TO: Elisabeth DeVos, Nominee for Secretary of Education

FROM: Qianying Jenny Zhang qianying@gse.upenn.edu

DATE: December 20, 2016
SUBJECT: Three Recommendations to Consider in Your Upcoming Policy Decisions
The evolutionary nature of mankind has determined that people across the globe have
high expectations for their childrens education for that the fate of a human society depends on
the quality of training and preparation its youth receive and will make use of when they become
adults. Under democratic governments, education is closely linked to the wishes of the people,
but the strength of that link in America has been unique. The American people have traditionally
regarded education as a means for improving themselves and their society and have invested
more hope in education as a lever of social progress and equality. Skimming over the history, we
see that whenever an objective has been judged desirable for the individual, the demographic
group, or the society as a whole, it has tended to be accepted as a valid concern of the school.
Arguing that universal public education can create the virtuous republican citizenship needed to
sustain American political institutions and prevent social disorders, Horace Mann led the
common school movement. Believing that education is the most fundamental method of social
reconstruction for progress and reform through helping students construct their own learning,
John Dewey set the tone for pedagogical philosophy as well as concrete school reforms during
the Progressive Education Movement. To alter the attitudes and socialization of children, civil
rights movement leaders and education reformers fought for integrated schools and went through
ups and downs that were shaped by various court rulings and policy battles to put black and
white children in the same classrooms. After the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1, the federal
government expanded its role in public education and authorized federal funding under the
National Defense Education Act for an array of educational programs designed to develop
American talent in fields relevant to national defense. Over the past few decades, the American
education system underwent cyclical standardization movements aiming to close the gap
between the high hopes projected onto schooling and the low effectiveness of school and district
efforts, and all such attempts to rationalize schools ended with failure.
Given the seemingly never-ending misery around public schooling, it is easy to dive
headfirst into the search for the next panacea. Thus it is of extreme importance to remember what
purposes education serves. Two of the best-known definitions of purposes were formulated by
educators in 1918 and 1938. The first definition, by the Commision on the Reorganization of
Secondary Education, proposed for the school a set of seven cardinal objectives: health,
command of fundamental processes, worthy home membership, vocational competence,
effective citizenship, worthy use of leisure, and ethical character. The second definition, by the
Educational Policies Commission, developed a number of objectives under four headings:
self-realization, human relationship, economic efficiency, and civic responsibility.
In essence, these objectives belong in two categories: individual development and
societal growth. Schools first and foremost should foster the development of individual
capacities which will enable each human being to become the best person he or she is capable of
becoming. Schools have been designed also to serve societys needs, namely, providing
education that helps maintain the political order which depends on responsible participation of
individual citizens and the economic order which is determined by peoples ability and
willingness to work. It is crucial that policymakers construct and implement reform measures
that take into account both purposes. The New Math curricula, for example, were put in place
with an overwhelming focus on the societys needs, in this case, producing a sufficient number
of talented scientists, and ignored the adequacy of education received by the poorest Americans.
In the end, the New Math failed in its promise to intellectually prepare students and the
exigencies of the 1970s demanded a return to basics, local control and tradition rather than
blind trust in the methods of experts and elite academicians. In order to avoid such mistakes, the
dual purposes of education will need to be always kept in mind. Guided by these two central
purposes, I hereby provide with you three recommendations to consider for your upcoming
policy decisions as the countrys Secretary of Education.
Balance between Top-down and Bottom-up
The dichotomy between the Top-down approach and the Bottom-up approach
characterized a significant percentage of the ever-heated debate on American school reforms. At
the crux of these discussions are the underlying assumptions that one approach is inherently
correct while the other is not and that the right one must take the complete place of the wrong
one. However, it is easy to be so involved in such discussions that it becomes overlooked that the
approach to education reforms is only a means to an end. The end goal of education should
reflect the central purposes of education while the means used should be any measures that are
the most effective regardless of their directions on the socio-political hierarchy. Therefore, my
first recommendation is that education reforms should be a product of balanced Top-down and
the Bottom-up makeup, and that there should be a role for both popular and expert opinion and
input in the design and execution of relevant policies.
