Abstract
Over the past several decades, numerous arguments have been made advancing the notion that the failings of the public education system in the United States have placed the nation’s national security or economic prosperity at risk. This article will examine some of these “crises” and explore how arguments claiming that the shortcomings of the educational system have placed the country at risk have been manipulated and revised to suit the temporal circumstances of the time. The article will also examine how federal education policy has been crafted to address risk and will argue that the most recent policy initiatives have created a risk-averse climate in public education. In particular, the implementation of policy measures has been characterized by a campaign to mitigate risk and bring uniformity and predictability to public education. In doing so, policymakers have arguably undermined some of the qualities that have made public education in the United States unique and exceptional.
Introduction
In March 2012, the rather odd couple of Condoleezza Rice, the former United States secretary of state, and Joel Klein, the former chancellor of the New York City public school system, were suddenly, albeit briefly, back in the news. The pair were granting interviews and making regular appearances on news talk shows stirring up interest in their report decrying the state of public education in America. Klein and Rice served as co-chairs for a Council on Foreign Relations task force charged with analyzing how public education affects the nation’s ability to defend itself, conduct foreign policy, and compete economically. The report that the pair produced did not merely add another volume to the hefty pile of documents bemoaning the state of the nation’s public schools; in it, they argued that the shortcomings of the educational system placed the country’s national security and economic prosperity at risk—in doing so, Klein and Rice put a contemporary spin on the sense of dread that had accompanied the Soviet Union’s launch of Sputnik I in 1957, while also borrowing from the gloomy economic prognostications offered in A Nation at Risk in 1984. According to Klein and Rice, the nation was at risk again.
American education has an unusual, somewhat paradoxical relationship with risk. On one hand, risk is interpreted to suggest a threat or danger. From this perspective, the educational system has—or, more specifically, the shortcomings of the educational system have—placed the United States in a position where our role in the global economic order is threatened and our national security is compromised. Moreover, from this perspective, one could argue that the appropriate response to such a threat is to take conservative steps to mitigate or manage the risk and limit the danger. On the other hand, risk is interpreted as a calculated gamble, or the entrepreneurial spirit embodied in exposing oneself to some uncertainty regarding an outcome, but doing so with the expectation that taking a risk will yield future returns or rewards. From this perspective, the American economic system—as well as other facets of our society, including public education—have long embraced risk-taking. In part, this article will explore these two perspectives.
For the past several decades, it has seemed as though the nation is at risk in one way or another because of the shortcomings of public education. This article will trace the implications of some of the nation’s more recent crises related to education and explore how the notion of risk or the nation being at risk has been appropriated and manipulated to fit the temporal circumstances of the time. Moreover, I will argue that policy initiatives in education have been crafted largely to mitigate risk and bring a sense of orderliness, uniformity, predictability, and reliability to public education. Finally, I will suggest that the measures put in place to mitigate risk have potentially placed the nation at greater risk by undermining some of the very qualities that have made public education in the United States unique and exceptional.
How did we get here? A nation at risk—time and again since the 1950s
Given the central role that the federal government currently plays in educational policy, it seems odd that the word “education” does not appear in the United States Constitution. Those applying a strict interpretation to their reading of the Constitution would properly conclude that nothing in the document provides an entry point for the federal government to exert its considerable might in the field of public education. In fact, for much of the nation’s history, politicians and jurists recognized that education was the realm of state and local officials, not the federal government.
Prior to the 1950s, the federal government was sporadically involved in providing support to various education initiatives. The creation of land grant universities through the Morrill Act during the Civil War, providing funds for vocational programs through the Smith-Hughes Act during the First World War, and initiating the school milk program during the Great Depression: these are all examples of federal intervention in education-related concerns. Importantly, each of those acts was launched during a time of crisis and each is an example of the federal government providing aid with few strings attached. The federal government could justify these measures as liberal interpretations of the Constitution’s “elastic clause” granting Congress the authority to make laws that are “necessary and proper” in any realm, including education. Even so, as late as the mid-twentieth century, federal officials were cautious of treading too heavily on state and local control of schools. Another crisis, however, provided the opportunity for Congress to intervene significantly in public education.
On October 4, 1957 the Soviet Union successfully launched a satellite, Sputnik I, into low orbit around Earth. Overnight, the country’s national security was apparently at risk, and Congress responded with the National Defense Education Act (NDEA), which channeled federal funds into mathematics, science, and foreign language programs in the nation’s high schools and universities. NDEA differed from previous federal incursions into the field of education in that it marked the first time that funds were allocated categorically to particular subject areas in the academic program. Of course, exerting federal influence in the academic program has since become common and the role of the federal government in education has grown dramatically (Urban, 2010). Beginning with the initial rationale that education was critical to national security, the federal role in education steadily expanded as Congress identified new risks to address—the effects of poverty on educational achievement in the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the problem of racial isolation in the Emergency School Aid Act, the challenges of English language learners in the Bilingual Education Act, to name a few (Graham, 2005; Reese, 2005; Spring, 2014; Urban, 2010).
