A strange, new educational orthodoxy has taken hold of Washburn High School, a public school in southwest Minneapolis. Issues of academic excellence and equity are in play. And the stakes have been raised by the “Love it, or leave it” attitude taken by Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) leaders.
Before dismissing this as a typical kerfuffle of no concern to anyone beyond the tumult of MPS, consider that educational fads have unpredictable lives, and this one could one day be coming to a school near you.
The new orthodoxy is this: Classrooms must be arranged to include students of every achievement level. There shall be no classrooms that group students in order to facilitate more focused instruction, whether that be for remedial purposes, or to provide additional challenges for more advanced students.
In other words, one-size-fits-all classrooms are the new order of the day. One speed. One standard level of difficulty. Anything that separates students by achievement is deemed suspect at best.
So forget about traditional honors classes. Don’t ask for A.P. courses or any other arrangement that smacks of “advanced.”
Washburn does employ an International Baccalaureate (IB) program for all juniors and seniors. But Washburn’s version means one level for all, unlike the traditional model with two IB levels, and non-IB options as well.
‘Honors for All’
Washburn does repurpose the “Honors” label, applying it to all core-subject courses (English, Science, Social Science) freshman and sophomore years. “Honors for All” is what they call it. But since they arrange for no classroom to go faster or deeper than the standard curriculum, it makes as much sense as declaring all of Lake Wobegon’s children “above average.”
Before the objections come rolling in, let me say that there are minor exceptions to this one-size-fits-all characterization. Let me acknowledge that there are good reasons to design part of the school day to include courses that bring all students together. And let me hasten to add that there are a number of things to like about Washburn, apart from this new orthodoxy and the harm it poses for academic rigor.
Nuances aside, however, the clear direction is to limit choices and have all students take the same classes together.
Why they are doing this is far less clear.
It isn’t because …
It isn’t because this approach is proven to work well. Four years into the experiment, state data on student achievement show that Washburn fares poorly in comparison with similar metro schools. Nor is there a track record elsewhere to argue for this approach over a longer time frame.
It isn’t because there is growing agreement in the academic community that one-size-fits-all classrooms are the way to move ahead.
It isn’t because there is a demand for this approach that Washburn aims to fill. MPS doesn’t market Washburn as a magnet school for a one-size-fits-all program.
Washburn is doing it instead because the proponents of the new order feel that offering different levels of instruction is unjust, stigmatizing even, to those students not in the more advanced classes. They have an unfounded belief that if schools offer different levels, they must also employ a rigid and unfair tracking system.
Yet, all neighboring public high schools, MPS included, find acceptable ways to offer a mix of standard courses, along with honors and A.P. options. Only Washburn seeks to resolve accessibility issues by refusing to offer advanced options to anyone.
Different challenges within classroom
Instead of using different course options to challenge and inspire students who are at different levels, Washburn expects that each teacher will provide suitable challenges for all levels within every classroom.
In other words, teachers are expected to provide the differentiation that the system does not. Unfortunately, in the real world of large classrooms with students spanning many grade levels in terms of achievement, this doesn’t often happen, even with good intentions and skilled teachers.
Moreover, to date, Washburn has been lacking in the extensive out-of-class tutoring operation that proponents of the approach elsewhere argue is essential for realizing effective differentiated instruction in one-size-fits-all high school classrooms.
In short, this approach puts the entire burden upon Washburn teachers, without the requisite support. For administrators, the arrangement is foolproof. Blame for any shortcoming falls on teachers, not the system. This is one of the reasons an MPS mediator has been working to bridge differences between Washburn staff and administration.
The message to parents
If only there were a mediator to also intervene on behalf of parents. When the principal and the area superintendent both respond to questions of academic rigor by regularly telling current and prospective Washburn parents that they should take advantage of Minnesota’s open enrollment law, there is a need.
Their message to dissenters is clear: Please go away. But when other MPS schools with better options are effectively closed to those with the wrong city addresses, this means exiting the district.
Although this might be an effective short-term strategy for preserving the idiosyncratic vision at Washburn and for disguising the reality that they are failing to meet the academic needs of large numbers of students from all backgrounds, it ultimately harms both the district and the wider community.
Kip Wennerlund is the parent of three MPS students and has taught at several universities.
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Mainstreaming
Has been a recurrent fad in American Education at least for the past 50 years.