It is easier to comprehend why pure bottom-up reforms do not work. Such efforts often
face enormous obstacles because teachers and principals are unable to form any coalition with
political allies or build a significant political or economic base behind their advocacy. In
contrast, the Top-down camp have always had more power and resources and thus an absolute
advantage in the debates. This difference between the two tells us that we need to be especially
careful with the unsound black-or-white perception that people have about Top-down and
Bottom-up, given that it is dangerous while tempting to be disarmedly charmed by the elites
plan. First of all, the motive behind the reform advocates was unclear. There is debate among
historians over whether such desire to control the system of schooling was motivated by a belief
in the genius theories and models forwarded by elites or their self-serving purpose to retain
power over a rapidly growing immigrant population (Mehta, 2013). If the latter is true and the
improvement of education is used by reformers as a means to an end that is their own financial
and political dominance, the Top-down approach needs to be questioned entirely. Even if the
former is the case, it still does not always guarantee the most desirable results. In fact, some of
the bureaucratic efforts even led to disastrous failures, such as the toxic teaching-to-the-test
atmosphere under No Child Left Behind, which suggests that the Top-down approach alone is
not sufficient to turn the education system around.
The tension between the Top and the Bottom was evident in the progressive era where
the reformers created a centralized system and shifted the power from teachers and principals to
superintendents. At the time, rural schools were deemed as problematic by the reformers, whose
symptoms include the 'bookish' curriculum, haphazard selection and supervision of teachers,
voluntary character of school attendance, discipline problems, and diversity of buildings and
equipment. (Tyack, 1974, p. 21) The administrative progressive reformers attributed these
symptoms of rural education to the rural folks lack of knowledge on what would work in the
complex new society and their consequent inability to run the schools despite their strong desire
to do so. The remedy the reformers prescribed was what David Tyack later called the one best
system that would turn the localized and highly varied system of schooling into a standardized,
modernized community in which leadership came from above, the bureaucrats and professionals.
The cultural implication of their reform advocacy was that the more cooperative community
members were in doing what central administrators commanded, the more successful their
schooling would be. According to Mehta (2013), however, this implementation logic was a
highly limited strategy for improving schools because teaching is too complex to remotely
control and teachers became resistant to dicta from above. (p. 40) The result was reciprocal
mistrust between teachers and policymakers, with little of the sought-after improvement in
teacher practice.
Drawing on this cultural template created by the administrative progressives for the
control of schooling, bureaucrats and professionals continued to institutionalize education and to
decree changes to happen at the local level from afar. Because state and federal administrators
were too distant from schools to direct their improvement effectively, they started to place the
measurable ahead of the meaningful. Consequently, standardization became more and more
emblematic of Top-down policies and the disconnect between central administrators reform
decisions and frontline practitioners ideas and experiences greater and greater. Efforts to
incorporate standards into federal legislation culminated in No Child Left Behind, and almost
fifteen years later, we still do not see the nations educational ills cured.
A more recent failure of the Top-down approach happened in Newarks education
overhaul after the city received a $100 million donation from Mark Zuckerberg. This generous
gift that could have made Neward a national model eventually failed to substantially improve the
citys public schools because there was less focus on Newark as its own complex ecosystem
that reformers needed to understand before trying to save it. (Russakoff, 2015, p. 210) While
the intention of the plan might have been to improve the quality of education and foster the
development of students capacities, which is compatible with the central purposes of education,
its execution completely deviated from the needs of individual students, marginalizing teachers
and parents altogether in the process. As a result, a large portion of the donation never reached
the Newark classroom floor because district money gushed and oozed in myriad directions.
(Russakoff, 2015, p. 74) For instance, the district spent $1,200 a year per student on janitorial
services, which was triple the market rate while the gap between these numbers could have paid
salaries for up to ten additional teachers and counselors at a district school. There are countless
other examples of the districts cost overheads preventing resources from supporting quality
instruction in classroom because the voices of community members whose fates are really at
stake are not included in the decision-making process. The Newarks Top-down reformers, with
their hubristic pledge to fundamentally transform the citys education system within five years,
once again proved the deep flaws of pure Top-down reforms. Therefore, we must try to find the
most effective approach to school reform in the overlap between both Top-down and Bottom-up
measures.While further questions as to whether the two approaches are equally important or one
approach should play a more significant role while the other more auxiliary, still need to be
answered, it is important to note that Top-down and Bottom-up are not mutually exclusive and
should be considered in a synergistic rather than diametrically opposed way.
