What Is BASIC?

By Rothstein, Richard; Jacobsen, Rebecca

Despite standardized testing’s focus on reading and writing, traditional U.S. education focused on teaching less-easily-tested lessons.

Principals are increasingly held accountable for student achievement. To most people, this seems desirable, and when school leaders protest, they can easily be characterized as self-serving, incompetent, or worse. Why shouldn’t schools, like other institutions, be judged on how successfully they perform their mission?

Yet school leaders have a good reason to resist contemporary accountability programs. Instead of articulating the mission of schools and then holding leaders accountable for accomplishing it, the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) and similar state programs redefine that mission as teaching students whatever happens to be easy to test. As a result, schools are given incentives to ignore outcomes that may be as important as basic skills in math and reading, but more difficult to assess. Further, the students most likely to be harmed by these curricular shifts are economically and socially disadvantaged, leading to widening outcome gaps in areas less easily tested.

The Council for Basic Education surveyed school principals in fall 2003. It found that schools that had a high proportion of minorities were more likely to have reduced time for history, civics, geography, the arts, and foreign languages so they have more time to devote to math and reading. In New York, for example, twice as many principals in high-minority schools reported such curricular shifts as did principals in mostly White schools. In high-minority elementary schools, 38% of principals reported decreasing time devoted to social studies, but in low-minority schools, only 17% reported decreasing such time (von Zastrow & Janc, 2004; Von Zastrow, personal communication).

Recent surveys by the Center on Education Policy (2005; 2006) found that 97% of high-poverty districts had new minimum time requirements for reading, and only 55% of low-poverty districts had them. Of the districts that had adopted such minimum time policies, about half had reduced social studies, 43% had reduced art and music, and 27% reduced physical education.

These shifts have not gone unnoticed. Historian David McCullough concluded, in testimony before a U.S. Senate committee, “Because of No Child Left Behind, sadly, history is being put on the back burner or taken off the stove altogether in many or most schools, in favor of math or reading” (Dillon, 2005, p. A-14) Retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor now cochairs the Campaign for the Civic Mission of Schools (2006) laments that under NCLB, “civic learning has been pushed aside, [and] society has neglected a fundamental purpose of American education, putting the health of our democracy at risk.”

Traditional Education

Supporters of restricting accountability to math and reading often assert that teaching basic skills has been the traditional role of schools and that other goals have only recently been added, to the detriment of math and reading. However, this view is not supported by history. When Thomas Jefferson (1818/1964) provided the first coherent American description of a public education system, enabling a student “to calculate for himself, and to express and preserve his ideas, his contracts and accounts, in writing” was but one goal in a series that emphasized moral and political development.

Most of the Founding Fathers believed that public education should focus on preparing potential voters to make wise decisions in the selection of their representatives. George Washington (1790/ 1966), in his first state of the union message, urged Congress to consider how to promote educational institutions to teach U.S. citizens not only “to value their own rights” but also “to distinguish between oppression and the necessary exercise of lawful authority” (p. 3).

In his farewell address, Washington (1796/1969) worried about voters who might be tempted to elect demagogues, warning that “it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened” (p. 25) by schools. Wanting students to experience and accept diversity as a goal of education did not originate with contemporary affirmative action proponents: Washington also thought it important that a public university should bring together youths of different backgrounds so they could develop a common national identity (Ellis, 2001).

Political goals had continued prominence in early public school systems, as expressed, for example, in the annual reports of Horace Mann, the first state schools superintendent of Massachusetts. Following a tour of Europe, Mann (1844) praised Prussian schools for their students’ discipline and order. But he noted that universal public education did not itself ensure democratic values. Prussian students became literate, after all, but this literacy was used to support autocracy. So Mann suggested that public schools in a democracy could not be held accountable for academic proficiency alone; they must inculcate democratic moral and political values so that literacy would not be misused:

If Prussia can pervert the benign influences of education to the support of arbitrary power, we surely can employ them for the support and perpetuation of republican institutions…and if it may be made one of the great prerogatives of education to perform the unnatural and unholy work of making slaves, then surely it must be one of the noblest instrumentalities for rearing a nation of freemen (p. 23).