There’s some (very limited) evidence that students at the low end of the performance scale show some benefits; possibly due to higher expectations.
No one has bothered to assess its effect on students at the higher end of the scale, since they as a group do well despite whatever teaching fad is in vogue. Of course, they are the ones that will drive our future. When we limit their education we pay the price: outsourcing to countries that do a better educational job.
An anecdote:
Mark Zuckerberg (FaceBook) left a good public high school in his senior year to finish at an elite (and nonreligious) private academy. That’s the route for those who can afford it (he’s the offspring of a psychiatrist and a dentist).
Definitely not a new thing
This “experiment” isn’t new. And it’s something that might actually be necessitated by the lack of funds. As to whether it harms the high achievers, I can only give you an opinion based on anecdotal evidence–yes. Smart kids get bored with low level learning and tend to score poorly in class if not given some sort of challenge. While some of them are ambitious enough to find their own challenges, most are more likely to simply slide by and find themselves under water when they get an actual challenge (in college or grad school or “out in the real world”). Finally, a less than challenging curriculum for those that could advance beyond their peers puts them at a distinct disadvantage when pitted against individuals that are as smart (and sometimes less smart, but better educated) as they are. No amount of potential is worth anything without the tools to excel.
One could argue
that if someone in charge at Washburn likes the “little one-room school house” model that was the norm in rural America back in the day where kids of all ages and grades sat together while the schoolmarm delivered their lessons, then in the interest of allowing schools to offer new and different education models to the eduction marketplace, it should be allowed to exist.
However, to be fair to the customer, it seems to me that you must advise parents of your model well in advance of the school year so they can make informed choices about whether they want to buy into it or go elsewhere. Without that full disclosure you’re not delivering what the parent has expected and you would be guilty of fraud.
Let all models be offered and let those who deliver results be rewarded with plenty of parental support or fail and be closed because of the lack of results and parental support.
The strength of the one room school was
that each class had exposure to what those both ahead and behind them were being taught, thus reinforcing, or reviewing material they may be foggy on, or getting a feel for what they would be learning further down the line. There is also the fact that teaching something is the best way to learn something – therefore the upper class members helping the grades behind them was beneficial to both. True learning has a lot to do with reinforcement to move the information from short term learning to mid term and then to long term learning. I have seen to many children over recent years in a system that sometimes learns something for the test at the end of the week, never to return to it later, thus never internalizing the concepts and integrating them with others that follow.
Washburn’s system has nothing to do with that as each is a separate and separated entity with no reinforcement such as the above mention system. Above average students are not challenged, and will not live up to their potential, although they may be at the top of the class.
And the administration putting all the burden on the teachers while making no support network available and shows a real lack of willingness to take responsibility on their part, while their compensation is considerably more than the teachers whom they leave to take the blame.
UGH!!!
What Do You Do When the Evaluation of Your School…
Is based on nothing but how your lowest achievers are doing,…
and your funding is falling far behind the rate of inflation?
You dump everybody in unified classrooms and concentrate on making sure that you get those lowest achievers as far as you possibly can, while depending on the dedication and self motivation of everyone else to get them through the year.
Of course if you’re a “big business,” “chamber of commerce” Republican this almost guarantees you employees who will never know enough about their own rights to be “uppity” or to be “trouble makers” who will never try to unionize your places of business.
If you’re a Tea Party or Ron Paul Republican who believes that less government spending is ALWAYS an improvement, this approach probably sounds good to you, too
(and will continue to sound good right up until your social security checks start shrinking and your medicare coverage is canceled and you realize that what the Democrats were saying about Mitt Romney, Ron Paul, et al, were not just “accusations,” but the actual truth about what they intended to do).
Dear Kip, Thank you for your relentless attention to this topic. I am a proud public school graduate who had the honor of attending Stuyvesant High School, a public high school, with more Noble Laureate graduates than most colleges. I have no doubt that if the folks in charge of MPS had a school like Stuy, for which admission is based 100% on test scores, in their grasps they would shut it down. Why does MPS insist on punishing the best and brightest? Don’t they get it? How dare they demand that our hard working teachers differentiate in a classroom where students run the gauntlet from special education or english language learners to grade level to students who can do college level work in high school? How dare they do that to students? Who benefits from that? Where are the stats showing the benefit to the bottom, middle or top of the class? Where’s the evidence that this works for any of the students?