The stu­dents at Mia­mi Edi­son Senior High School in Flori­da ​“fail” every day. Edi­son is a text­book exam­ple of the strug­gling urban school: dis­mal test scores, high dropout rates, a rep­u­ta­tion for vio­lence and a large­ly poor, black stu­dent body.

‘It’s no coincidence that the schools that are failing are in the harshest neighborhoods. There are no street lights, no police. It’s filthy, there are drug addicts and prostitutes walking the streets.’

So, it was no sur­prise when the Flori­da Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion gave Edi­son a grade of ​“F” for the 2007 – 2008 school year – a des­ig­na­tion that, under the fed­er­al dic­tates of No Child Left Behind, is sup­posed to com­pel the school to revamp itself.

But cur­rent senior Tranette Myrthil sees the government’s report card as part of the fail­ure. The school ​“reforms” the state has hand­ed down are squeez­ing out the things that make edu­ca­tion mean­ing­ful for her.

Myrthil rel­ished read­ing in Eng­lish class, and is frus­trat­ed that her class spent so much time drilling for the FCAT (Florida’s mul­ti­ple-choice read­ing test), instead of delv­ing into more nov­els. In the end, she got a 10th-grade read­ing score of two (on a scale of five) – a grade that she says ​“doesn’t speak for me.”

Recall­ing books that stirred her, she says, ​“I learned things that I could use now … in the 12th grade.” But the mate­r­i­al she stud­ied to pass the FCAT, ​“I can’t bring with me to the 12th grade, because it’s just for that moment. It’s just for that test.”

After sev­en years of the Bush administration’s land­mark edu­ca­tion law, No Child Left Behind, a dis­con­nect remains between the edu­ca­tion­al demands imposed on stu­dents like Myrthil, and what Myrthil wish­es she could demand from her education.

Class­room politics

The premise of No Child Left Behind, passed in 2001, sounds basic enough: ensure that chil­dren from all back­grounds attain a qual­i­ty edu­ca­tion from good teach­ers. But the debate over how to reach that goal is frac­tured by ide­ol­o­gy, bureau­cra­cy and entrenched bar­ri­ers to opportunity.

Main­stream reform dis­cus­sions have cen­tered on ​“school choice” ini­tia­tives that move pub­lic invest­ment toward less-reg­u­lat­ed char­ter schools and pri­vate ser­vices. Mar­ket-ori­ent­ed reform­ers, both Repub­li­cans and Democ­rats, cham­pi­on exper­i­men­tal char­ter schools and rigid, test-cen­tered ​“account­abil­i­ty” man­dates for teach­ers – mea­sures that have attract­ed polit­i­cal momen­tum but also alien­at­ed teacher unions. Oth­er advo­cates, includ­ing one of Pres­i­dent Obama’s lead­ing edu­ca­tion advis­ers, Lin­da Dar­ling-Ham­mond, favor more coop­er­a­tive strate­gies, focus­ing on com­pre­hen­sive teacher train­ing and aca­d­e­m­ic stan­dards that extend beyond rote skills. Pro­gres­sive edu­ca­tion activists point to social fac­tors dri­ving racial and eco­nom­ic gaps in achievement.

Edu­ca­tion was a side issue in the pres­i­den­tial race. But after get­ting mired in polit­i­cal grid­lock through­out the Bush era, activists hope the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion will recast the debate on how to make pub­lic schools work for all communities.

Under No Child Left Behind, schools that con­sis­tent­ly miss year­ly tar­gets for read­ing and math improve­ments and oth­er cri­te­ria may be hit with strict sanc­tions. Reform mea­sures could range from pri­vate tutor­ing to full-scale state takeover or con­ver­sion to a char­ter school. For the past few years in Mia­mi, Edison’s teach­ers and admin­is­tra­tors have worked under gov­ern­ment man­dates to boost stu­dent per­for­mance by dra­mat­i­cal­ly restruc­tur­ing pro­grams and staff.

