J.

CURRICULUM STUDIES, 2013

Vol. 45, No. 1, 415, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00220272.2012.754946

Race to the top and leave the children behind

DANIEL TANNER
The USA was the first nation to attain universal secondary education through the
creation of a unitary school structure capped by the uniquely American institution, the
comprehensive or cosmopolitan high school. Other leading democratic nations adopted
the comprehensive model, but not until well after mid-twentieth century. The modern
movement for charter schools was advocated by President George H.W. Bush in America
2000, issued in 1991, and subsequently expanded in the No Child Left Behind Act of
2001, signed by President George W. Bush. The charter school movement, coupled with
nationalized testing, was to gain great momentum under President Barack Obama in
Race to the Topraising a clear and present danger of splitting up the school system.
Once ubiquitous in the elementary school, shop classes have been virtually eliminated
while the studio artsthe subjects that children lovehave been cut back drastically.
Once regarded as professional malpractice, teaching-to-the test is now a best practice,
with deleterious consequences for the school curriculum, and in making decisions on
pupil placement, teacher tenure and school evaluation. There is an abiding taboo in the
education profession against exposing the invalidity of external, high-stakes, standardized
tests in making such decisions.

Keywords:

education; evaluation; reorganization; consequences

Political leaders are acutely aware of the abiding belief is education on the
part of the American people. Political leaders also know that their tenure
in office is greatly determined on how they are perceived and portrayed in
the mass media. In turn the media are also aware of the public interest in
the public schools. But it seems that as far as the media are concerned
with regard to the public schools, it is no exaggeration to say that, Good
news is no news, and bad news is good news. In the same vein, it is far
easier for American political leaders, from the presidency on down, to
blame the public schools for almost every crisis in society, as opposed to
marshalling the needed resources for attacking the pervasive problems of
the public schoolsovercrowded classrooms, outmoded buildings and
facilities, lack of adequate curricular offerings and resources, changing
demographics and children in poverty. For it is far easier and cheaper to
fix the blame than to fix the problems (Newman 1961, Engler 1973, Berliner and Biddle 1995, Tanner 2000, Ravitch 2010).
Daniel Tanner is a professor emeritus in the Graduate School of Education at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ 08901-1183, USA; email: dantan@rci.rutgers.edu, where he
established and directed the doctoral programme in Curriculum Studies. He is the author
of 14 books and co-author of History of the School Curriculum. His articles have appeared
in The Atlantic Monthly, New York Times, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Educational
Researcher and other leading professional journals. He is a former president of the John
Dewey Society and recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Curriculum Studies Division of the American Educational Research Association. He has lectured at leading
universities in the USA and throughout the world.
2013 Taylor & Francis

RACE TO THE TOP

Top-down control by national standardized testing

Just as American public schools were demonized for the alleged lead of the
Soviet Union in the era of the space race and the cold war, they are being
blamed today by the highest political leadership, from the White House to
the state house, for the nations decline from its once dominant position in
the global economic marketplace. President Obamas Race to the Top for
regaining the US economic hegemony is rooted in the initiatives taken by
two of his predecessorsGeorge H.W. Bush in his manifesto America 2000
(1991), and George W. Bush in the No Child Left Behind Law (2001). But
Race to the Top goes much further in tying nationalized high-stakes testing
to teacher accountability and school finance, while promoting charter
schools.
The narrow focus of the school curriculum on academic basics at times
of economic crisis is an appealing route to school reform; it is simple
minded, inexpensive and perfectly suited to electronic multiple-choice testing for accountability, economy and efficiency. But aside from the modern
computer technology, the retrenchment to basic academic skills is a throwback to the skilldrillkill curriculum of the nineteenth century. As teachers
and students and their schools are measured by scores on the state and
national tests, teachers are compelled to embrace the methodology of teaching-to-the test. These standardized tests are focused largely on what may be
termed established-convergent learning as measured by the students capability of making perfectly predictable choices of answers. But really thoughtful learning in school and life is emergent, not established convergent.
Thoughtful learning is generative and requires hypothetical thinking and
problem solving. To the extent that the emphasis given to established-convergent learning in the educative process is increased, the power of the learner to deal intelligently with emergent problems is diminished. It is a simple
rule of inverse proportions. Over many years it has been shown that tests
can be designed to evaluate and foster emergent learning and growth in critical thinking, but this will require a radical change in the mindset of the test
makers and marketers in an entrenched and influential industry addicted to
the multiple-choice structure (Dressel and Mayhew 1954, French et al.
1957, Ravitch 2010, Smith and Tyler 1942, Epstein 1998).
During the early years of the testing industry, test makers sought to
align the tests to the curriculum. With so many textbook publishers offering a wide range of approaches to the curriculum to meet the preferential
differences of local school districts and states, this was virtually an impossible task. However, as the high-stakes, standardized tests became the chief
metric for national and state assessment of pupil achievement, teacher
effectiveness and school quality, there was an about face, from aligning the
test to the curriculum to aligning the curriculum to the standards defining
the tests (Condron 2011, Epstein 1998). That teachers would be pressed
to the practice of teaching-to-the test should have been predictable from
the beginning. In fact, teaching-to-the test is now becoming an approved
or best pedagogical practice.
This leaves educators with yet another conundrum. Despite the
emergence of external standardized testing as a vast and profitable growth