Thirty years ago, A Nation at Risk famously warned that America’s public schools were committing “unilateral intellectual disarmament,” and that the educational system was “presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a Nation and a people” (p. 1). Secretary of Education Terrel Bell and the members of the Commission on Educational Excellence who produced the report succeeded in linking education with economic competitiveness, maintaining that “our once unchallenged preeminence in commerce, industry, science and technological innovation is being overtaken by competitors throughout the world” (p. 1). Members of the Commission concluded that, just as the launch of Sputnik I threatened our national security, so the failings of the public education system threatened our economic security and the nation’s preeminent position in the global economy. A Nation at Risk did not consider the Soviet Union a threat, but recognized Japan, Germany, and Korea as our new rivals in the global economy. Although the authors of the report produced no compelling evidence that demonstrated a causal relationship between public education and economic vitality, there is no question that, for much of the general public and their representatives in Congress, such a link seemed apparent. Unquestionably, the report gained traction in part because of the fortuitous timing of its release. In 1984 the United States was struggling with stagnant economic growth, unemployment at its highest levels since the Great Depression, growing trade deficits, and an expanding federal debt (Conte and Karr, 2001). The source of the nation’s economic ills, the report suggested, was the nation’s public schools.
Most recently, the Klein/Rice report has attempted to extrapolate the relationship between public education, national security, and economic prosperity. Borrowing arguments from A Nation at Risk, and appropriating the national security rationale from the National Defense Education Act, the Council of Foreign Relations report offers a bleak assessment of American public education. Titled “U.S. Education Reform and National Security,” the Klein/Rice report draws rather dubious conclusions regarding how the state of public education could jeopardize America’s standing as the world’s lone military superpower and imperil our position in the global economic order. Making good use of the same sensational language employed in A Nation at Risk, the Foreword to the report begins by flatly stating: “it will come as no surprise to most readers that America’s primary and secondary schools are widely seen as failing” (ix). Klein and Rice argue that educational failure puts the United States’ future economic prosperity, global position, and physical safety at risk, and that the country “will not be able to keep pace—much less lead—globally unless it moves to fix the problems it has allowed to fester for too long” (p. 58).
According to the Klein/Rice report, “when measured against global standards, far too many U.S. schools are failing to teach students the academic skills and knowledge they need to compete and succeed” (p. 3). It is not entirely clear what the authors consider to be the battery of skills and knowledge necessary to compete and succeed, but the report relies largely on the results from the Program of International Student Assessment (PISA), an international comparative assessment administered to 15-year-olds in reading, mathematics, and science. Since it was first administered in 1999, the United States has consistently fallen in the middling ranks on the PISA, and the same is true for other international comparative assessments. Klein and Rice argue that these results reveal “persistent weaknesses in U.S. elementary and secondary schools” (p. 15). Moreover, they conclude that “large, undereducated swaths of the population damage the ability of the United States to physically defend itself, protect its secure information, conduct diplomacy, and grow its economy” (p. 13).
In addressing the many perceived shortcomings of American public education, Klein and Rice offer three major recommendations. The first two contribute nothing new to the contemporary debates around the nation’s education system. First, they urge the adoption of an expanded version of the Common Core State Standards to serve as a national curriculum of standards and assessments, which would ensure that America’s youth are “mastering the skills and knowledge necessary to safeguard the country’s national security” (p. 5). Second, they recommend “structural changes” in the educational system with the objective of creating an environment characterized by “enhanced choice and competition,” arguing that such conditions would “fuel innovation” and “transform results” (p. 5). The final recommendation is for a nebulous “national security readiness audit,” the purpose of which would be to assess whether students were learning the skills and knowledge required to safeguard the country’s national security and continued economic prosperity. Klein and Rice suggest that the federal government provide incentives to states to develop the national audit, with the expectation that the results would be widely publicized and spur additional reform.
Although Klein and Rice intended for their work to serve as “a clarion call to the nation, aiming to magnify the need for change” (p. xi), the report has not sparked a significant change in the direction of educational reform. While the curious proposal for a national security readiness audit has not been seriously considered at any level, the recommendations for increased school choice, enhanced competition between schools, and the adoption of a national curriculum merely echo proposals that have been hotly debated for more than two decades (Apple, 1993, 1996; Berliner and Glass, 2014; Bracey, 2003). Indeed, several members of the very task force chaired by Klein and Rice objected strongly to the report’s endorsement of increased competition between schools and expansion of school choice as two drivers of improved educational performance (Artigiani, 2012; Darling-Hammond, 2012; Walt, 2012; Weingarten, 2012). Other elements of the report have sparked passionate rebuttals. Klein and Rice’s unusual philosophical perspective, suggesting that the nation’s most compelling interest in children of school age is that they are the “human capital” that will continue to insure America’s position as a global military and economic leader, has been widely criticized (Zhao, 2012). So, too, has the remarkably anti-democratic position espoused by Klein and Rice that the greatest purpose for public education is to serve the nation’s economic and national security interests (Ravitch, 2013). Finally, others have questioned the legitimacy of the threat to national security, noting that military spending in the United States is approximately 75 percent that of the rest of the world combined (Berliner, 2013; Global Firepower, 2014; Walt, 2012).
