The recent results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress offered a stark reminder that student achievement has been swooning for over a decade, with the biggest declines among low-income students. What will it take to turn things around? It seemed an excellent time to talk with Steven Wilson, the author of the new book The Lost Decade: Returning to the Fight for Better Schools. Wilson is the founder and the former CEO of Ascend Charter Schools, the architect of the National Summer School Initiative, and a senior fellow at Massachusetts’s Pioneer Institute. Here’s what he had to say.
—Rick
Rick: Steven, just last month, the latest National Assessment of Educational Progress results extended a decade of sagging performance, with the sharpest declines among low-achieving students. What do you make of this?
Steven: Rick, the disappointing NAEP results came as no surprise. When students returned to school after the pandemic, every analysis told us they had fallen catastrophically behind. To catch them up, schools would have needed to radically accelerate learning, especially in large urban districts where students lagged the most. That would have required a concerted drive to improve classroom instruction. Despite $189 billion in new funds from the federal government, districts did nothing of the sort. Instead, many invested in “anti-racism” training for staff that were shot through with anti-academic and anti-achievement messages. Schools claimed to empower students when failing to educate them.
Let’s go back to the start of the decade. In 2020, we were set back hard on our heels: NAEP scores showed that two decades of standards, accountability, and school choice had little to show for themselves. But that account, I argue, obscured striking wins in school reform on which we could have built. Massachusetts rose to the top of the 50 states in student performance by adopting ambitious, knowledge-based, engaging standards and strengthening teacher preparation and licensure. Urban charter school networks, by single-mindedly focusing on the quality of classroom teaching, were closing achievement gaps at scale. But we turned away from these successes.
Rick: You’ve got a new book out, The Lost Decade. How does it tie into these concerns?
Steven: At the start of the decade, social-justice education—anti-racism work, trauma-informed teaching, critical pedagogy, and “decentering whiteness”—overtook academic teaching in many schools. Teachers were invited to function as therapists and as proselytizers. Many formerly high-flying schools saw student discipline collapse and student outcomes plummet. Here we are at the middle of the decade. Five years from now, how will school reformers look back on the 2020s? We are losing a decade in the struggle for better schools. We can’t let that happen. We must change course.
Rick: I’m struck by the suggestion in the title of your book that we need to “return” to the fight for better schools. Can you say more?
Steven: Sure. In 2019, Stanford’s Macke Raymond dropped her third charter study, examining the effects of charter schools on 1.8 million students. Thousands of “gap-busting” schools, as she termed them, were closing—and reversing—gaps in student achievement based on race and class. Together, these gap-busters were adding 50,000 seats a year. That’s like opening a new district the size of Boston’s—but one that works! Despite intense opposition from entrenched interests, reformers were advancing in the fight for equal educational opportunity. The racial reckoning of 2020 could have spurred this transformation of urban schooling. Instead, it arrested it. In the name of advancing social justice, educators turned away from the commitments that drove their success—safe and orderly classrooms, high expectations, and relentless attention to great teaching. I worry that if we stay the course, America’s most marginalized students will be left less educated, more excluded, and more vulnerable.
Rick: What motivated you to write The Lost Decade?
Steven: In 2008, I opened Brooklyn Ascend Charter School in Brownsville, one of Brooklyn’s most challenged communities. I made many mistakes. In 2013, we wrote an entirely new curriculum with a focus on inquiry and student discussion. We threw out our behavior system and adopted Responsive Classroom, with the goal of fostering students’ sense of agency and belonging. Then it clicked. Ten years in, Ascend had 15 schools. Our students had caught up with their more privileged peers statewide—and were pulling past them. We offered a liberal arts education, a joyful culture, and attractive new buildings. I love that it “ran on regular”—on public dollars, not philanthropy. Importantly, this wasn’t just happening at Ascend. Other networks in the city were, in fact, doing it better. So, I know firsthand it can be done. From Stanford’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes on the right to Brookings on the left, researchers agreed: Charter networks were a once-in-a-lifetime win in school from—in urban areas. Then, I saw it all imperiled. I was shocked. I wanted to write this book to chart this history—and offer a call to action.
Rick: In 2019, you were pushed out as CEO of Ascend because, in the blog post “The Promise of Intellectual Joy,” you lamented that “worship of the written word” had been dismissed as “damaging characteristics of white supremacy culture.” How has this shaped your thinking?
