Defining the Good School

Educational Adequacy Requires More than Minimums

Jeff Swensson and Michael Shaffer

The deck is stacked against educators and parents/caregivers looking for educational adequacy in contemporary US education. Too often, satisfactory quality in the good public school is identified based on opinion, the dubious value of standardized test results, and marketing ploys. Moreover, the contemporary purpose of US education and the definition of educational adequacy are wild cards that prevent most from playing a winning hand.

Finding the good public school is left to chance. This book initiates a search to transform this state of affairs. All students deserve a comprehensive public education that invests in the original power of education, dynamic instruction, and principled reasoning.

This discussion tackles the barriers—the eye of the beholder, the tyranny of either/or, and standardized testing—that hobble the capacities of educators and students. Once these barriers are removed, the determinants of comprehensive public education—power, policy, and instruction—emerge.

From these discoveries implications are derived that indicate how comprehensive public educationengages educators and students with a transformed definition of educational adequacy. The good public school depends on this and a complete readjustment of the purpose of US public education. This search enables educators and parents/caregivers to identify and establish the good public school without taking any chances.

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Pages: 168 • Trim: 6¼ x 9¼

978-1-4758-5620-0 • Hardback • February 2020 • $66.00 • (£51.00)

978-1-4758-5621-7 • Paperback • February 2020 • $34.00 • (£25.00)

978-1-4758-5622-4 • eBook • February 2020 • $32.00 • (£25.00)

Subjects: Education / Organizations & Institutions, Education / Comparative, Education / Standards (incl. Common Core)

Defining the Good School

Educational Adequacy Requires More than Minimums

Hardback

Paperback

eBook

Summary

The deck is stacked against educators and parents/caregivers looking for educational adequacy in contemporary US education. Too often, satisfactory quality in the good public school is identified based on opinion, the dubious value of standardized test results, and marketing ploys. Moreover, the contemporary purpose of US education and the definition of educational adequacy are wild cards that prevent most from playing a winning hand.

Finding the good public school is left to chance. This book initiates a search to transform this state of affairs. All students deserve a comprehensive public education that invests in the original power of education, dynamic instruction, and principled reasoning.

This discussion tackles the barriers—the eye of the beholder, the tyranny of either/or, and standardized testing—that hobble the capacities of educators and students. Once these barriers are removed, the determinants of comprehensive public education—power, policy, and instruction—emerge.

From these discoveries implications are derived that indicate how comprehensive public educationengages educators and students with a transformed definition of educational adequacy. The good public school depends on this and a complete readjustment of the purpose of US public education. This search enables educators and parents/caregivers to identify and establish the good public school without taking any chances.

Details

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Pages: 168 • Trim: 6¼ x 9¼

978-1-4758-5620-0 • Hardback • February 2020 • $66.00 • (£51.00)

978-1-4758-5621-7 • Paperback • February 2020 • $34.00 • (£25.00)

978-1-4758-5622-4 • eBook • February 2020 • $32.00 • (£25.00)

Subjects: Education / Organizations & Institutions, Education / Comparative, Education / Standards (incl. Common Core)

Author

Jeff Swensson served in traditional public education as a teacher, assistant principal, principal, assistant superintendent, and superintendent across the Midwest for the past 45 years. He graduated from Amherst College, received his MAT from Northwestern University, and earned his PhD from Indiana University.

Michael Shaffer served in schools in Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Indiana, and Iowa as an assistant principal, principal, and assistant superintendent. He graduated from Morehead State University with a BA and MA in elementary education and earned his Education Specialist and Education Doctorate in Educational Leadership from Ball State University.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Preface

Introduction

CHAPTER 1. What’s the Purpose of Public Education?

