5 pages

Reframing Educational Debates

Reframing Educational Debates:

A Progressive, Whole-Child, Big-Picture Perspective

By Karl F. Wheatley, Ph.D.

Abstract

The test-driven accountability movement arrived on a wave of rhetoric that framed educational debates in terms that favor market forces, factory-style schooling, and authoritarian control. This article argues that this widely-accepted framing of educational debates is profoundly misleading about what works best in the long run in education, given the goals Americans value most. From this view, terms such as “greater accountability, measurable outcomes, objective testing, student achievement, and scientifically-based teaching” have derailed quality education. Opposition to test-driven schooling has gained little traction in part because no compelling alternative framing has been presented, and opponents of authoritarian, test-driven, factory-style schooling often use the very language that helps perpetuate test-driven schooling. A fictional dialogue between a CEO and a researcher presents an alternative framing of educational issues and solutions: a big-picture paradigm emphasizing democracy, developmental psychology, and long-term effectiveness for the whole child. Strategies for successfully reframing educational debates are discussed.

An earlier version of this article was presented at the (Identifying Reference).

Reframing Educational Debates:

A Progressive, Whole-Child, Big-Picture Perspective

By Karl F. Wheatley, Ph.D.

“We have an obligation, I think,

to refuse to accept the debate as it has been framed for us.”

- Alfie Kohn 2004, 178

In a classic example of being framed, a man is asked, “Yes or no, do you still have a serious drinking problem?” Merely agreeing to answer the question with a yes or no traps the man into seeming to confirm that at some point, he had a real drinking problem. How we frame issues matters, and if the man never had a drinking problem, the wise reply in this situation is to refuse to answer the question as asked, and to re-frame the whole discussion instead.

In this article, I argue that the current framing of educational debates in the United States sustains myths and promotes a counterproductive paradigm of education, one characterized by autocratic control, corporate worldviews, narrow academics, behaviorist psychology, and a factory-style organization for schooling. I provide here a counter-narrative for thinking and talking about education, one that is grounded in strong democracy, whole-child development, and active, constructivist learning within caring learning communities.

Although my focus is the particulars of the test-driven educational accountability movement in the U.S., the issues involved are relevant for any countries with highly or increasingly privatized or test-driven education, and many of the conceptual frames discussed apply directly to other English-speaking countries (e.g., Canada, England, Australia).

Overview

Americans have largely agreed to debate educational issues by using conceptual frames such as “failing schools, accountability, objective testing, student achievement, and global competitiveness.” Such framing has created a powerful and endlessly repeated narrative that assumes U.S. schools are failing and that favors authoritarian, technocratic, and market-based solutions. Predictably, the result has been a dramatic shift towards authoritarian control, test-driven curricula, factory-style schooling, and private, for-profit management, while making American teachers, their unions, and schools into scapegoats for persistent social inequalities that are largely outside their control.

I believe that framing education this way has misled us about schools’ performance, what our goals should be, and how to improve education. I argue here that the operative meanings of these frames are both misleading and counterproductive, that educators and researchers should stop discussing education in these terms, and that we should re-frame educational debates instead. There are no value-neutral educational narratives or policies, and my re-framing of education is based on specific moral stances about the purposes of education, the nature of a good life, the world I want for our children, and the proper roles of the public and private sectors.

I use the term “big-picture education” for educational approaches based on democracy, developmental psychology, and constructivism. More specifically, big-picture education aims for effectiveness in the long run for the whole child, given the goals we value most, while also strengthening democracy and improving the world. In practice, this means meeting children’s basic needs; pursuing our top goals for the whole child; real-world active learning; substantial child-initiated learning and individualized, transdisciplinary curriculum; authentic assessment; and caring classroom democracies.

I believe that broad, long-term research shows that such big picture education is superior to factory-style and narrowly academic schooling for the goals we value most. Just as climate scientists now seek ways to persuade the public that climate change is real, this counter-narrative provides tools for persuading the public and policymakers that authoritarian, test-driven factory-style schooling is counterproductive. Although I provide supporting citations, this article mostly presents an alternate narrative, not an exhaustive proof of the accuracy of this vision. However, many of my references are book-length treatments of the core issues involved, and interested readers will find therein hundreds of other studies expanding and supporting my positions.

To be sure, critics of my positions can provide contrary evidence—seemingly proving that test-driven, factory schooling is superior, if you accept their view of educational goals, curriculum, teaching, learning, motivation, assessment, and their view of scientific research. Such evidence usually consists of well-executed research methods finding narrow, academic gains in the short-term (i.e. one year or less). However, one truism of child development is that the approach that works fastest for low-level compliance or narrow, short-term learning is routinely counterproductive for the whole child in the long run. Just as rapid weight loss sets in motion the dynamics (e.g., cravings) that often sabotage one’s long-term success, rapid low-level learning gained through controlling educational methods reliably creates dynamics (e.g., student resistance, reduced intrinsic motivation) that often engender long-term failure. Thus, even the strongest empirical evidence of narrow, short-term academic gains is wholly unconvincing to those who study long-term development. Also, such research is often seen as less scientific or trustworthy by educational or developmental psychologists, because it often reflects the long-ago eclipsed theory of behaviorism (Hunt, 1993), instead of more current, powerful, and encompassing theories of development (i.e., cognitive-developmental, socio-cultural).

In sum, I assert here that we best reach the long-term goals we value most for children through big-picture education and a big-picture perspective on applied research. This requires a paradigm change in how we think and talk about education and educational effectiveness.

After explaining conceptual framing, I describe how U.S. educators have been framed—both in the sense that American education has been maligned as performing more poorly than it truly does, and that market-oriented strategies, including test-driven factory schooling, have been cleverly marketed to the public as the best solutions. I then present a model of how to reframe educational debates, through a fictional dialogue between a CEO and an educational researcher.