D. TANNER

industry, with test scores used to determine decisions affecting the fate of
children and youth for school promotion, college admission and career prospects, the fact remains that the most valid predictor of school or college academic performance is the grades given to students by teachers (which are
encompassed in the grade-point average and rank in class)even though
grading standards, the curriculum and school quality vary considerably
(Atkinson and Geiser 2011). These measures are valid predictors simply
because they closely correspond to the measures and criteria used by teachers
in higher education. And these criteria include a most significant and unspoken one for academic success. The Germans have a word for it: Zetsfleischthe motivational power to glue oneself to the seat of a chair over long
hours. This power may be assessed by the students devotion to work in the
laboratory, shop, studio or libraryand the outcomes as measured by teachers in form of student projects, themes, self-initiated readings beyond course
requirements, the questions raised by individual students in class and so on.
The students grade-point average and rank-in-class may be computer
generated, but it nevertheless incorporates multiple criteria including
those that are powerfully subjective. Yet American political leaders, the
mass media and the lay public have been led to believe that high-stakes
testing is the most scientific way of evaluating and predicting the academic worth of the student because the measure is reduced to a simple
quantitative value in the form of a number (score) derived from a standardized multiple-choice test.
The correlation between scores on the best standardized tests and college achievement ranges between 0.30 and 0.40, giving them a predictive
validity of from only 9 to 16% (Atkinson and Geiser 2011). No decision
on an individual student should be made on the basis of a single test
score. Academic success is based on multiple factors, not the least of
which is the motivation of the learner to develop the powers of sustained
inquiry and application. Such learning cannot be captured by the
convergent thinking style of the multiple choice test, but is idea-oriented
and requires hypothetical thinking, time and patience.
What would Darwin think?
One is led to wonder what Charles Darwin would have to say about the
multiple-choice test upon finding that, after a long and tortuous evolution
of humanity, the measure of the educative worth and potential of the
mind can be reduced to a numerical score on a lowly standardized
multiple-choice test. It is indeed a strange state of affairs that the
technocrats who created the multiple-choice test should seek to re-create
the human mind in the multiple-choice image.
In The Origin of Species (1859: 648), Darwin concluded that, as
natural selection works solely for the good of each being, all corporeal
and mental endowments will tend to progress towards perfection. It
would seem that our political leaders have come to regard the standardized multiple-choice test as the infallible measure of selection for human
progress towards perfection.