School sys­tems in Wash­ing­ton, D.C., New York City and oth­er areas have float­ed ini­tia­tives to weed out sup­pos­ed­ly incom­pe­tent teach­ers or to tie pay scales to staff per­for­mance. Obama’s pick for edu­ca­tion sec­re­tary, Arne Dun­can, is seen as a mod­er­ate but gained promi­nence as head of Chica­go Pub­lic Schools by push­ing for the clo­sure of under­per­form­ing schools and boost­ing charters.

But pro­gres­sives in the edu­ca­tion com­mu­ni­ty ques­tion con­ven­tion­al notions of ​“achieve­ment” and ​“fail­ure.” To Mil­dred Bove­da, a spe­cial-edu­ca­tion teacher at Myr­tle Grove Ele­men­tary School in Mia­mi Gar­dens, Fla., the obsta­cle to real change is the con­fine­ment of the school pol­i­cy dia­logue with­in class­room walls.

“It’s not a coin­ci­dence that the schools that are fail­ing are in the harsh­est neigh­bor­hoods. There’s social issues that are going on,” she says. The cri­sis in schools par­al­lels oth­er com­mu­ni­ty prob­lems: ​“There are no street lights, there are no police. It’s filthy, there are drug addicts and pros­ti­tutes walk­ing the streets. You’re going to tell me that that’s not going to affect teacher morale, stu­dent morale and then stu­dent per­for­mance – then you’re kid­ding me.”

Smarter than the test

Edison’s stu­dents aren’t the only ones in trou­ble. Accord­ing to 2007 – 2008 state data com­piled by Edu­ca­tion Week, near­ly 30,000 schools missed ​“ade­quate year­ly progress” bench­marks. For 2007, while a large por­tion of all stu­dents fell short of state pro­fi­cien­cy lev­els in read­ing and math, fail­ure was espe­cial­ly preva­lent among low-income, black, Lati­no and Native Amer­i­can students.

At Edi­son, the polit­i­cal fren­zy over stan­dards trans­lates into a dis­en­gaged class­room. Myrthil says that while her read­ing score left her dis­cour­aged about the sys­tem, some fel­low stu­dents, faced with repeat­ed fail­ures, don’t even attend class anymore.

“Know­ing that you’re smarter than what this test is say­ing – but you still can’t pass it – it makes you feel angry and frus­trat­ed,” she says.

Mean­while, schools are hurtling toward No Child’s key dead­line – all stu­dents at grade-lev­el read­ing and math pro­fi­cien­cy by 2014.

Teach­ers, crit­ics warn, are pres­sured to align cur­ric­u­la with tests, in turn sap­ping resources from sub­jects like music and art, and under­min­ing edu­ca­tion­al approach­es based on crit­i­cal think­ing and dialogue.

For pro­gres­sive edu­ca­tors, the stiff bureau­cra­cy of the test­ing estab­lish­ment runs counter to both stu­dents’ inter­ests and teach­ers’ aspirations.

“I’m glad the prin­ci­pals are pay­ing atten­tion to what stu­dents aren’t gain­ing, and what we are going to do to make sure that they can gain,” Bove­da says. ​“But at the same time, I wish there was more than just that state test.”

High-stakes tests tend to demor­al­ize rather than moti­vate, she says: ​“Stu­dents and teach­ers get phys­i­cal­ly sick. That’s how much we want to pre­pare for this test. But it’s like the whole thing is set up for you to fail, anyways.”

One loom­ing con­cern about test-based account­abil­i­ty sys­tems is that they might actu­al­ly dri­ve schools to dilute or erode stan­dards – dumb­ing down tests, for exam­ple, or eas­ing the cre­den­tial­ing process for teach­ers. In a recent Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go study, researchers linked high-stakes test schemes to a pat­tern of short­chang­ing under­served stu­dents: teach­ers would con­cen­trate on stu­dents most like­ly to reach pro­fi­cien­cy, poten­tial­ly leav­ing strug­gling kids, who need the most help, to fall fur­ther behind advan­taged peers.

Pro­gres­sive edu­ca­tion activists argue that one-dimen­sion­al test­ing repli­cates and deep­ens struc­tur­al bias­es by fur­ther stig­ma­tiz­ing blacks, Lati­nos, Eng­lish-lan­guage learn­ers and oth­er mar­gin­al­ized groups.

