The previous sections covered the Creation Paradigm, how education based on it can grow the student into both a creator and a self-creator, and why this has to be done, and can only be done, in a liberal democratic society. In the United States, however, politics and the civic conversation tend not to focus on growing students into creators and self-creators. Like shoots bending towards a UV bulb, they reach for tangential issues. All too often, both left and right see schools as culture war battlegrounds. Section 3 discussed how Republicans in Florida are using education in this way. But the left is not immune to the temptation either. Witness the San Francisco School Board’s money and attention-wasting attempt to rename schools named after founding fathers such as Washington and Jefferson, because they owned slaves, as well as non-slave owning figures from Abraham Lincoln to Robert Louis Stevenson, against whose names some sort of black mark could be struck. If the majority of a school’s African-American students and families want the renaming of a school that is currently named after a historical figure who owned slaves, then, out of respect for this community and its historical memory, the school should be renamed. But this is not where the focus of education policy should be.

Neither should the focus be on models of governance, on the merits of traditional public schools, charter schools, or vouchers redeemable at private schools. The debate can be summarized as follows: Should communities favor the traditional public school district, in which an elected school board appoints a superintendent, usually an experienced teacher and school leader, and she appoints assistant principals to run schools and sets policies that apply to all the schools? Or should they prefer charter schools, which are publicly funded and do not charge fees, but are run independently of the school district or any other layer of government? Or should states give vouchers that can be redeemed at schools that are wholly private, and which may charge fees in excess of the sticker price of the voucher?

What makes these questions difficult to resolve is that there are excellent traditional public schools, excellent character schools, and excellent private schools that accept vouchers. Nationwide, however, neither charter schools nor traditional public outperforms the other[i]. For-profit charter schools have generally been less successful[ii]. This is not surprising, given that the most successful private schools are not-for-profit. And it suggests that the profit motive, while it may be very successful in spurring the production of everything from bread to aircraft to financial services, does not lead to good education. Education is best provided by teacher and school leaders who are idealists and who, if they are accountable to anyone other than their students’ families, are accountable to other idealists, not bean counters.

I teach at a private school that only accepts students from limited-income households, does not charge school fees, and is funded by both vouchers and private donations. Data and observation tell me that we are a radically successful school, just as some charter schools and some traditional public schools are successful. But we are not a normal voucher-accepting private school. Overall, these are no more successful than schools of any other kind[iii].

The great debate about models of school governance is actually a distraction, and, if left and right would abandon their ideological fortifications, they might find they could have a discussion of more important issues.

Another sometime distraction—really a set of plausibly helpful educational tools that has been blown up into a distraction—is standardized testing as a way of assessing students, teachers, and schools. Standardized tests can be compromised by test anxiety, poor test taking skills, or a lack of buy-in on the part of students. But, handled well, it can also provide helpful data on students’ progress in a limited number of skills, chiefly basic reading, editing, and math skills.

However, they are not a comprehensive measure of student achievement. In my own subject, English, they do not allow students to demonstrate their writing or speaking skills, their research skills, or their argumentative skills. They do not ask them to analyze texts on a deep level or to consider them in historical context. More broadly, they do not measure students’ ability to create anything—not an analysis, not an argument, not a literary or artistic product, not a scientific study.

Why, then, have standardized texts become, in much of the discussion of education, the be-all and end-all of assessing student progress and school and teacher competence? The answer is not that they are fit for those purposes but that they are easy. They provide relatively simple sets of data from which conclusions can be drawn, without the inconvenience of spending time at a school, observing instruction, interviewing students and other stakeholders, and encountering students’ work. But it is the latter route—the hard, expensive, time consuming route; the one that is largely qualitative rather than quantitative, and therefore harder still—that will actually yield worthwhile conclusions about student progress and the effectiveness of teachers and schools.

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If the culture wars, the great school governance debates, and the standardized testing-focused “accountability” movement are distractions, what are the important matters that they distract from. The answers include curriculum, quality of instruction, extra-curricular programs, and aspects of school culture. Section Two gave ten numbered points of “best practice,” in the light of the Creation Paradigm. Just above, this section has given a brief idea of best practice for the evaluation of teachers and schools, whether by school leaders, district leaders, accreditation bodies, or government entities.