RACE TO THE TOP

A uniquely American school structure and

comprehensive curriculum
The USA has gained its greatness by building an education system premised on inclusion and opportunity, not by outscoring other nations on
standardized tests. It has become increasingly recognized that the preeminence of the USA in global economic standing and influence emerged
over the course of the twentieth century as the result of universal secondary education as provided by a uniquely American high school known as
the comprehensive or cosmopolitan high school, coupled by open-access
higher education led by the great state universities (Brubacher and Rudy
1976, Commission on the Reorganization of Secondary Education 1918,
Goldin and Katz 2008). But it was only a matter of time before other
advanced democratic nations would catch up by adopting the comprehensive high school structure. During the 19741975 academic year, I was at
the University of London where I studied the transformation then taking
place in creating comprehensive secondary schools. The new education
legislation held that in order to receive state support, all secondary schools
must be comprehensive. Until that time, virtually any school under
private auspices or serving a special-interest constituency, such as a
religious denomination or occupational group, could qualify for state aid
as a charter school. This arrangement for charter schools originated in
nineteenth century England and was well suited to a class-divided society.
But England had entered a new era, and the public demand for educational opportunity became relentless along with the national need for an
educated populace in an age of increasing global economic competition.
The people stood behind the comprehensive secondary school despite
subsequent setbacks and efforts by conservative political leaders to turn
back the clock (Benn and Chitty 1997). To the conservatives, more
means worse. But the great movement for universal secondary education
and the comprehensive high school, led by experimentalist-progressive
educators in the USA over the course of the twentieth century revealed
that more educational opportunity meant more social mobility and higher
educational yield (Conant 1959a, Cremin 1961, Goldin and Katz 2008,
Wraga 1994).
As leader of a team of American educators in an exchange programme
in the Peoples Republic of China in the winter of 1997, I was repeatedly
told by national education officials and administrators in schools in various
regions that they wanted their students to show more initiative and be more
open and creative, like American students. And more than one educator
recited an ancient Chinese proverb that went something like this: First
comes God, second the emperor, third the parents, and fourth the teacher.
Almost everywhere I travelled in Europe over the years, casual
conversation with lay people led to this exchange upon learning that I am
an American educator:
I understand that American schools are terrible.
Where did you get that idea?, I ask.

D. TANNER

I saw it on a TV program from America.

Or, I read it in an American magazine.

But everywhere I met with young peoplefrom Finland to South

Africa, from the Czech Republic to Chinathe conversation almost
invariably revealed their desire to come to the USA for their advanced
studies. They seem to believe that the USA is the place for gaining an
education that will help them define their future.
It is ironic that while other advanced democratic nations have successfully undergone a transformation toward the comprehensive secondary
school, or a more inclusive system of secondary schooling, the national
education policy and initiatives in the USA have promoted and supported
the splitting up of the school system through the establishment of specialinterest charter schools targeted to serve a social underclass or a select
population from waiting lists. For the less privileged, the curriculum at the
elementary and middle levels is concentrated heavily on basic academics as
defined by the high-stakes tests. The charter school serving the less privileged often follows configurations that can be replicated easily and cheaply
along the lines of the franchised operation in the business sector. In the largest cities and school districts, a charter school may be located on separate
floors or areas of an established school, raising problems of equity in allocation of space and resources. Added to this is the problem of conflicting
parental constituencies as the conditions typically are set in favour of the
charter school, including lower teacherpupil ratios providing for smaller
class size. In addition to enrolling a cosmopolitan pupil population, comprehensive schools require a critical mass in the form of material resources,
physical facilities, range of curricular offerings and faculty specialties, where
students have access to studios, shops, laboratories, libraries with full-time
librarians and adequate grounds for recreational activity.
The attainment of a unitary and comprehensive school structure
over the course of the twentieth century had impelled progressiveexperimentalist educators to develop a modern and comprehensive curriculum for all the children of all the people. This led to the quest for a
common core curriculum in the high school and college, designed to foster a universe of discourse, understanding and competence required of all
citizens of a free society (D. Tanner and L. Tanner 1990, 2007, Harvard
Committee 1945). This meant that the curriculum would address the
problems of democracy and the life needs of the rising generation. At the
elementary school level, the traditional basics of drillskillkill were
replaced by engagement in the actual development of academic skills as
tools for understanding and the application of knowledge (Commission
on the reorganization of secondary education 1918). In the USA, from
the Great Depression to the cold war, curricular materials in history and
social studies in progressive schools included units of study on civil rights
and discrimination against the Negro people and other minorities. A notable example of these materials was the Building America paperback book
series on the problems of American democracy, which sold over twelve
million copies annually over a period extending from 1925 to 1948,