How Framing Works

As Lakoff (2004) noted regarding conceptual framing research, the taken-for-granted terms of any debate strongly influence which facts make sense to listeners and which sound like nonsense. Believing that the facts alone will win the argument is naïve, for the framing of the argument influences which thoughts and emotions are activated and whether or not one identifies with the argument (ref). Politicians and businesspeople know that framing is essential in persuasion, which is why American politicians re-branded torture as “enhanced interrogation” and why our coal industry have spent lavishly so that the phrase “clean coal” would enter our thinking. The acknowledged power of framing is also why American conservatives have worked for decades to establish five frames in the public’s mind: “smaller government, lower taxes, free markets, strong defense, and family values.” Once “lower taxes” and “smaller government” became widely accepted frames for policy debates, raising taxes on anyone to pay for government programs became terribly difficult.

The constant repetition of conceptual frames such as “failed stimulus, death panels, job creators, and failing schools,” can establish a new and shared perception of reality in the public’s mind, even one that contradicts crucial facts. Lakoff (2004) argued that because American progressives have not done the work to establish progressive frames in citizen’s mind (e.g. effective government, broad prosperity), it is more difficult for progressives to construct a narrative that resonates with voters. Thus, progressives often do more poorly in debates than one might predict, even when they have powerful facts on their side (e.g., the climate change debate).

Having studied the framing of American educational policy debates for eight years, I discovered a framing imbalance in American education that parallels that found in American politics. That is, those advocating privatization and authoritarian, test-driven schooling have consistently framed the debate to favor their views, but critics of this approach have not provided clear framing for their vision for progressive, big-picture education. Here’s a glimpse.

How American Educators and Education Were Framed

In the U.S., the decades-long repetition of conceptual frames such as “a nation at risk” and “failing schools” convinced citizens that public schools were failing, and now, media coverage of education consistently uses the frame “failing schools.” Once Americans were convinced we had “failing schools” and “incompetent teachers” who put our “nation at risk,” respect for teachers was replaced by scorn, teacher autonomy became difficult to defend, and scripted lessons replaced teacher-developed curricula.

As more Americans became convinced that “education is just like any other business,” businesspeople took greater control of education, and corporate-style control, competition, and privatization increased markedly. Once Americans believed we needed “higher standards,” “measurable outcomes,” and “objective testing,” high-stakes standardized testing seemed to be the logical solution, and test scores seemed to be a perfectly logical way to evaluate students and teachers. When Americans were convinced that the solution was to “hold people more accountable,” rewards and sanctions for students, teachers, and schools all seemed logical.

As the mainstream media became persuaded that corporate-style control, test-driven policies, and privatization were “real reform,” teachers and their unions were publicly framed as self-interested obstacles to those “real” reforms. Now, after decades of negative framing and media coverage, American public education is under attack as never before (Emery & Ohanian, 2004; Ravitch, 2010). Meanwhile, many who strongly oppose test-driven schooling and privatization use the same conceptual frames that were designed to promote these policies, and thus, they have been unwitting accomplices in reinforcing and spreading the ideas they oppose.

A few examples illustrate the disconnect between the framing of policy debates and education reality. First, for those who trust test scores, despite the widely-held perception that U.S. schools are “failing,” when one controls for poverty, American students and schools are routinely either number one or near the top of the rankings on international tests (Bracey, 2009). Second, despite the routine assumption that lower average test scores put our nation “at risk” economically, test scores have not been consistently correlated with economic performance for the U.S. or for other similar countries (Ramirez et al., 2006). In fact, average test scores are sometimes negatively correlated with national wealth, economic growth, creativity, happiness, and degree of democracy (e.g., following the First International Math Study). Third, despite the policymakers’ faith in these alleged solutions, American education has not been noticeably improved by graduation tests (e.g., Musoba, 2010) or other high-stakes testing (e.g., Nichols & Berliner, 2007), charter schools (CREDO, 2009), teacher bonuses for raising test scores (e.g., see recent failures in Texas, Nashville, and New York City), or “scientifically-based” reading instruction (Coles, 2003; Institute of Educational Sciences, 2008).

Rhetoric trumped reality for at least three reasons. First, advocates of test-driven factory schooling have money, power, great media access, and like-minded think tanks that share their views. Second, the ideas behind test-driven accountability and privatization have been promoted through an aggressive and highly-coordinated marketing effort (Ohanian, 2002, newewr), and are brilliantly framed. Third, opponents of test-driven factory schooling provided no coherent, well-publicized alternative framing of educational issues.

Once the educational policy debate was framed in terms favoring authoritarian, test-driven and market-based schooling, and once people accepted these frames for the debate, the usual counterarguments made by progressive educators and researchers made no sense, and they fell on deaf ears. People had simply accepted the wrong assumptions about education. As one Ashleigh Brilliant cartoon quipped, “Your reasoning is excellent; it’s only your basic assumptions that are wrong.” To escape authoritarian, test-driven, factory schooling and to create more progressive, big-picture education, I believe we must challenge all of the major assumptions of the market-based and test-driven “accountability” movement, and replace all of the misleading conceptual frames that sustain those false assumptions.

