FINAL GASPS?

It's sad and interesting at the same time. Make no mistake about it; unless some drastic changes take place, we are seeing the death of an institution. If not its death, then its ability to be at all functional, to be viable. That institution is the American public school system. It has several strikes against it, some being systemic. For one, probably most important, it is an institution whose basic foundation goes against the grain of the prevailing economic system – a condition it has suffered since its inception. But this government run institution was able to maneuver around the capitalist environment for over one hundred and fifty years. But the times have been “a'changin” and not in the way the Dylan song referred to back in the sixties. Today, capitalist forces are playing full court offense against any organization run by non-entrepreneurs and the public school system is dead in their sights.

That's the societal level danger that public schools are facing. Now let's look at the institution itself and we do see dire dysfunctions. And in looking at this terminal process, I believe it's best to look at it through a functional approach. Specifically, the public school system is having drastic problems meeting two – at least – essential functions any institution or organization needs to meet: production and adaptability. In terms of schools, production is measured in terms of good citizenship, knowledgeable graduates, and graduation rates. Others add to these measures. They talk of schools helping in lowering crime rates, decreasing unwanted pregnancy rates, bolstering health outcomes, and the like. Some of these are legitimate; they reflect success in meeting the functions I identified above. But we need to be careful. Schools can't do it all. But they should educate in terms of preparing youngsters to be good citizens and employable. Unfortunately, the institution is not “getting it done.” A look at one of these identified measures tells enough of the story.

Graduation rates are appalling. According to Ed H. Moore,¹ CEO of the Independent Colleges and Universities of Florida, three million students find school too burdensome and decide to walk away before graduation – a dropout rate of 8,300 per day. This is magnified in our urban school districts where seventeen of them have an over 50 percent dropout rate (41 percent in our 50 largest urban areas). Even when we feel we can boast – Florida just celebrated a graduation rate of 75 percent – we are still facing one in four students not graduating. For them, the one in four, we are talking about an almost certain life filled with money problems, probably marital problems, probably legal problems, etc., etc. For example, 75 percent of all crimes are committed by dropouts. We know that 90 percent of the jobs in our technically based economy demand that employees have at least a high school diploma. I think it's safe to conclude that our schools are not being productive enough.

As for adaptability, our schools don't seem to be changing fast enough. A lot of sociological (and political science) literature has been dedicated to the need for institutions and organizations to adapt to changes to their internal and external conditions. One such writer is Samuel P. Huntington.² Here is what he points out in terms of what adaptability concerns any institution or organization needs to address in order to remain healthy and even survive into the future. The most obvious concern is change and the rate of that change. Institutions in static environments naturally have an easier job at adapting – there's little need to adapt. But, of course, we are not static. We are dynamic and the rate of dynamism is increasing. This is led by technology. But even in trying to adapt to what is now old technology, such as TV, schools still have not been able to adjust to excessive TV viewing – and its socializing effects – with which most students engage. So here comes the digital world: I phones, texting, YouTube, computer games, on and on, with all their effects. All of these developments have had their negative effects on our ability to teach kids. Yes, there are the positive effects of computers; we'll see how extensive they are. But as of now, the overall effect has been to present schools and teachers with daunting challenges.

We can further analyze this function. As it turns out, according to Huntington, the age of an institution positively relates with the ability of that institution to adapt. The older, the more experienced an institution is, the more likely it is to adapt to new challenges. Huntington identifies three ways to view age.

One is chronological. Here, public schools began somewhere near the middle of the nineteenth century (first system started in Massachusetts in 1821). Since then, the institution has adapted to many changes with varying degrees of success, probably none more challenging than desegregation with which schools are still dealing. While no one would judge the institution a beacon of light when it comes to adaptation, it still kept on functioning in relation to both the demands of the economy and to our social expectations. Some of us can remember when schools were viewed as reasonably successful – perhaps a false image to begin with but an image that perhaps gave the leaders of this institution, years ago, a false sense of invulnerability. Perhaps this level of “success” has been enough to instill an aura of invincibility among the leaders of the institution. If so, then adaptation takes on, for them, a lower level of priority. This is probably not the case now, but I do believe it was the case initially. Be that as it may, this institution today is not adapting successfully and everyone seems to know it. I feel fairly sure that most administrators of our school districts are appreciating the existential challenges they are facing as these newer changes have made themselves known.

A second way to view age is generational. That is, is its personnel turning over with the “right” types of people filling its important roles? This usually applies to leadership roles, but in terms of school, a more important personnel issue has been replacing the talented women who used to see education as that rare area of employment that society deemed acceptable for women to pursue. Of course, that all changed since the sixties and the rise of the women's lib movement. Now, all those highly talented women do what men have been able to do all along; that is, seek employment that is self-satisfying and more lucrative. And guess what? For far too many of them, teaching is not that field. And so, an internal change to the institution has been the lack of sufficiently skilled personnel to meet higher demands.

A third way to view age is the functions themselves. Here is where I believe the most challenging changes have taken place. Huntington writes:

Usually an organization is created to perform one particular function. When that function is no longer needed, the organization faces a major crisis: it either finds a new function or reconciles itself to a lingering death. An organization that has adapted itself to changes in its environment and has survived one or more changes in its principal functions is more highly institutionalized than one that has not. Functional adaptability, not functional specificity, is the true measure of a highly developed organization. Institutionalization makes the organization more than simply an instrument to achieve certain purposes.³

This passage hits on an important area of concern that affects schools. The assumption had been, back in the fifties, that schools functioned. They produced; they met their functional niche in our society. But since this demand for education is never satiated – there's always a new generation of youngsters who need to be educated – public officials were ill advised to dump new functions on this institution. And yet that's exactly what they began to do, even though evidence began to mount that indicated the institution was not meeting its initial, specific function.

And so it goes. We are watching the death of what was once a venerated institution. Our public schools are being attacked from all quarters. I even saw a clip where the in-house Fox liberal, Juan Williams, argued for choice – vouchers and charter schools. I will make a prediction: a form of public schools will survive and those schools will resemble public schools in developing countries where only the abject poor attend. These schools will literally be warehouses in which to store poor kids during the day. People with any means will send their kids to publicly subsidized schools that are run by business people, not educators. They will provide what the parents of those students want. In most cases, that is not education, but credentials. It will be only the minority of these schools that will actually educate students. We will have higher graduation rates, but we will not have more education or better citizenry.

1Moore, Ed H. (2014). Let's not endorse and enable failure: Dropping out at 16 is being sentenced to poverty. Tallahassee Democrat, February 11, p. 5.

2Huntington, S. P. (1968). Political order in changing societies. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

3Ibid., p. 15.