All told, it seems unlikely that the Klein/Rice report will produce major shifts in federal educational policy. The report is a classic piece of fearmongering, but in the absence of a tangible “crisis,” it hasn’t captured the kind of momentum that the NDEA and A Nation at Risk harnessed. Nevertheless, those previous crises have profoundly shaped the federal role in public education.
Responding to perceived risks
Prior to the Soviet Union’s launch of Sputnik I in 1957, the federal government had a very limited role in public education. The sputnik crisis, however, facilitated a radical departure from the detachment Congress had generally exhibited in educational issues. One year after Sputnik, Congress responded with broad bipartisan support for federal education funding in the interest of national security. The National Defense Education Act (NDEA) initially allocated $1 billion to a bevy of programs at all levels of the nation’s educational system. In the public school system, NDEA funds were targeted at science, mathematics, and foreign language instruction, and also fueled the growth of student guidance and testing services in order to identify promising students in those fields. Although the NDEA was a targeted measure designed to address a particular risk associated with the technology gap exposed by the Soviet Union’s satellite launch, the impact of that piece of legislation reached far beyond the late 1950s. The NDEA asserted a federal interest in the public school system and underscored the federal government’s authority to intervene in the educational system in support of national security and the country’s general welfare. In that regard, the NDEA laid the foundation for subsequent federal education initiatives, and the federal government’s influence in education has steadily expanded since (Urban, 2010).
By the time A Nation at Risk was released, Congress had long resolved whatever reservations that body once had regarding the federal government’s role in public education. The National Defense Education Act provided a rationale for asserting a federal interest in the nation’s schools and the passage of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act seven years later emphatically underscored a federal role in public education. School districts across the country relied on infusions of federal funds for the operation of various programs, particularly Title I, and federal dollars accounted for as much as 10 percent of the operating budget in dozens of large urban districts.
Moreover, A Nation at Risk established education as a national concern, and educational policy has occupied a central place in political discussions at the national level ever since its publication. Whereas in previous presidential elections there was no expectation that candidates for the nation’s highest office would have any specific ideas regarding school reform, in 1988 George H.W. Bush announced that he intended to be the “education president.” Every serious candidate for the presidency since has had an agenda for education, and the same can be said for candidates in Congressional races. Meaningful change, however, came rather slowly.
Despite the volumes of rhetoric generated by A Nation at Risk concerning the state of public education in America, very little changed between the mid-1980s and the mid-1990s. Essentially, none of the report’s major recommendations became policy. The length of the school day and school year remained unchanged, there was no indication that more homework was assigned, federal funding for education did not increase, and significant numbers of teachers continued to teach classes that were outside of the subject areas in which they held certification. A cornerstone of A Nation at Risk recommendations, the “New Basics,” made some headway as more high school students were enrolled in the academic core and a number of states raised their graduation requirements (National Center for Education Statistics, 1995). Although many of its recommendations were fruitless, A Nation at Risk shaped the ideological debate for a considerably more consequential and far-reaching federal role in public education.
Since 2000, the role of the federal government in public education has steadily grown, to the point that local control of schools is no longer true in any meaningful sense. Issues of teacher certification, curriculum standards, assessment practices, reporting student achievement data, school safety, and hosts of other concerns are now largely the domain of the federal government, generally acting through state governments and utilizing the inducements of federal money to assure compliance. Of course, the principal law that has reshaped the landscape of American public education is No Child Left Behind (NCLB). With some modifications, federal educational policy in 2014 remains grounded in the fundamental framework established in 2002 by NCLB. In broad strokes, contemporary educational policy in the United States is focused on market-based competition centered on accountability and tracking student performance on standardized tests. Schools that succeed in producing appropriate academic gains across all disaggregated groups of students in a few select subject areas are rewarded; those that are unsuccessful are labeled as failing and face sanctions that are increasingly severe with each year of failure.
This system of high-stakes assessments, increased accountability, and rewards and sanctions attached to student performance has spawned a variety of unintended and arguably damaging outcomes. It is well documented that NCLB has resulted in a narrower curriculum that emphasizes drilling students on discrete sets of facts, concepts, and skills—largely in literacy and mathematics—with the intent of producing acceptable scores each year. The myopic drive to produce satisfactory test scores has also generated intense pressure on teachers to forsake their own professionalism and faithfully implement highly prescriptive and regimented teaching methods and materials. Furthermore, there are countless examples of teachers and administrators cheating to ensure acceptable scores for their students and schools. In some districts, there is evidence of systemic distortion and manipulation in the reporting of test score data and dropout figures. Still further, thousands of lower-achieving students have been retained at grade levels that are not subject to testing, forced out of the school system, or denied diplomas because they cannot pass the required tests (Haney, 2000; Meier and Wood, 2004; Leung, 2004). In short, there is considerable evidence in multiple areas that unreasonable emphasis placed on test scores and fear of sanctions has compelled teachers and school administrators to skew the curriculum, abandon their own professionalism, act unethically, distort achievement data, and deny students access to education. All of these outcomes raise serious questions regarding the validity of the standardized testing regime (Nichols and Berliner, 2007).
