Education the Swedish way

http://www.economist.com/opinion/displayStory.cfm?story_id=15949738&source=hptextfeature

Recently I read this article about the British attempt to improve their school systems and reduce economic disparity. The article a Swedish law past in 1991 allowed charities, religious organizations, parents and businesses open and run schools and receive the same amount of funding per student as public schools. The results have been positive. However, there are difference between a country like Sweden's school system, federal policy and educational challenges and the United States. First of all the shear size, economic disparity and differences between urban, suburban and rural educational challenges. But there is something that can be said by enterprising education. So far for the last 40 years, I will use inner city youth education as the point of reference because that is what I am closest too, we are still dealing with the same challenges. Education fundamentally is much larger than a school, a curriculum and test scores. There is a foundation that needs to exist in order for this educational infrastructure to make a difference. Could enterprising education to find ways to lay the foundation of child development that supports this education infrastructure that in the end serves as a platform for educational development and creating future productive and innovative citizens. In an article in the city paper (An Education?: Two recent books take hard looks at the current state of America's public schools | Baltimore City Paper), the writer references two writers and their view and description of the challenges and solutions. The writers and their respective works Diane Ravitch's The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education (Basic Books) and Linda Darling-Hammond's The Flat World and Education: How America's Commitment to Equity Will Determine Our Future (Teachers College Press).

According to the article Diane Ravitch seems to renounce enterprising institutions role in education reform through charter schools even though she initially seemed to be an advocate for. According to the article Ravitch writes in her book that "she changed her mind because what were perhaps good ideas in the abstract simply did not work out in the reality of actual schools, or they produced negative, unintended consequences in the lives of students and their communities" (An Education? By Michael Corbin - City Paper Article 4/7/2010):

Ravitch's title is an ambitious homage to Jane Jacobs' 1961 The Death and Life of Great American Cities--perhaps the most influential book on urban planning of the 20th century. Jacobs criticized planners' hubris, which didn't take into account the human consequences of their social-engineering abstractions, however well-intentioned. Similarly, Ravitch indicts today's education engineers.

The book is a detailed genealogy of where today's education abstractions came from and how they are found wanting in practice. Ravitch looks critically at both New York City and San Diego, which have been incubators of both the "business model" of education reform and wholesale reordering of curriculum and school organization. She traces the history of the idea of school "choice," from its origins in "vouchers" to its contemporary manifestation in "charters." She argues that where charters were once meant to be experiments for the most vulnerable and needy, they have become boutique schools to shield the better off from the vulnerable and needy, undermining both their original idea and the public trust.

Similarly, she writes that the transfer of de facto authority to what she calls the "Billionaire Boys Club" is unprecedented in the history of American public education. With the power given over to the philanthropic patronage of such organizations as Teach for America, New Leaders for New Schools, the New Teacher Project, and Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP)--all of which have a significant presence in Baltimore--she argues that we've left public education to the "whim of entrepreneurs and financiers."

She concludes of testing in the era of "No Child Left Behind," counter to all the "data-driven" reform in Baltimore and across America, that we are fundamentally lost: "When we define what matters in education only by what we can measure, we are in serious trouble. When that happens, we tend to forget that schools are responsible for shaping character, developing sound minds in healthy bodies and forming citizens for our democracy."

Ravitch is prescriptive about forming those better citizens, and in this she is a consistent education "conservative." She argues for a national curriculum that all Americans should know. She wants politicians and businessmen out of education decision making. She wants charter schools to focus on kids who need the most help and for teachers to be paid a fair wage, not "merit pay" based on test scores. She wants school attached to family, community, and nation in a meaningful, inclusive story of what America is all about.

This generates several questions:

• Can free enterprise (charities, religious organizations, businesses, groups of parents)?
• Should education be developed, administered and legislated at national level vs. a local level?
• Are the challenges the US faces the same as a country like Sweden?
• Are the challenges faced in urban, rural and suburban America the same?

If we look at the challenges in our urban school system the answer is we need to try everything because there is no formula that has been successful so finding education innovation through enterprising organizations can not hurt and may actually lead to a solution that works and is sustainable.

Answering the last question helps us answer this question. The US is diverse by geography, by culture and socioeconomically. What works for suburban schools might not work for urban schools and the same for rural schools. The challenges we face are local. The same policy, curriculum and administration to address steady improvements is not the same as what is needed to establish basic cognitive learning. Like the challenges that are unique so should our solutions. Benchmarking and testing are important but the same standardized testing to compare apples and oranges does not seem plausible.

Finally, the US is not like Sweden. We are geographically, culturally and socially different. We have different challenges,in a more diverse setting and income disparity much broader in the US. But we can learn from what they have done and adapt it to meet the challenges we face in the US. For 40 years urban education has suffered and lost ground against education standards. We still have no solution to meet these challenges. Now is the time for drastic changes and why not let enterprising organizations try drastic measures to address these challenges. Change, quantum leaps of improvement and innovation only come from breaking the paradigm, inviting new and diverse perspectives to address the challenges and trying and failing. Now is not the time for incremental improvements. Now is the time for drastic changes, innovation and quantum leaps of improvement. We will only be successful once we open the arena and to paraphrase Theodore Roosevelt in his speech "Citizenship in a Republic" to the Sarbonnes in Paris in 1910, to those who's face will be marred by sweat, dust and blood. The time is now for change, the time is now for innovation, the time is NOW. Together we can develop a future of contributing, productive and innovative citizens.

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