What do the 2012 Republican presidential primaries and the documentary Waiting for "Superman" as well as the "no excuses" movement sprouting from it have in common?
Both prove that making claims that speak to popular assumptions and stereotypes are highly effective even when those assumptions and stereotypes have no basis in the evidence.
In The New York Times, Charles Blow has documented both the pervasive racism and classism coming from the Republican candidates for president (inequality, anti-black rhetoric, and envy) and the lack of credibility of their narratives. Yet, polls in SC during the primary season show that refrains about free markets, an equitable America, and deficit views of people and children living in poverty work among the majority Republican electorate.
The release of Waiting for "Superman" as well as the popular reaction to the documentary revealed that charges about "bad" teachers, corrupt teachers' unions, "miracle" charter schools, and the "missionary zeal" of Teach for America (TFA) recruits are as compelling as the race and class bating among Republican candidates—again despite ample evidence that the documentary and its central claims are misleading at best.
Republican candidates for president depend on assumptions and stereotypes to drive their agendas and candidacies just as "no excuses" education reformers require several narratives to remain robust in the public in order for their agenda to control education policy in the U.S.: (1) poverty is not an excuse (success and failure are earned, lying in each person and not social mechanisms), (2) teacher quality is the most powerful element in student learning, (3) teachers' unions are preserving a failed status quo, and (4) accountability built on standards and testing are central to sustained education reform.
While SC is the crucible de jure for the 2012 race for presidency in the U.S., let's test (again) as well the claims from "no excuses" reformers in the context of SC.
Claims v. Evidence: South Carolina's Three Decades of Education Accountability
Just as claims by Republican candidates fall apart against the evidence about the free market, poverty, and the working poor, the claims being made by the "no excuses" reformers are difficult to justify against the realities of education and education reform in SC over the past three decades. Consider their claims and the evidence from the palmetto state:
(1) If poverty is not an excuse, then how do we explain the powerful and persistent correlation between poverty/affluence and tests scores? Consider that a recent ranking of the 100 worst schools in the U.S. included over 70 schools from SC. Setting aside the egregious problems with ranking [1], this list is notable since it reflects what we can safely say about nearly all designations of failing or "bad" schools—a high rate of poverty. To offer context, I paired with this listing the poverty indices from the SC department of education, revealing that nearly all of the schools labeled "worst" had poverty rates above 90 (out of 100). While suggesting that anyone is using poverty as an excuse is essentially a strawman argument, we must confront that "no excuses" reformers are stating that all of these schools, nearly three-fourths of the list, are filled with students and teachers who simply aren't trying hard enough. That defies logic, but does mask what these correlations between test scores and poverty show: Education alone is not enough to overcome the varied and extensive consequences of poverty.
(2) If teacher quality is the most powerful element in student learning, then how do we explain the impact of National Board Certified teachers in SC (just one of many initiatives implemented in SC over three decades to address teacher quality) since the state has lead the nation in numbers of teachers gaining national certification, and how do we explain, as identified above, the persistent correlation with student and school success with poverty levels, and not with teachers (SC SAT scores, for example, remain low and correlated with socioeconomic conditions despite those students having the best teachers in the state)? SC proves to be the ideal setting refuting the misleading claim that teachers are the most important aspect of student learning. This mantra by the "no excuses" reformers is factually misleading (out-of-school factors dwarf teacher influence) and a tremendous distraction. As long as time, money, and dialogue are spent on weeding out "bad" teachers and rewarding high-quality teachers, we are not confronting the greatest weight on student learning—the inequity in their lives. But, again as I asked above, are we to believe that all of the schools labeled as failures and highly correlated with poverty are staffed by "bad" teachers who are collectively and across the state simply not asking enough of their students?
(3) If teachers' unions are preserving a failed status quo that protects "bad" teachers who are, inexplicably, the primary forces behind low student outcomes, then how do we explain that SC remains low-achieving and is an at-will (non-union) state? No teachers in SC work under contracts, pay scales, or tenure negotiated by a union since unions have no power in the state. And very few teachers even bother to join NEA or SCEA as a result. If the claims embedded in Waiting for "Superman" and nearly every proposal endorsed by "no excuses" reformers are true, then are we to accept that teachers' unions in other states are so powerful they are collapsing education in SC in the same way that every teacher in high-poverty schools is the cause of low achievement? Both claims about the influence of poverty and the singular power of teachers defy logic as well as collapse against the same data the "no excuses" reformers appear to embrace.
(4) If accountability built on standards and testing are central to sustained education reform, then how do we explain that SC remains trapped today in the same charges of failing schools as we did in 1984 when the state was one of the first and most aggressive states embracing the accountability paradigm of standards, high-stakes tests, and accountability for students, teachers, and schools? Throughout the accountability era since 1983's A Nation at Risk, think-tanks and the media have examined and assessed various states' accountability systems. While many conclusions have identified too much variety among the states, SC has, ironically, often been identified as both a low-achieving state and one of the most challenging states based on our standards and tests. SC, like 49 other states, have not found accountability to be effective for raising student outcomes; thus, why should we think that national standards and testing will accomplish something different?
Newt Gingrich has stood on a caustic claim about children living in poverty, as reported by Mail Online:
"Really poor children in really poor neighborhoods have no habits of working and nobody around them who works," Mr Gingrich told fundraisers Thursday night at a dinner outside Des Moines, Iowa.
"So they literally have no habit of showing up on Monday. They have no habit of staying all day. They have no habit of 'I do this and you give me cash'... unless it's illegal."
This stereotype of people trapped in poverty being inherently lazy and prone to criminality is a base cousin to the claims being leveled at students and teachers by the "no excuses" reformers—all of which are false but all of which remain effective.
U.S. politics and education would do well to listen and look carefully at SC during this primary season. Our democracy and children deserve better than the attacks being leveled on the powerless by the powerful whether the context is politics or education. SC remains the state of vivid lessons needing our attention.
[1] The 2011 Poverty Index (PI) data in SC shows that 28 out of 39 primary schools, that 318 out of 645 elementary schools, that 164 out of 304 middle schools, and that 69 out of 222 high schools have PIs over 80.