EDITOR'S CYBERCHAIR ARCHIVE

One of the strangest facets of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) is its slow penetration of the heartland. A reform – if that is the word – without precedent in the annals of the federal government, yet word about its pending impact is only slowly filtering out to school districts and the states. (Whether or not NCLB is a “reform” is an empirical question that will be answered in due time. The Congress and President clearly mean it to be a reform.)

Indeed, as I make the rounds of states and districts and talk to state and local policy makers I am struck with how little is known about NCLB. (Which reminds me of the old chestnut about the quintessential final exam question: Which is the bigger problem, ignorance or apathy? The answer is “I don’t know and I don’t care.”) While NCLB has been the talk of Washington since it was first introduced – and the centerpiece of the Bush Administration’s domestic policy initiatives – it has not grabbed the imagination of states and districts. Why not?

Hard to say, though theories abound. The most obvious is that Uncle Sam (in this case Secretary Paige) has not done enough to get out the word. Another is that since 9/11 the nation has been preoccupied with terrorism and security matters. Another – not incompatible theory – is that the economic downturn, if not meltdown, has grabbed everyone’s attention. Or all of the above.

For my part, I think there is a deeper and more interesting explanation. NCLB has been greeted with a yawn because state and district educators think its déjà vu all over again. They’ve been there, done that. They see it as a shift in program emphasis and contours; they do not yet understand that it is a major shift in program design. And they are in for a big surprise.

NCLB is the first, large scale, overt manifestation of a true education paradigm shift in 150 years, and taken seriously it is mind-boggling in its implications. Its underlying premise is that what schools do makes a difference. Historically, what schools offered and what students did made the difference. To hold schools accountable for student learning is a shift of massive proportions – if it works.

As Peter Drucker wisely observed decades ago, American public education is a cornucopia as an extraction system. That is, it offers much to the enterprising student who can draw education out of the system, like hauling water from a well. You can lead a horse (or a student) to water, but you can’t make him drink.

Who is able to “extract” an education from the old system? Aside from the rare self-starter, it is students from cultures and social strata that put a premium on learning. Cultures that treasure learning produce an environment that demands high academic achievement. Asian and Jewish traditions, for example, prize learning, encourage it and reward it. Student effort is a given. By way of contrast, most lower class white and black traditions do not. As Berkeley-based, Nigerian-born sociologist John Ogbu’s work points out, in many cases lower class norms are actively hostile to academic achievement, making the successful lower class student all the more impressive.

When a student is ridiculed for doing well the stakes are raised in perverse ways. Ogbu describes high achieving, low-income black kids who hide when they study, not wanting to expose themselves to their classmates obloquy. Contrast this to Tevia, the peasant hero of Fiddler on the Roof. In If I were a wealthy man, one of the enduring songs from the musical, Tevia tells us that he would spend his time reading, rather than acquiring another team and wagon or summer place by the sea. Tevia had his priorities right.

There is a familiar ring to Ogbu’s analysis. My generation of high school graduates – at least those of us who graduated from big, diverse inner city high schools were often ridiculed for being “brains” – but the ridicule ended as 16^th birthdays rolled around. That was when the kids who were derisive – and defensive – about academic achievement dropped out, leaving mostly college-bound kids in the Junior and Senior classes. There was no one left to ridicule us. Unhappily for the drop-outs -- although the economy could absorb them in semi-skilled work -- their long-term earnings potential was bleak.

But if NCLB spells the end of the “extraction model” of schooling, what will replace it? The Strasbourg goose model, perhaps (force feeding); or the Tea House of the August Moon model (in which the American commandant says he will “bring democracy to the natives if he has to shove it down their throats.”) Or the throw-up your hands in the air (and hope for the best) model.

To borrow a hockey metaphor, what is called for is a new model that might be called the education hat trick model. First, teachers have much higher expectations for their students; second, students have much higher expectations for themselves; and third, families must have higher expectations of both. This is a culture shift.

It has long been known that the Asian schools’ secret weapon is a highly motivated student body – kids in China, Japan, Thailand – all of Asia – take school seriously and work diligently. In Japan, for example, there is almost no conception of talent. What counts in Japan is effort. Similarly, one of the reasons Catholic schools do so well in this country is that they expect the parents to back the school, not fight it. When Sister Mary Alice sends home a note she gets action.

One of the most salutatory effects of NCLB should be to force our public schools to squarely address the issue of student effort, because that is where the slack in the system is greatest. Harness student effort and academic achievement will soar. Conceptually, what is needed is a level and degree of academic enthusiasm that mirrors athletic enthusiasm.

Ironically, one way to get at this issue would be to eliminate an earlier reform, compulsory attendance (and replace it with guaranteed access to a quality program). Teachers should not have to be entertainers to hold the attention of bored teenagers; neither should terminally bored students be forced to sit through classes they find stupefyingly dull.

Indeed, I would go so far as to say that compulsion and education are incompatible. (The one historic justification for compulsory education that mattered was that it forbade families from forcing their teenagers into the work place and guaranteed them a chance to attend school. Changing social norms no longer require such laws and I doubt if there is a teacher in America who would not be delighted – at lease secretly – to not have to deal with unwilling and recalcitrant students. How wonderful to be able to say you are here voluntarily; if you plan to stay you’ll do your homework, be awake in class, take off your hat, and so on.)

It is noteworthy to me that two of the highest achieving countries in the world – with among the highest graduation rates – have no compulsory attendance for high school: Japan and Israel.