Start with this: NJ public schools are getting the job done

reprinted from the Daily Record.

The vast majority of New Jersey public schools are succeeding.

That should be the starting point of any debate on how to improve education in the state.

Then we can all have an honest discussion about possible reforms, especially in regard to cutting costs responsibly and attacking the problems faced most acutely by poor urban districts.

But once and for all, let’s just drop the thoughtless, agenda-driven, too-often repeated notion that New Jersey schools are failing. Because they’re not, not by any meaningful, intelligent, rational benchmark.

This entire effort to “reform” education in the state is about money. Education has become exceedingly expensive in New Jersey, and those costs have to be brought under some control. That’s undeniable.

But to generate wider public support for change, lawmakers seem to believe that they can’t just say that most schools are doing good work just as they are, even though that’s the truth. That won’t sufficiently agitate the masses. So instead we’re told over and over again that we’re spending too much and not getting enough for our money, that the schools are failing our children regardless.

Well, it’s not the schools failing these kids, by and large. It’s their communities. Their broken families. It’s their society that still leaves far too many people buried in poverty.

The socioeconomic challenges faced by urban school districts in this state are staggering, and virtually insurmountable if the measure of success is high test scores and graduation rates and other achievement standards on a par with suburban districts facing far fewer of those challenges. And even many of those suburban districts have substantial numbers of special-needs children who need more assistance than any school can be expected to provide.

The federal No Child Left Behind program had noble intentions in its stated desire to assure that all categories of students were receiving the services necessary to reach basic proficiency levels. And it has helped to identify areas in each school that potentially needed more attention. But it also created wildly unrealistic expectations that resulted in many schools being unfairly labeled as “failing.” It even set the impossible standard of eventual 100 percent proficiency.

What this has all accomplished is to create an environment in which schools in New Jersey and nationwide are judged to be either successes or failures, as if there is some measurable, distinct way to arrive at such a black-and-white, either-or conclusion. But that perception is far too simplistic, and doesn’t recognize the many influences on student achievement that extend far beyond the classroom.

There are, for instance, success stories to be found in urban districts every day, the product of good teachers and motivated students. Those stories are, however, invariably masked or obliterated by the broader misery surrounding them. A teacher confronted with a collection of deeply troubled students may be doing great work just by reaching a few of them. Judging such a teacher by a pile of test scores is both unfair and naive.

Charter schools and voucher programs are designed to provide families with choices, and they are worth pursuing, carefully. Perhaps through such experimentation New Jersey can develop a model that better adapts to the socioeconomic factors hampering many students. If tenure reform is properly constructed, districts would have a greater ability to rid themselves of ineffective teachers, and that also is an initiative worth exploring. And, of course, there is the overriding need to corral the escalating costs of education, in a variety of ways.

But all of this should be approached not with a desire to shake up a broken system, but to maintain and improve a largely effective one. Because the vast majority of New Jersey schools are succeeding. Say that again, and again, and keep repeating it, especially when the “failing schools” nonsense surfaces. From now on, that should be the framework of every education debate we have in this state: “The vast majority of New Jersey schools are succeeding.’