One might reasonably ask, what could possibly be wrong with “greater accountability?” A frame such as accountability acts as Trojan Horse language that is allowed into our thinking because it has one or more irresistible connotations, but the listener often doesn’t realize that the operative meaning of the term pushes us towards test-driven factory schooling. For example, in the U.S., people use “accountability” to mean that students learn well, teachers behave responsibly, schools provide sound data on student learning or are transparent in their operations, truly awful teachers get fired, and that test scores influence student promotion and teacher pay. Of course, beyond any desirable meanings of accountability, its central meaning in current U.S. educational policy is using rewards and punishments to pressure students and teachers to raise test scores. However, if you believe, as I do, that extrinsic controls and high-stakes standardized testing are cornerstones of a counterproductive paradigm of education, then “greater accountability” is absolutely the wrong starting point for education or policy. Yes, somewhere in every system, you need a way to remove poor workers who fail to improve even with support. However, centering policymaking on “greater accountability,” and using phrases like “holding people more accountable” means that the overall paradigm for current policies is authoritarian Theory X management (McGregor, 1960). If we believe that democracy-oriented Theory Y management is superior and better fits our values, we shouldn’t use “greater accountability” at all, and we need a different way of framing the issue. More generally, to describe a different educational paradigm, we must totally re-frame all the key terms of current educational debates.

Establishing New Frames for Education and Policy

I present below a model of reframing through a fictional dialogue between a CEO who favors market-based, test-driven, factory-style schooling and an educational researcher favoring big-picture education. There are six key points about this model. First, to effectively re-frame, you totally stop using the conceptual frames whose main connotations are counterproductive given your values, because repeating the other person’s frames reinforces their worldview and argument. Second, it is essential to identify and consistently use short frames and phrases that frame the debate in an accurate and constructive way, given your values. As Lakoff (2004) noted, if one person uses concise, memorable frames while the other speaks in unfocused paragraphs, the person with the concise frames automatically has the advantage. Research and details can be added later, when one’s reframing raises questions, as it surely will. Third, I use a very direct speaking style here to concisely introduce negative reframing of authoritarian, factory schooling (e.g., “coercion”), and to introduce positive frames that support big-picture education (e.g., “healthy motivation”). Because I cover the broad waterfront of education policy in limited space, there is a tone of relentless disagreement, but my real-life discussions usually move into the details, and don’t usually contain such constant back-and-forth disagreement. Once one learns reframing, strategies such as using stories and finding common underlying interests further softens these discussions. Fourth, the blunt style the CEO uses here is actually milder than some of my real experiences. In debating policymakers and pundits for years, my views have been called “garbage” and “witchcraft,” and while debating reading policy one day, someone in a very nice suit shouted at me, “Why do you hate poor children!?” In the policy arena, powerful people intentionally use powerful language to suppress dissent and to advance policies that they favor. Fifth, I have felt very successful using the frames the fictional researcher uses—with undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral students, and in discussing education and policy with parents, teachers, pundits, administrators, businesspeople, and educational policymakers. This reframing shifts the terms of the debate. I have heard every point the CEO makes, and have made every point the researcher makes. Sixth, some of the language used (“Founding Fathers, American values”) is quite parochial, but this is the kind of language that resonates and influences other Americans. In other countries, different, but similarly parochial language will be effective. Here is a model debate between an educational researcher and a CEO, with key frames and phrases for both sides italicized.

A Model of Reframing Education

CEO: To improve American education, we must run it more like a business.

Researcher: Business is the wrong paradigm for education—most new businesses fail, they usually fail quickly, and winner-take-all markets amplify inequalities. Why use a model that ensures such failure, inequality, and instability? What happens to kids and families when their beloved school gets boarded up like a closed sandwich shop? Democracy provides the bedrock values for society and education.

CEO: Market solutions create widespread excellence.

Researcher: No, market forces create and amplify inequalities. The quality gap between the goods and services in the rich and poor sections of town is just as great as are the test score gaps between rich and poor kids. We need public sector solutions such as excellent public schools to fix the problems and inequalities caused by market forces.

CEO: Governments create inefficient bureaucracies. We need deregulation of education.

Researcher: Reckless deregulation creates major disasters. Deregulation gave us the Gulf oil spill and the worst financial meltdown since the Great Depression. In education, weak regulation has ushered in widespread corruption and collateral damage, but didn’t improve learning. Quality requires effective regulation. To strengthen American democracy, we need strong public schools with effective regulation.

CEO: Look, education is like any business. Why not run it like one?

Researcher: No, education is a unique profession and education is profoundly different than business. Businesses focus on maximizing their own profit: Education focuses on sharing what you have with others and maximizing others’ potential. Markets hate uncertainty and confusion, but deep learning thrives on it. Standardization works wonders for manufacturing but standardization is a disaster for real learning. The worst feature of American education, factory-style organization, resulted from basing schools on the sweatshop assembly lines of last century.

CEO: Successful urban charter schools prove how market forces create excellence.

Researcher: Actually, the charters often featured in the media are perfect examples of how market forces amplify inequality. Those charters are really siphon schools (Rakow, 2011), because they drain many of the most motivated teachers, principals, students and parents out of the district and pool them all together in one building. When such schools succeed, they do so through a process that directly undermines the strength and success of the rest of the district. Thus, market forces in education make the rich richer and everyone else poorer.

CEO: Look, the other schools could just replicate what the good schools do.

Researcher: First, we don’t even know if the schools whose kids have high test scores are doing well. Second, education isn’t manufacturing, and you can’t mass-produce meaningful learning or magically make all teachers and students equal. If everyone works their hardest, but talent and motivation are unevenly distributed, you get uneven outcomes.

CEO: More competition would improve all the schools.

Researcher: That’s the wrong paradigm again—it confuses learning with manufacturing. As the late David Sarnoff, founder of NBC and CEO of RCA, said, “Competition brings out the best in products and the worst in men.” Education is about bringing out the best in people, and schools who compete for students don’t do any better on international tests than those who don’t (e.g., as found in the 2009 PISA results). In classrooms, cooperative learning is reliably superior to competitive approaches for the goals we value most, especially for complex learning (e.g., Kohn, 1992; Nembhard, et al., 2009). Competition also fosters anti-social behavior and creates multiple motivation and learning problems. Everyone gets hurt when we emphasize beating others: Working together simply works better.