To some degree, it is fair to conclude that the fallout from contemporary educational policy in the United States has distorted the system and undermined some of the qualities that historically have made American education unique. In particular, it is reasonable to suggest that public education in this country has grown increasingly risk-averse and hostile to uncertainty. Essentially, policymakers have sought to create conditions in which the innumerable uncertainties involved in the process of teaching and learning are blunted such that the outcomes—evidence of student achievement as measured by standardized assessments—are rendered reliable and predictable. In other words, contemporary education policy is aimed at reducing or eliminating the variability from one teacher to the next, one student to the next, and one school to the next. The emphasis on uniformity, standardization, and the primacy of data results is characteristic of scientific management principles applied to education with the aim of taming uncertainty. It is a system in which local control is no longer a meaningful construct, the autonomy of individual teachers has been radically reduced, and innovation, creativity, and risk-taking are actively discouraged.
Resisting uniformity
One central theme in American educational policy over the past few decades has been the drive toward standardization and uniformity. Momentum behind the standards movement had been building since the publication of A Nation at Risk and in 1990 President George H.W. Bush and Congress allocated federal funds for the development of national education goals in several content areas. The results over the next handful of years were somewhat disappointing for advocates of a national curriculum. In some content areas, such as science, competing sets of standards were produced by multiple organizations. In numerous instances, states chose to develop their own standards independent of those produced by the professional organizations. Still further, when viewed collectively, the various content area documents delineated hundreds of standards and thousands of benchmarks—far too many for all to be addressed adequately in any child’s public school education. Perhaps the best examples of this phenomenon were the civics and history standards, which each encompassed more than 400 benchmarks (Marzano and Kendall, 1998). Although history and civics were perhaps the most egregious offenders, the standards documents illustrated what Chester Finn called “gluttonous and imperialistic tendencies” in each content area to view their subject as the most important and worthy of the most time in any school day or year (quoted in Diegmuller, 1995, p. 6).
Despite the mixed results of the late 1990s, the standards movement pressed forward, and by the time No Child Left Behind became law every state had adopted standards and most had instituted accountability systems to measure student performance. Although the quest for a national curriculum may have again faltered, as evidenced by the recent controversies around the Common Core State Standards and the Next Generation Science Standards, accountability and high-stakes testing are nationwide realities. NCLB required school districts and states to report student performance on standardized tests and to document annual progress toward 100 percent proficiency for all students in the areas of literacy and mathematics. Regardless of whether one views the goals of NCLB as realistically attainable or not, there is no disputing that in practice, the mandate to report standardized test scores, coupled with the escalating sanctions that accompany unsatisfactory assessment results, have produced countless unintended, and frequently damaging, consequences.
Pressure to meet the accountability goals articulated in NCLB has inspired a curious variety of conservativism among teachers and school officials. As Eisner (1997) has argued, in times of crisis, the educational system—already relatively conservative—becomes increasingly conservative. In this climate, teachers rely on traditional methods in order to minimize the risk of failure (Sahlberg, 2006). In short, schools have become much more risk-averse and have systematically implemented measures designed to mitigate risk. Essentially, school officials have attempted to tame the numerous uncertainties inherent in a human enterprise such as education and scientifically manage the system such that it renders predictable outcomes for student achievement. This sort of thinking underlies the current push toward a standardized basic skills curriculum focused largely on a limited array of content areas—literacy and mathematics, in particular. Furthermore, since the existing system has established student performance on standardized assessments as the measure of whether schools and teachers are succeeding or failing, the response has been retrenchment. The dogged pursuit of satisfactory tests scores has resulted in a distorted curriculum that values conformity and discourages innovation, creativity, and risk-taking.
The impacts that standardization and accountability have had on schools is widely documented in scholarly and popular literature. Some have focused on the reordering of the school day such that larger blocks of instructional time are devoted to mathematics and literacy skills at the expense of social studies, science, physical education, music, art, and other curricular areas that are not tested. In the elementary grades, the amount of time devoted to studying social studies, physical education, music, and science has declined by about one-third (Au, 2013; Jones et al., 2003; McMurrer, 2007). These studies all have found that content areas that are not subject to standardized assessments are viewed as lower priority by teachers and administrators, and the amount of time dedicated to those subjects has declined accordingly, particularly at the elementary level.
Reorganizing the school day such that significantly larger blocks of instructional time are committed to literacy and mathematics has frequently been coupled with additional mandates. In the realm of teaching methods, highly structured scripted curricula are a clear manifestation of the desire to “teacher-proof” the curriculum and mitigate the impact that an individual teacher may have on student performance. By 2001, one in every eight California schools was using Open Court, a scripted reading program. In 2006, a nationwide study revealed that more than 1500 schools in 48 states had adopted Success for All, just one of several scripted literacy programs (Ede, 2006). Although scripted programs are most common in the elementary grades, the use of packaged curricula with rigidly structured activities is widespread at all levels, as are tightly focused and regimented curriculum guides.