But we have to get out of the idea that there’s one big idea floating around in education policy space that will dramatically improve education. The answers to poor educational outcomes, where these exist, lie rather in best practices by teachers and schools. They lie with teachers and school leaders who are willing to rigorously consider what the best practices may be and to share them with each other and learn from each other. This takes humility. Sadly, not all educators have it. In my experience, many see any suggestion that they could improve their teaching as a personal attack, as a suggestion that they are professionally worthless. The waning of this attitude would do more for education than any policy on the national or state level.

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Improved funding may also help, because better funded schools are better able to hire good teachers and can provide suitable facilities, including well-constructed, clean buildings, books, technology, and subject-specific facilities like science laboratories. Higher teacher salaries may help attract people to the profession and keep them in it, and, over time, may alter its low perceived status among the educated professions.

When more money is needed, it should be provided through progressive taxation. Those who object to this argue that progressive taxes punish effort and success, as though a person’s income is the best measure of their success or how hard they’ve worked for it. They forget, because it’s convenient for them to forget, that schools create opportunities for success of every kind, including the financial kind.

Why should this opportunity be paid for by those who have had (or, just as likely, inherited) more financial success? Can’t we create equal opportunities without reversing unequal outcomes? And aren’t unequal outcomes the product of hard work and ability? The answer to the second question is no, or only to a limited extent. They’re also the product of circumstances or birth and upbringing, of how fortunate people are in their health, of privilege based on race and gender, and also of blind luck.

Besides, equality of opportunity and inequality of outcomes can’t exist together for very long, at least not without very good publicly funded education and other redistributive government policies to preserve equality of opportunity. Inequality of outcome tends towards the creation of a hereditary class system. Parents will give their children the advantages they can give them. This is perfectly natural, and no parent should be blamed for it. But, when some parents are able to give their kids health, freedom from financial worry, and an excellent education, which others struggle to put food on the table, opportunity will gravitate to the children of the first group.

Higher earners should pay more tax not because they are to blame for all society’s ills, but to prevent their monopolizing opportunity for their own children.

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However, education doesn’t just need best practices and adequate funding. It also needs a broader social context that is nurturing of children. Being undernourished or malnourished impedes a child’s education, as well as, of course, their general wellbeing. So does being constantly worried. And parents’ worries infect children, even when parents try to keep their worries to themselves. Neglect also harms children and their education, no matter whether that neglect is voluntary or forced on their parents by a need to work long and unsociable ours just to provide basic necessities. In short, poverty and economic instability feed on children like vampires, sucking their physical health, their emotional health, and their ability to learn. A creative society, above all one that wishes to create creative citizens, must address poverty, through some combination of wage and labor laws and income support programs. Perhaps through a guaranteed minimum income program. Perhaps through strong labor unions and a willingness on the part of business and government to work with them. Definitely through public education about health, including about nutrition, and through vaccination, the maintenance of a clean environment, and provision of health care—at the public expense and by means of progressive taxation.

Schools can help, of course, by providing some nutritious meals and through physical education and sports programs. And perhaps by meeting some health care needs—partnering with community organizations to provide physical check-ups, vaccination, and mental health counselling, for example. But society must not shunt its responsibility for children onto schools, or even onto families. They are our children, our future, and our sacred responsibility.

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[i] See National Conference of State Legislatures: https://www.ncsl.org/research/education/charter-schools-research-and-report.aspx

[ii] Singleton, John D. “Putting dollars before scholars? Evidence from for-profit charter schools in Florida.” Economics of Education Review 58, June 2017, pp. 43-54. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0272775716302527

  Dykgraaf, Christy Lancaster, and Lewis, Shirley Kane. “For-Profit Charter Schools: What the Public Needs to Know.” Educational Leadership 56:2, Oct. 1998, pp. 51-53. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ573478

[iii] “School-Voucher Schemes are Spreading across America.” The Economist, 30 March 2023. https://www.economist.com/united-states/2023/03/30/school-voucher-schemes-are-spreading-across-america