CEO: How will you prepare American kids for global competition if you don’t have competition throughout education?

Researcher: That’s the wrong view of the future. First, what kids from America and other nations need most is to be prepared for global cooperation, to work together to solve big global problems like climate change and poverty, and to share the planet peacefully. It’s a small planet and we’re all in this together. Seeing the future as a competition undermines the collaborative spirit, leadership skills, and personal excellence that we need to meet these challenges.

CEO: Well, at least we can agree that the key to improving schools is greater accountability. We must hold people more accountable.

Researcher: No, focusing on “holding people accountable” proves we’re using the wrong paradigm for thinking about how our schools are doing and how to improve them.

CEO: (Incredulous) You’re against accountability! That’s crazy.

Researcher: Accountability is a vague term with many meanings, some helpful, some harmful. In education, the demand for “more accountability” mostly means pushing people around through more top-down control of schools and curriculum, using stronger threats and bribes to coerce kids and teachers.

CEO: That’s not coercion, it’s incentives.

Researcher: Using power to pressure people to do something they believe is wrong is called coercion, and most teachers don’t believe test-driven schooling is the answer. Thus, what you’re calling “accountability” is really coercion.

CEO: Look, incentives work. Rewarding excellence creates more of it.

Researcher: Actually, rewards routinely backfire. Both in education and in business, carrot-and-stick motivation only works in the short term for low-level outcomes, but doesn’t work for complex learning (Deci & Ryan, 2002; Kohn, 1999; Pink, 2009) or for improving performance in complex professions like teaching (Perry, et al., 2009).

CEO: People respond to rewards.

Researcher: The way people respond to rewards is just like a fad diet. That is, carrot-and-stick motivation often yields some short-term quantifiable results, so it seems to “work,” but then it sets in motion the seeds of its own broad, long-run failure. You get a few rewarded behaviors but not overall excellence. Healthy motivation is more effective in the long run than threats and bribes are (Deci & Ryan, 2002; Kohn, 1999), especially for healthy development and learning and for complex professions like teaching.

CEO: C’mon, you have to incentivize excellence.

Researcher: That’s an outdated paradigm. Children are naturally wired to learn (Hirsch-Pasek & Golinkoff, 2003) and teachers begin their careers highly motivated to help children learn. Yes, there are miserable jobs that people only do for the money, but teaching and learning are different. If we ask what works best in the long run for the whole child, we find that intrinsic motivation and internalized self-regulation are superior to carrots and sticks (Reeve, 2002).

CEO: But plenty of kids and teachers just aren’t motivated.

Researcher: Factory-style schooling, with its authoritarian control, cookie-cutter curriculum, and competition is almost custom-designed to undermine or destroy everyone’s healthy motivation. Make schools into learning communities run by democracy and you’ll see that healthy motivation and passion spring to life.

CEO: Sounds lovely, but while America’s children go to failing schools, the teachers and unions have been the biggest obstacle to real reform. If teachers are so motivated to help kids, why have they opposed real reform?

Researcher: Actually, teachers have opposed misguided policies based on failed ideas (Darling-Hammond, 1997; Ravitch, 2010). First, the problems with high-stakes testing go back centuries (Madaus, et al., 2009), so test-driven education policies such as NCLB Race to the Top are failed ideas from the past. Second, this means we should thank the wise teachers who opposed these misguided policies. Actually, teachers should oppose these misguided policies more vigorously, and that’s where stronger unions are needed—so policymakers who don’t understand education don’t force failed policies onto kids and communities.

CEO: Unions are an obstacle.

Researcher: Strong unions are as American as apple pie—they provide the same checks and balances in the workplace that our Founding Fathers built into American government. We need strong unions to prevent misguided policies from hurting kids, adults, and America.

CEO: But our schools are failing. Someone needs to make teachers shape up.

Researcher: Actually, we should congratulate American teachers. American schools have been remarkably successful, considering…

CEO: That’s crazy! International test scores prove American schools are failing.

Researcher: I don’t trust test scores much, but if you take test scores so seriously, in apples-to-apples comparisons, U.S. kids and schools do remarkably well on these tests.

CEO: I thought U.S. kids were usually about 20th in the world.

Researcher: If you control for the differing levels of poverty between countries, American kids and schools routinely rank in the top five in the world on those tests, and would frequently rank number one (Bracey, 2004; Riddile, 2010). Despite their flaws, American schools have been remarkable successful, especially given our students’ tremendous diversity, the lack of respect and pay for teachers in America, and our high poverty levels and unequal school funding.

CEO: But everyone says our low student achievement threatens our economy.

Teacher: People have been misled. America’s real problems are primarily due to poor leadership. Also, so-called “student achievement” just means test scores. Test scores are the wrong goal for schools so you should stop taking test scores so seriously. Test scores have weak predictive validity for economic success for individuals and countries.

CEO: But I heard student achievement predicts nation’s economic growth.

Researcher: Some of those studies include countries like Malawi. If you put very different cases into a correlational analysis, you often get meaningless results. Average test scores are actually poor predictors of economic productivity for our country and the countries most like us (Ramirez, et al., 2006), so even people who are narrowly focused on the economic benefits of education shouldn’t take these low-level tests too seriously. Also, our average test scores are lowered dramatically by our high rate of childhood poverty.

CEO: Poverty! Poverty is no excuse for low scores.

Researcher: As Gerald Bracey said, “Poverty is not ‘an excuse.’ Poverty is a condition like gravity. Gravity affects everything we do. So does poverty” (Bracey, 2004, p. 43). Aside from the environmental deprivation often caused by poverty, i.e., hunger, medical problems, lack of books and stimulation (Berliner, 2006), poverty often causes irreversible harm to brain development, through mechanisms including lead poisoning and constant stress. Poverty is the most powerful variable affecting children, and to judge research, you must always control for poverty or SES. If America always has substantial poverty, we will always have substantial educational inequality.

