The Connection

Kudos to the new Superintendent of Alexandria City Public Schools, Dr. Gregory Hutchings. Finally the system has a leader willing to challenge the conventional thinking that some students, because of a myriad of socioeconomic disadvantages, are forever relegated to mediocrity and, worse, failure. “Raise the bar for all kids, give them the necessary supports, and we will see them achieve.” Wow!

Recent research validates Dr. Hutchings’s approach. Prompted by the dismal state of public education in the United States, researchers have begun to study the reasons why other countries have become education powerhouses — e.g., Finland, Poland, South Korea. Their findings show that, while culturally such countries are widely diverse, their public schools share commonalities that any system could adopt, chiefly: (1) clarity of purpose, in all cases a focus on academic rigor; (2) high expectations of all students that they will not only reach but vault the bar of academic success; (3) prioritization of equity, channeling resources to the neediest students so that they can learn at the level of their peers; (4) principals who insist on academic rigor in every classroom; (5) teachers who themselves are highly educated, usually in the top-third of their graduating classes, and correspondingly well paid; (6) parents who recognize that a rigorous education is critical to their kids’ life choices.

What, according to these studies, are not conditions for success in education? To begin with, too many of the policies of failed systems are based on good intentions rather than evidence. And, contrary to conceived wisdom, success is not a function of culture, wealth, or privilege. In fact, the evidence indicates that money does not translate into quality education anywhere; for instance in Norway, where the per-capita income is the highest in the world, public-school student performance is mediocre, while in Finland, its much less-wealthy Scandinavian sister, students top the international academic charts. Nor are average class size, state-of-the-art facilities, and access to the latest technology critical to student achievement: one of Finland’s best public schools is in a multiethnic immigrant neighborhood housed in an old building fenced by chain link; Poland’s best has no cafeteria, no sports-playing field, and no high-tech toys for its students; South Korea’s teaches hundreds of students in each of its austere classrooms.

Encouragingly, these success stories show that improvements don’t take generations or even decades to achieve, but — with an unrelenting focus on rigor and high expectations for all students — can happen in the short term. A society does not have to wait until it fixes poverty or assimilates immigrants or resolves whatever erstwhile socioeconomic excuse has been given to explain educational disparities and to perpetuate discriminatory standards.

Dr. Hutchings’s focus on the primacy of academic rigor and on applying the equity principle to achieve it for all students is new to the public-school debate in Alexandria, even revolutionary. Heretofore, the perennial prevailing premise of well-meaning (and much-misnomered) “progressives” — heedless of the consistently regressive results of their education policies — has been that students who fail do so because they come from disadvantaged circumstances; consequently, high expectations for such students are futile, even prejudicial (!).

In your efforts to reverse this social injustice, Dr. Hutchings, know that you have many like-minded supporters throughout the city.

Judy Navarro

Alexandria