With respect to curriculum and assessment, much attention has focused recently on the concept of the guaranteed and viable curriculum (GVC). At its heart, the GVC clearly articulates the knowledge and skills that all students should acquire in a particular content area, and ensures that all students have equal opportunity to learn material and acquire skills regardless of the teacher. The GVC is typically a lengthy bulleted list of knowledge, concepts, and skills that students should master as they progress through the school system. The notion that such a curriculum is “guaranteed” has proven to be an attractive incentive for adopting GVC, particularly because the GVC is aligned with assessments designed to measure student performance. In short, the adoption of a GVC is supposed to make student achievement predictable and reliable. Indeed, Marzano (2012) maintains that, when paired with other school effectiveness measures, a school will experience “a dramatic shift in the way it ‘does business’ and can guarantee that every student has mastered specific content necessary for success in the 21st century” (p. 2). Of course, the successful implementation of the GVC or any other packaged curriculum relies in part on the fidelity of teachers. Deviating from the program is strongly discouraged and pressure to use the program in the prescribed manner is enforced by administrators and supervisors (Ravitch, 2010). In an age where one principal goal of education is to document that all students are making adequate progress in mastering content and basic skills on high-stakes assessments, a program that guarantees results is an attractive proposition for a school or school district.
The widespread adoption of uniform standards and assessments, “teacher-proof” scripted curricula, and guaranteed viable curricula are indicative of the risk-aversion that prevails in America’s public schools. Each of the initiatives above is crafted as a measure to mitigate risk and attempt to bring standardization and predictability to educational results by applying techniques of scientific management to schooling. In such systems teachers are considered technicians tasked with merely following directions, rather than viewed as professionals who are capable of making reasoned judgments and exercising some autonomy in their field of expertise (Nichols and Berliner, 2007; Sleeter, 2008). In this educational climate, conformity and fidelity to the directives handed down from administration are highly valued and actively reinforced in ways that undermine teacher autonomy and devalue the work of teachers. Indeed, teachers who deviate from prescribed plans and engage in risk-taking do so at their peril.
Recent surveys have revealed that accountability mandates, coupled with measures undermining autonomy and de-skilling teachers, are crippling morale and job satisfaction in the teaching profession. The 2013 MetLife Survey of the American Teacher found that only 39 percent of teachers were very satisfied with their jobs, a decline of 23 percentage points in a five-year period. Moreover, the survey revealed that teachers and principals have little faith that the pervasive imposition of greater standardization actually produces the intended result. Fewer than one in five teachers and administrators responded that they believed the implementation of the Common Core would improve student achievement (Strauss, 2013). Beyond the findings related to education professionals, there is evidence that standardization and the testing regime have adversely affected student motivation and engagement in school. High-achieving students find the narrow curriculum boring, fragmented, and devoid of challenge; others resent curricula developed around drilling for mastery of isolated skills that have no relevance to their real lives; and still others object to the amount of time devoted to preparing for tests that they do not recognize as being meaningful (Foster, 2006; Nichols and Berliner, 2008). It is not unreasonable to conclude that one of the more significant impacts of the standardization and accountability system has been the draining of much of the interest and enjoyment out of teaching and learning for students and teachers alike (Moran, 2012; Nichols and Berliner, 2008).
Rediscovering creative thinking
One common theme that appears in many school district mission statements is something along the lines of an affirmation that the school system will prepare students with the knowledge and skills to succeed in a changing world. Of course, it is difficult to ascertain just what skills and knowledge students will need to thrive in the future. For example, most children entering elementary school in the 1980s would have progressed through their public school career blissfully unaware that the Internet would revolutionize the sharing of information shortly after they graduated high school. Nevertheless, there is some expectation that schools equip their students with the skills that will allow them to make their way in the world. Given that expectation, it is important to consider what variety of skills students might need in order to be well prepared for a changing world.
In the current educational climate, the knowledge and skills that are most highly valued in schools are those that appear on standardized tests, and the importance of standardized test results is paramount in the ways that administrators and teachers think about curriculum, instruction, and assessment. However, there is considerable debate regarding how valuable those skills and that knowledge are beyond the standardized assessments, and whether the basic skills tested for in standardized assessments have much utility outside of the test. Given that there is some expectation that what is learned in school actually is applicable to the world outside of school and that students should be prepared to be successful in that larger context, one should consider the types of skills and knowledge that might be of greatest benefit. Of course, there is no consensus regarding what learning is of most benefit or provides a competitive advantage, but surely it goes beyond basic literacy and numeracy.
A recent survey of 1500 chief executive officers from 60 countries and representing 33 different industries found that 60 percent of the respondents cited creativity as the single most important quality for successful leadership in the global economy (IBM, 2010). Business leaders recognized the importance of thinking divergently and generating multiple possible solutions to problems as key abilities in navigating a complex and changing global marketplace. Creativity is a highly valued trait and creative thinking a highly valued skill, not just among CEOs but in the general public as well. A 2012 survey of 5000 adults in five different countries also found that two-thirds of those surveyed believed creativity is valuable to society at large, and about 80 percent agreed that creativity was vital to driving economic growth (Adobe, 2012). Regrettably, creative thinking in the United States is suffering of late.