RACE TO THE TOP

sponsored by the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (Hanna). But the books were censored out of existence during the
cold war as state legislators and superpatriotic groups attacked the books as
subversive and un-American (Newman 1961). And the once ubiquitous
problems-of-democracy course went into virtual extinction.
The USA appropriately has its historic heroes of the civil rights struggle, but contemporary political leaders and historians have forgotten that
the battle for civil rights was actually won in the public schools through
the untold efforts of teachers working with children and adolescents in
advancing the American Creed, or what Myrdal called the national
conscience (1944). Virtually every study of teachers over many decades
has revealed them to be dedicated to child welfare and advancement in
service to the greater social good. Unfortunately, at the height of the civil
rights movement in the largest cities, the massive programmes for
desegregation did not lead to integration. The courts failed to recognize
that when a school population quite suddenly approaches a disadvantaged
minority population of about 40%, the school becomes vulnerable to
polarization with the consequence of middle-class flight (Coleman 1966,
Conant 1961).
Through the work of progressive-experimentalist educators in the
first-half of the twentieth century, the USA pioneered in child study and
in the recognition of adolescence as a distinct period of human development. The curriculum was vastly expanded and enriched to meet the
needs of children and youth (Cremin 1961, 1988, Dewey 1900, 1902,
1910, 1915, 1916). The rudiments once deemed adequate for the masses
employed in factories were no longer acceptable to a rising generation
seeking opportunity in a free society, and the door to opportunity was the
uniquely American invention of the comprehensive or cosmopolitan high
school and the open-access community college and state university
(Commission on the Reorganization of Secondary Education 1918,
Conant 1959a, 1961, 1967, Eurich 1980, Wraga 1994). The consequence
was that the USA led the world in educational yield as measured in years
of formal education on the part of the population (Husen 1971, 1983).
Why reforms often fail
Witness a class in a school shop or art studio and observe what happens
when the teacher announces that its time to clean up. The announcement is almost invariably followed by moans and groans in response to
the interruption from work. I have witnessed the same response when students are engaged in science projects, library research, theme writing,
panel discussions and a host of student club activities. No subject should
be purely academic. All studies should connect with the life and nature
of the learner, thereby generating working power to go on learning. No
education reform can succeed if the curriculum ignores or violates the
psychosocial nature of the learner and the democratic prospect.
The machinery extending educational opportunity lies in strengthening
the unitary structure of the American school system, and can be put into

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D. TANNER

effect by creating a joint unit between the upper two years of the comprehensive high school with the two years of the community collegeforming
a four-year, two-by-two, tech-prep programme which could lead to entry
to a gainful career or advanced education. The separate structure and
narrow curricular function of the charter school mitigate possibilities for
such institutional coordination and curricular correlation. To split up the
US education system with charter schools is to surrender the education
cause as conceived and developed through the American experience.
Professionalization of teaching
Since mid-twentieth century, teachers have made great strides toward
professionalism. The basis for this was the earlier movement of the rise of
teacher education from the two-year normal school to the university, and
then into graduate and professional studies. But the transformation to
professionalism also came about because of the union movement and teacher tenure (Lieberman 1956). The present-day assault on teacher tenure
and right to collective bargaining is fuelled by an agenda for budgetary
retrenchment and not education improvement which would require significant investment in curricular resources, equipment, facilities and staff.
Public school teachers are indeed public employees, but teacher tenure,
as provided in virtually every advanced democratic nation in the world,
sets teachers apart because they are charged not merely with the human
transmission of knowledge, but with its transformation through the rising
generation who will hold the keys to progress. This requires freedom of
inquiry or academic freedom. The current attacks on teacher tenure and
the undermining of the status of the teacher in US society mitigate efforts
to improve the schools and raise the danger of erasing the gains made in
advancing teaching as a profession. A society that has low regard for its
teachers can only have low regard for its rising generation.
Reform or renewal?
The very mandates or models set for the American schools to qualify for a
Title I School Improvement grant under Race to the Top understandably
are regarded by many teachers and school principals as unprofessional,
arbitrary, negative, coercive, divisive, punitive and destructive. From the
test results, low-performing schools must follow one of four federal
models: (1) transformation, by which the principal is replaced and
interventions added; (2) turnaround, in which the majority of faculty
and staff are replaced; (3) restart, which involves conversion to a charter;
and (4) closure, in which the school is replaced by a charter.
But no nation has ever tested itself out of an educational, economic or
social problem. Testing cannot make up for deficiencies in school
resources and facilities, overcrowded classrooms, understaffed faculty,
segregated schools and children in poverty. On the contrary, such
deficiencies factor into lower pupil achievement and school effectiveness
(Coleman 1966, Conant 1966).