 Teaching as an Attractive Profession
To really achieve the two central purposes of education, schools need good teachers.
First, for the purpose of fostering students capacities, among the hundreds of research studies
have focused on the importance of teachers for student achievement, a general finding is that
teachers are indeed important. With the teacher as the independent variable, the average gains in
learning across classrooms, within or without the same school, vary significantly and no other
attribute of schools comes close to having this much influence on student achievement
(Hanushek, 2010). Secondly, for the purpose of meeting the societys needs, Eric Hanushek
(2010) of Stanford University also found that an excellent teacher (one a standard deviation
better than average) raises each students lifetime earnings by $20,000. If there are 20 students in
the class, that is an extra $400,000 generated, compared with a teacher who is average. When the
extra income becomes extra spending, extra taxes and extra investment, it gives rise to an
increase in consumption and helps stimulate the nations economy as a whole.
We need good teachers but the challenge is that there does not seem to be enough of
them. Not to be confused with a lack of total teacher supply, the lack of good teachers refers to
the shortage of teachers who have the moral virtue and the adequate knowledge and skills
required to teach responsibly and effectively. While the overall supply is not hugely problematic,
the source of the plight is who we have in the teaching workforce. In 2015, the National Center
for Education Statistics released a report that shows the difficulty public schools have filling
vacant teaching positions has dropped considerably over the past dozen years (Malkus et al.,
2015). As Nat Malcus (2015) incisively pointed out, on the national level, America is not
approaching a crisis involving increasing teacher shortages but where and whom schools hire is
often problematic.
Whom are schools hiring anyway? A study by McKinsey & Company (Auguste, Kihn &
Miller, 2010) found that 47 percent of Americas kindergarten through 12th-grade teachers come
from the bottom one-third of their college classes (as measured by SAT scores). The same report
also showed that countries that lead respected international assessments, such as the Programme
for International Student Assessment (PISA), including Singapore, Finland, and South Korea,
draw their teachers from among their most talented peoplethe top third of their cohort. This
striking contrast in teacher selection raises another question: why dont brilliant young people in
America want to teach? The answer is simple: low pay and low status. Therefore, in order to
attract more capable college graduates who possess a deep working knowledge of a discipline
into the teaching field, my second recommendation is to increase teachers pay and the public
esteem associated with the profession.
Teaching is not an appealing profession in this country because it does not lead to
financial prosperity. The McKinsey study found that a starting lawyer at a prominent law firm,
including bonus, makes $115,000 more than a teacher at a public school (Auguste, Kihn &
Miller, 2010). The report also showed that the starting teacher pay, averaging $39,000, would
have to rise to $65,000 to fill most teaching vacancies in high-needs schools with graduates from
the top third of their classes. It should not be a surprise that teachers in Singapore, South Korea
and Finland are highly respected and paid well. Teachers in South Korea and Singapore on
average earn more than lawyers and engineers (Auguste, Kihn & Miller, 2010). The reason why
the American society do not think teachers deserve to be paid as highly as medical and legal
professionals is peoples perception of teaching as a semi-profession, not a full-fledged one, as
Mehta (2013) repeatedly stresses in his book.
