As we embark upon the 2020s, it’s worth taking a final glimpse back at the decade we’re leaving behind. In education, as in so much else, it was a frenetic, polarizing stretch. As I look back, I find myself drawn to certain moments that serve as guideposts in making sense of it all. Here are ten that stick out for me.
The Common Core’s wild ride: In June 2010, the Common Core State Standards in reading and math were released. The U.S. Secretary of Education termed the Common Core the “greatest thing to happen to public education” since the Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown ruling, and the effort enjoyed broad support from elites and major funders. Encouraged by the federal Race to the Top program, more than three dozen states adopted the standards. Within a few years, however, Common Core would be bashed as “Obamacore” on the right and as more evidence of test-obsession on the left. In short order, public officials were distancing themselves from it. The denouement has been a little-noticed effort to insist that the Common Core succeeded, but also that it shouldn’t be held responsible for a lack of progress on national assessments.
Newark’s $100 million gift: In late 2010, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg announced on the Oprah Winfrey show that he would give $100 million to Newark schools after the odd couple of Republican governor Chris Christie and Democratic mayor Cory Booker made the case that Newark could be a model for transforming low-performing urban school systems. In retrospect, with Zuckerberg and other more established funders having changed gears on their giving, the episode can be seen as the high-water mark of a certain kind of muscular philanthropy.
Atlanta’s cheating scandal: In 2011, following on earlier reporting by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation implicated 178 educators in an organized effort to manipulate student answers on state tests. Thirty-five educators were ultimately indicted. While most took plea deals, a dozen went to trial; 11 of the 12 convicted on racketeering charges. Especially given that superintendent Beverly Hall had been honored for her data-driven accomplishments, it was no surprise that “Atlanta” quickly came to serve as shorthand for growing concerns about testing.
President Barack Obama speaks with a student as he signs the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) … [+]
Every Student Succeeds Act: In December 2015, in what was hailed as a “Christmas miracle,” massive majorities of Republicans and Democrats enacted the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), rolling back the more intrusive school accountability provisions in the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act. Their handiwork was quickly signed into law by President Obama. Fueled by congressional frustration with both the Bush administration’s school accountability efforts and the Obama administration’s habit of operating as a “national school board,” ESSA ushered in an era—for good or ill—of more restrained federal leadership in K-12 schooling.
Betsy DeVos’s polarizing confirmation: In January 2017, the U.S. Senate held its confirmation hearing for Betsy DeVos, President Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Education. The hearing turned into a media event, featuring the ferocious attacks on DeVos that would become standard fare. When DeVos suggested that some schools might need guns to protect themselves from grizzly bears, she was lampooned across late night—an intimation of things to come. DeVos was ultimately confirmed after a 50-50 vote when Vice President Pence broke the tie in her favor. DeVos’s tenure would supersize Bush- and Obama-era precedents of the Secretary of Education turning into an increasingly visible, polarizing figure.
Charles Murray at Middlebury: In early 2017, Middlebury students brought concerns over free speech on campus to a boil when AEI scholar Charles Murray was shouted down—and the professor who was hosting him physically assaulted—during a book talk. Footage of the event went viral, while the push to stifle heterodox voices spread across a growing number of campuses. Heterodox Academy held its inaugural Open Mind conference the following year, and Republican legislators in various states pushed legislation to protect free speech on campus. Along the way, it seems that free inquiry itself has morphed from a shared, bedrock principle to one more point of contestation.
West Virginia’s teacher strike: In February 2018, West Virginia’s teachers went on strike. It was the first statewide teacher strike in over a decade. The strike involved 20,000 teachers and school employees and shut down schools in districts across the entire state. After an eight-day strike, the teachers, whose pay ranked 48th in the U.S., won the five percent pay boost they sought. The successful strike in a red state soon inspired equally successful imitations in Oklahoma and Arizona and has been followed by a steady stream of strikes since, in places like Los Angeles, Denver, and Chicago. The resulting attention has shifted the debate around teaching in fundamental ways, with a focus on “teacher pay” taking the central position held for more than a decade by “teacher performance.”
The end of the great teacher evaluation push: In mid-2018, RAND issued its tough appraisal of the Gates Foundation’s multi-district effort to turn teacher evaluation into a powerful tool of school improvement. After seven years and more than $500 million spent, RAND found that the venture hadn’t delivered. That jibed with work Brown University professor Matthew Kraft, who similarly found that ambitious efforts by dozens of states to overhaul their teacher evaluation systems had led to little change in the actual evaluations of teachers. The RAND study was really a postscript on a once-ubiquitous effort which had already lost its oomph: The Gates Foundation had already pivoted away from teacher evaluation, states had lost interest, and teacher strikes were shifting the focus from performance to pay.
The FBI’s “Varsity Blues” sting: In early 2019, the FBI’s investigation into a criminal conspiracy to manipulate college admissions led to more than 50 people being charged. Organized by the sleazy William Rick Singer, the effort included inflated test scores, doctored admissions materials, and bribes. The prosecution, which involved more than 30 parents, cast a harsh light on the easily manipulated nature of elite college admissions. It also illuminated just how willingly these colleges sell access and how little they do to police corruption in their admissions processes.
NAEP scores stagnate: In late 2019, newly released National Assessment of Educational Progress results showed a continued decade-long stagnation in student performance. After a string of steady gains that stretched back to the 1980s, the unnerving results offered a disheartening counterpoint to a swath of frenetic reform efforts. While any number of theories sought to explain the trend, the reality is that no one is sure what’s responsible or what it’ll take to change it.
In education, the 2010s were a decade marked by grand aspirations and more than a little disappointment. Great ventures in philanthropy and school improvement came up short. Meanwhile, ESSA and triumphant teacher strikes seemed to be as much about undoing some of the excesses of the aughts as anything else. A higher education landscape that was once regarded as a national treasure is a source of doubt and division. There’s much work ahead. Fortunately, we have a whole decade in which to tackle it. So let’s get started.