CEO: But we know from high-flier, high-poverty charter schools that poor kids can succeed as well as other kids.

Researcher: On average, poor kids simply don’t succeed as well as other kids. Yes, some poor children learn in amazing ways, and yes we often should expect more of poor children and teach them better. However, less than 1% of high-poverty schools are consistently “high-flier” schools, even looking just at test scores in reading and math (Bracey, 2004). Look at a broader range of outcomes, and the picture is probably much worse. There is no broadly replicable miracle occurring for poor children in American education.

CEO: For-profit schools could fix these urban districts.

Researcher: For-profit groups have failed for decades to improve urban districts (Bracey 2004), even when spending more per pupil. They have also been plagued by financial scandals. Worldwide, if we control for parental background, private schools do no better than public schools on test scores (e.g., see 2009 PISA results), despite often offering a narrower curriculum, serving fewer challenging students, and underpaying teachers, thus increasing income inequality.

CEO: Well, changing subjects, I believe we need objective testing to focus reforms.

Researcher: Then we’re out of luck, because testing is never objective. Why not? Testing is never objective for the same reason there is no objective voting—because both voting and testing are based on our subjective values. Educational testing is always highly subjective.

CEO: That’s ridiculous! It’s an objective fact that Washington was our first president.

Researcher: Yes, that’s an objective fact, but testing itself is always highly subjective. Which facts and skills we test, how many points they earn, how we assess them, and how we score items—these are all hugely subjective decisions. Testing is always highly subjective, and the subjectivity is built in at the factory (see Farley, 2009, for a troubling insider account).

CEO: But you can’t just let these incompetent teachers assess kids.

Researcher: American teachers are much more competent than you think, given the successes I mentioned earlier and the fact that teacher-determined grades predict college success better than college entrance exams do (Sachs, 1999). Let’s trust teachers more and trust tests less.

CEO: Look, you need some way to measure how kids are doing.

Researcher: That’s impossible. There is no real measurement in education.

CEO: You’re crazy. Tests measure student learning.

Researcher: No, they don’t. Tests assess some learning, but they are not real measurements in the sense that we measure coffee or lumber. To have real “measurement” of that sort, you need agreement on what you are measuring and what the units of measurement are. We can’t agree on what reading or intelligence really are, and our units of assessment are always changing. That’s not real measurement, not like inches, pounds, or meters are. A century ago, educational psychologists started talking as if we had real measurements, so we would be treated as a “real science,” but there has never been any real measurement in education.

CEO: That’s just semantics. Whatever you call it, quantifying things improves results.

Researcher: Numbers can be useful, but you’re confusing education with manufacturing. Education is different than manufacturing: Education is a unique profession, and while the last eight years have been the most intensely numbers-driven period in American education, our learning trajectories have not improved and the collateral damage has been dreadful (e.g. Nichols and Berliner 2007). Even for those who value test scores, growth in scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) actually slowed down compared to the period before NCLB (Fuller, et al., 2007).

Emphasizing easily quantifiable outcomes means dumbing-down education (McNeil, 2000; Nichols & Berliner, 2007), because low-level knowledge and skills are what is most reliably quantified (Sacks, 1999). If you want quality, you must stop obsessing about numbers.

CEO: But I heard that math scores went up under NCLB.

Researcher: In states such as Texas that reported benefits from stricter accountability schemes, those gains often resulted from larger numbers of lower-scoring students dropping out because of the intense accountability pressures (McNeil, et al., 2008), or narrowed curriculum.

CEO: But you can’t manage what you can’t measure.

Researcher: Look around you. People manage all sorts of things that can’t really be measured, and make all kinds of major life decisions based on factors that can’t be measured.

CEO: But you can’t have standards-based education without high-stakes tests.

Researcher: Actually, high-stakes testing prevents real standards-based education. Standardized tests inherently neglect or ignore higher-level content standards (Kohn, 2000; McNeil, 2000), and test-prep curriculum violates standards for curriculum, teaching, assessment, and professional ethics. High-stakes standardized testing is educational malpractice.

CEO: But the tests finally have people focusing on higher standards.

Researcher: Actually, the tests have people panicked about raising test scores. Education should focus instead on meaningful real-world standards. It’s the difference between answering multiple-choice questions about the scientific method versus doing real science experiments. To focus on meaningful, real-world standards, we must end test-driven, factory-style schooling.

CEO: So how would you assess kids?

Researcher: To get quality education, we need authentic assessment that focuses on deep understanding, real-world competence, and the other goals that parents and employers value most for children: love of learning, creativity, communication, independence, character, risk-taking, problem-solving, critical thinking, confidence, initiative, persistence, respect, citizenship, leadership, and to be caring, happy, and healthy.

CEO: How are you going to measure or test those things?

Researcher: Asking the wrong question gets you the wrong answers. There is no such thing as measurement in education, so the right question is, “How you will assess those outcomes?” Most good assessments are not standardized tests, and there are ways to assess all of those outcomes. We also need multiple indicators for trustworthy assessment.

CEO: But we need tests for value-added measurement (VAM), to judge quality.

Researcher: First, VAM is testing, not real measurement, and ironically, VAM ignores much of what we value and tests many things we don’t value. Second, VAM assumes that earlier and faster gains on testable academic outcomes indicate better learning and teaching. That’s often false. In weight loss, growing wealth, and many areas of life, the approach that often yields dramatic short-term gains is generally less effective overall in the long run. Faster is often worse.

