Mirrors reflect reality with remorseless accuracy. Exercise, eat well, and the consequences are reflected in the mirror — flat belly, taut muscles, and all. Sit on your duff and gobble Twinkies? These consequences also are reflected with unflattering exactitude.
Schools act as our nation's mirror. What's right or wrong with them, reflects what's right or wrong with America. Here's a vivid example. The U. S. has the most uneven distribution of wealth in the world. The Aspen Foundation reports that the wealthiest 1% of American families possess some 40% of that wealth. The bottom 90%, that's the rest if us, share less than 25%. One consequence is reported by the Annie E. Casey Foundation. About 18% of all of America's children, a total of nearly 13 million or 1 in 5, live in poverty. That profoundly impacts the lives of these children. And schools reflect the consequences.
Consider also that more of our citizens per thousand are imprisoned than in any other nation in the world. In fact, the US Department of Justice says that in 2022 that includes 684,500 fathers of at least one minor child. We've also locked up 57,700 mothers of minor children. In fact the Annie Casey Foundation reports that more than 5 million American children, that's 1 in 14, has had a parent imprisoned at some point in their lives.
The destructive effects of these incarcerations flood into our classrooms with devastating effect. And this is especially true in the poorest school districts where teachers have inadequate resources and the children have more numerous major problems. In more affluent areas with financially secure, well-educated parents, more functional families, safer streets, a rich tax base and broader respect for learning, good school outcomes are much, much more likely. And, paradoxically, that's where teachers are better paid and have far more resources. It's a case of "them that has, gets,"
Let's also briefly consider how the quality of parenting fits in. Is quality parenting reflected in school outcomes? You might as well ask: "Is the Pope Catholic?" Of course it is. After all, the requirements for becoming a parent are distressingly lax. Consequently a host of people gain parental responsibility who simply can't, or won't, meet the mark. Many are far too stupid, selfish, cruel, frightened, impoverished, mentally ill, emotionally needy, foolish, addicted, ignorant, etc., to responsibly raise a child. And our schools reflect this melancholy reality every hour of the day.
I know a first grade teacher who for years won many plaudits. Then she was hired to teach kindergarten in the School District of Philadelphia. She quit before the year was up to preserve her mental and physical health. Her comment upon quitting was, "I don't know what I was supposed to be doing in there, but it sure wasn't teaching. Then added, "And I'm tired out caring more for other people's children than their parents apparently do." Hyperbolic and spoken in disgust? Sure. But there still is a strong element of truth.
Politicians find it expedient to interpret the situation differently. They maintain, some might even believe, that poor school outcomes are the fault of educators. Sometimes they are. But most of the time they aren't.
Let's reprise. Our schools mirror our nation. So if you are disturbed by what you see reflected in our schools, it is unlikely to be schooling's fault. And if you like what you see, don't give the mirror much credit either.
Does that mean educators are essentially powerless and can do little or nothing to improve learning? Of course not. But what they can do is very limited when poverty, crime, lousy parenting, social disorder, dysfunctional families, etc., create an avalanche of problems, indifference, even opposition.
Perhaps you can remember the George W. Bush and Barack Obama era, when school reform was all the rage and the federal government wasted billions of dollars on mandatory testing and other largely worthless school "improvements." As a matter of fact, many of these 'reforms' actually functioned as bureaucratic distractions from the central task of schooling children.
In retrospect it seems as if these reformers were buying new mirrors because they weren't satisfied with what the existing mirrors reflected. That's like someone changing mirrors in hopes it will improve their looks. Are our politicos aware that this is what they've been doing when they meddle with our schools? The dumb ones probably do not. But even the dumb ones know that appearance matters more than reality when you're playing politics. And they also know that Barrack Obama was not even half serious when he officially ruled that folks in-training to be teachers were already "highly qualified." ("Highly qualified" was a standard that the No Child Left Behind Law required. But left undefined, the requirement turned out to be meaningless.)
Obama actually did this with a straight face; proving that the former president is an accomplished liar. Fortunately, Trump and Biden have shown less enthusiasm for federal meddling with our public schools than Obama and his immediate predecessors. Of course Trump and most other republican politicians favor turning public education over to the private sector. The trouble with that 'reform' is the resultant charter schools don't do any better than their public counterparts in raising student achievement. Charter schools too are simply mirrors.
If any 'public servant' really wants to improve school outcomes, here's some of the things they would have to do:
1. reverse the growing disparity between the rich and the rest of us
2. stop locking up parents without regard for what that does to their kids
3. start offering free, high quality, parent training (plus follow-up support) to anyone who wants it.
4. inact national health care, so the poorest among us can afford to be well.
Accomplish things like thes above and school results will improve. But there's little chance that any of them will actually happen. So we will keep thinking, as well as pretending, that the problems we see in our schools are pedagogical, when they really are far more than that.
For more on this see www.newfoundations.com/Clabaugh/CuttingEdge/PSMirror.htm