With Learn Everywhere back in the news, discussions about the program tend to involve errors of fact (e.g., that costs for the program would be incurred by local districts) and errors of reasoning (e.g., that offering more alternatives to some students somehow means harming other students). But to me, the discussions are most notable for the way they seek to perpetuate the double standard that defenders of the status quo like to hide behind.
That is, public schools are to be judged by their ideals and intentions — their best possible outcomes — rather than by their actual performance; while the alternatives (e.g., charter schools*, private schools, Extended Learning Opportunities, the Children’s Scholarship Fund, and now Learn Everywhere) are to be judged according to their worst possible outcomes.
That is, when we talk about public schools, it must always in terms of what could go right; while when we talk about alternatives, it must always in terms of what could go wrong.
For example, one state representative recently published an editorial in which he worried that the adoption of Learn Everywhere would mean that
Local school boards would potentially no longer be responsible for the quality of their diplomas. Potential employers and institutions of higher learning would no longer have assurance of the quality of diplomas granted by our high schools.
But do they have such assurance now? At the moment, New Hampshire’s graduation rate is around 90 percent; but only about 40 percent of those graduates meet basic proficiency requirements for fundamental skills like reading, writing, and mathematics.
A charter or private school where only half the students fail to reach proficiency by graduation would still be doing better than the average public school. So wouldn’t that be the proper standard of comparison?
If we compare public schools against other alternatives on the basis of ideals and intentions, public schools would lose, since they are aiming at ‘adequacy’, while the alternatives are normally aiming at excellence.
If we compare public schools against other alternatives on the basis of the worst possible outcomes, public schools would again lose, for the simple reason that no matter how badly they perform, they can’t go out of business the way the alternatives do when they fail to deliver on their promises.
If we compare public schools against other alternatives on the basis of actual performance… Well, that’s really the only comparison where public schools have a chance of measuring up. However, their track record suggests that this is unlikely to happen.
These three possible standards — What could go right? What could go wrong? What’s likely to happen? — lead to different kinds of conversations, but no matter which we choose, we need to choose the same standard for all the alternatives being discussed, or we’re in danger of being led into nonsense.
* Yes, I know that charter schools are public schools. But in these discussions, they are often treated as a threat to the rest of the public school system, so I’m grouping them together with non-public alternatives.
