Failing?

By Wes Walker

It’s a controversial question: what if it’s a mistake to say that schools are “failing”? Students today clearly have a weaker grasp of the “three R’s” than they ought, but what if many school administrators have a private, and different, set of goals defining success in education than Joe Public does?

Sure, politicians of every stripe decry how education is failing our students, and pledge to “do better”. Doing better means shoveling more money, equipment, or books at the problem, or maybe testing new educational theories on our kids.

But specifically how are schools failing? By what standard do we measure, and what constitutes a failed outcome? Many school models exist, with widely differing objectives, and methods. Against whose standard are we measuring results?

If the public assumes that the main goal is literacy, numeracy, competency and learning, many schools have objectively failed. But measuring the success of our schools in that way would unknowingly misinterpret their results — IF the system has a different goal.  To Read More…..