RACE TO THE TOP

11

Throughout its history, US public schools have undergone great

changes in structure and function so as to meet changing needs and
demands of society. In the process, the USA created a unique system of
education and a uniquely comprehensive, cosmopolitan high school and
system of land-grant universities close to the people. Underlying the promotion and support of charter schools is the implicit belief and explicit
contention that the US public schools are largely intransigent, but the US
history reveals otherwise despite the difficult conditions and material
shortages under which teachers work (Cremin 1961).
Over the decades since mid-twentieth century, US public schools have
been subjected to political cycles and recycles calling for change ,innovation, restructuring and reform. All but forgotten was the constructive
force of renewal through which the idea of progress comes to life in the
American experience. In a lecture to parents delivered in 1900 on the
topic of The School and Social Progress, John Deweys opening paragraph quoted Horace Mann: When anything is growing, one former is
worth a thousand reformers. History is testimony to the belief in progress
and the experimental spirit governing the creation of a unique and universal system of public education by the American people (D. Tanner and
L. Tanner 1990, Conant 1959a, Cremin 1961, Nisbet 1980).
Year after year, the Gallup/Phi Delta Kappa Poll on the publics
attitudes toward the public schools reveals that the closer people are to
the public schools, such as parents, the more favourable they are toward
the work of teachers and schools (Bushaw and Lopez 2011). Parents seem
to be well aware and appreciative of the teacher in the elementary classroom who is responsible for the well being of some 25 or more active
children with differing personalities, interests, achievement levels, needs
and home backgrounds. The secondary school teacher may quite typically
be responsible for 125 or more individual hormonal adolescents each day.
The teacher not only is expected to develop each class as a harmonious
social group, but as a group of individuals motivated for organized
learning and life success.
Splitting up the school system and leaving the children
behind
It should be recalled that the elder President Bush had declared in his
America 2000 manifesto, issued in the spring of 1991, that his first
national goal, which he called noble, was that, By the year 2000 all
children in America will start school ready to learn. Common sense
would tell us that this goal would require that no child would be living in
poverty and suffering from inadequate nutrition and poor health, inadequate housing and other forms of neglect, and that all children would be
growing up in a safe and nurturing environment. Unfortunately, the
presidents first national goal was never matched by the necessary
programmatic plan and federal funding. This same problem remains with
Race to the Top, with the consequence that US children are once again
being left behind.

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D. TANNER

Under America 2000, President George H.W. Bush directed his priorities at expanding and intensifying the use of nationalized high-stakes
achievement tests from the elementary grades through the high school and
allocating federal funds for charter schools, including charter schools under
private corporate networks such as New American School Development
Corporation.
The Conant legacy
James B. Conant served as president of Harvard over a period of two
decades, extending from the Great Depression to mid-twentieth century.
As a young chemistry professor at Harvard, Conant was a member of the
undergraduate admissions committee. In that capacity he came across
studies revealing that Harvard students from public comprehensive high
schools earned more academic honours than compeers from the great
independent/elite preparatory schools of the Eastern seaboard (Bruner
1960: 71).
Following his term of office as US High Commissioner and later US
ambassador to West Germany in the European reconstruction years
following the Second World War, Conant undertook a study of the
American high school at the behest of the Carnegie Corporation.
From this national study, Conant found that the best high schools were
comprehensive in structure and function in that they were able to serve a
democratizing function without sacrificing academic achievement (Conant
1959a, b, 1967).
As a leading advocate and defender of the comprehensive high school,
Conant quoted extensively from a report of the American Academy of
Arts and Sciences, which openly criticized liberal arts professors for their
academic biases on the school curriculum and their abject ignorance of
the functions of the school system in a polyglot society:
There exists among a considerable number of defenders of the liberal arts a
shocking ignorance of the social problems with which the modern school is
confronted. Consequently, these professors attack many of the most wellmeant endeavors of our public schools on the basis of inadequate and
fallacious criteria If they (our modern schools) had tried to carry through
the program of one of the foremost critics of our high schools and colleges
our whole national life would be in danger of collapse. (Conant 1959a: 63)

