A major, paradigm-shifting trend that is a central focus of a new history of American education will ring a bell with New Yorkers: the growing tendency of outsider non-educators — a billionaire media mogul, say, or an antitrust lawyer — to butt their heads into the formerly marmish enterprise of public schooling and demand radical change. The CEO Michael Bloomberg is rebranded Education Mayor Bloomberg; the Justice Department enemy of Microsoft Joel Klein becomes the enemy of the teachers union schools chancellor.
New York City knows the story line particularly well. Among teachers, lamenting the excessive influence of a hated outsider — it might be Mr. Klein, or charter schools, or the consulting firm Alvarez & Marsal — is a guaranteed applause line. In other circles, the money is in the reverse effort; declare your intention to take on the union, or, for the boldest, "Randi" (the president of the United Federation of Teachers, Randi Weingarten), and complimentary cocktails will flow your way.
The insider-outsider wars are becoming churlish. That is why "Troublemaker" (Princeton University Press, 376 pages, $26.95), a lively and wise new memoir by educator-turned-gadfly Chester E. Finn Jr., should be required reading for charter school leaders and left-wing teacher unionists alike. A "personal history" of the last five decades of public schooling, Mr. Finn's memoir weaves America's story with his own. For what can often be bland material — high schools were small, then big, then small! — personal details are a welcome addition.
As a history of today's insider-outsider wars, Mr. Finn's account is also supremely fair, and his commitment to spurning adults for the sake of children is studiously recorded throughout the memoir. The troublemaking tendency apparently dates all the way to his days as a high school teacher, when he stored an actual slaughtered pig's head in the teachers' lounge refrigerator — because he wanted to preserve it for a lesson on "Lord of the Flies."
Since then he has remained firmly in the outsider camp. As teaching colleges tilted toward multiculturalism, Mr. Finn pulled in a different direction — and found a kindred spirit in the education historian Diane Ravitch. They formed a cross-country friendship, becoming what Mr. Finn calls professional "soul mates," as they founded an organization from scratch to promote "bold reforms" and a single set of national standards. The Educational Excellence Network laid the groundwork for the standards-based reform movement whose modern incarnation is the federal No Child Left Behind law. Working with the governor of Tennessee at the time, Lamar Alexander, he helped introduce merit-based pay, a policy loathed by many teachers. In the 1990s, he helped launch America's first for-profit education management company, Edison Schools, literally jumping on and off a private jet to plot what he describes as the organization's plan to "colonize" American schools with a new model.
Yet far from making him a reluctant critic, this background makes Mr. Finn perfectly placed to give a fair account of where the reformers have gone wrong and where they have gone right. Mr. Finn takes seriously the concern — he describes it as "dismay" — of educators with the tendency of businessman-reformers to justify reform in the "crass, utilitarian terms" of a "knowledge economy." He writes that he has spent a career wrestling with the problem, and the effort pays off in his thoughtful conclusion. Politicians and businessmen bring energy and resources to the problem of education, so their involvement should not be dismissed, Mr. Finn argues. Yet Mr. Finn is not a corporate cheerleader. "This view of education also fosters tunnel vision," he cautions, ending with an important challenge: "Can we keep the reformist energy of instrumentalism, better jobs, and economic growth while broadening our understanding of why society sends kids to school and what it means to be educated?" How to tackle that challenge is hinted at in a brief assessment he gives of New York City's current arrangement. After praising the idea of mayors controlling public schools, he levies a criticism. The tendency for mayors, including Mr. Bloomberg, to appoint non-educators to run their school systems usually "makes better sense in theory" than in practice, he writes.
Mr. Finn applies the same troublemaking honesty to the sacrosanct matter of school choice. He has not given up on charter schools and voucher programs. However, citing his own experience with them in Dayton, Ohio, he now argues that, to be good, schools must not just be free but also internally strong, with a good curriculum and good instruction. Declaring his old beliefs "naïve," Mr. Finn concludes: "Market forces alone will not speedily lead to stronger academic achievement."
Mr Finn's conclusions have the unpopular characteristic of adhering neither to one side nor to the other. Yes to vouchers, he says, as long as voucher schools have high quality; yes to business involvement, as long as it does not abandon sound instructional knowledge and the imperative of a civic mission; yes to standards, but only if they are rigorous.
These are not sexy answers, but they are thoughtful ones, and for the field of education, that is quite the right medicine.
egreen@nysun.com
