Purposes and Causes

US public schools are failing and something must be done. So begins the tale of woe told by US school reformers, and if you should continue to listen, you will soon hear the familiar high points of this well-worn story. First, the purpose of US schools is, for the most part, to further critical national economic goals. Second, failures to achieve these goals are substantially caused by t h e n a t i o n ' s p r o b l e ma t i c s c h o o l s. T h i r d , me a n i n g f u l p r o x i e s , s u c h a s l i t e r a c y r a t e s o r S AT scores, can tell us, with certainty, whether or not a school or schools are failing, and relatedly, that this failure is strong evidence that a school or some schools are not fulfilling their duties to the nation. Fourth, because certainty is possible, and because we are reasonably certain of the propriety of our views on educational purposes, cause and effect, failure, and need for reform, responsible reform can proceed with confidence that any harm to schools, students, polities, etc. attributable to the reform itself is more likely than not offset by the benefits. Finally, reform should focus on schools themselves and not on larger social policies or economic reform. This paper sets forth two modest claims about the above discourse. First, at least some evidence supports the idea the school r e f o r me r s ' c e r t a i n t y , o n ma n y c o u n t s , i s n o t f u l l y j u s t i f i e d. This claim could take many forms. It could be contended, for example, that the purposes attributed to schools are the wrong purposes, or that schools are not the proper instrument for achieving these, often vague and lofty, purposes, or that the concrete metrics for evaluating schools bear little relation to the efficacy of schools in pursuit of the stated goals, or that the metrics are, indeed, valuable but show that schools are working just fine. This paper focuses on …