The Contemporary Purpose of Education

At A Loss to Glimpse the Future

The More US Education Changes, the More It Stays the Same

A Selfie Puts Education’s Purpose and Educational Adequacy to the Test

A Selfie Reveals…

State Authority for Public Education

A Diverse Student Population

High School Graduation

Funding for US Education

Parents and Caregivers

The Impact of Standardized Testing

Contemporary Purpose and Standardized Testing

What Do We Have Here? Implications from the Selfie

A Picture That Demands at Least a Thousand Words

A Future for US Public Education

Beginning to Search with the End in Mind

CHAPTER 2. True North: The Moral Obligation of Public Education

True North and Socialization

Socialization and Moral Obligation in Public Education

Moral Obligation: One Point of View

Moral Obligation: Another Point of View

The Troubled History of Moral Obligation

The Impact of US History

Moral Obligation and the Absence of Critical Habits of Mind

The Capacity for Moral Obligation in Public Education

Leading-Out Principled Reasoning

Fostering Autonomy and Relatedness

Interpretations of Moral Obligation

Two Imperatives of the Moral Obligation of Public Education

Responses to these Imperatives

Students and Self-Mastery and Principled Reasoning

Choices and the Future of Moral Obligation

Moral Obligation and Choices About Student Capacity

Moral Obligation and Choices About Agency in Public Education

Standing in the Way of Moral Obligation

Precepts of the Moral Obligation of US Public Education

CHAPTER 3. The Eye of the Beholder: An Unavoidable Barrier

This Search and Its Barriers

The Perspectives and Publics of Contemporary US Public Education

History and the Eye of the Beholder

Major Perspectives About US Public Education

Free Market Schooling

Choice + Mechanisms = Competition in the Free Market

In the Free Market Only the Individual Knows Best

To Create the Marketplace Only the Self-Anointed Know Best

Traditional Public Schools

Two Publics in US Public Education

The Public

And the public

Barriers Arise Where None Should Exist

Why Do These Barriers Endure?

Taking this Search Beyond the Eye of the Beholder

CHAPTER 4. A Barrier Within: The Tyranny of Either/Or

The Synergy of Struggle

Characteristics of the Tyranny of Either/Or

Adult-Centric Advantage

Ideology Is Destiny

Reform Is Ideology

Education Is Singularity

The TEO Barrier: School-Attached or School-Detached

The Bricks in this Barrier

Dismantling the Tyranny of Either/Or

CHAPTER 5. Confronting the Barrier of Conventional Wisdom

The Authority of Conventional Wisdom

The Baleful State of Educational Adequacy

Educational Adequacy as a Social Construction

Educational Adequacy as Minimum Quality

A Challenge to Educational Adequacy? See You in Court!

Deficiencies and Disparities

How Educational Adequacy Becomes Conventional Wisdom

The Paradox of Educational Adequacy

Educational Adequacy: A Dead End

Can Conventional Wisdom Be More than Minimums?

Reconsidering Educational Adequacy

Conventional Wisdom and Linearity

Mediational Influence

CHAPTER 6. The Measurement Barrier in US Public Education

I-P-O and Measurement: Standardized Testing

Measurement and its Misnomers

Measurement Misnamed: Accountability

Measurement Misnamed: Efficiency

Naming Rights: The Convenience of Efficiency

Measurement Misnamed: Cost Abatement

The Fog of Certainty

Testing Bait and Switch

Just More Numbers in the Wall

Students Lost in the Fog

Measurement and the Illusion Called Gap-Gazing

The Weakness of the Bricks in this Barrier

The Case for Effective Evaluation

Examples of Effective Evaluation

Teaching to Cognitive Expectations

The End of Measurement Inadequacy

CHAPTER 7. Power and Public Education

The Presence of Power in Education

The Rationale for the Future of US Public Education

The Heart of the Good Public School

Power: Abuse and Potential of a Steady State

When Power Is Exclusionary

The Minor Leagues: Purpose, Power, and Education

Why the Original Power of Education Is Vulnerable

Amorality and External Power

The Many Effects When Wires Cross

The “What,” “Who,” and “Why” of Power in Education

The “What” of Power in Public Education

The “Who” of Power in Public Education

The “Why” of Power in Public Education

Power and “I Identify As…” Statements

“I Identify As…” Statements

“I Identify As…” Statements and Stereotype Threat

Avoiding the Absolutes: Power + Corruption

Uncritical Habits of Mind: A Case Example

Subordination within Contemporary Education

Freedom: The Original Power of Education

Power for the Freedom of the Intentional Self

CHAPTER 8.Dynamic Instruction: Act I—Function, Evaluation, Precursors

Setting the Stage for Dynamic Instruction

Learning Styles Are Instructionally Anemic

Stable Instruction Is an Unreliable Presumption

Dynamic Instruction

Educational Function

Educational Adequacy and Educational Function

Educational Function and Instructional Mapping

Effective Evaluation

Instructional Precursors

Act I: Exeunt All

CHAPTER 9.Dynamic Instruction: Act II—Student Engagement

Student Engagement and Satisfactory Quality

The Triumvirate of Student Engagement

Pedagogical Agency

The Expectations of Pedagogical Agency

Authoritative Engagement

Languaging and Student Engagement

The Languaging of a Think-Aloud

The Relationship between Languaging and Memory

Student Engagement and Habits of Mind

A Curtain Call for Act II

The Reviews Are In: Dynamic Instruction

CHAPTER 10.Policy and Idiocy in US Public Education

The Idiocy of Contemporary Educational Policy

The Idiocy of Policy: More Linearity

The Idiocy of Policy: Fantasy

The Idiocy of Policy: Ignorance by Choice

The Wreck of the Good Ship Educational Policy

Policy and the Siren Song of “Reform”