In education, the approaches that often boost test scores fastest (i.e., traditional instruction) are counterproductive for many of the outcomes we value most—understanding, real-world applications, critical thinking, initiative, and creativity (see Walberg, 1986).

CEO: C’mon, faster test score gains mean it’s working.

Researcher: No, faster test score gains often spell trouble. Kids actually forget material faster if they learn it for a test than if they learn it just to learn it (e.g., Grolnick & Ryan, 1987). I once memorized all the answers to the game Trivial Pursuit using a flashcard approach, but I never understood what they meant, and forgot them almost as fast as I learned them. Also, in reading research, substantially better test score gains in reading subskills consistently accompany poorer education outcomes overall (Coles, 2003). So, faster test score gains are often worse, and the core assumptions of VAM are simply false.

CEO: But Bill Gates says that using test scores to evaluate teacher effectiveness is going to be a real game changer.

Researcher: Unfortunately, most policymakers don’t understand education, haven’t studied past failures of test-driven schooling, and don’t understand that emphasizing test scores makes them even less trustworthy (Madaus, et al., 2009). Tests are the wrong reason to learn, and the wrong focus for curriculum. China is trying to escape the grips of centuries of test-driven education so they can pursue quality education (Zhao, 2009). America should do the same.

CEO: You oppose data-based decision-making?

Researcher: For centuries, teachers have made decisions every day based on real-time data, and meaningful curriculum provides better data than low-level standardized testing does.

CEO: So you probably oppose giving teachers merit pay for raising test scores?

Researcher: Test score pay is a failed strategy that combines an outdated motivational approach with weak assessments.

CEO: But performance pay is how the real world works.

Researcher: No, the real world mostly doesn’t work that way (Adams, Heywood, & Rothstein, 2009). Only about one in seven American workers get bonuses for performance, mostly in sales and real estate.

CEO: But merit pay works.

Researcher: Only for specific types of work. For a physical job with a clear way to quantify work completed (i.e., a delivery person), rewards for quantity of work completed often increases the quantity of deliveries. However, even beyond the role that executive bonuses played in the financial collapse of 2008, decades of research finds that performance pay doesn’t improve the quality of performance in complex professions like teaching (Perry, et al., 2009).

In teaching in particular, test score pay has repeatedly failed to even raise test scores, including twice in Florida, a $300 million dollar program that didn’t improve anything in Texas, a program that seems to be failing in Chicago, a well-designed program in Nashville whose failure was announced in 2011, and the recent failure of the $75 million program in New York City. Learning doesn’t improve, but test score pay creates substantial collateral damage.

CEO: They must be doing it wrong.

Researcher: No, what’s wrong is controlling people with threats and bribes. That’s a counterproductive approach that weakens democracy. In education, humans are their best when they are motivated by intrinsic motivation and self-regulation (Deci & Ryan, 2002) and when they work together in a real democracy.

CEO: So would you trust teachers to assess those outcomes you say are so important?

Researcher: Yes, we must trust teachers to assess students, just as we trust teachers to vote for president. Let’s also involve parents and community members in assessment. Trusting fellow citizens to make important judgments is the American way—it’s how democracies work.

CEO: I read that less than half of teachers thought it was important to focus on teaching the basics, like phonics. Why trust teachers if they won’t even teach the basics first?

Researcher: The real basics of education are safe schools, caring learning communities, balanced goals, healthy motivation, meaningful curriculum, authentic assessment, big-picture teaching methods, practicing democracy, and involved families and ethical professionals who help make it all happen. Those are the basics of big-picture education.

CEO: What’s “big-picture education”? Never heard of it.

Researcher: Big-picture education is education that focuses on what’s most effective in the long run for the whole child, including our top goals for children, and that is designed to strengthen democracy and make the world a better place.

CEO: Sounds idealistic.

Researcher: All great education is idealistic.

CEO: Fine, but phonics and math facts are still the basic content to teach first.

Researcher: There is no content you must teach first, although maintaining kids’ love of learning must always be a top priority. In the early years, learning works much better if it mostly starts with rich experiences and kids’ questions about the physical and social world (science and social studies), and if children learn reading, writing, and mathematics through investigating their questions about the world, and communicating what they learned. By teaching the 3Rs first, and in isolation, American curriculum is largely backwards. Dividing learning into little bits and teaching low-level facts and subskills first comes from an outdated theory of learning called behaviorism (Hunt, 1993), and from the outdated model of factory-style schooling.

CEO: But the National Reading Panel (NRP) Report proved that skills-first instruction works best.

Researcher: No, the NRP report was deeply flawed and untrustworthy, which is why spending over $6 billion to implement the NRP recommendations didn’t improve reading comprehension (Institute of Educational Sciences, 2008), but made many other things worse.

CEO: I thought phonics-first teaching was “scientifically proven.”

Researcher: The federal definition of “scientific research” is so fatally flawed that teaching methods can be labeled “scientifically-based” even if they only make one thing better but make five things worse (Identifying Reference, in review).

CEO: What are you saying?

Researcher: A closer look at the NRP Report and other quality research reveals that whole language is superior for the goals we value most. While direct reading skills instruction boosted reading subskills faster in the short run, this didn’t translate into any real-world benefits. Compared to kids receiving direct reading skill instruction, kids from whole language classrooms did as well or better on reading comprehension and spelling and performed better on writing skills, and students doing sustained silent reading (SSR) often had better attitudes towards reading (Coles, 2003). Whole language also provides for more science and social studies learning, and whole language is even better for democracy.

CEO: Better for democracy!? How?

Researcher: Whole language involves kids in making daily decisions about their learning: It develops the initiative, decision-making, creativity, critical thinking, and give-and-take you need in a democracy, and in a rapidly-changing entrepreneurial economy.

CEO: You can’t just let kids make decisions about their learning.

