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Blog: FCAR
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The ripple effect in high-school
reform
By Marion Brady
*December 28, 2004
Drive any distance on Europe's multilane highways and you're likely to be
impressed. On America's interstates, if traffic is heavy and a lane is blocked
by construction or other obstacle, the road can quickly turn into a miles-long
parking lot. In Europe, that's much rarer. Everything else being equal --
traffic density, speed, weather, time of day -- European traffic will flow
around a bottleneck far more smoothly than American traffic. Often, in fact, it
won't even slow down, much less come to a bumper-to-bumper stop.
The reason is simple. Think back to an old All In the Family sight gag. Archie
and Meathead, side by side, approach a doorway. Neither gives way. They bump,
hesitate for a second to glare at each other, then one backs off and lets the
other go first.
Think of Archie and Meathead as cars approaching a blocked lane. That momentary
hesitation arguing over right-of-way ripples back the line of cars, increasing
in duration as it goes until everyone is sitting still and dinner's getting
cold.
Back to Archie and Meathead. What if, in a rare moment of decreased hostility,
they agreed that when approaching a doorway, whoever happened to be on the right
would always go first? End of arguments, indecision and momentary hesitation.
Problem solved.
Now, back to our interstates. What if, recognizing our problem, we agreed that
everyone would always, without exception, drive in the right-most lane except to
pass? End to arguments, indecision, and momentary hesitations rippling back the
line of cars. End to obstacle-created traffic jams. Problem solved.
But not just one problem solved. Ended, also, the "rolling roadblocks" so
frustrating to police and emergency vehicle drivers. Ended, also, the single
greatest cause of road rage. Ended, also, fuel wasted as engines idle and air
conditioners whine waiting for the road to clear. Ended, even, many cross-median
fatal accidents because always-far-right driving maximizes the distance between
traffic going in opposite directions, allowing more time for evasive action.
Just one action -- driving in the right-most lane except to pass -- solves a
whole string of problems.
Is there, in education, some single change which would solve a whole string of
problems?
There's certainly plenty of problems, particularly at the high-school level.
Many who start never finish -- this in the face of an outside world with little
to offer. Truancy is routine. An estimated four of every five kids are, to
varying degrees, disengaged from the work. Most adults remember little and make
use of even less of what they once "learned."
Take away the force of law, the appeal of extracurricular activities, and
opportunities to socialize, and high-school students would be in open revolt.
The problems aren't limited to kids. The new-teacher dropout rate is appalling.
Contact between teachers and parents -- except in response to disciplinary
problems -- is the exception rather than the rule. Teachers rarely know enough
about students to respond adequately to their individual needs. Teachers sharing
the same kids may hardly know each other.
There's enough wrong with American high schools to fill a book. My own major
beef has long been with an obsolete curriculum. Another beef is with a command
and control administrative structure that gives those who know the most about
how the system is working -- the teachers and the kids -- no power to change
anything, not even a voice in the change process.
However, in the search for a problem-solving counterpart to driving in the far
right lane except to pass (a single action with multiple positive consequences),
I'd let those two beefs stew on a back burner if policy makers would agree to
get behind a single change -- a switch to small, really small,
no-more-than-400-students-small, high schools.
That's doable, and it's the nearest thing to a silver bullet for what ails high
schools. It's a bullet that's easier to load than either changes in curriculum
or changes in administration, and it's a bullet that can be shot without
permission from outside the district.
Not that it'd be easy. (In education, there's no such thing.) But it could be
done. And creating a local, autonomous Small Schools Division would be a good
way to start.
I've heard all the arguments against small high schools and, if quality
education is the goal (a big if), not one of them is good enough to justify
continuing what we're doing.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is so convinced of that fact they've thus
far handed out more than $50 million to school districts willing to abandon a
losing idea.
*Originally published in the Orlando Sentinel. Published here by
permission of the author.
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