A Nation (of Students) at Risk: The Political Rhetoric of Equity and Achievement in US Education Reform

Abstract

The American public schools discourse of the 21st century remains unabashedly obsessed with education reform. A mainstream narrative of “achievement gaps” and urban schools requiring swift rescue from power-hungry teacher unions and their self-serving memberships has dominated conversations about how to improve education for America’s schoolchildren (or, as emphasized in the policy arena, America’s future workforce). Outside of those who come from a long line of educators, coaches, and mentors, a growing share of the American public has seemingly embraced the notion that failing schools are created by union leaders who put teachers before students, teachers who protect the status quo, and/or parents who simply don’t care enough to engage in the education of their children. Consequently, various education reform efforts grounded in politicalphilosophies, cultural ideologies, and private agendas have trumped evidencebased approaches to effective teaching, learning, and leadership (Apple, 2001; Berliner and Biddle, 1995; Buras, 2008; Darling-Hammond, 2007; Ravitch, 2010; Vasquez Heilig et al., 2012). For instance, the corporate reform agenda, which supports a free market system of education, has focused on high-stakes testing and evaluation of students and teachers, expanding school choice options for parents through charter schools and vouchers, and overhauling collective bargaining agreements for teachers in order to close achievement gaps and improve student achievement (Hess, 2004; Hess and West, 2005; Ravitch, 2010). While this particular reform movement has spurred great appeal for and benefitted from feature-length films such as Waiting for Superman and Won’t Back Down, teacher recruitment programs such as Teach for America and corporate reform organizations such as Students First are fixated on firing bad teachers, closing underachieving schools, and recruiting parents to fire teachers and closeschools. These practices not only ignore the well-established education research literature on the structural factors that reproduce inequality and suffering; they are implemented in the name of equity and achievement. This well-funded rhetorical crusade to “close the achievement gap” by supporters of Teach for America like the Walton, Gates, and Broad Foundations (Ravitch, 2010) further extends and deepens such structural problems through its ahistorical approach to educational improvement that privileges the advantaged while purportedly advocating for the students who are most “at risk” (Howard, 2003). The same can be said for “grassroots movements” aiming to put “students first” that are supported by big city mayors and school choice proponents across the country. The purpose of this chapter is to present a historical analysis of the politicalrhetoric of equity and achievement in the high-stakes accountability reform movement and its implications for future education research, policy, and practice. As we consider efforts to advance educational equity and achievement within a contemporary policy context dominated by calls for innovation, charters, vouchers, alternative routes to licensure, pay-for-performance, and the end of collective bargaining, this chapter is guided by two central questions: First, how did American public education get here – a place where educational equity and achievement are more commonly associated with high-stakes testing and turnaround school models than by strategies to increase educational opportunity, access, and equity? Second, why does US education policy seem more focused on dismantling public schools rather than transforming them? Finally, based on how we got here and the history of competing policy paradigms and political rhetoric used to frame issues of educational equity, achievement, and reform, in what directions must education research, policy, and practice go in order to improve America’s diversifying schools? To answer these questions, this chapter begins with a discussion of the NationalCommission on Excellence in Education’s (NCEE) 1983 report A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform, which sparked the education reformmovement in America (Guthrie and Springer, 2004; Hunt and Staton, 1996; Wong and Nicotera, 2004). Given its unprecedented role in shaping US education policy, largely through its rhetorical influence as a political document, I will show how A Nation at Risk (NAR) serves as a useful model for understanding the political rhetoric of equity and achievement today. I will also argue that the co-optation of the language of equality, access, equity, and opportunity – hallmarks of education policy during the Great Society and Civil Rights Eras – poses an equal if not greater risk to both our nation and its students given its lack of attention to social and cultural contexts, culturally relevant leadership, and the role of community in education reform. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the promise and possibilities of community-based education reform as an approach to providing equitable educational opportunities and improving student and school performance in historically underserved and under-resourced neighborhoods.