Why Conventional Wisdom On Education Reform Is Wrong (a primer)

As a teacher I’m told a lot of stories about how education works and how we are going to fix it. We tell the stories because they give us easy-to-understand enemies along with optimistic explanations of our problems. But these stories are not often based in evidence. And when they aren’t clearly wrong, they are much more complicated than the stories on the ground. I’m going to try to collect the stories I’m told and do my best to show why they are probably wrong or at least not clearly right.

1. The US spends a lot on education

Spending is the guiding principle for how most people make sense of education policy. We have very high expectations for what our public schools need to offer and, on top of that, we frequently assume that reform means more spending.

This spiral has led to the United States spending more than almost any other developed country despite having poor relative rankings on international measures of education quality. This misconception drives a lot of the dysfunction and gluttony in the system. We can’t just spend our way out of education problems. We’ve tried and it’s led to education being one of the largest parts of the US federal budget despite the fact that most of us are dissatisfied with the results.