A Nation (of Students) at Risk: The Politics of Equity and Achievement in Education Reform

• In Event: Risks and Opportunities for Advancing Educational Equity

Abstract

Various education reform efforts grounded in political philosophies, cultural ideologies, and private agendas have trumped evidence-based approaches to effective teaching, learning, and leadership (Apple, 2001; Buras, 2008; Darling-Hammond, 2007; Ravitch, 2010; Vasquez Heilig, Khalifa, & Tillman, 2012). For instance, the corporate reform agenda, which supports a free market system of education, has focused on high-stakes testing and evaluation of students and teachers, expanding school choice options for parents through charter schools and vouchers, and overhauling collective bargaining agreements for teachers in order to close achievement gaps and improve student achievement (Hess & West, 2005; Ravitch, 2010). These practices not only ignore the well-established education research literature on the structural factors that reproduce inequality and suffering; they are implemented in the name of equity and achievement.
This conceptual paper presents a historical analysis of the political rhetoric of equity and achievement in the high-stakes accountability reform movement and its implications for future education research, policy, and practice. As we consider efforts to advance educational equity and achievement within a contemporary policy context dominated by calls for innovation, charters, vouchers, alternative routes to licensure, pay-for-performance, and the end of collective bargaining, this paper is guided by three central questions: First, how did American public education get here – a place where educational equity and achievement are more commonly associated with high-stakes testing and turnaround school models than by strategies to increase educational opportunity, access, and equity? Second, why does U.S. education policy seem more focused on dismantling public schools rather than transforming them? Finally, given the history of competing policy paradigms and political rhetoric used to frame issues of educational equity, achievement, and reform, in what directions must education research, policy, and practice go in order to improve America’s diversifying schools?
To answer these questions, this paper begins with a discussion of the National Commission on Excellence in Education’s (NCEE) 1983 report, A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform, which sparked the education reform movement in America (Guthrie & Springer, 2006; Wong & Nicotera, 2004). Given its unprecedented role in shaping U.S. education policy, largely through its rhetorical influence as a political document, I will show how A Nation at Risk (NAR) serves as a useful model for understanding the political rhetoric of equity and achievement today. I will also argue that the co-optation of the language of equality, access, equity, and opportunity – hallmarks of education policy during the Great Society and Civil Rights Eras –poses an equal if not greater risk to both our nation and its students given its lack of attention to social and cultural contexts, culturally relevant leadership, and the role of community in education reform. The paper concludes with a discussion of the promise and possibilities of community-based education reform as an approach to providing equitable educational opportunities and improving student and school performance in historically underserved and under-resourced neighborhoods, especially those serving students of color and communities that are linguistically diverse.

Author

• Sonya Douglass Horsford, George Mason University