Locally-Sourced Policy

Educational Policy: A Mutable Dialectic

A Snapshot of the Mutable Dialectic for Policy

Removing Idiocy from the Policy Menu

21^st Century Educational Policy

Common Ground: Policy for the Good Public School

CHAPTER 11. Recovering the “public” of US Education

The Shared Circumstance of “public” in Education

The Intelligence of Common Ground

Freedom Vis-à-vis Learning

A Sample Lesson: The Social Contract

Common Ground: “public”

Balance and Common Ground

Connection and Common Ground

Agency and Common Ground

CHAPTER 12. Weaving Educational Adequacy and the Good Public School

Transforming Educational Adequacy

Commitments About Comprehensive Public Education

Choices, Weaving, and Philosophy

The Good Public School: Indicators and Objectives

21CPE Indicators

21CPE Objectives

Objective #1: The Good School Is Functionally Public

Objective #2: The Good Public School Is How to Think

Objective #3: The Good Public School Fulfills Moral Obligation

Objective #4: The Good Public School Is Student-Centric

Objective #5: Directing the Power of Comprehensive Public Education

CHAPTER 13. Implications from this Search for Educational Adequacy

The Second Implication

The Third Implication

The Fourth Implication

The Fifth Implication

The Sixth Implication

Learning from the Implications of this Search

Teachable Moments and Legitimacy for 21CPE

CHAPTER 14. Student Futures and Comprehensive Public Education

We Have Met the Enemy and He Is Us

Stasis vs. Transformation

The First Tenet: Power

The Second Tenet: True North

The Third Tenet: Principled Reasoning

The Fourth Tenet: Critical Habits of Mind

The Fifth Tenet: Common Ground

The Benchmarks for 21CPE

Promises Empower 21CPE

Freedom in Comprehensive Public Education

Dealing with the “If” of 21CPE

Welcome to the Good Public School

References

Index

Reviews

In the US, chance is a major factor in finding and choosing a good public school for one's children, as a school's educational adequacy is often determined by test scores, marketing strategies, and public opinion, factors that may not accurately represent whether a school can deliver the best education for students. In Defining the Good School, Swensson and Shaffer, both public school leaders, provide an opportunity for policy makers, professors, school administrators, teachers, and parents/caregivers to engage in a thoughtful dialogue about the purpose of US public education and the notion of educational adequacy. The authors claim that the only way to achieve educational adequacy is to identify and dismantle the barriers that stand in the way of a good public education. They espouse the belief that the responsibility to create the conditions for a “good public school” for every child rests on everyone's shoulders, and can be achieved by identifying the characteristics that would constitute a 21st-century, comprehensive public education (21CPE). This is a must read for anyone seeking to understand the obstacles hindering public education and preventing schools from delivering adequate education to all students in the US. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All levels.

— Choice Reviews

I was struck by Swensson’s and Shaffer’s “data selfie” regarding American public education as the metaphorical equivalent of the ancient Greek cynic philosopher Diogenes of Sinope who has been painted with a lantern held in the faces of the citizens of Athens searching for an honest man. Swensson and Shaffer are long time educators, trench workers in the fight for adequate education for all students, something too many have given up on as the impossible dream. They bring us back to first principles and re-establish the case for moral clarity and not market efficiency as the driving force for true educational reform.
— Fenwick W. English, Teachers College, Ball State University

“Educational adequacy” is the way that many of our U.S. state constitutions define the government’s obligation to public education. Legal decisions over federal or state financial obligations to public schools use this term repeatedly. But educational adequacy has remained a murky, legalistic, and empty term. The authors of Defining the Good School show us that our responsibility for creating the conditions for a “good public school” for every child is the singular task for achieving educational adequacy. Spelling out both the purposes of, and barriers to the good public school, the authors create a compelling vision for comprehensive public education in the 21^st century founded on the powerful construct of critical habits of mind. I recommend this book to school leaders and policy-makers at all levels of governance.
— Kathleen Knight Abowitz, Professor, Department of Educational Leadership, Miami University

The authors of Unraveling Reform Rhetoric: What Educators Need to Know and Understand have now turned their studied attention to the critical topic of what constitutes an “adequate” K-12 education. Their new work, Defining the Good School: Educational Adequacy Requires More than Minimums, explores the topics of what actually constitutes educational adequacy, what types of societal, legislative, and cultural obstacles currently impede the delivery of an adequate education in America’s public schools, and finally how we, as a society, can overcome those barriers. Swensson and Shaffer have once again correctly identified the cancerous impact of recent privatization efforts and the so-called “choice” movement as one of the greatest obstacles to the delivery of comprehensive public education for all US students. This is a must read.
— Joel D. Hand, Partner, Hand Ponist Horvath Smith and Rayl, LLC, General Counsel and Lobbyist for the Indiana Coalition for Public Education