The Best Schools

How Human Development Research Should Inform Educational Practice

Thomas Armstrong

• Publisher: ASCD
• Year: 2006
• Print ISBN: 9781416604570
• eBook ISBN: 9781416615125
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Educators, politicians, parents, and even students are consumed with speaking the language of academic achievement. Yet something is missing in the current focus on accountability, standardized testing, and adequate yearly progress. If schools continue to focus the conversation on rigor and accountability and ignore more human elements of education, many students may miss out on opportunities to discover the richness of individual exploration that schools can foster.

In The Best Schools, Armstrong urges educators to leave narrow definitions of learning behind and return to the great thinkers of the past 100 years—Montessori, Piaget, Freud, Steiner, Erikson, Dewey, Elkind, Gardner—and to the language of human development and the whole child.

The Best Schools highlights examples of educational programs that are honoring students' differences, using developmentally appropriate practices, and promoting a humane approach to education that includes the following elements:

* An emphasis on play for early childhood learning.
* Theme- and project-based learning for elementary school students.
* Active learning that recognizes the social, emotional, and cognitive needs of adolescents in middle schools.
* Mentoring, apprenticeships, and cooperative education for high school students.

Educators in "the best schools" recognize the differences in the physical, emotional, cognitive, and spiritual worlds of students of different ages. This book will help educators reflect on how to help each student reach his or her true potential, how to inspire each child and adolescent to discover an inner passion to learn, and how to honor the unique journey of each individual through life.

Chapter 1
Academic Achievement Discourse

These are difficult times for educators who believe that learning is worth pursuing for its own sake and that the chief purpose of school is the nurturing of students as whole human beings. Higher test scores seem to be the order of the day. To accomplish this aim, administrators strain to meet political agendas, teachers respond by teaching to the test, and students in turn react by cheating, taking “learning steroids” (legal and illegal psychostimulants), or just not caring in order to cope with the demands placed on them in school. The adventure of learning, the wonder of nature and culture, the richness of human experience, and the delight in acquiring new abilities all seem to have been abandoned or severely curtailed in the classroom in this drive to meet quotas, deadlines, benchmarks, mandates, and targets.

The immediate cause of this crisis in education is the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB), which greatly expanded the role of the federal government in determining what goes on in the classroom. Its many provisions include annual testing of students in reading and mathematics (and starting in 2007, testing in science as well), and the requirement that schools make adequate yearly progress (AYP) incrementally on a year-by-year basis until all students reach 100 percent proficiency in these areas by the year 2014. Failure of a school to maintain AYP will result in penalties for the school, including the right of students to receive special tutoring or to transfer to schools that do maintain AYP, and the eventual placement of a school on probation leading to possible government or commercial takeover. Although NCLB has been hailed by many groups as a major step toward narrowing the achievement gap for poor and minority populations, its actual implementation has revealed a significant cluster of difficulties (see for example, Archer, 2005; Karp, 2003; Klein, 2006; Lee, 2006; Olson, 2005).

Aside from any specific problems inherent in the law itself, however, what seems most troubling about NCLB is that it represents the culmination of a movement that has been gathering steam in American education for over 80 years. The most destructive legacy of NCLB may turn out to be that it hijacks the dialogue in education away from talking about the education of human beings (what I’m going to call in this book “Human Development Discourse”) and toward a focus on tests, standards, and accountability (what I will refer to as “Academic Achievement Discourse”). In this chapter, I will define the implicit assumptions of Academic Achievement Discourse, explore its history in U.S. education, and detail the way it sabotages the efforts of educators to make a positive and lasting impact on the lives of students. In the next chapter, I will explore the assumptions, history, and positive consequences of engaging in Human Development Discourse. If we are to understand what conditions underlie the best schools in our country, we need to clarify whether we are talking about schools with the highest standardized test scores and adequate yearly progress, or whether there are other more human and humane elements that need to be taken into consideration.

