*THE TRIUMPH OF THE SCHOOL AS FACTORY

It has been well over a century since, state by state, America embarked on the breathtakingly ambitious venture of providing universal publicly funded schooling for every child. The costs of this endeavor quickly proved extraordinarily burdensome. So state after state, and school district after school district, decided to fulfill this dream in as cost effective a manner as possible. The consequence was a relentless push for cost-cutting efficiency. What resulted was public schools modeled on factories with an emphasis on mass production and cost-effectiveness.

Today’s public schools remain factories. In fact, the organization and management that typifies the most unenlightened factories is now so common as to go unrecognized. Management is top-down. The federal government sets basic rules. State government implements them while adding many more. School boards then make decisions based on these federal and state rules plus their fiscal and political realities. The superintendent executes the will of the board. Principals tell teachers what to do and when to do it; and they, in turn, direct the youngsters in similar manner.

Despite the intent to promote efficiency, this industrial approach produces profoundly inefficient results. A Superintendent of the School District of Philadelphia, for example, once boasted to the press that at any given date and time she knew what was being taught in every classroom in the city. This was her factory foreman's fantasy. What was actually happening was administratively induced chaos because the standardized, teacher-proof, factory-style methodology is incapable of accommodating individual differences. 

For instance, in Philadelphia second grade teachers were forbidden to use anything other than second grade readers and the canned lesson of the day. This was imposed, even though some of the second graders couldn’t yet read. Similarly, seventh grade math teachers were required to ‘teach’ algebra to kids who, in many cases, still couldn’t do fractions or long division. None of this makes any sense at the classroom level. But such standardization is the fulfillment of every factory-style school manager's dream.

Given such management, classroom teacher adaptability is non-existent. Nevertheless, the education industry remains focused on standardization, teacher proofing and measured outcomes. No Child Left Behind and its Every Child Succeeds successor represent the near total triumph of factory model schooling in contemporary America. The whole weight of the federal government imposed the school as factory as never before. And, for the most part, this still pertains.

\