Abstract
Schools can save money by addressing learning problems early and also by fostering more independent learning.
Kappan has addressed the tough budgetary climate for schools in every issue this year. Educators around the world are understandably worried about budget pressures facing governments. Given increasing challenges around student achievement, equity, and many other expectations of public schools, educators fear that they'll have to reduce staff and programs and that the least advantaged students may suffer most from these cuts. And, even if budget reductions don't badly damage essential services, they're likely to generate morale problems in the system and political controversy in the broader community — both of which can be major distractions from the real work of schools.
That's why schools must consider how to meet financial challenges while also making decisions that are educationally sound. Without downplaying the potential negative effects of budget cuts, at least a few possibilities fit that bill. Several of these ideas are described in more detail in a report I did last spring for the Province of Nova Scotia (Levin, 2011). Here, I will only raise two.
One useful focus that could emerge from discussions of budget pressures is to try to prevent student failures so that fewer students repeat grades or years. The idea of failure as necessary to maintain standards is deeply engrained in our thinking about education. In the U.S., “ending social promotion” has been an ongoing issue and has led to quite a few efforts to hold students back more often.
The problem with this position is that most research, including studies of some of these recent initiatives, suggests that retention in grade is an ineffective policy. (This research is reviewed and cited more fully in the Nova Scotia report mentioned above.) Not only does flunking kids fail to boost short-term achievement, research shows a significant association between grade retention and lower long-term student achievement, including failure to complete secondary education. And even if the policy were effective, it is still very expensive. U.S. data suggest that 10% of elementary students are being held back at least once during their schooling, and while in high school at least 30% of students are taking at least one more year to graduate. And Canadian evidence — from Ontario and Alberta — shows that most students who return for an extra year of secondary school still don't graduate. These numbers show that a huge amount of money — perhaps 20% of total expenditures — is tied up in a very ineffective strategy. If some of this money was used earlier to keep students on track or help them catch up — as recommended by the OECD (2007), schools would be less expensive and more effective. Of course, students should not be moved along in the system without real skills, but failing them is not a good strategy to help them acquire those skills.
Does any other field regard a large amount of failure as an indication of quality? Any business with a 20% failure rate in its services or products would soon be out of business. While comparing schools to businesses is usually not very accurate or helpful, the orientation to preventing failure and achieving high quality at every stage is one focus that school systems could borrow. The goal of every enterprise, including schooling, must be the highest possible quality with the lowest possible failure rate, which means an emphasis on preventing problems or their very early remediation. This is just what high-achieving school systems in Finland or Singapore do. They set out to ensure that students are supported as soon as they have problems, allowing them to catch up, thus avoiding the expensive and unhelpful experience of repeating a course or grade.
Retention in grade is an ineffective and expensive policy.
More independence
A second interesting possibility is extending the amount of independent learning that students do. Developing independent learners is surely an important goal of schooling, yet few systems give this goal much tangible expression. Moreover, as documented recently in a wonderful book by Kathleen Cushman, Fires in the Mind: What Kids Can Tell Us About Motivation and Mastery (Jossey-Bass, 2010), virtually all students have something in their lives about which they're passionate and to which they devote many hours of their own time. Cushman gives many examples, from artistic or sports endeavors to knitting, cooking, or fly fishing. (See firesinthemind.org for a series of videos in which students talk about the things that absorb them.) Sadly, students reported to her that they rarely had opportunities to explore or build on these passions in school.
What if all schools expected students to undertake significant independent learning as part of their schooling? Wouldn't it be reasonable to expect every student to have at least one such experience during their elementary schooling, and one or more during their high school years?
The idea of failure as necessary to maintain standards is deeply ingrained in our thinking about education.
Independent learning could be encouraged in many ways, from giving students opportunities to work independently within the curriculum to having them work in areas entirely outside the normal curriculum to more extensive use of online and virtual learning modes. Each of these has advantages and challenges. But imagine the effect if every student were to define, create, and carry out an independent learning project, whether it's developing an ancestral language, building a computer application, studying their family genealogy, learning in depth about an occupation, or developing a musical or artistic talent.
There are two ways this kind of policy change would help with resources. First, students doing such independent learning would require less teacher contact time. Most students would still want and need support from educators, but less intensively than if they were in a regular class. The same number of teachers could support more students. And from a teacher's point of view, working with highly motivated students is so much more fulfilling than trying to drum unwanted material into disinterested students.
Second, motivated students are more successful students. Indeed, one of the strongest lessons about improving education is that increasing student engagement and motivation is central to almost everything else. So, increasing self-directed learning will also help with the first challenge of reducing failures in the system.
In making these proposals, I'm not naïve about the challenges. Schooling is deeply rooted in the idea that kids have to be told what to do and that they should suffer if they decline to do what adults tell them. My proposals aren't so much about policy change as they're about changing the way we think about schooling — though their implementation certainly will require changes in policy. The financial pressures facing schools and other public services could offer an opportunity to do that rethinking. There is no guarantee it will happen; tough times can also trigger more conservative thinking and a return to old practices, even if those old practices don't work. Educators can influence this direction if we can be leaders for thinking that will help students be more successful even in the face of declining resources.