 The low status of the teaching profession can be explained by the historical patterns
under which teaching developed. Pure Top-down reform measures, in particular, largely
restrained teachers from enjoying an autonomous and respectable role in the society. In the
Progressive Era, schools were expected to follow the directives of a central manager in a district
office, which effectively institutionalized teaching, not as a profession under the control of its
frontline practitioners, but as an activity performed within a bureaucratically controlled
hierarchy. Teachers, being at the bottom of an implementation chain, were unable to established
professional control of their own. As public education became more and more narrowly
academic in focus and purpose, the role of teachers ironically became less and less complicated
and intellectual-oriented (Zimmerman, 2014). With the passing of No Child Left Behind law in
2001, schools are judged as good or bad solely based on their students performance on
standardized tests. In 2009, the Race to the Top program used federal funding to encourage
evaluation of individual teachers based on their students test scores. When teaching is
considered equivalent to teaching to the test, characterized by dull instructions, predictable
routines, and a huge focus on rote and recall, the public start to see it as simple, mechanical work
and as a result, it becomes even more difficult for teachers to claim authority on the basis of
social trustee status. (Mehta, 2013, p. 124)
Mehta (2013) concluded that another reason why teachers are not valued by other society
members is that the field has failed to developed a stock of widely shared, usable, and practical
knowledge. In other words, teachers have been unable to establish a defined body of knowledge
considered essential to becoming a teacher. Specifically, the most relevant knowledge in the
education field came from other social sciences, such as psychology and economics, and the
status of pedagogical knowledge and education research has been notoriously low within the
academy and with the public. (Mehta, 2013, p. 123) Consequently, teachers have been unable to
convince the public that a lengthy course of study is required or necessary for good teaching; this
liability has become more significant as other professions have recast the source of their
authority in the mastery of technical knowledge.(p. 123) This also explains why elites and
bureaucrats without any teaching background feel so comfortable telling educators on the ground
what to do. While most people outside the field of law or medicine are never trained in those
disciplines, almost all people are products of some degree of primary and secondary education,
who have all been taught how to add and subtract and have all read Harper Lee.
Therefore, for teachers to claim authority as social trustees, they will have to create a
monopoly over expert knowledge. One way to start is to promote the sharing of experiences and
the exchange of feedbacks among teaching professionals. During these peer review discussions,
different methods can converge and trials and errors can be recorded, which can later serve as a
base for a teacher-specific body of knowledge. In fact, many other advanced countries have been
making good use of critical commentary within educators for a long time. Japanese teachers, for
example, constantly evolve as professionals through learning the imperfections about their own
teaching as well as what other teachers are doing better. According to the OECD Teaching and
Learning International Survey (TALIS), 96 percent of teachers in Japan work in schools where
principals report the use of formal appraisals, which are later used to put in place measures to
remedy weaknesses in teaching based on discussions with the teacher. Almost all teachers in
Japan report receiving feedback on their work from multiple actors within their schools, such as
the school principal and members of the school management team, using various methods,
including classroom observation. Teachers in Japan also participate in many more observation
visits to other schools and in education conferences and seminars than their international
colleagues. Japanese teachers even have a separate word for their weekly routine to critique each
others curriculum and pedagogy, jugyokenkyu (Zimmerman, 2014).
In Finland, the main form of appraisal occurs through face-to-face and often informal
dialogue with the school leader (OECD, 2011). While the percentage of Finnish teachers who
report having received feedback from their principal and other teachers in their schools (42% and
43%) is less than half of that of Japanese teachers, TALIS data show that teachers who believe
that appraisal and feedback influences their teaching report higher confidence in their abilities,
which gives many Finnish educators reason to believe that improving the feedback system could
be an opportunity to implement a policy for better professional experience of teachers in Finland.
TALIS results on U.S. teachers seem to be consistent with the traditional view of teachers
as working in a closed classroom in isolation from colleagues. Half or more U.S. lower
secondary teachers report never teaching jointly in the same classroom with a colleague or never
observing other teachers and providing feedback on their teaching (OECD, 2011). Thus, if
American teachers wish to start constructing their own expert knowledge to change the publics
perception of the profession and gain a higher level of respect, they need to engage frequently in
peer review sessions and collaborative activities that have been shown to be positively correlated
with teachers reported job satisfaction and with the confidence they have in their own abilities
as teachers (OECD, 2011).
The last piece regarding the low attractiveness of teaching comes from how teachers are
openly discussed and portrayed in various media channels. Teachers unions usually embrace an
antagonistic model of bargaining almost exclusively on wage and benefit issues,(Mehta, 2013,
p. 124), which makes it hard for teachers to escape the lazy and greedy rhetoric that the
public seem to have associated them with. However, since a fundamental solution to the
American schooling problem is to attract more brilliant teachers, the correct strategy is to elevate
teachers by raising their salaries and helping them defend their honor against public scrutiny.
