it goes up and it goes down

from Education Gadfly:

The coin of the education realm is, of course, student performance--test scores, graduation rates, and such. Most of the indicators are flat at best; rather than prolonged "prosperity," k-12 education has been in a long-term recession from which it seems unable to emerge. Like Wall Street, we obsess over every wee bump and dip in the measures we typically follow: SAT scores down a bit, NAEP fourth-grade scores up a bit, AYP schools more or less numerous, graduation-test passing rates a hair better (or worse) than last year's, and on and on. Most of these little wrinkles mean nothing, any more than a hundred-point dip or uptick in the Dow. (My grandfather used to say of the stock market: "It goes up and it goes down.") But they rivet our attention and lead to all manner of writings, symposia, hand-wringings, speechifying, sometimes even election outcomes.

a long-term recession

I like that way of putting it.

more:

Yet the big education picture is precisely the opposite of the big picture presented by the U.S. economy. In the economy, despite bumps, prosperity improves over time. During boom times, it can seem as if everything works. (Never mind the business failures that still occur.) So try some heretofore unknown credit or debt instrument. Make those loans to sub-par home-buyers. Take that chance. Just about everything appears to have a strong chance of succeeding.

In education, by contrast, the results don't change and nothing much seems to work. In part because of our frustration with that flat terrain and our determination to scale some hillsides, educators and policy folks take a number of risks, too. "If nothing has worked so far, let's try something different." So we launch program after program, intervention after intervention, law after law, expenditure after expenditure, innovation after innovation, generally with little or no evidence that it will change the angle of the performance trend line. But we try them anyway. That's risky behavior, indeed, behavior that likely serves to flatten the line.

That's my district, the only difference being that there is no risk involved. No matter what the district does, the scores will always be high and, thus, the school will always be "high-performing."

The district can do as it pleases, and it does.

Strange how the powerful parents of suburbia, with our ability to pick up and move at the drop of a hat, or sock our kids into private schools at 30K a year, don't seem able to influence the people we hire to run our schools.

Speaking of which, I received an email from our principal this week thanking me for my "interest" in the middle school.

He's been on the job for one year.

I've lived here, now, for 11 9 years.

But the school belongs to him.

...........................

I can't figure out whether an email thanking me for my interest is better or worse than a welcome back to school letter thanking us for our ongoing support and cooperation.