Is This the End of the Traditional School System? Maybe It Should Be.
Dissatisfied Families Opting Out, Covid, and Teacher Shortages Don’t Bode Well for the Future of Schooling. We Need a New Model.
Last year when we were in the heights of panic about Covid, I told an educator colleague: “I think this might be the end of the school system as we know it.” They thought I was being a bit dramatic — that we were experiencing a temporary setback due to a novel pandemic that would soon pass. The system of schooling wouldn’t, couldn’t, crumble! We wouldn’t let it!
Fast forward eighteen months and my concerns remain. Let me be blunt: I think the taken-for-granted traditional school system — a network of adult-led public, charter, and private school buildings where children and youth spend most of their days for most months of the year — is flailing.
What is the Purpose of K-12 Schooling?
I’ve worked with K-12 educators and schools in all kinds of settings (urban, suburban, rural, public, charter, private) doing social justice work for my entire career. I often ask the educators I work with to write a personal mission statement about why they do what they do. What’s their purpose? What are their goals as an educator? What do they see as the purpose and goals of our larger schooling system?
For a lot of educators, this is the first time they’ve ever truly considered any of these questions — a microcosm of a larger societal problem: Most people, even those of us connected to schools through employment or parenting, haven’t thought very much about the purpose of schooling. We do it because, well, it’s just what you do. And this means most of us aren’t paying close attention to how the purpose and structure of schools might need shifting.
I think schools are generally meant to do two things:
Educate children to be considerate, responsible, self-sufficient adults.
Provide childcare — a place for children to be — so that the adults responsible for caring for them can go to work.
I would argue that the ability of schools to fulfill either purpose is starting to crack under the combined stress of dissatisfied families, Covid-19, and the worsening teacher shortage.
Reason #1 Why This Might Be the End of Traditional Schooling: Dissatisfied Families.
Growing numbers of families from a range of different backgrounds have become dissatisfied with the education that schools are providing to their children. Conservative, largely white, evangelical families have long been the leaders of opting out of traditional school. They are perhaps most known for creating homeschool communities to educate their children in ways that are aligned with their religious beliefs. But what many people have not paid attention to are the growing trends of other groups opting out in numbers that are quite honestly shocking.
Recent data shows that Black families, spurred on by the national racial reckoning, have decided to homeschool in record numbers. They went from being the least likely of all racial groups to homeschool their children, to being the most likely. Last year the percent of Black families homeschooling their children rose from 3.3% to 16.1% — an almost 500% increase. The rates of homeschooling grew dramatically for all other groups as well, with the percentage of Hispanic families homeschooling growing from 6.2% to 12.1%, Asian families from 4.9% to 8.8%, and white families from 5.7% to 9.7%. Overall, the number of families homeschooling their children rose from a steady 3.3% prior to the pandemic to over 11% by the Fall of 2020. The National Black Home Educators organization says their membership rose from 5,000 before the pandemic to 35,000 at last check. These families are not simply doing the Covid-virtual option offered by their public, private, or charter schools — they are withdrawing and disenrolling from those systems altogether.
Families of color opting out of traditional schooling cite many reasons:
curriculum that doesn’t reflect their experiences, histories, or cultures;
biased school discipline policies and practices;
low grades and test scores;
toxic relationships with educators;
racist bullying; and
tracking, course assignments, and special education designations that are racially biased.
This summer, both justice-minded families of color and conservative white families have seen the “Critical Race Theory” debates as further evidence that most schools are not aligned with their family’s values.
