It’s a pleasure to be here with you today. I’m Rick Hess, Director of Education Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute, and I’m here to talk with you about my new book. I called it Tough Love for Schools. Why? As a former teacher, I’m often struck that we know what good classrooms look like--but we don’t apply any of that same thinking to schools. We know that our best teachers usually employ some form of tough love: they find ways to set high standards, require students to work hard, reject excuses, support creative thinking, and recognize excellence. We know that great teachers excel in different ways. It’s not about recipes or expecting every student to succeed in the same way. Rather, what the best teachers have in common is that they insist on excellence, support it, and help each student succeed on his or her own terms. What the best teachers have in common is that they use their tools to build a classroom where excellence is expected, valued, and achievable.

Yet, we seem to forget all of this common sense when it comes to school reform. We need to bring the same thoughtful toughness to improving schools that the best teachers bring to their classrooms.

Now, some have suggested that our schools are doing okay on the whole. Well, you tell me. Researchers have estimated that only one-third of all 18-year-olds graduate from high school with basic literacy skills and having completed the courses necessary to attend a 4-year college. In fact, barely one-third of 4th or 12th graders are “proficient” readers. In DC, more than half your peers won’t even finish high school.

The thing is, for all the heated debates about schooling, education is an area where there’s surprising agreement on the big questions. Just about everyone thinks students need to be literate and numerate, to have solid content knowledge, to be creative, and to be disciplined and motivated. The disagreements are about how we get there. Sometimes, I think we forget this simple fact, and it’s easy for those who are more concerned about contents or creativity to get caught up in denouncing and attacking each other rather than focusing on what matters.

The real challenge is building an educational system to accomplish our shared goals. That’s where we often fall short. We argue about whether teachers who do a better job should be rewarded--in fact, some people argue that we can’t even tell good teachers from bad teachers.

We offer lots of excuses for schools and teachers that are doing poorly. We impose rules that make it difficult for schools and teachers to operate in new, possibly more effective ways.
Instead of tough thinking and straight talk, we get caught up in mushy sentiments. Reformers declare their love for “the children,” offer saccharine tributes to teachers, and trumpet vague calls for more money and favored programs. Well, that’s all well and good, but I’m less interested in how much someone claims to love teachers and students than in whether their ideas make good sense.

My Perspective

Anyway, let me tell you a bit about how I approach these questions.

My own K-12 experience was both fortunate and largely wasted. I had the privilege of attending the highly acclaimed public schools of Fairfax County, Virginia--just a few miles from here. We moved there because my parents had the dollars to afford a district with great schools--and the savvy to ensure that their kids wound up in good programs. At the same time, I was an example that teachers can only do so much. I was undisciplined, lazy, and unmotivated, and didn’t take much pride in my performance. I excitedly read the Washington Post every day--yep, I was a poor student and a dweeb--yet earned lousy grades.

Like anyone else, I was shaped by some of the great teachers I had--but I was also struck by how little anyone really seemed to notice or care about their efforts--or our performance. Teachers were basically on their own. If they had high standards, then their classrooms did. If they didn’t, that was their business. As far as any of us students could tell, our good teachers and our poor teachers were treated the same, had the same frustrations, and drove the same cars. This was in the 1980s, in the days before charter schooling and school accountability, and so everyone just accepted all of this as a given.

In college, needing money for late-night pizza and textbooks, I started substitute teaching. Somewhat to my astonishment, I found I really liked being back in school--but I was amazed that the way schools were managed reminded me more of the jobs I’d had as a landscaper or yard-hand than of a place that valued ideas or rewarded excellence.

Even so, I thought it was the coolest thing I’d ever done. After graduating, I headed off to Harvard University to study education and get licensed to teach. The next year, I was hired to teach high school in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

Teaching

While teaching in Baton Rouge, I got a glimpse of why our schools have so much trouble. I saw, up close, an organization filled with typical people--some well-meaning, some hardworking, most just trying to juggle all the obligations of life--that did not seek out talent, reward performance, or have any clear sense of what it was supposed to be doing. Like so many districts, it looked like a classroom out of control.

One of many formative experiences was trying to start an Advanced Placement Economics class, as I’d in part been hired to do. First, my teaching schedule didn’t provide any room for the course, so we agreed that I would teach during my preparation period--if we could get district approval.  More than 30 students signed up to take the class. Then there were concerns that the textbooks were too expensive, so we tracked down cheap texts at a used book sale at Louisiana State University.  After we’d worked through these, and other, details, it was determined that I couldn’t teach during my prep period. We were told to give it up, and I was called a pain in the butt, to boot. This experience was just one of many.  And, over the years, I have learned how typical such experiences are for educators across the country.