In another report, Mann (1848) stressed health and physical fitness as important school goals. If schools fail to attend to these, Mann noted, the costs are borne by the entire community in lost worker productivity and in the burdens of caring for the infirm, so it is in the community’s interest to ensure that all children receive instruction in health habits. These included physical fitness as well as sophistication about issues of public sanitation and hygiene, such as provision of pure drinking water and sewage systems in the growing cities of an industrializing nation. Mann concluded, “For this thorough diffusion of sanitary intelligence, the Common School is the only agency” (p. 52).

Throughout the 20th century as well, leading educators and policymakers have often proclaimed a broad set of school goals and bemoaned the threat to these goals posed by standardized testing. In 1938, for example, an Educational Policies Commission, appointed by the National Education Association (at the time, not a teachers’ union but a quasi-governmental organization representing teachers, principals, other administrators, university faculty members, and policymakers in education), echoing Horace Mann’s reflections following his visit to Prussia, proclaimed, “The safety of democracy will not be assured merely by making education universal”-in other words, simply by making all U.S. citizens literate-”the task is not so easy as that. The dictatorships [Germany, Italy, Japan, and the Soviet Union] have universal schooling and use this very means to prevent the spread of democratic doctrines and institutions” (p. 16). Teaching of democratic values and habits must be an explicit focus of schools, and could not be assumed. The commission, foreshadowing the problems educators face in the 21st century, went on to warn:

Most of the standardized testing instruments [and written examinations] used in schools today deal largely with information…. There should be a much greater concern with the development of attitudes, interests, ideals, and habits. To focus tests exclusively on the acquisition and retention of information may recognize objectives of education which are relatively unimportant. Measuring the results of education must be increasingly concerned with such questions as these: Are the children growing in their ability to work together for a common end? Do they show greater skill in collecting and weighing evidence? Are they learning to be fair and tolerant in situations where conflicts arise? Are they sympathetic in the presence of suffering and indignant in the presence of injustice? Do they show greater concern about questions of civic, social, and economic importance? Are they using their spending money wisely? Are they becoming more skillful in doing some useful type of work? Are they more honest, more reliable, more temperate, more humane? Are they finding happiness in their present family life? Are they living in accordance with the rules of health? Are they acquiring skills in using all of the fundamental tools of learning? Are they curious about the natural world around them? Do they appreciate, each to the fullest degree possible, their rich inheritance in art, literature, and music? Do they balk at being led around by their prejudices? (pp. 153-154)

Twenty years later, a report by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund (1958), written to urge that a new scientific elite be trained to compete with the Soviet Union, qualified its proposals for science education by asking:

[How] may we best prepare our young people to keep their individuality, initiative, creativity in a highly organized, intricatelymeshed society?… Our conception of excellence must embrace many kinds of achievement at many levels…. There is excellence in abstract intellectual activity, in art, in music, in managerial activities, in craftsmanship, in human relations, in technical work. (p. 14)

The report’s emphasis was on excellence, not on preparation for democracy or social justice, but the Rockefeller Brothers Fund (chaired by future governor and vice president Nelson Rockefeller, with future Secretary of State Henry Kissinger as staff director) was in accord with previous generations’ insistence that school goals could not encompass academic achievement alone.

The report warned that testing would become increasingly important as a way of sorting future scientists and leaders for advanced training, but:

Decisions based on test scores must be made with the awareness of the imponderables in human behavior. We cannot measure the rare qualities of character that are a necessary ingredient of great performance. We cannot measure aspiration or purpose. We cannot measure courage, vitality or determination. (p. 29)

Nearly 30 years later, a committee of the National Academy of Education (as cited in Morgan et al., 1991) issued this warning:

At root here is a fundamental dilemma. Those personal qualities that we hold dear-resilience and courage in the face of stress, a sense of craft in our work, a commitment to justice and caring in our social relationships, a dedication to advancing the public good in our communal life-are exceedingly difficult to assess. And so, unfortunately, we are apt to measure what we can, and eventually come to value what is measured over what is left unmeasured. The shift is subtle, and occurs gradually. It first invades our language and then slowly begins to dominate our thinking. It is all around us, and we too are a part of it. In neither academic nor popular discourse about schools does one find nowadays much reference to the important human qualities noted above. The language of academic achievement tests has become the primary rhetoric of schooling. (p. 64)

Citing this warning, the Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) established the Special Study Panel on Education Indicators, which published a report in 1991 that promoted the creation of a national indicator system that reflected a balance of educational goals. The report urged that in addition to academic competence in the core subjects, measured “learner outcomes” should include tolerance, comprehending pluralism, self- direction, responsibility, commitment to craft, and other measures (Morgan et al., 1991). But NCES never proceeded to develop such a system, and as the testing frenzy grew, the warning of the National Academy was forgotten.