People with public influence, especially political figures who represent the federal
government, should be extra careful about their comments regarding teachers. Heated feuds
between government officials and teachers unions only reinforce the negative impressions people
have of teachers. In 2015, New Jersey Governor, Chris Christie, said on CNN that a national
teachers union deserves a punch in the face and called it the single most destructive force in
public education. (Layton, 2015) Christie said the union cares only about higher wages and
benefits and not about children. Such comments that call a national teachers union the single
most destructive force in public education in America from a widely known politician can have
serious consequences. Given his frequent media exposure, his comments can potentially sway
what people feel about the teaching profession. Attacking teachers unions in such a hateful way
is not only biased and irrational, but also antithetical to the goal of providing better education
since it is withholding the public esteem that teachers deserve.
The portrayal of teachers in popular films and television programs can also influence the
public opinion on teachers. It is not mere speculation to suggest the potentially powerful role the
entertainment industry can have in shaping the perceptions and opinions of students, parents,
policymakers, and the general public. Researchers in the healthcare industry found that popular
movies and television have a powerful impact on public attitudes regarding nurses and the
nursing profession (Brodie et al. 2001). This aforementioned study drew heavily on the
cultivation theory which argues that when people are exposed to a consistent set of messages
frequently enough about a certain group, they tend to incorporate the information gleaned from
those messages into their worldview and their view of that particular group, which also
re-emphasizes the importance of speaking respectfully of teachers in public. If other professions
are concerned about their public image, an implication for educational stakeholders and
policymakers should be that the more people see teachers portrayed positively, the more likely it
is for them to think of teachers in a positive way. Thus, my recommendation for the popular
culture piece is to encourage the showing of existing films that have positive teacher portrayals,
as well as the making of new films that feature good teaching practices.
Continuing the Fight for Desegregation
Over six decades after the Brown decision ended legal segregation in public schools, an
enormous volume of multi-disciplinary social science evidence has pointed to the important
academic, social and civic benefits for low income students of color who attend high quality,
diverse schools. While the ways in which white students are advantaged by racially diverse
school settings received less attention, existing research suggests that diverse schools also benefit
this group by providing far better learning outcomes. Moreover, enrollment in racially integrated
schools is associated with important social and psychological advantages that improve
productivity in an increasingly diverse workplace. Therefore, despite the costs of desegregation
such as busing and white-flight, the fight for desegregation has served well the two central
purposes of education. Given the ever-worsening tendency for schools to resegregate today, my
third recommendation is that racial and ethnic integration in public schools should remain a
focus of continuous reform efforts.
Avoiding racial and economic segregation in schools is important not only from the civil
rights angle, but also because of the many documented benefits it provides to students who are
able to enroll in more racially integrated, lower poverty schools (Mickelson, Roslyn & Bottia,
2010). A large number of multi-disciplinary social science studies over the past two decades
have demonstrated that education at integrated public schools leads to: achievement gains in
math and reading for African American and Latino children (Crosnoe, 2005; Tevis, 2007),
increased likelihood of employment, less involvement with the criminal justice system
(Schofield, 2001), and a higher probability for integrated schools graduates to choose to reside in
integrated neighborhoods later in life, have friends from many races and ethnic groups, and work
in diverse work environments (Weiner et al., 2009), all of which are consistent with the purpose
of fostering student development and pushing forward societal advancement.
Racially and ethnically diverse schools have also been documented to have brought a vast
array of positive academic outcomes for white students. These include more robust classroom
discussions, the promotion of critical thinking and problem-solving skills and higher academic
achievement (Chang, 2006). In particular, the presence of different racial and ethnic backgrounds
in a classroom is closely connected to heightened dialogue and debate where diverse
perspectives can provide participants with multiple lenses through which to view and understand
problems and events. Compared to racially isolated educational settings, racially integrated
schools are also associated with reduced prejudice among students of different racial and ethnic
backgrounds, a diminished likelihood of stereotyping, more friendships across racial lines and
higher levels of cultural competence (Aboud, Mendelson, & Purdy, 2003). These cognitive and
social gains combined, present a more fundamentally important outcome, a true lesson of
pluralistic democracy. That is, through their experiences at racially integrated schools, students
are able to develop a societal perspective, exhibit empathy, acquire a capacity to evaluate
alternative perspectives on complex social problems, and become better prepared to take on
social roles as decision makers and negotiators of different perspectives.