Steven: I can’t speak to my departure from Ascend, but let me say this about the blog post: It was a rather anodyne call to tap into students’ innate curiosity to power their learning. I wrote that anti-intellectualism, which has long pervaded America’s schools, snuffs out that curiosity. We need to name that and then fight it with everything we’ve got. One example I gave was a 2019 mandatory training for all New York City administrators where they learned to identify “worship of the written word” as a symptom of “white supremacist culture.” Can you imagine a more damaging message to urban teachers and their Black and brown students? Someone started an anonymous petition on Change.org, claiming my piece reflected white supremacist culture. It popped up in subscribers’ feeds; they clucked and clicked. Charter funders pressured their networks to implement anti-racism training like the city’s. I felt there were essential issues that needed to be engaged in urban schools, including my own. There were racial disparities in staff promotions. Struggling teachers could put power over purpose in their classrooms. There were real problems to be addressed. But not that way. Ideological coercion violates the most central value of a liberal education: the opportunity to grapple with diverse viewpoints.
Rick: How did that personal experience inform your book?
Steven: Well, I soon discovered I wasn’t alone. It turned out that the tract that I criticized, “The Characteristics of White Supremacy Culture” by Tema Okun, was circulating everywhere. Not only in urban charter networks like mine but also in big city school districts, nonprofits, and corporations. It purports to be racial taxonomy. But it’s really a complaint against the contemporary workplace. Okun takes issue with hierarchy, punctuality, the expectation of clear written communications, and even a “focus on results.” By the way, good luck running your organization without these expectations—tell us how it works out for you. Okun—who is a white woman—racializes her dislikes, claiming such professional standards to be “white supremacist.” Why did this document have such influence?
Rick: The backdrop for much of what you discuss is the decline of the “no excuses” charter school model. What happened? And where do things stand today?
Steven: The North Star of “no excuses” schools was student achievement. When principals faced a decision, they knew the criterion: What would best advance student achievement? Say it was November. You’re in a room that is in chaos with constant disruptions, unhappy students, and little learning. The teacher’s drowning and has become harsher. You tried coaching him. You tried resetting the room. None of that worked. You’re running out of runway to get the plane in the air and the children ready for the next grade. So, you ask the dean of students to take over the room. Does she love that? No. But she’s committed to doing whatever it takes. She knows it’s urgent.
Now, when networks declared themselves anti-racist in 2020, the criterion for decisions changed. The question became: Which action is the most anti-racist? When researching for my book, I learned that in one top-performing charter network, some teachers objected to an award-winning writing program, The Writing Revolution, long used by the network. Their concern? Solely that its two authors are white women. The network’s longtime math program continued to generate top scores, while a new social-justice-themed math program posted weaker results in the network’s pilot. Despite this, the new program was adopted. This was the story in many formerly high-flying schools. The attention to great teaching was lost.
When culture systems, including merits and demerits, were judged racist and removed, discipline collapsed. The professional culture turned rancorous, former network executives reported. Longtime staff, newly deemed white supremacists, threw in the towel. Scores plunged, sometimes to below the district average. Fast forward to today. Many network leaders know social-justice education isn’t working, even if they can’t acknowledge it publicly. In small steps, they’re trying to restore discipline and return the focus to academics. But they’ve lost much of their top talent, and turning around a shattered school culture is brutal. Publicly, they insist academic excellence and anti-racism are compatible despite the evident contradictions.
Rick: What will it take to put an end to the lost decade?
Steven: The first step is to break the climate of fear. We must talk candidly about what is working and what is not. At mid-decade, we can still change course. We can commit to equipping all children with a rigorous and engaging liberal arts education that arouses curiosity, cultivates compassion, and upholds reason. We need to do what works: Reinvest in urban charters, tap knowledge-building curricula, and create cultures where students feel known as unique individuals. We have the financial and human resources to do it, so now it’s a matter of will. As with every daunting project, the hardest part is simply deciding to do it.
Rick: If you have one piece of advice for educators about what’s needed today, what is it?
Steven: To create a culture in your building that unabashedly prizes knowledge, curiosity, and achievement, you must model enthusiasm for these objectives in every interaction and celebrate them in your staff and students. Recommit to doing “whatever it takes” to succeed with every child. Ditch the hiring essays where candidates must signal their ideological purity. Instead, screen for teachers who know their subjects and are infectious in their enthusiasm. And who have the drive and perseverance to become great teachers. Hire fewer teachers and pay them more! There is no harder and more important job than teaching.