Academic Achievement Discourse: A Definition

First let me explain what I mean by the term “discourse.” The word “discourse” as a noun is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as “communication of thought by speech,” “the faculty of conversing,” or “a spoken or written treatment of a subject” (Simpson & Weiner, 1991, p. 444). In the field of philosophy and in the social sciences, the word has a more specific designation:

A discourse is considered to be an institutionalized way of thinking, a social boundary defining what can be said about a specific topic.... Discourses are seen to affect our views on all things; in other words, it is not possible to escape discourse. For example, two distinctly different discourses can be used about various guerrilla movements describing them either as “freedom fighters” or “terrorists.” In other words, the chosen discourse delivers the vocabulary, expressions, and perhaps also the style needed to communicate. (Wikipedia, n.d., para. 1)

In the field of education, one might engage in a “disability discourse” (seeing a child primarily in terms of what he or she can’t do, through labels such as “learning disability” or “attention deficit hyperactivity disorder”) or a “learning differences discourse” (seeing a child primarily in terms of how he or she learns, with an effort not to label but to describe the child’s specific ways of thinking and learning as accurately and specifically as possible). In other words, two educators can be looking at the same student and engage in vastly different speech acts and written communications about that student.

In my previous writings, I have devoted a great deal of time to delineating the differences between these two particular kinds of discourse (see, for example, Armstrong, 1997, 2000a). In some of these writings, I’ve used the term “paradigm” to mean something equivalent to “discourse” (see, for example, Armstrong, 2003a). I’ve come to prefer the term “discourse,” however, because it more accurately specifies the actual speech acts and written communications that educators use to reveal their underlying assumptions about learning and education. The words that educators use to describe their students, the speeches made by politicians regarding education, and the laws that are written to enforce those beliefs are three examples of speech acts and written communications that have had immediate, practical, and significant impact on classroom practices. In this book, I will contrast two distinctly different educational discourses, Academic Achievement Discourse and Human Development Discourse. I will suggest that the types of speech acts and written communications, or discourses, engaged in by educators today—at least in public settings—are predominantly and increasingly Academic Achievement Discourse.

What do I mean by Academic Achievement Discourse? I use this term to designate the totality of speech acts and written communications that view the purpose of education primarily as supporting, encouraging, and facilitating a student’s ability to obtain high grades and standardized test scores in school courses, especially in courses that are part of the core academic curriculum. Academic Achievement Discourse, however, means much more than this simple definition. There are several assumptions that help shape Academic Achievement Discourse:

Assumption #1: Academic content and skills are the most important things to be learned.

The first word in Academic Achievement Discourse tells us a great deal about what is valued in learning: academics. First and foremost in Academic Achievement Discourse is an emphasis on academic content (literature, science, and math) and academic skills (reading, writing, problem solving, and critical thinking). These are the areas, after all, that students are required to be proficient in by the year 2014 and that schools are expected to make adequate yearly progress on from year to year as part of the NCLB law. One could also be fairly confident in adding IT (information technology, including computer skills) to this pantheon.

Given an important but secondary status in Academic Achievement Discourse is the study of history, the social sciences, and foreign languages. Content and skill areas that are generally considered to be outside Academic Achievement Discourse (unless achievement in these areas can be tied statistically to academic achievement) include music, drama, art, physical education, vocational education of different types (e.g., auto mechanics, food preparation), and “life skills” (e.g., parenting skills or family studies, counseling and guidance, personal care, and health education). Thus, it is more important in the Academic Achievement Discourse to learn the vocabulary words for the sport of soccer than to be able to play soccer. It is more important to generate a timeline of the Civil War than to be able to dramatize significant events in that war. It is more important to know the names of the 206 bones in a human being than it is to know how to take care of those bones in one’s own personal life through proper diet and exercise.

Assumption #2: Measurement of achievement occurs through grades and standardized testing.

The second word in Academic Achievement Discourse, achievement, tells us how educators want students to engage in academic content and skills. Educators want students to achieve in these areas. The Oxford English Dictionary defines “achievement” as “the act of achieving, completing, or attaining by exertion; completion, accomplishment, successful performance” (Simpson & Weiner, 1991, p. 12). Thus, in Academic Achievement Discourse, there needs to be a successful completion, through effort, of the acquisition of academic content and skills.