Researcher: Having choices is the American way. To develop effective citizens who make wise decisions in adulthood, children need daily practice making meaningful choices, under supervision, before the stakes of their decisions get higher.

CEO: We tried that open education stuff back in the 60s, and it didn’t work.

Researcher: Actually, despite often-sloppy implementation, open or democratic education worked better than traditional education. Compared to kids from traditional classrooms, students who experienced the freedom and democracy of open classrooms were more independent, creative, respectful of diversity, and had better problem-solving and critical thinking (Walberg, 1986). They also liked school more and had increasingly positive attitudes to school each year, while kids from traditional classrooms suffered steady declines in motivation and had only slightly higher test scores (Walberg, 1986).

CEO: Aha! See, the traditional approach worked better.

Researcher: Sorry, but small differences in test scores don’t lead to differences in real-world performance, and in cases where kids in the traditional and big-picture classrooms have similar test scores, a closer look usually reveals that the kids from constructivist, big picture classrooms have better understanding and better ability to apply what they learned than do the kids from traditional classrooms. Because direct instruction is more focused on teaching the specific items on a test rather than mastering a broad domain, test scores consistently overestimate the real mastery of kids in traditional direct instruction classrooms and underestimate the real mastery of kids from constructivist, big picture classrooms.

Significantly, everyone says creativity is essential in the 21st century (e.g., Florida, 2002, Wagner, 2008), and big-picture education with substantial freedom simply works better for promoting creativity (Chamberlin, et al., 1942; Walberg, 1986; Zhao, 2009).

CEO: How can we standardize and control teaching if we give all those choices?

Researcher: Standardization and control are the wrong goals. Standardization works wonders for making cars but standardization a disaster for growing children. Great education requires substantial individualization.

CEO: That would be chaos. What if a kid moves from Texas to Ohio and they have a different third grade curriculum there?

Researcher: I certainly hope it is different: Excellent curriculum varies from classroom to classroom and from year to year. You’re still thinking of education as an assembly line, so you’re worried about getting all the assembly lines synchronized. Quality education means getting rid of the assembly lines and replacing them with a better model, one in which it is much easier to provide appropriate challenges for kids with vastly different interests, abilities, and backgrounds.

CEO: But with our new core standards, shouldn’t standardized curriculum come next?

Researcher: Good standards can aid planning. However, a standardized, national curriculum would mean we’re doing cookie-cutter education—the kind that kills motivation, creativity, and initiative. Freedom is central to America and to big-picture education.

CEO: But if kids and teachers have choices, they’ll take the easy way out.

Researcher: Researchers find that learners often do play it safe under the ego-threatening conditions created by factory schooling (see Schunk, et al., 2007), but under the conditions created by big-picture education, learners choose challenging tasks that expand their abilities.

CEO: But what if different kids learn different things?

Researcher: Learning always varies among students, and that’s good. There are a million different challenges and jobs in our future, and so we need to support different kinds of minds (Pink, 2006). We want some core knowledge, skills, and habits, but those can best be achieved through emergent curriculum that reflects children’s questions and is connected to real life. Diversity improves the adaptability of any species, so we need diverse curriculum and learning.

CEO: OK, I know what you’re against. What are you for?

Researcher: To create a better future for our children, we need paradigm change. We need big-picture education focused on what’s most effective in the long run for reaching our top goals for the whole child, and that strengthens democracy and makes the world a better place.

To do big-picture education, teachers need a deep understanding of healthy development and learning, especially healthy motivation, need a big-picture perspective on education and research, and need the ethical professionalism to stand up for what they believe is right for children, families, and America. Big-picture teachers ensure that children’s basic needs are met, create safe schools and caring learning communities, focus on balanced goals and healthy whole-child development, promote active learning, and create meaningful curriculum together with students and families. Teachers also use authentic, performance-based assessment and big-picture teaching methods, practice democracy, and give children the opportunity to make meaningful choices about their learning every day and at every grade level.

We also need researchers who adopt a big-picture perspective on education, who study what works for the whole child in the long run, who pay attention to systems effects, and who stay focused on our top goals for children—not just what’s easy to reliably quantify. We must stop researching “What’s the fastest way the achieve the objectives of factory schooling using the methods and assumptions of factory schooling,” when big-picture education works better overall in the long run. Because faster short-term gains on narrow academic outcomes do not prove educational effectiveness for the goals we value most, researchers and policymakers must re-think most current claims and assumptions about educational effectiveness.

Finally, if we want widespread excellence in American education, we need a strong social safety net and broad prosperity. People who are hungry, sick, or afraid don’t learn well or contribute much to creating a stronger America. Big-picture education works better and it better fits our core American values of freedom, self-determination, and democracy.

Discussion

New Frames for Making Paradigm Change Happen

I believe a complete transformation of American education is needed, because every aspect of authoritarian, test-driven, factory schooling creates pressure to maintain every other aspect of that paradigm. Behavioral objectives, standardized and de-contextualized curriculum, standardized testing, controlling teaching, assembly-line organization, extrinsic rewards—they are all mutually reinforcing. This is why tinkering doesn’t work: One must change the power relationships in education (Sarason 1993) and simultaneously replace every aspect of factory schooling with big-picture alternatives. Similar changes are needed around the globe.

To re-frame education, it seemed wise to also coin a new term for the overall educational approach. I chose “big-picture education” because it accurately describes the perspective and approach and because all other candidate terms were too narrow in meaning or have marked disadvantages (e.g., “democratic education” is a poor frame for persuading Republicans). “Big-picture” appears in arts education and with the “Big-Picture Schools,” but these uses are not widely known. Thus, the apparent weakness of the term “big-picture”—that people wonder what you mean—often works out well, for people often ask me for an explanation.