JoEt­ta Gon­za­les, direc­tor of Equi­ty Alliance at Ari­zona State Uni­ver­si­ty, one of 10 region­al equi­ty assis­tance cen­ters for schools nation­wide, says that in prin­ci­ple, the stan­dards them­selves are not harm­ful, but ​“it’s the instruc­tion­al prac­tices that are fail­ing the communities.”

In racial­ly and eco­nom­i­cal­ly mar­gin­al­ized com­mu­ni­ties, she says, ​“one of the things that’s being left out is adapt­ing and mod­i­fy­ing the cur­ricu­lum so that it’s cul­tur­al­ly respon­sive, and that it incor­po­rates the learn­ing inter­ests of the stu­dents that they’re teaching.”

Teacher-ori­ent­ed reform­ers pro­mote more holis­tic, par­tic­i­pa­to­ry teach­ing prac­tices; peer-review sys­tems for eval­u­at­ing staff per­for­mance; and alter­na­tive assess­ment meth­ods for stu­dents, like port­fo­lios and cre­ative projects.

Mark Simon, nation­al coor­di­na­tor of the Tom Mooney Insti­tute for Teacher and Union Lead­er­ship, a pro-union reform group, says test-based pro­grams don’t encom­pass the intel­lec­tu­al chal­lenges stu­dents will face in the real world. ​“There has to be a shift,” he says, ​“toward learn­ing how to think, learn­ing how to prob­lem-solve, and learn­ing how to grap­ple with infor­ma­tion that you’ve nev­er seen before and make sense out of it.”

Just anoth­er pattern

In Mia­mi, Myrthil is far removed from the school reform debate in Wash­ing­ton, but nev­er­the­less grasps the root caus­es behind her school’s cri­sis. Last school year, she worked with class­mates to explore edu­ca­tion­al qual­i­ty as a civ­il rights issue in Project POW­ER – Pro­mot­ing Our Will through Edu­ca­tion and Research – an action-research ini­tia­tive at Edi­son that engaged youth as edu­ca­tion researchers and advo­cates. Myrthil real­ized that stu­dents in more afflu­ent areas had access to tutor­ing, arts pro­grams and oth­er enrich­ments that are nowhere to be found in her school’s community.

“I feel like we should have the same oppor­tu­ni­ties,” Myrthil says. ​“But the peo­ple han­dling the school sys­tem – they feel like: ​‘Oh, this is where we came from, and this is where our par­ents came from, and it’ll just be anoth­er pattern.’ ”

Though No Child Left Behind’s test­ing fix­a­tion alien­ates many edu­ca­tors, the nation­wide col­lec­tion and analy­sis of test data under the law has fueled advo­ca­cy around racial and eco­nom­ic dis­par­i­ties. Still, edu­ca­tion activists say the harsh man­dates leave schools with­out the fund­ing or flex­i­bil­i­ty need­ed to con­front sys­temic inequities.

No Child’s sta­tis­tics under­score the blight of school seg­re­ga­tion, says John Beam, exec­u­tive direc­tor of Ford­ham University’s Nation­al Cen­ter for Schools and Com­mu­ni­ties. But ulti­mate­ly, he says, ​“I don’t think we’ll have bet­ter pub­lic schools until we’re will­ing to take on insti­tu­tion­al racism in our urban school sys­tems and to be seri­ous about the inequitable dis­tri­b­u­tion of resources that it causes.”

Richard Kahlen­berg, a senior fel­low with the lib­er­al Cen­tu­ry Foun­da­tion think tank, sug­gests eco­nom­ic inte­gra­tion can alle­vi­ate school dis­par­i­ties, chiefly by expand­ing No Child’s school trans­fer pro­vi­sions. The idea is to allow stu­dents to move from fail­ing schools to bet­ter ones – typ­i­cal­ly in high­er-income com­mu­ni­ties that pro­vide bet­ter teach­ers and oth­er aca­d­e­m­ic supports.

“Prob­a­bly the sin­gle best thing you could do for a low-income stu­dent is give her a chance to attend a mid­dle-class school,” Kahlen­berg says.