In 1970, Conant called attention to the development whereby some of

the more progressive European nations were adopting the comprehensive
model, and he expressed perplexity as to why Americans were not more
fully supportive of the institution that was their very own creation. In
Conants words,
I am an advocate of the comprehensive school, yet I must admit that the
future of this institution is far from certain in the United States. It is
strange that the enthusiasm for an American invention is so limited in this
country just at the time when other nations are beginning to explore
application of the basic idea Are the high schools of the United States to

RACE TO THE TOP

13

be so designed as to be effective means of forwarding the idea of a unity

based on diversity in a democratic community, or is the comprehensive
concept to be given at best only lip service? Far more than the nature of
our schools is involved in the answer to this question. The entire structure
of our nation may be at stakepossibly even its survival as an open society
of free men. (Conant in Eurich: 1970, 80).

In his autobiography, My Several Lives (1970: 667), Conant warned

that there is some reason to fear lest a dual system of secondary education
may in some states, at least, come to threaten the democratic unity provided by our public schools, as he went on to express concern that a dual
system of schools with tax money flowing in some form to private schools
seems to be a possibility. Sixty years later, several states were allocating
public funds for tuition vouchers for children attending private and
parochial schools (Wall Street Journal, June 910, 2012, pp. A1, A10).
James B. Conants life marked the end of a long line of American
university presidents who were advocates of the inclusive cosmopolitan or
comprehensive high school. They were outspoken in support of the public
schools, the main source of their own student bodies. They believed that
a secondary school built upon unity thought diversity would open the
gates to universal secondary education and the vast expansion of higher
education. They were looked upon as educational leaders and statesmen.
Today, the university president is more likely to be cast in the image of
the corporate CEO who regards the business of education as business.
In My Several Lives, Conant selected only four of his many speeches
for inclusion in their entirely in an appendix, one of which addressed the
problem of out-of-school and out-of-work adolescents in the large central
cities of the USA, a situation which he characterized as social dynamite.
The other speech, delivered in 1952, Unity and Diversity in Secondary
Education, stated the case for the comprehensive high school and the
significance of general education for American democracy.
What are the prospects for saving our public schools from
race to the top?
Back in 1984, as a member of the board of trustees of a private Pennsylvania
college, I was invited to meet over a weekend with James Michener, the
internationally noted Pulitzer prize-winning author, and his wife at their
home in Austin Texas together with another board member and the
president of the college. We were there to convince our hosts that they
should donate their farm in Pennsylvania to our college for use as a teaching
facility, along with the two houses on the land. Our weekend with the
Micheners was completely successful as they readily agreed to our proposal.
At the time, James Michener had just completed his historical novel, Texas,
and was getting ready to go to Alaska in a few days to embark on the writing
of his next book, Alaska. What impressed me greatly was that James
Michener had taken the time to meet with us when he was engaged in the
task of selling the house in Austin and moving on to another demanding
writing project in a small village in far-off Alaska. But what truly was most

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D. TANNER

impressive came out of our conversation at dinner on the evening of our

arrival on a Friday. In our dinner conversation, Michener revealed that he
regularly attended high school football games on Friday nights. He
explained how much he enjoyed sitting in the stands, joining parents and
other community members in cheering for the home team and in sharing
the joy and excitement that are so essential to the event. The lesson to be
learned from James Michener is that the American people might not want
to rally for a charter school when their hearts are with their communitys
comprehensive high school. It well may be that in the end, the high school
football and basketball teams may save our schoolsthe schools the people
really know and love.
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