What I saw was a system of schooling seemingly designed to frustrate competence. Teachers were hired, essentially for life, through haphazard recruiting processes. There was no systemic recognition for excellence. Compensation and classroom assignments were treated as rewards for longevity. The result was a culture of incompetence in which educators learned to keep their heads down, play defense, and avoid making waves.

Now, no one said, “Let’s build a bad system.” The schools looked this way because the structure made sense once. In a world where most students went on to work in factories or at other blue-collar jobs, it was enough for schools to keep most children occupied and just educate the privileged. When there was a captive teaching force of talented women with few other career options, we didn’t need to worry about competing for talent or rewarding excellent educators.

The world has changed. That’s the bottom line. A changing economy requires all students to now master skills once needed only by the elite. The assurance that talented female college gradates will be forced to choose teaching due to a lack of other options is long past.

When I went back to Harvard to study to become a professor, I began questioning what it would take to turn that school system--or any system of schooling--into one that would attract, reward, and nurture excellence.

So, let’s talk about that.

Tough Love

Even today in the world of K-12 schooling, it’s hard to find anyone who will bluntly declare that teachers are no more saintly than anyone else, that accountability systems should shut down poor schools and remove lousy teachers, that school districts should be more cost-effective and efficient, that profit-driven competition might be good for public education, or that teaching experience is not essential to being a school principal.

This is natural. Teachers, parents, and public officials are emotionally attached to schools and grow suspicious when they hear reformers talk bluntly about incentives, sanctions, profitability, or competition.

They prefer conventional--what I call “status quo”--reform efforts that presume the nation’s millions of teachers and administrators are already doing the best they can. Consequently, transforming schools is thought to be a question of more money, expertise, training, and support. Folks try smaller schools, smaller classes, new curricula, better teacher training, more funding, and a dozen other things. However, unwilling to consider fundamental change, they allow the status quo to define what is possible.

“Tough love” reformers recognize the merit of many of these suggestions but believe that none of it is enough--not by a long shot. Meanwhile, our country already leads the pack when it comes to international spending on education. In fact, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development reports that the United States spends more than any of our allies, even those famous for their generous social programs. In elementary schooling, for instance, we spend about 30% more per pupil than Japan, 50% more than France, and more than 100% over what South Korea spends. In DC, the public schools are spending about $15,000 per student per year--that’s a lot of money, at least in my book.

So, tough love types don’t think it’s about the money.

Tough love reform focuses on promoting a culture of competence in schools--where success is expected, excellence is rewarded, failure is not tolerated, and professionals are given the respect they deserve.

What Is Tough Love Reform?

What does tough love reform entail? Just as an excellent classroom teacher sets high standards, demands quality work, and then gives students the freedom to dig deep down and discover their best, smart reform demands the same things from--and the same flexibility for--schools.

I want to talk briefly about the seven keys to tough love reform. We can talk about these at more length a bit later:

First, tough love requires holding schools and educators responsible for performance--without blaming educators for all of society’s ills.

Second, it requires encouraging competition through charter schools, vouchers, distance education, and other measures--because accountability alone can be stifling.

Third, school districts need to work in all ways, especially in human resources and use of technology. It can’t be a good school if it’s not hiring good people and supporting them once they’re hired.

Recognizing excellent educators and rewarding them appropriately is essential, and it’s the fourth key to tough love reform.

Fifth, the rules and precautions that define school districts need to be unwound. Along with choice-based reform efforts like charter schooling and supplemental services, lessening of restrictions is part of what is making it easier for educators and others to launch new, creative programs and schools.

Sixth, we must look outside the regular channels for teachers and principals to attract those with the skills we need. Now, expertise is important, and valuable--but we shouldn’t presume we know how to deliver it. Instead, we should cultivate and support it.

Finally, tough love means being tough but fair--it requires that we be reasonable about expectations. We don’t expect a great teacher to ensure that a fourth-grader can master algebra or write like Shakespeare; similarly, we need to be reasonable in what we ask of schools, school systems, and educators.

Just First Steps

These are first steps. By themselves, they won’t make schools excel--just like a great teacher can’t “make” students excel--but they do create the opportunity for schools to get the job done.

Education reform will play out as it should in a democratic nation--through public reasoning, public argument, and public policy. It’s kind of fitting to talk about this here--in a school focused on civic responsibility and public policy. American education is not going to be reinvented by the scientists who venture into their dark laboratories. Schools will be reinvented by dynamic educators and leaders who develop better schools, use advances in technology and knowledge to improve schooling, and devise strategies to lure new and better teachers into the profession. And it will require the support and leadership of Americans, young and old, who believe that together we can--and must--do better.

Frederick M. Hess is a resident scholar and director of education policy studies at AEI.