The Importance of Seeking Common Knowledge Through the Public Schools: a Rejection of Charter and Voucher-Supported Private Schools

For anyone who is seriously interested in upgrading K-12 education so that students in the United States can aspire to the accomplishments of those in Finland and South Korea, a rejection of reform through charter and voucher-subsidized schools must be clear and forceful.

Clarity is a rarity in writing concerning the overhaul of K-12 education. Michelle Rhee (Radical: Fighting to Put Students First [New York: HarperCollins, 2013]) and Steve Perry (Push Has Come to Shove: Getting Our Kids the Education They Deserve--- Even If I Means Picking a Fight [New York: Broadway Paperbacks/ Random House, 2011]) are two high-profile education reformers who in the indicated works ultimately do not demonstrate clarity as to how we are to achieve excellence in education. The vexing omission that one notes in these and many other articles, books, and statements on achieving excellence in education is any definition of “excellent education.” Many such prominent advocates for change in K-12 education offer little logical rigor as they attempt to point the way toward educational excellence. And the great majority of people in the general public, including many of those who imagine themselves to care about and to know something about education, can be persuaded to approve of radically different approaches to K-12 education within seconds of hearing statements articulating those divergent approaches.

Consider these two statements, for example:

1) Excellent education is a matter of students and teachers pursuing their own passionate interests in designating and exploring subjects that will determine the curriculum.

2) Excellent education is a matter of knowledgeable teachers of high pedagogical ability imparting a rigorous liberal arts education in core subject areas to all students.

I can generally set heads to wagging up and down in affirmation with stout assertions of either of these two statements in the same conversation, which is good for my ego as an articulator of ideas but terrible for my desire to encourage people to take a clear view on matters pertinent to K-12 education.

The two statements offer very different visions for attaining excellence in education. The first statement flows from a so-called “progressive” notion of education, implying opposition to a specified curriculum in favor of an open-ended exploration of individual interests. The second statement embraces specificity in a challenging core liberal arts curriculum taught by teachers with firm mastery of content and high ability to transmit their knowledge to students. The latter conception of excellence in education is consistent with the notion of “common schools” advanced by people such as Thomas Jefferson and Horace Mann, who viewed a shared liberal arts education as vital to democracy, the means by which people of all economic and general life circumstances would gain an equitable chance to seek their dreams. The former conception is the misguided notion that has dominated university teacher training programs and undermined educational excellence in the United States for at least four decades.

Michelle Rhee offers much to admire in her tale of courage in confronting the education establishment in Washington, D. C. Similarly, Steve Perry has admirably found ways to circumvent the education establishment as principal of Capital Preparatory Magnet School in Hartford, Connecticut. Their accounts indicate that they understand the systemic impediments found in teachers unions, school boards, and central school district bureaucracies that prevent favorable initiatives such as accurate teacher evaluations, merit pay, and the jettisoning of incompetent teachers. They also give evidence of having articulated programs that have produced student gains in math and reading. But neither of these high profile advocates for change in public education ever gets around to defining what we mean by an excellent education. We cannot be certain that Michelle Rhee embraces a rigorous core liberal arts curriculum. Steve Perry issues a flurry of conflicting statements on the matter of a core knowledge base and ultimately seeks to leave education up to parents, students, and community members who would construct their own schools to replace those now run by public school systems.

And both Rhee and Perry are misguided in their sanguine approval of charter schools and even voucher-supported private schools. Neither of these types of schools can ever lead us as a whole nation toward the “common school” ideal in which all students master a rigorous liberal arts curriculum productive of a knowledge base shared by all. Most charter schools are worse than the regular public schools. There are not enough good private schools to accommodate millions of students throughout the nation. And either approach ultimately leaves curriculum to the whim of those who start the individual charter or private schools.

Rather than engage in the fancy of many different actors finding their own ways to educational excellence, we need to embrace the difficult task of defining a common curriculum, in the manner of those responsible for the excellent systems of Finland and South Korea. We would best do this at the national level, as have the Finns and South Koreans. But for now, in a nation that is fixated on “local control,” we should do this at the central school district level.

People acting at that level should agree on common knowledge sets in mathematics, natural science, history, economics, literature, and the fine arts to be mastered by all students in grade-by-grade sequence during the K-12 years. Much as Core Knowledge advocate E. D. Hirsch has done through his advisory board of subject area specialists of many different ethnicities, we can with attention to such an approach do this at the level of the local school district. Those of us who truly care about the education of all of our children must take responsibility for overhauling rather than replacing centralized public school districts. And we must with great clarity and vigor oppose notions that promote an unwieldy growth of charter and private schools that offer no commonality of educational excellence on which democracy depends.