Education is not like chess or dice or the stock market. It is not about outsmarting an opponent. So, enough with all the talk about students and schools who excel by beating the odds.
We don’t need a few more opportunities for students to beat the odds. We need to eliminate odds– a euphemism for inequality– as the primary determinant in whether or not young people get a high quality education. That is a far larger project than choosing schools, designing the right standards and tests, hiring and firing teachers, or giving parents the ability to opt out of struggling local public schools. It is a systemic project, not an individual child project, and not just about schools. It is what we need to do. It is what we can do.
Better yet, we need to drop the gambling metaphor entirely. Getting a high-quality education to prepare for life, work, and citizenship should not be a game of chance. It should be a guaranteed right for all students, regardless of the level of their parent’s income, social status, education background, or race.
It appears that in a perverse way, a segment of the wealthy understand the folly of beating the odds as a way for get ahead in the world. Apparently, competition is for others. Their game is not just to rearrange the odds in their favor, but to do whatever it takes to ensure that their privilege will be inherited. The FBI just “charged 50 people — including two television stars — with participating in a multimillion-dollar bribery scheme that enabled privileged students with lackluster grades to attend prestigious colleges and universities.”
Beating the odds is the metaphor that, as Billy Holiday sang, Them that’s got use to attempt to delude them that’s not into accepting the false notion that individual effort can overcome all. The beating the odds metaphor focuses on what individuals or single schools need to do to overcome the inequities that pervade the lives of some students. Such framing suggests that getting a good education will always be a function of winning a competition, taking a chance, and extraordinary individual effort. It starts with the defeatist dead end assumption that inequity and scarcity are unalterable.
Lately, there has been a great deal of emphasis on personal attributes like effort and persistence. However, the most significant variables that explain differences in achievement across all students are not effort or persistence but the socioeconomic status (SES) of their parents and community. SES encompasses a complex of individual, community, and societal, and influences on students’ readiness and ability to learn, sustain learning, and benefit from their achievement.
Of course, learning takes effort, working through difficulties, and persistence. That is true about everyone. Most everything worth learning is challenging. Persistence is essential– if it includes the right kind of effort– and it may explain variation in learning between students, all other things being equal. But, all other things are not equal. For individuals beating the odds is a good thing but it is an insufficient strategy for a more just and equitable society. The extraordinary is by definition not systemic.
For example, according to the U.S. Census Bureau (2014), individuals within the top family income quartile are eight times more likely to obtain a bachelor’s degree by age 24 as compared to individuals from the lowest family income quartile. If all the children of those top families were extraordinary they wouldn’t be cheating to get into elite colleges.
Money matters. The Learning Policy Institute reported that a recent analysis of the long-term effects of school finance reforms across multiple states found that “the estimated effect of a 21.7% increase in per-pupil spending throughout all 12 school-age years for low-income children is large enough to eliminate the education attainment gap between children from low-income and non-poor families.” Only people with a lot of money and access to high quality schools proclaim that money does not affect the quality of schools for everyone else.
These findings are not new. Debates about whether and how to address education inequality remain persistently fraught because conflicting values and goals often frame mutually exclusive questions and solutions.
Some people ask:
How can we give students who are disadvantaged a better chance to get into a better performing school?
That question leads to programs such as “opportunity scholarships”– the latest euphemism for vouchers for private schools. It provides the basis for offering parents the option of opting out of a struggling local school.
Instead, what if we ask:
How can we eliminate the inequities that cause some students to arrive at school less ready to learn and sustain learning than others?
How can we eliminate the resource differences between schools?
How can we prepare students to contribute to our diverse democracy?
These questions lead to universal health care, free high-quality pre-school for all students, investment in infrastructure to create jobs that pay a living wage and help to build more stable families. They might lead to funding schools through increased taxes on personal and corporate wealth, instead of local property taxes.
The former question is narrow and leads to a few winners, more losers, competition for artificially scarce resources, and inevitable resentment. It’s time to reject partial divisive solutions.
The latter are broad, inclusive, and lead to common struggles for the success of all students. It is long past time to choose unity. It is the only strategy that has ever been successful in improving the lives of the majority of Americans.
For individuals, beating the odds is a good thing, but it is an insufficient strategy for the majority. It’s the wrong model. Extraordinary students– with the right breaks and effort– may achieve tremendous success in life for themselves and others. However, except in the fanciful Lake Wobegon, not everyone can be above average. A high-quality education preceded and sustained by a decent life with sufficient food, clothing, shelter, health care, and yes– leisure time and a chance at happiness should not just be the reward for the privileged and the exceptional among us.
Arthur H. Camins is a lifelong educator. He works part-time with curriculum developers at UC Berkeley as an assessment specialist. He retired recently as Director of the Center for Innovation in Engineering and Science Education at Stevens Institute of Technology. He has taught and been an administrator in New York City, Massachusetts, and Louisville, Kentucky. The ideas expressed in this article are his alone.