Effective Students = Effective Schools

If we are to achieve Thomas Jefferson's dream of an informed, independent polity, we need effective schools. Children need to acquire certain skills in order to function politically and economically in our society, and so adults need to hep them acquire such skills. Some people would like to think that home schooling is the best way to attain that goal, but they are being unrealistic at very least, and may even be wrong in their basic conclusions. If "society" needs young people to be educated, then "society" must do the educating, and that means we need schools.


One serious problem with this conclusion, however, is that bad schools are at least as harmful as no school at all. They may be physically dangerous, they may teach kids that life sucks because it is boring or arbitrary, and they may train people in destructive habits. As a result, we cannot just say we want schools; we want schools that teach effectively.
So, what makes an effective school?

The best answer -- and I do not mean this facetiously or cynically -- is that effective students make effective schools. In one sense, this statement is not very helpful. Students with the talent, discipline, and family support necessary to succeed don't need a lot of help from professional teachers. (Let's call this the First Premise of School Evaluation.) These kids will find a way to do well even despite bad teaching. If everybody in the school has to tools when he arrives, then the school looks, and maybe even is, a good school. Admission offices at selective private schools, like the one I work in, understand this fact, and seek applicants who will make the institution and the community stronger.

The less obvious sense of the statement is more important. Our goal is not to have effective schools, but to have effective students. The only reasonable measure of a school, therefore, is whether its graduates can so what they need to do when they leave. (This will be the Second Premise.) If a school's alumni, by and large, live happy and productive lives, then the school has met its ultimate purpose.

Of course, if we go back to the First Premise, though, we can't know whether the alumni's happiness and productivity came as a result of or despite the actions of the school. To evaluate the schools themselves. therefore, we need to find a way to measure the difference between the kid when he arrived and when he left.

This is a difficult thing to achieve, and will be the subject of a number of later posts.