The reiteration of these benefits of desegregation is important because sixty-two years
after the United States Supreme Court ruled that segregated schools violate the Constitution,
American public schools still remain deeply segregated by race. Opponents of integration efforts
contend that the fight for integration is not worth it because it has been too long and too hard
while some racially singular schools are thriving perfectly. These people are missing the point.
They do not see that desegregation, when succeeded, is inherently capable of achieving great
academic and social outcomes. It has been a long and hard fight because there are many external
factors that are posing great difficulty in the process of eradicating segregation.
In post-Brown days, De-facto segregation happened because a large part of the white
population, wanted to stall the implementation of Brown for as long as they could. Since the law
centered on the integration of students, southern districts craftily shifted their resistance focus to
black faculty in order to maintain the status quo, dismissing black teachers and downgrading
black principals schools (Fultz, 2004). Local and federal influences, as well as private interests,
jointly developed a potent spatial ideology to move schools to the suburbs, far away from the
poor, African-American population in urban centers and to avoid any spending on new facilities
in city schools (Erickson, 2012). These challenging aspects all point to what Pettigrew (1965)
concluded after analyzing the factors that influence the rate of southern educational
desegregation: racial segregation engenders and nurtures a form of social inertia and avoidance
learning that slows the pace of school desegregation efforts which are already hampered by
social, economic, and political conflicts and inequities.
The effects of social inertia and avoidance learning are still very evident today,
perpetuating segregation in public schools. U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO)
investigators (2016) found that from the 2000-2001 to the 2013-2014 school year, the percentage
of all K-12 public schools that had high percentages of poor and black or Hispanic students grew
from 9 to 16 percent. Moreover, these schools were incredibly racially and economically
concentrated: 75 to 100 percent of the students were black or Hispanic and poor. The report
states that while much has changed in public education in the decades following the landmark
decision and subsequent legislative action, research has shown that some of the most vexing
issues affecting children and their access to educational excellence and opportunity today are
inextricably linked to race and poverty.
The danger of De-facto resegregation will become even more pressing as the minority
population continue to grow. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the minority population is
expected to rise to 56 percent of the total population in 2060, compared with 38 percent in 2014
(Wazwaz, 2015). Thus it is of extreme importance for the Department of Education to regularly
analyze its civil rights data to identify disparities among types and groups of schools and
generate reports on relevant information that can help monitoring segregation tendencies, such as
test score disparities.
Conclusion
Education is never an isolated sector but has always been embedded in the larger
geopolitical map. While an education reform decision is always made with the consideration of
its political, social and economic implications, the two central purposes of education should be
placed at the center of the picture. Whether or not a policy should be implemented should always
be judged against the two criteria: 1). Does it foster the development of students capacities
which will enable to become the best version of themselves. 2). Does it serve the societys needs
in that it helps maintain political order and bring economic prosperity? The three
recommendations included in this memo are made with the two central purposes of education as
imperative guidelines and are aimed at addressing some of the most problematic areas in the
American public education system today.
Recommendation 1: Neither the Top-down nor the Bottom-up approach is absolutely
correct. Both should be considered as a means to an end, not the end itself. The most effective
approach to school reform needs to be found in the overlap between both Top-down and
Bottom-up measures, with each approach exerting its strength while immobilize its weakness, to
make sure that resources can be optimized.
Recommendation 2: Teachers pay and social status need to be increased in order to attract
more capable graduates with the adequate knowledge and skills to teachers into the teaching
workforce. For teachers to gain higher public esteem, they should initiate programs where they
exchange critical commentary on pedagogical practices with peers and also provide with each
other intellectual support to improve skills and learning. Public officials should be held
responsible for their insulting comments about teachers, for that may negatively influence the
publics perception of the teaching profession. The showing of existing films that have positive
teacher portrayals and the making of new films that feature good teaching practices should both
be encouraged.
Recommendation 3: Racial and ethnic integration in public schools have absolutely
crucial benefits for individual students and the society as a whole. Thus it should remain a focus
of continuous reform efforts. Since racial segregation in this country has a self-perpetuating
tendency and is almost impossible to eradicate, it should be carefully monitored and problems
should be addressed in a timely manner.
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