Yet reform­ers tak­ing a long-range view con­tend trans­fer pro­grams will not tru­ly equal­ize a sys­tem that lacks the resources to ensure every kid a spot at a qual­i­ty school. Rather than shut­tling stu­dents around, they say school pol­i­cy should focus on build­ing the capac­i­ty of under­served com­mu­ni­ties to edu­cate their chil­dren well.

Nik­isha Valdez, a social stud­ies teacher at Edi­son who helped lead Project POW­ER, says that over time, the school has lost stu­dents through trans­fers, but in many cas­es, ​“if the resources were there, if we had the sup­port that we need, we could ful­fill that goal for them. It’s real­ly sad, espe­cial­ly when you think of Edi­son being such a fix­ture in the community.”

Beyond No Child

Years after No Child Left Behind promised to trans­form pub­lic edu­ca­tion, polit­i­cal dis­cus­sions still hinge on a basic ques­tion: How broad­ly should the chal­lenge of fix­ing schools be defined? While the class­room offers a start­ing point for address­ing inequal­i­ty, not even the best-equipped school can lev­el out the skewed social land­scape stu­dents go home to each day.

To New York Uni­ver­si­ty edu­ca­tion pro­fes­sor Deb­o­rah Meier, pol­i­cy­mak­ers can’t tack­le school reform with­out a deep­er con­scious­ness of under­ly­ing socioe­co­nom­ic barriers.

“We have only one area in Amer­i­can life, vir­tu­al­ly, that we demand equal­i­ty from, and that is test scores in schools,” she says. With­in No Child’s nar­row frame­work of account­abil­i­ty ​“we want test scores to be more equal, but do we want people’s incomes to be more equal? Do we want people’s health to be more equal?” In oth­er pol­i­cy are­nas, she adds, ​“there’s been a con­cert­ed dri­ve against that egal­i­tar­i­an notion.”

Recent­ly, a coali­tion of pro­gres­sive reform­ers and civ­il rights activists pre­sent­ed a ​“broad­er, bold­er approach to edu­ca­tion” that empha­sizes social pro­grams to advance edu­ca­tion­al and eco­nom­ic oppor­tu­ni­ty: expand­ing health­care for fam­i­lies, strength­en­ing rela­tion­ships between com­mu­ni­ties and schools; improv­ing out-of-school enrich­ment pro­grams for neigh­bor­hood youth.

Louie F. Rodriguez, a Flori­da Inter­na­tion­al Uni­ver­si­ty edu­ca­tion pro­fes­sor who launched Project POW­ER, says nation­al pol­i­cy should empow­er com­mu­ni­ties to shape schools from the ground up, through local youth, par­ents and oth­er stakeholders.

“It would be pret­ty amaz­ing,” Rodriguez says, ​“if Oba­ma said, ​‘We need teach­ers that are going to moti­vate stu­dents, that believe in stu­dents, that are going to have high expec­ta­tions for stu­dents.’ And then leave it up to the local com­mu­ni­ty peo­ple to define what high expec­ta­tions look like. … We need to fun­da­men­tal­ly change the way we do things in our edu­ca­tion sys­tem by shift­ing the role that stu­dents, edu­ca­tors and com­mu­ni­ties play in the reform process.”

“If you’re look­ing for poli­cies that will improve out­comes for kids in low-per­form­ing schools, that has to be dri­ven by peo­ple who deeply under­stand pub­lic edu­ca­tion,” says Stan Karp, a vet­er­an teacher work­ing with the pro­gres­sive edu­ca­tion jour­nal Rethink­ing Schools. ​“If the admin­is­tra­tion relies on social engi­neer­ing, by peo­ple who basi­cal­ly want to break up the pub­lic sys­tem and blame teach­ers and their orga­ni­za­tions for its prob­lems, then we’re going to have the same kind of fights that we’ve had for the last eight years, and we’re not going to get the progress that we need.”

Teach­ers like Bove­da, her­self a grad­u­ate of local pub­lic schools, know what a real con­ver­sa­tion about edu­ca­tion might sound like.

“Instead of stig­ma­tiz­ing the school and putting more pres­sure on stu­dents,” she says, ​“let’s talk about the social issues that are going on, with­in and out­side and around the school.”