Progressive families from various racial and economic backgrounds are also becoming more critical of schools. Some of these families share concerns about how issues of race and segregation, as well as class, gender, sexual orientation, ability, religion, and other identities, are dealt with in schools. They also identify a broad range of other concerns about schooling, such as:
teaching practices that are not aligned with what brain research tells us about how children learn
lack of self-directed, child-led, and interest-based learning
grading and behavior systems that teach unhealthy competition and shame from the earliest ages
lack of flexibility for the individual ways in which children learn and develop
physical and emotional safety of children
leaving their children with people they do not know
start and end times that aren’t aligned with a work day and aren’t developmentally appropriate
the division of learning into school-imposed subject areas with little room for interdisciplinarity
age segregation that doesn’t allow friendships across different age cohorts
traditional curriculum that doesn’t adequately deal with the most pressing issues of the present and future such as the climate crisis, how our political and voting systems work, how to parse truth in the age of “fake news,” and how money and our financial system work
and more…
Research into the experiences and outcomes of those who attend traditional schools further highlight their shortcomings. Despite decades of school reform efforts:
two-thirds of American students in traditional K-12 schools are not proficient in reading or math;
twenty percent of American adults are functionally illiterate;
racial and economic “achievement gaps” have not budged in half a century;
as of 2014, half a million students attended alternative education programs because they were not succeeding in traditional classrooms;
prior to the pandemic, about 5% of students dropped out of school altogether; and
40% of eligible voters do not vote in Presidential Elections and 60% don’t vote in midterm elections.
In short, there is a growing group of students, parents, and observers who believe the school system we have is not aligned with what’s best for kids or our society. Even families who have not fully opted out of schools are starting to opt out of standardized testing and homework in growing numbers.
My own work has sought to help schools address many of the issues raised by dissatisfied families of color and dissatisfied progressive families. Similarly, teachers around the country are coming together though organizations, like Learning for Justice, Facebook pages, and Twitter hashtags in their efforts to disrupt our current systems. And yet, the reality is that even in districts taking this work seriously, families have figured out that change is proceeding at a pace that is unlikely to benefit current students.
To be clear, the trend of families questioning if they should continue sending their children to schools fundamentally unaligned with their morals, values, politics, beliefs, and perspectives was underway long before the pandemic. But the number of families opting out remained relatively low and consistent. Most families, even those questioning the system, continued sending their kids to schools if for no other reason than because they had to go to work.
And then Covid hit.
Reason #2 Why This Might Be the End of Traditional Schooling: Covid.
Covid has had a significant effect on both the educational and childcare purposes of school. First, the mass transition to virtual schooling brought the classroom into homes and put what was happening in schools under a magnifying glass for families around the country to witness. While it’s unfair to fully judge schooling based on the mishmash of virtual learning that happened last year, families saw more of what their children’s school days consist of than maybe ever before in history, and many found themselves dissatisfied.
Covid also eliminated the role of many schools as a reliable source of childcare in a country and culture in which most parents work. Despite the objections of many educators who dislike the notion of schools being thought of as babysitters, the reality is that schools are the number one childcare provider in our country (even for educators’ own children). In March of 2020 the inability of schools to provide childcare seemed like it would last for a few weeks. Then weeks became months, months became the entire next school year, and now we’re entering the third school year of Covid and schools that many had assumed would be fully open, 5 days a week, for all kids, have already started shutting down and reverting to virtual learning. This school year is starting off as a mess of openings, closings, and debates over masks and vaccines.
The Delta variant, low global vaccination rates (which make the emergence of even worse variants more likely), and the resistance to accessing free vaccinations among a significant segment of the US population suggest that this pandemic may be far from over. Short of a complete cultural shift in which we start mandating vaccines or viral shift in which Covid simply disappears, there is no reason to think next year will be much different. Instead, there’s a good chance that the ups and downs of pandemic life may be the new normal. And this reality means there are lots of families who just aren’t going to show up to school.
Last year 1.5 million students nationally were missing from K-12 school enrollment, with especially high numbers of missing kindergarteners. This year already, parents who previously had no interest in opting out of the traditional school system are wondering if it’s safe to send their children back to school — especially to the many schools failing to practice safety protocols such as vaccines, ventilation, outdoor learning, and masking. Some of these parents are choosing to keep their children home, even in cases where virtual learning was disastrous last year and in cases where there isn’t even a virtual option being offered by their district. As a parent of three myself, discussions in my circles abound about how families can trust schools whose leaders seem incapable of processing and following scientific recommendations themselves, or worse, are summarily rejecting it.