One widely recognized measure of creativity is the Torrance Test of Creative Thinking (TTCT). Since its development in the 1950s, the TTCT has been administered to millions of children around the world, including thousands of American children every year since 1958. For three decades, the scores achieved by children from the United States on the TTCT steadily increased. However, since 1990, American children’s scores have trended downward across all categories of creative thinking measured in the test (Kim, 2011). Of course, the decline in creative thinking ability among America’s youth is influenced by a myriad of factors, both within and outside of schools. Recent research indicates that part of the decline is attributable to increases in the number of hours during which children passively engage in watching television or playing video games in which the parameters of the game and the objectives within the game are defined by the programmers. Other research points to reductions in the amount of time during which children engage in unstructured activity or play in which they invent their own games and rules (Hirsh-Pasek and Golinkoff, 2003; Hirsh-Pasek et al., 2009). With respect to school-related factors, the decline in creative thinking has been linked to the narrowing of the curriculum, the increased emphasis on standardized testing, and shifts in curriculum and teaching methods toward more rote recitation and drilling for mastery of discrete skills (Gentry, 2006).
Schools are not solely responsible for developing and promoting creative thinking in students, but there is wide agreement that teachers and the public education system generally have some role in cultivating those abilities. Regrettably, the perception is that the country’s schools are not fulfilling this expectation. According to the Adobe survey, 62 percent of those surveyed in the United States responded that the educational system stifles creativity. In part, the survey concluded that several situational factors influence creative thinking, including an environment that encourages risk-taking, a climate which recognizes and accepts that failure is part of the creative process, and a setting that values individuals’ unique ideas without judging those ideas (Adobe, 2012). In contemporary American classrooms, some of these factors are not present and students engage in little risk-taking, idea generation, or creative problem-solving.
The prevailing educational policy climate does not promote creative thinking, but rather rewards more structured teaching methods. In many classrooms, considerable time and effort is devoted to engaging students in drilling for mastery of particular skills and discrete pieces of knowledge. These are closed tasks with one correct answer for a problem, and arriving at the one correct answer is an exercise in convergent thinking that mimics the format of items on standardized assessments (Craft, 2005). Because the accountability system is structured such that the evaluation of students—and, by extension, their teachers—is largely determined by scores on standardized tests, drilling for mastery of the types of items that appear on the tests is rewarded (Sahlberg, 2006). Teaching to the test not only assures that students will have extensive experience with exercises that are similar to test items, but also promotes a mindset in which there is only one correct answer to a particular problem or item. Quite simply, because it is not rewarded, there is little incentive for teachers to take risks and experiment with novel approaches to teaching and learning (Eisner, 1997).
Promoting creative thinking clearly involves risk-taking and embracing uncertainty on the part of teachers and students alike. For teachers, there is considerable pressure to rely on highly structured materials and instructional methods that are aligned to assessments. Departing from those formulaic approaches to teaching entails coming to accept uncertainty regarding the results (Cochran-Smith, 1991). Teaching practices that promote creative thinking and idea generation do not follow a script. These approaches are open-ended and consciously intended to encourage divergent thinking that leads to a multitude of possible strategies and solutions to a given task. By design, there is no single correct answer. Moreover, engaging students in divergent thinking and creative problem-solving entails a commitment of time and the recognition that creative thinking is highly individualized and there is tremendous variability in how much time is required for students to move through the process (Craft, 2005). To be sure, there is great risk here. There is no assurance that students will perform better on standardized assessments because they have been exposed to open-ended tasks that encourage divergent thinking and creative problem-solving. Nevertheless, developing these abilities is highly valued, and there is evidence that possessing these abilities is crucial for students to thrive in a rapidly changing world.
Some economists and educators have suggested that the ability to think creatively, effectively use information, apply innovative new technology, and adapt ideas to unique new circumstances represents skills that have become increasingly valuable in the knowledge-based global economy (Hargreaves, 2003; Schweke, 2004). Sahlberg (2006) argues that the prevailing influences in educational policy inhibit teachers and administrators from adopting innovative practices. He maintains that in order for there to be creativity in schools, there must be flexibility in the educational system, encouragement of risk-taking, and acknowledgment that teachers have the autonomy to experiment with innovative approaches to teaching and learning. Therein lies an important paradox. Although policymakers concerned about promoting economic competitiveness urge the public schools to become dynamic centers of innovation and creativity, the accountability system that those same policymakers have created and the sanctions that are attached to failure actively discourage risk-taking and experimenting with novel teaching practices.
In some respects, the bureaucratic oversight of the accountability system, fear of failure, and the loss of teacher autonomy have coalesced in such a way that risk-taking and promoting creative thinking are no longer priorities in many classrooms. Moreover, although there is no concerted effort in American schools to nurture the creativity of children, other countries have taken steps to promote creative thinking in their school systems. Since 2000, Great Britain has been engaged in a nationwide initiative to revise curricula with the objective of promoting creative thinking at all educational levels (Craft, 2005). Similarly, China has begun to abandon its test-driven, skill-and-drill curriculum in favor of problem-based learning, creative and critical thinking, and a more comprehensive curriculum designed to cultivate a variety of talents and abilities (Bronson and Merryman, 2010; Zhao, 2009).