I have experienced the power of using the other big-picture frames to steer educational debates into the right ballpark. People ask what I mean by “healthy motivation,” and they are so surprised when I say, “student achievement is the wrong goal for schools” and “accountability is the wrong focus for policy,” that it takes the conversation in a whole new direction.

Making Reframing Work

Several factors make reframing more effective, beginning with communicating the big-picture perspective: In the long run, big-picture education is superior to authoritarian, test-driven, factory schooling for the goals we value most for the whole child. I consistently decline to use the assumptions, practices, or research underlying factory schooling as the reference for discussion, and I always start with this big-picture perspective instead. When people realize that I do not share their assumptions, the discussion usually shifts to the consequences of following different assumptions and paradigms. This shifts the discussion to the merits of contrasting paradigms, rather than conversing within the boundaries of the factory-schooling paradigm.

Next, effective reframing requires self-monitoring and self-discipline. For example, unless directly commenting on a specific frame that supports factory schooling, I try to never use those frames, and ensure they don’t appear in my handouts, articles, or speech. It takes effort to stop using common frames such as “measure” or “student achievement,” and to get in the habit of gently re-stating the misleading frames I hear in conversations or presentations.

In reframing discussions, the most influential strategy has been to consistently ask what works best in the long run for the whole child, given our top goals for children. The goals I listed earlier (love of learning, creativity, etc.) did not come from me—they came from two decades of asking thousands of people around the country about their top goals for children. People’s top goals always look roughly like that earlier list, and many education authors provide similar lists of goals, and CEOs provide very similar lists for what new employees need in the 21st century economy (Wagner, 2008). Another persuasive point is that education must focus on what matters most, and not on what is easiest to quantify. Most non-researchers readily accept this.

Next, it helps to remind people that, from the big-picture perspective, the federal criteria for “scientific research” are fatally flawed, and even the best-executed studies are often untrustworthy guides for policy and practice (Identifying Reference, in review). Why? Most studies examine what is easy to quantify not what matters most, assume separate subject instruction, and ignore system effects that often cause broad and long-term collateral damage. Nothing in the criteria for scientific education research prevents an approach from being judged “evidence-based” even if it only makes one trivial thing better, but makes five things worse. For example, the NRP endorsed direct, de-contextualized skill-based reading instruction because it boosted reading subskills fastest, but often over very short time periods in studies with no plausible comparison groups, and although it does not improve long-run reading comprehension, and is inferior for many other outcomes we value (Coles, 2003; Garan, 2004).

Thus, it helps to reiterate that most educational researchers assume that learning more testable content earlier and faster is better although educational and developmental psychologists often view the approach that yields rapid compliance and low-level learning as precisely that which is broadly counterproductive in the long run. Learning less academic content, later, and more slowly, is often superior in the long run. Thus, we need new research criteria that focus on what approach works best in the long run for the goals we value most for the whole child, while also strengthening democracy and improving the world (Identifying Reference, in review).

Even when factory schooling doesn’t even succeed at raising long-term test scores, it is essential to use test score evidence judiciously—as just one, often-misleading piece of evidence regarding effectiveness. The medium is the message, and for opponents of test-driven education to rely too much on test scores as evidence sustains the idea that test scores are the main tool for judging education. However, test scores assess less than half of what matters in education.

Major successful social movements in America (e.g., civil rights) are usually grounded in the broader narrative of American values, ideals, and democracy. Thus, our efforts to promote educational paradigm change should also be explicitly grounded in these values.

Overemphasizing economic arguments is also dangerous, for this can deepen the habit of viewing education and life as being merely about money, and the private sector worldview is already crowding the public sector worldview and narrative off the stage. If we are not vigilant, money and profit will become the only operative values in American policymaking, and more essential concerns for citizens’ general welfare and for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness will be abandoned.

To cover many issues, I took shortcuts above. First, to fit in more detail, I allowed the researcher to talk too much. Communicative turns usually need to be more balanced in length to sustain the other person’s engagement. Second, this model reframing is sparse and disconnected from life. In real discussions, stories, quotes, and examples should be added to convey how these ideas play out for real people, for example, the joy of learning in a caring community where democracy is thriving. Doing this persuasively requires us to state clearly that education is never a neutral enterprise, and to speak directly from the language of values (Lakoff, 2004). As a researcher, this value-laden stance can feel uncomfortable, but my empirical side sees that feigning neutrality in policy debates inherently supports the factory-schooling status quo.

Finally, frames alone are not enough. These frames are effective in re-directing and reframing the conversation, but one also needs supporting knowledge and research. For example, it is not enough to say “healthy motivation:” One must be able to explain why intrinsic motivations are more beneficial for individuals and society, cite relevant research (e.g., Kasser & Ryan, 1996, ref), and explain how extrinsic rewards so often backfire. Because most researchers are specialists, we need broad dissemination of information about reframing and about the effectiveness of big-picture education.

Language matters. Powerful language helped launch the American Revolution and sustained the civil rights movement. Cleverly chosen and aggressively marketed language has led American education down a dead end, and now, how we say the problem is one of our biggest problems, for the wording of our policy debates directly promotes counterproductive practices. Lakoff (2004) noted that actively reframing the debates is powerful social action. For all citizens who believe that big-picture education is better for children and for America, it is time to skillfully and assertively re-frame America’s education debates, at every chance we get.

I outline here an alternative view of education, illustrated by reframing educational debates in ways that I believe a) better fit reality, b) challenge the narrative sustaining factory-style schooling, and c) support the kind of education that works best in the long run for the goals we value most. For those who believe that authoritarian, test-driven schooling is ultimately counterproductive, and who believe that the better approaches carry labels such as democracy, intrinsic motivation, or constructivism, this reframing provides a powerful counter-narrative.

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