In July of 2020, I proposed that we should pay parents to (temporarily) stay home with their kids. This year it’s already clear that in many families someone will have to be home, at least some of the time. In the worst-case scenario, many schools will return to virtual learning. At the very least, many of us will experience school closures and quarantines without warning. Neither aligns with many people’s work schedules and responsibilities, putting the ability of schools to fulfill their second purpose — providing childcare so that parents can work — truly into question.
And finally, climate change — which is both increasing the days schools are closed due to weather, fires, and power outages and decreasing school building safety due to water damage, mold, and toxins — seems likely to make schools a less reliable childcare provider moving forward. How many parents concerned with stability and safety will continue to play this game of wondering whether schools will be open? And for how much longer will they play it? For at least some segment of the population, the answer might be not much.
Reason #3 of Why This Might Be the End of Traditional Schooling: Teacher Shortages.
In addition to dissatisfied parents and a global pandemic, schools are also facing the mass exodus of educators from the profession. Low pay (leading many educators to need second and third jobs to support themselves and their families), endless hours, disrespect, lack of safety, frustrations with standardization, unfair evaluation systems, and lack of autonomy have long been leading to a steep decline in people pursing education as a career and in educators staying in the field.
The “Critical Race Theory” debates, in which teachers feel they are navigating political minefields they were not prepared for, and a global pandemic, in which many educators feel their health, safety, and families have not been prioritized, have only exacerbated this trend. Reports of parents physically attacking educators over such issues have only heightened the feelings of many educators that they are undervalued.
The truth is, I don’t see how we retain an adequate staff of educators in these conditions. Just weeks and days from schools starting, some districts are short hundreds and thousands of educators. In addition to teachers there are reports of districts struggling to find bus drivers, social workers, and other support staff. Amazing teachers I know are leaving the field, many just a few years shy of being eligible for their pensions, because the money just isn’t worth the stress or the health risk. Even if I’m wrong about reasons 1 and 2, I’m not sure how we retain the system we have when we don’t have enough people willing to work in it.
For a long time, the assumption of those of us on the left has been that the greatest threat to public education is privatization — via vouchers, for-profit charter schools, etc. Now, I’m not so sure that any of our current traditional schooling options — public, private, or charter — will survive this moment unscathed. If schools cannot respond to the cultural and political issues of our time, cannot guarantee the most marginalized students will be cared for, cannot produce graduates who are proficient in reading and math, cannot keep kids safe so parents can go to work, and cannot retain teachers and support staff, they may be all simply becoming obsolete.
A Vision of the Future
I’m of the belief that the future of schooling is entangled with the future of many other systems currently in question in our country, especially those related to work, family, and caregiving. Schooling is inextricably linked to things like:
how much and how flexibly Americans work and the great resignation;
whether, despite the story we were told that we could have it all, it’s actually possible to raise children in these times with both parents (or one single parent) working full-time outside of the home;
whether young adults interested in having a career and worried about the future of the planet will even have children (who may one day need schools);
if we will expand the social safety net to better support children and families; and of course
whether we will do enough about climate change in enough time to leave these children we are so concerned about educating much of anything worthwhile at all.
So, what should school look like in this context? What is it that the next generation needs to know and be able to do to survive in the world of the future — a diverse, multiracial, global society with dwindling resources and growing inequity? And how and where might they best learn it? What is the balance going forward between the amount of time children will or should spend “at home” and the amount of time they spend at whatever version of “school” we end up with? What should the balance be between how much education (at home or at school) is student-led, interest-led, flexible, liberatory and how much is adult-led, structured, and standardized? What is the role of the dwindling numbers of educators in the model of the future? Is it to make sure kids pass tests built for a society of the past, or to cultivate a generation of critical thinkers, innovators, and justice-minded self-starters who are prepared for what is looking to be a trying future?