There is some irony in recent developments. For decades, Chinese officials recognized that innovation and creativity in China had lagged far behind the United States (Hannas, 2003). Recent reforms in China are aimed at closing the creativity gap and represent a dramatic shift in educational priorities (Zhao, 2009). While touring schools in Beijing and Shanghai, University of Indiana professor Jonathan Plucker discussed educational trends with his Chinese university counterparts. Plucker characterized American education as focused on standardized curriculum, rote memorization, and nationalized testing. When his statement was translated, Plucker said the Chinese professors laughed out loud and replied, “You’re racing toward our old model. But we’re racing toward your model, as fast as we can” (Bronson and Merryman, p. 46). In seeking to impose order, uniformity, and standardization in America’s public school system, it is possible that the country is unintentionally sacrificing the innovation and creativity that have been competitive advantages all along.
Recognizing the limitations of data
In American education, it is the age of data. At all levels—classroom, school, school district, state, and nation—data is collected in unprecedented volumes. Leading policymakers, such as Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, routinely reference the improved outcomes that can be achieved by “unleashing the power of data” (Department of Education, 2010a). School leadership programs continually reference data-driven decision-making (Datnow and Park, 2014; Kowalski et al., 2008; Picciano, 2006); schools and school districts produce annual reports loaded with data-rich tables, charts, and graphs; and teachers are compelled to meet regularly in data teams to pore over assessment results. There is something attractive—and useful—about distilling the remarkably complex activity that transpires in schools down to neat data sets that lend themselves to colorful charts and graphs. The difficulty lies in recognizing that no matter how much data is collected, what is captured is an incomplete snapshot of a particular moment in time. In short, data has its limitations (Economic Policy Institute, 2010; Nichols and Berliner, 2007).
Dense systems for collecting and analyzing data are characteristic of scientific management and the desire to impose order and render the outcomes of a complex enterprise reliable and predictable. Originally, scientific management techniques pioneered by Frederick Winslow Taylor in the early twentieth century were applied to industrial operations in an effort to gain efficiency in production, eliminate waste, and increase profits. By systematically collecting data on each step of the production process, industrial managers could determine with a high degree of precision how much output could be produced reliably during each working shift. Taylor’s methods were widely adopted and became standard operating procedures for factories around the industrialized world (Montgomery, 1987). Taming uncertainties and creating conditions in which the outcomes were rendered more predictable and reliable were attractive concepts in numerous fields, including public education (Callahan, 1962). The current obsession with using data to measure student achievement, teaching effectiveness, curriculum alignment, quality of teacher education programs, and so on clearly has its roots in scientific management. However, it is quite reasonable to argue that although scientific management revolutionized industrial processes, it has been inappropriate and naïve to assume that applying similar techniques to education could result in reliably predictable outcomes.
Many of the problems associated with the uses and misuses of assessment data have been explored in detail. The focus on assessments in only a few content areas has skewed the curriculum and is contributing to the atrophy of the liberal arts in public schools (Zastrow and Janc, 2004). Assessments don’t evaluate countless skills and values, including creativity, critical thinking, problem solving, perseverance, civic-mindedness, self-discipline, focus, and teamwork (Bracey, 2003). With respect to the objective of using data to measure academic progress, the literature is rife with examples of how data is falsified, manipulated, and distorted (Berliner, 2008; Cronin, 2003). There is considerable variability in the measures that different states have adopted to determine student proficiency on assessments, thereby rendering comparisons between states misleading at best, and arguably meaningless (Kingsbury et al., 2003). Attempts to link student performance on standardized assessments to teacher effectiveness are riddled with inconsistencies and are influenced by numerous factors completely unrelated to individual teachers (Economic Policy Institute, 2010).
Despite these concerns, extraordinary commitments of time, resources, personnel, and money are dedicated to educational assessment. Much of this effort is devoted to establishing conditions in which the results of standardized assessments will be made predictable and reliable. The tension here, however, is that industrial models of scientific management have been applied to an exceedingly complex human enterprise. It is important to recognize that, no matter how much attention is paid to taming the countless uncertainties in education, teaching and learning remain quintessentially human processes (Moran, 2012). There will always be ambiguity in educational data, and it may be wise to acknowledge that not all of the diverse goals and objectives are measured by standardized assessments, nor can they be. To adopt such a perspective regarding the data clearly involves embracing some risk and some uncertainty. It is perhaps unfortunate that a plurality of policymakers, at all levels, are more inclined to formulate policy from a position of risk-aversion. The desire to tame risk and reliably produce satisfactory test scores has resulted in a bureaucratic accountability system that compels teachers and administrators to react conservatively and avoid risk-taking.
Rethinking competition
A hallmark of accountability measures currently in effect in the United States is that schools, teachers, and students are engaged in a competition around test scores. At the school level, market-based systems are designed to promote competition in which it is possible to identify the highest-scoring schools, which then accrue additional benefits, and identify those that are struggling, which are then subject to sanctions and ultimately reorganization or closure if their performance does not improve. Such a system is crafted to put struggling schools “out of business” and force ineffective teachers—those with students whose test scores are lower—out of the profession. With respect to personnel, merit pay and performance-based compensation models, which link teacher and administrator compensation to test scores, encourage teachers to view students not in terms of their potential or the unique qualities they bring to the classroom, but rather as vehicles through which test scores are either increased or suppressed. The accountability system inherently implies—for teachers and students alike—that the primary purpose for learning is to score well on the tests. Furthermore, students recognize that they are valued, or devalued, because of their performance on high-stakes tests (Nichols and Berliner, 2007, 2008). There are clearly winners and losers in this system, and the system is plainly rigged against the students and schools with the greatest needs (Economic Policy Institute, 2010). The competition to produce satisfactory test scores has established an atmosphere that inhibits collaboration between teachers and encourages those with the most successful strategies for improving student achievement to guard their secrets. Still further, the sanctions and stigma attached to “failing” schools virtually assure that the best teachers will avoid teaching in those schools and, consequently, that the student populations with the greatest needs will be taught by the least experienced and least prepared teachers (Nichols and Berliner, 2007).
