Engagement Is the Answer

Closing the achievement gaps between advantaged and disadvantaged students constitutes the biggest challenge facing today’s schools. We all know the statistics on test scores and dropout rates. But a sadder commentary may be the resulting collateral damage that has dragged down good instruction, de-skilled many teachers, squeezed subjects other than math and reading out of the curriculum, and produced data juggling and test falsification by desperate administrators trying to avoid having their schools branded as “failing.”

How did this mess happen? Why hasn’t the estimated $3 trillion spent on school reform since the 1960s made a difference? We’ve tried just about everything: smaller schools, year-round schools, single-sex classes, after-school mentoring, school uniforms, charter and magnet schools, school-business partnerships, merit pay for teachers, payments to students for performance, private management companies and for-profit schools, takeovers by mayors and state departments of education, site-based management, data-based decisionmaking, and just about every idea containing the words “standards” and “accountability.” All of these suggested silver bullets promised results, but little has changed. Most are built on structural changes and calculated to have an impact on entire school districts or states. But these structural changes have focused too much on low-level, highly prescriptive pedagogy intended to improve standardized-test scores.

The mainstream school diet for many poor and struggling learners is dominated by a remedial pedagogy that has failed to lessen achievement gaps. I believe it has actually contributed to their perpetuation. The instruction these children receive is often designed to determine what they can’t do, don’t like to do, and see no reason for doing. Then their teachers are told to focus on beating them...