This is the conversation we should be seriously, collectively, strategically, and proactively having. It seems more and more clear that despite the hard work of so many committed educators, the traditional system of students spending 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, sitting inside at desks, learning from lectures, textbooks, and worksheets, in 50-minute subject-area blocks, largely unconcerned with issues of social or climate justice, with loads of homework to be completed in the few hours they spend at home, isn’t desirable, functional, or sustainable. And, as more and more families are figuring out, they don’t have to do it. In every state in the nation parents already have the option of pulling their kids out of school and educating them in ways that are as flexible as one could imagine — from “school at home” to “unschooling.” But families shouldn’t have to choose between a system that isn’t working or opting out of schooling altogether. Instead, we could decide to build something new, different, better.
Already there are innovative models of schooling popping up that are challenging the status quo. Alternatives to the traditional model of schooling include things like Forest Schools, Democratic & Sudbury Schools, Agile Learning Centers, Free Learners, family-school partnerships, homeschool hybrids, Outschool, Discovery Charter Schools, Ocean Grove, as well as more well-known progressive education models like Project-Based Learning, Montessori, Reggio Emilia, and Waldorf, and alternative education programs housed in many public school districts. These schools and programs offer a range of flexibility, self-direction, and social justice; allow students to stay a part of a structured institution; and provide at least some childcare. But they exist almost exclusively outside of the public school system and often come with a fee. In other words, while they have rightly adapted to the needs of students, they have done so largely to the benefit of the most privileged. It doesn’t have to be this way though. The public school system, which is the only institution in our country with the potential to interrupt histories and ongoing realties of inequality, could (and I’m arguing, should) follow suit.
I should be clear that I am not suggesting traditional schools adopt a hodgepodge of models to respond to the whim of every potential stakeholder or opinionated parent. But I do believe we should be intentionally redesigning our school system in ways that are aligned with equity and justice, that take into account the best research about what children need physically, emotionally, and psychologically, and that deliver the skills and knowledge they will need to deal with the effects of climate change, polarization, and globalization. And if we want schools to be open to do this in person, we will need to take the science of an aerosol-based pandemic seriously and mandate things like vaccines, masks, and significantly improved ventilation.
I’m of the belief that the two core purposes of schooling — providing a free and fair common education system outside of the family that helps shepherd the next generation into adulthood, while giving them a safe place to be (even if it isn’t all day every day for all kids) — are essential. But for schools to stay relevant, we must reimagine what they do, how they do it, and why. Going into a third year of Covid seems like an opportune time to reexamine the decisions offered families, the programs of districts, and the education policies of states and governments. But alas, we can’t even figure out if students should be wearing masks (let alone what kind of masks are safest) so I doubt we are going to have an existential conversation about what this whole enterprise we call “schooling” should really be about. For my kids’ sake, I hope I’m proven wrong.
References
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“Unique hybrid-homeschool option opens in Poland” by Danielle Cotterman, August 25, 2017 https://www.wfmj.com/story/44600298/new-education-option-opens-in-poland
“Outdoor classes and ‘forest schools’ gain new prominence amid distance learning struggles” by Karen D’Souza, October 1, 2020 https://edsource.org/2020/outdoor-classes-and-forest-schools-gain-new-prominence-amid-distance-learning-struggles/640853
“How to Create a Project-Based Learning Lesson” by Jenny Pieratt, February 16, 2020 https://www.cultofpedagogy.com/project-based-learning-lesson/
“Montessori, Reggio Emilia and Waldorf: What’s the Difference?” by Tessa Judge, February 25, 2020 https://indyschild.com/montessori-reggio-emilia-and-waldorf-whats-the-difference/
“How Do States Define Alternative Education?” Allan Porowski Rosemarie O’Conner Jia Lisa Luo, September 2014 https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED546775.pdf
Shayla Reese Griffin, PhD, MSW, is the co-founder of Justice Leaders Collaborative, author of “Those Kids, Our Schools: Race and Reform in an American High School” (Harvard Education Press, 2015) and co-author of “Race Dialogues: A Facilitator’s Guide to Tackling the Elephant in the Classroom” (Teachers College Press, 2019).