Better Balance

NCLB’s exclusive emphasis on basic academic outcomes is not entirely new. There have been previous efforts to assert the primacy of academic training, but most U.S. citizens have usually wanted both the academic focus and the social outcomes. But how should an accountability system balance these many goals?

In 2005, we synthesized the descriptions of goals for public education, established through 250 years of U.S. history, into eight broad categories that seemed to be prominent in each era, although certainly emphases have changed from generation to generation. We then presented these eight goal areas to representative samples of adults, school board members, state legislators, and school superintendents, asking respondents to assign a relative importance to each of the goal areas. Average responses of all adults, board members, legislators, and superintendents were very similar. (See figure 1.)

The results articulate the goals of state legislators and school board members, public officials who, in the last two decades, have established school accountability systems that expect performance only in basic skills. This gap between the preferences for educational goals expressed in our survey and the educational standards established through political processes reflects a widespread policy incoherence.

Principals should welcome accountability for student outcomes. But they also have unique insight into how current accountability systems make producing a balanced set of outcomes more difficult. Communicating this insight to parents and community leaders, without suggesting a fear of true accountability, is a challenge principals now face.

Every valuable end of government is best answered by the enlightened confidence of the people….

-George Washington

To give to every citizen the information he needs…to understand his duties to his neighbors and country.

-Thomas Jefferson

The safety of democracy will not be assured merely by making education universal…the task is not so easy as that.

-Education Policies Commission

References

* Campaign for the Civic Mission of Schools. (2006). Call to action. Washington, DC: Author.

* Center on Education Policy. (2005). From the capital to the classroom: Year 3 of the No Child Left Behind Act. Washington, DC: Author.

* Center on Education Policy. (2006). From the capital to the classroom: Year 4 of the No Child Left Behind Act. Washington, DC: Author.

* Dillon, S. (2005, September 16). From Yale to cosmetology school, Americans brush up on history and government. New York Times, p. A-14.

* Educational Policies Commission. (1938). The purposes of education in American democracy. Washington, DC: National Education Association of the United States and the American Association of School Administrators.

* Ellis, J. J. (2001). Founding brothers: The revolutionary generation. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

* Jefferson, T., et al. (1964). Report of the commissioners appointed to fix the site of the University of Virginia, etc. (pp. 248-260). In R. J. Honeywell, The educational work of Thomas Jefferson. New York: Russell and Russell. (Original work published 1818)

* Mann, H. (1844). Seventh annual report of the board of education together with the seventh annual report of the secretary of the board. Boston: Dutton and Wentworth, State Printers.

* Mann, H. (1848). Twelfth annual report of the board of education together with the seventh annual report of the secretary of the board. Boston: Button and Wentworth, State Printers.

* Morgan, A. D., et al. (1991). Education counts: An indicator system to monitor the nation’s education health (NCES 91-634). Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics.

* Rockefeller Brothers Fund. (1958). The pursuit of excellence: Education and the future of America. The Rockefeller report on education (special studies project report V). New York Author.

* von Zastrow, C, with Janc, H. (2004). Academic atrophy: The condition of the liberal arts in America’s public schools. Washington, DC: Council for Basic Education.

* Washington, G. (1966). The first annual message. In F. L. Israel (Ed.), The state of the union messages of the presidents, Vol. 1, 1790-1860. New York Chelsea House-Robert Hector Publishers. (Original work January 8, 1790)

* Washington, G. (1969). The farewell address. In B. I. Kaufman (Ed.), Washington’s farewell address: The view from the 20th century. Chicago: Quadrangle Books. (Original work September 17, 1796)

Richard Rothstein

rrothstein@epi.org

Rothstein is a research associate of the Economic Policy Institute.

Rebecca Jacobsen

rjj7@columbia.edu

Jacobsen is a doctorate candidate at Teachers College, Columbia University. Research on which this article is based was supported by the Teachers College Campaign for Educational Equity.

This article is adapted from a forthcoming book by the authors.

Copyright National Association of Secondary School Principals Dec 2006

(c) 2006 Principal Leadership; Middle Level ed.. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.