McDonaldization of Education

Oh, McDonald’s. I won’t eat there. It’s the exact same crappy food with the exact same crappy service every time. Nothing is ever different or exciting. But I will give them this: they are dependable. I do, however, drink Starbucks. A lovely coffee shop where each drink is made the same way every time, unless you ask for a change. Much like Burger King, you can have it your way. So much of our world has become McDonalized (to borrow from Ritzer). And it has moved from food to gyms to…you guessed it, education.

With the onset of No Child Left Behind, specific pieces of education were McDonalized: curriculum. Some districts adopted reading programs that were scientifically proven to teach all children to read. Some districts decided that every teacher at the same grade level would teach the same page of the same book at the same time. That way, when an administrator walked into the room, they would know exactly what the teacher was supposed to be teaching. Schools were no longer places that were serving the specific needs of the community in the way the educator found the best way possible; they were spaces that were privy to the demands of the government who said all children will learn, and they will all learn in this way.

I see this evidenced at the elementary school level where teachers of grades K-3 used a specific reading program. And let me tell you, when those students are finished, they sure sound like they can read. They are expert decoders, as we like to say in the education community. They can decode letters to make them sound like words. But stop a child who seems to read like an expert and ask him/her what they just read and forget it. All is lost. They don’t know. While the program teaches them to decode and read words, it does not teach them comprehension nor critical thinking. In this program, students never read an entire book or story from beginning to end, only pieces of the story that stand out. The beautiful picture painted by the narrative never comes to life. All those hours wasted by the author; hours spent on character on plot development gone to waste.

This beautiful idea of streamlining education also brought about many new jobs. Jobs which were deemed as “incredibly important.” Jobs that took money away from teaching positions and moved it towards more administrative positions. It is now the job of someone at the district level to create new curriculum, curriculum that works for all students (as they have scientifically proven by piloting it in a limited number of schools). All teacher receive these huge gray binders, and for each day one opens the binder, there is the lesson and any necessary materials, all laid out. Sounds nice, right? Less work for me? Wrong. The one year I did use the notebook, I was miserable. Each day I woke up, my excitement had waned. I did not want to go into work for another dreaded day with the imagination killing binder. And my students looked like they wanted to take a nap. So, I did the best I could; I altered the lessons and brought in my own material, just as I would have had I been able to use the standards to guide my curriculum. Only, this time, I was just sprucing up someone else’s boring curriculum, which turned out more difficult than starting from scratch.

And the best part was, we were all gathered to give feedback on the lessons. And what happened the following year? Had the lessons changed? No. The same gray binders made their way to the same grade level teachers to teach all over again. We weren’t going to waste someone else’s effort just because it didn’t work for our students! No! In the name of No Child Left Behind we were going to teach the pre-made curriculum!

I do agree with one small piece of No Child Left Behind: all children can learn. But I will say this, not all children can learn based on something that has been McDonalized. The McDonaldization of education must stop. It is killing the imaginative and inventive spirit of our nation. My students are becoming close minded yes-sayers who simply do as they are told and do not think first. And due to these “scientifically proven” programs, I am finding that they are becoming less and less skilled along the way.

Good bye, McDonalidization. You are no longer welcome in my classroom.

An open letter to Arnie Duncan

February 6, 2010

Dear Secretary Duncan,

I was very much looking forward to listening to your interview on NPR this morning. And it seemed that the only music to my ears was the phrase “necessary changes to NCLB.” I was very excited when the interviewer asked about the major changes necessary, and so let down to hear the general response of “more charter schools” and “merit pay.” And again, so interested in hearing the response to “What does merit pay look like?” and so disappointed to hear the avoidance of a clear answer.

As a public school teacher, it is very hard to support what I hear about the changes recommended for education in our country. It seems as though even the Department of Education has a hard time with understanding what most people fail to understand: schools are not insulated from society. Schools are a mirror and reflection of our society, its values and its power structures. When students walk in to my classroom, I know that the teacher before me attempted to teach California’s ridiculously complicated standards, and that due to the socioeconomic status of my students, these standards have been difficult to grasp from day one. I know that they are not coming into my room on grade level, but according to the little bit I have heard about the plans for merit pay, they are magically supposed to leave my room in June at grade level. I work incredibly hard with my students; I accommodate varying learning modalities that are all forced to learn in the same room together. I use varying strategies to help my students to access and learn our standards. I push literacy and critical thinking skills. But I can not, no matter how hard I try, overcome the overarching, problematic issues of my students’ society that follow them from the sidewalk into my classroom. And I truly still question how I will be paid for my merit when the only way I have heard is through “evaluations” and “scores.” What if my administrator has a grudge against me? What if my scores are low in general, but my students have progressed three grade levels from September to May? How will I be compensated for all of that hard work? How will I be protected from the vengeful administrator?

I took it personally that it was assumed that standards are “dumbed down” and that they are not challenging enough to support our students who are headed to four year universities. Students who are placed in remedial classes upon entering college are simply a reflection of the drop in true literacy outside of the classroom. They are a product of a generation that does not read, are not interested in the world beyond the one they can hold in their hand, do not engage outside of “popular culture.” They are placed in remedial classes not because the schools have failed them, but because the school is not a powerful enough tool to overcome the faults of our socioeconomic inequities. I can not control that somewhere along the line the parents of my students were told not to speak to their children in Spanish, but in English. And so, did my students learn how to speak beautiful Spanish? No. Were my students exposed to weak, broken English? Yes. I can not control that books are a luxury to the students in my community and so they have little exposure to reading for pleasure. I can not control that for many of my students, there is no parental figure at home to motivate my students to do their homework. Why are they not home? Because they are too busy working more than one job to make sure that there is food on the table and that the bills are paid.

And the idea of charter schools simply breaks my heart. Charter schools do look amazing on paper. They have wonderful test scores. They have beautiful graduation rates. They send all of their weak students back into the public school pipeline for us to deal with. To make it seem as though those of us teaching in public schools are not effective teachers. That those of us in public schools do not have the same teaching skills as those in charter schools. That charter schools are the answer. The answer is understanding that the problems in our schools reflect the problems of our society; that the children who are successful generally come from families of stronger socioeconomic backgrounds. Yes, we have students that break through the glass ceiling and defy existing power hierarchies, but they are few and far between, and oftentimes are breaking through on only a temporary, superficial level.

Schools will not improve until we accept that they are mirrors of our society. Schools will not improve because someone says “merit pay” and “charter.” Schools will not improve when the money follows the child. Schools will only improve when we address the overarching social issues that impact the students (and faculty) attending our schools. Schools will only improve when the values of our society are adjusted. Schools will only improve when my students know that their unhealthy cafeteria lunch will not be the only meal they eat that day. Schools will only improve when we as a society acknowledge that the society impacts the school and that the school impacts the society.

I hope that upon your restructuring of No Child Left Behind and the Elementary and Secondary Education Act that the society at large is taken into consideration, and that schools are no longer isolated from that which is happening in our country at large.

Thank you for taking the time to read my concerns. I hope soon to hear the actual plan for merit pay and for a way to improve our public school system that does not lean on charter schools.