How does Academic Achievement Discourse define whether achievement has taken place? Its most highly valued method of determining whether a successful completion has taken place for each student is quantitative in nature. In other words, numbers (in the context of grading and testing) are used to indicate whether a student has been successful or unsuccessful in mastering academic content and skills. A student who receives a 4.0 grade point average (where 4 equals an A) is deemed to have achieved, whereas a student who has a 1.0 grade point average is deemed not to have achieved. A student who takes a standardized test in reading and scores at a 99th percentile is regarded as an achiever, while a student who scores at a 14th percentile is seen as a nonachiever.

Assumption #3: Academic Achievement Discourse favors an academic curriculum that is rigorous, uniform, and required for all students.

One phrase frequently heard in Academic Achievement Discourse is “raising the bar.” This phrasing implies that academic requirements are being made tougher and that academic courses are being created that are more rigorous than they were previously (through the addition, for example, of Advanced Placement courses or an International Baccalaureate program). Academic Achievement Discourse promotes a situation in which students are required to take courses deemed more difficult; listen to longer lectures; study harder; have more homework than they did before; and engage in more reading, writing, and problem-solving activities (as opposed to activities viewed as softer, such as interviewing, role playing, and taking field trips).

Similarly, Academic Achievement Discourse proponents prefer that all students in a school take the same coursework and engage in that coursework in the same way—through traditional methods such as note taking, raising hands for questions, and reading the same textbooks. Academic Achievement Discourse generally does not favor engaging in individualized instruction, taking into consideration individual learning styles, or giving students significant choices in their selection of material and methods used in learning.

Assumption #4: Academic Achievement Discourse is primarily future-oriented.

Learning in Academic Achievement Discourse is not generally valued for its own sake—that is, because learning itself is intrinsically worthwhile and satisfying. Rather, learning takes place as a preparation for the future. Educators want students to achieve academically so that they will be ready for something that will take place later (e.g., challenges, college, or jobs). Sometimes it is the near future that is the focus. For example, a kindergarten teacher might say something like, “I’d prefer not to have my students do so many worksheets, but I have to get them ready for the rigors of 1st grade.” A word frequently used in early childhood education, “readiness,” is a key indicator that Academic Achievement Discourse is being used. At other times it is the more distant future that is evoked. When a politician says, for example, “The low test scores in our nation’s schools indicate that we are not adequately preparing our students for the challenges of the 21st century,” he is gesturing toward the future-oriented dimension of Academic Achievement Discourse.

Assumption #5: Academic Achievement Discourse is comparative in nature.

There is a distinct preference in Academic Achievement Discourse for making comparisons between students, schools, school districts, states, or even countries, as opposed to looking at the changes that take place over time within each of these groups. So, for example, an individual student’s performance on a standardized test will be compared to the performance of a group of students who took the test under equivalent circumstances at another time and place (a “normative” measure). This approach is given preference in Academic Achievement Discourse to looking at that student’s individual improvement over time (an “ipsative” measure). On an organizational level, test scores are used in Academic Achievement Discourse to compare the performance of individual schools or school districts in a state. Increasingly, these results are being posted in community newspapers or on Web sites, such as www.greatschools.net, so that parents can fully engage in this aspect of Academic Achievement Discourse.

The ultimate expression of this component of Academic Achievement Discourse occurs when the math, science, and reading scores of different nations of the world are compared to each other. Politicians can then engage in Academic Achievement Discourse with a statement such as one that is included in the Executive Summary of the No Child Left Behind Act: “Our high school seniors trail students in Cyprus and South Africa on international math tests” (U.S. Department of Education, 2002, p. 1).

Assumption #6: Academic Achievement Discourse bases its claims for validity on scientifically based research.

