Schools Need Tough Love Reform

While school reform is an incredibly politicized issue with many opinions and a significant amount of vitriol between sides, Frederick M. Hess of the American Enterprise Institute says what schools really need is some tough love.

In an AEI panel on January 31, Hess presented some of the thoughts he conveys in his new book, Tough Love for Schools: Essays on Competition, Accountability, and Excellence, followed by a discussion with James Donnelly, Jason Kamras and Joe Williams.

According to Hess, tough love for schools means looking seriously at the problems in schools and finding solutions that work, rather than offering up empty rhetoric and playing blame games. Frequently people say we need smaller classes and schools, more professionalism for teachers and suggest increasing teachers’ salaries, but none of these fixes the problem and no one wants to be the person who is against any of these nice sounding ideas, explained Hess.

He also talked at length about why school-choice and standards for teachers and students are both good ideas, but most of such reform efforts lack the scale or the teeth to make any meaningful impact.

“I think we set the bar way too low and instead of improving the conversation it cheapens it,” said Hess. “The notion of using standardized answers strikes me as shortsighted. We need to accept risk and use creative-problem solving.”

Schools need real competition and choice can help provide that, and schools need real accountability, but that means rewards for excellent teaching and consequences [including firing] for unsatisfactory teaching, explained Hess.

Jason Kamras, a teacher at John Philip Sousa Middle School in Washington, D.C., and the 2005 National Teacher of the Year said that he loved most of what Hess had written in the book and especially appreciated the tone of the book.

“I love accountability. I want to be held accountable. I look forward to seeing my students’ scores on the standardized tests each year even though they [standardized tests] are not perfect,” said Kamras. “I want to be in an environment in which I have to work hard and prove myself.”

Sometimes what teachers want is not what people think teachers want. I polled 200 new teachers and asked if they would choose a $10,000 salary increase or pick their colleagues if they had the option, and most said they would rather pick their colleagues said Kamras.

James D. Donnelly, Jr., a school principal in Dolgeville, NY, said that he also agreed with most of Hess’s book. He began as a principal at a school that had many problems and began giving feedback to the tenured faculty, some of whom said they hadn’t spoken to an administrator in years. While hitting some rough patches, Donnelly’s feedback has helped his school significantly. Since becoming the principal there, the school has moved to a faculty committee for hiring decisions as one way to improve things.

“Is testing the only avenue to assess schools?” asked Donnelly. He says his greatest criticism of standardized testing is whether the tests and testmakers can be valued and trusted. He also brought up the point that there is no way to measure whether schools add value each year because testing occurs at the end of each year and results come back even later so by the time problems are identified the kids have moved on. He suggested more teamwork instead of isolation for educators and said that schools need to focus on doing “what’s best for children and reasonable for adults” because most of the problems with students stem from the adult problems. Donnelly also agreed with Hess and Kamras, saying that there is “a drastic need for accountability.”

Joe Williams, author of Cheating Our Kids, said that “public education is at its core political and there are people in schools [teaching] who think [about reform] this way, but they can’t talk about it” because they will be accused of being anti-public education.

“The climate that exists now does not really allow tough-love conversations because branding occurs immediately. We need to change the debate and not allow politicians to get off the hook,” said Williams. Hess’s book is one step in the direction of changing that debate.

Julia A. Seymour is a staff writer for Accuracy in Academia.