The competitive nature of the educational system and the increasing pressure on teachers and administrators to produce satisfactory test scores has clearly stifled creativity, innovation, and risk-taking among education professionals. Teachers have acquiesced to the imposition of rigidly structured linear curricula, prescribed teaching methods, and mandated learning targets such that it has undermined their autonomy and devalued their education, training, professional judgment, and teaching experience. This is particularly troubling as it is not clear that competition necessarily improves the quality of education or has tangible benefits beyond the bragging rights associated with high scores.
Perhaps if there were meaningful causal relationships between standardized assessment results and indictors of economic growth or well-being, or if there were any directly measurable benefits associated with high test scores, it might be worth attempting to reform and preserve the current accountability system. Unfortunately for proponents of high-stakes standardized testing, there is no evidence of such benefits. In fact, some studies suggest that the opposite is true. According to Baker’s (2007) analysis of the 1964 First International Mathematics Study (FIMS), the higher a country’s test score, the worse its economic performance in the four decades since the test was administered. In FIMS, the United States placed 11th of the 13 participating countries, and in the 40-plus years since FIMS the United States has continued to be the world’s leading economic and military superpower. Moreover, since the FIMS test debuted in 1964, there have been numerous other international studies and competitions ranking participating countries in literacy, mathematics and science. As with the original FIMS results, the United States typically does not fare very well in such studies, and yet it continues to rank near the top in global competitiveness indices (Salburg, 2006).
It is unfortunate that policymakers appear to have ascribed predictive qualities to the results of international comparative assessments. This line of reasoning has much to do with the direction of contemporary educational policy in America. One driver of educational reform since A Nation at Risk has been the premise that educational achievement must be improved in order for the country to remain competitive in the global economy. Such thinking remains highly influential today. Indeed, in discussing the 2009 results from PISA, President Obama warned that the country that “out-educates us today will outcompete us tomorrow” (Department of Education, 2010b). Baker’s study indicates that there is little truth in such a premise. Nevertheless, competition around test scores remains a staple of the current accountability system, despite strong evidence that it distorts the aims of the public education system, discourages risk-taking in innovative teaching methods, squelches innovation and creativity, victimizes lower-achieving and disadvantaged students, and is a poor indicator of future global competitiveness.
Conclusions: winning the future?
In his 2012 re-election campaign, Barack Obama pledged that federal policies in multiple areas would be crafted with the aim of “winning the future.” According to the president, the formula for winning the future would entail “out-innovating, out-educating, and out-building our competitors” (White House, 2012). “Out-building our competitors” referred largely to improving the nation’s infrastructure, and that element is of less interest to the topic at hand. The dual references to innovation and education are more germane to a discussion of risk-taking. Winning the future is forward-thinking and clearly embraces risk-taking with the prospect of future advantages, future returns, future profits. However, contemporary educational policy in the United States can hardly be characterized as forward-thinking and plainly is more aligned with risk aversion than risk-taking. Indeed, one could convincingly argue that current educational policy in America is overtly hostile to risk-taking and, as a consequence, the nation’s school-age population has fewer opportunities to develop diverse interests and talents that could potentially benefit the country. Moreover, the reforms that have been implemented are ineffective in developing critical thinking, creative problem-solving, cooperation, and teamwork—all skills that may be highly prized in a rapidly changing world.
Is reform needed in American education? Perhaps—no doubt there are areas where schools and teachers could improve, and there is little question that much of the general public believes that educational outcomes in the United States could improve (Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup, 2013). However, the reforms currently in place seem decidedly ill suited for the contemporary world. Educational policy in America, as it stands, is anchored to basic skills accountability measures almost exclusively situated in literacy and mathematics. Of course, it is exceedingly difficult to project what sets of skills and abilities students should be taught so that they are well prepared for some unknown future. That said, it would seem reasonable to suggest that they may need more than just literacy and mathematics. Moreover, it is difficult to imagine a future in which penciling in bubbles on an answer sheet could constitute a skill that provides a competitive advantage in the global economy.
Contemporary educational policy in the United States is geared toward mastery of low order skills and minimum competencies in only a few content areas. This may not be an utterly worthless goal, but it seems anachronistic in a modern world where thriving depends on the ability to adapt quickly to changing circumstances. Abilities that will allow today’s students to thrive in tomorrow’s global society are those that are flexible and adaptable to different situations and settings, coupled with the confidence to take risks. Given that we are already living in an age where near-limitless volumes of information are literally available at one’s fingertips with a smartphone, recitation of discrete facts and concepts is not likely to be a highly valued skill in the future. With these considerations in mind, it may be worthwhile to reassess the nation’s current direction in educational reform.