When promoting its cause, educators and others who engage in Academic Achievement Discourse usually state that their teaching strategies and interventions, as well as their benchmarks and assessments, are backed up by scientifically based research data. Similarly, when defending their position, the accusation is frequently made that programs favored by critics usually lack support from scientifically based research. This term generally refers to statistical results obtained by qualified researchers with PhD, EdD, or MD degrees that are published in peer-reviewed educational, psychological, and scientific journals. The No Child Left Behind Act contains more than 100 references to scientifically based research or some approximation of it, and provides an even more specific definition of this term by recommending randomized controlled trials as the gold standard of educational research (Olson, 2002). To quote from a U.S. Department of Education (2003) booklet:

For example, suppose you want to test, in a randomized controlled trial, whether a new math curriculum for 3rd graders is more effective than your school’s existing math curriculum for 3rd graders. You would randomly assign a large number of 3rd grade students to either an intervention group, which uses the new curriculum, or to a control group, which uses the existing curriculum. You would then measure the math achievement of both groups over time. The difference in math achievement between the two groups would represent the effect of the new curriculum compared to the existing curriculum. (p. 1)

Assumption #7: Academic Achievement Discourse generally takes place in a top-down environment in which individuals with greater political power impose programs, procedures, and policy on individuals with less power.

Much of the impetus for Academic Achievement Discourse comes not from educators working in the classroom but from individuals with political power—for example, the president, governors, legislators, or CEOs of large corporations. Based on their speech acts (e.g., “our children are falling behind in the international marketplace of ideas”) and their written communications (e.g., laws such as NCLB), they create a climate in which educators must engage in Academic Achievement Discourse. Those who are most committed to this discourse in the field of education are, similarly, individuals in positions of power—for example, state education officials, superintendents, principals, and other administrators. They in turn create an environment that requires those under them (teachers) to speak the same language, especially when they are in the presence of these supervisors and administrators. Other sources of power that generate Academic Achievement Discourse are parents, school boards, and members of the mass media, who report national test results on a regular basis. At the bottom of this food chain are the students themselves, who have little power but must nevertheless engage in Academic Achievement Discourse in their own way. For example, one student might ask another, “Whad’ja get on yesterday’s test?”

Assumption #8: The bottom line in Academic Achievement Discourse hinges on grades, test scores, and ultimately, money.

In terms of education, the bottom line in Academic Achievement Discourse is based on grades and test scores. Students may not be permitted to graduate from high school, for example, if they are unable to maintain a specific grade point average or pass a highstakes graduation test. Similarly, schools can be penalized under the NCLB law if they fail to make adequate yearly progress in student proficiency on standardized test scores.

At a deeper level, however, it becomes apparent that the ultimate desired outcome of Academic Achievement Discourse is something like the following scenario: to have a student earn a 4.0 (or higher) grade point average on Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate courses in high school; achieve a perfect 2400 score on the SAT; enter a prestigious college or university such as Harvard, Yale, Princeton, or Stanford; achieve the highest grades there; graduate summa cum laude; achieve the highest scores on a graduate or professional school test; attend a prestigious law school, medical school, business school, or other postgraduate institution; and then (and here comes the payoff) take the most lucrative positions in society—lawyer, doctor, business executive, research scientist, and so on.

This type of scenario represents the pinnacle of success in our corporate-influenced culture. However, as we will see in the next chapter, there are other aims of education that may be equal or superior in value to the goals of Academic Achievement Discourse.

A History of Academic Achievement Discourse

Although any history of Academic Achievement Discourse is bound to be somewhat subjective in its selection of key events, I believe it is possible to construct a general outline of a movement toward increasing engagement by U.S. educators in Academic Achievement Discourse (see Figure 1.1). If I were to ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Foreword
• Introduction
• Chapter 1. Academic Achievement Discourse
• Chapter 2. Human Development Discourse
• Chapter 3. Early Childhood Education Programs: Play
• Chapter 4. Elementary Schools: Learning How the World Works
• Chapter 5. Middle Schools: Social, Emotional, and Metacognitive Growth
• Chapter 6. High Schools: Preparing Students to Live Independently in the Real World
• Conclusion
• Appendix
• References
• About the Author
• Copyright