Culture, Discipline, and the No Child Left Behind Act

I agree fully with Mr Kosar’s comments below but it should be noted that the delay of gratification research literature has characteristic problems.  Mr Kosar tactfully does not mention an even bigger problem than differences in culture—differences in ability

David Brooks of the New York Times has been on a bit of an education kick of late. In his May 7 column, “Marshmallows and Public Policy,” he wrote of the famous Mishel experiment.  “Around 1970, Walter Mischel launched a classic experiment. He left a succession of 4-year-olds in a room with a bell and a marshmallow. If they rang the bell, he would come back and they could eat the marshmallow. If, however, they didn’t ring the bell and waited for him to come back on his own, they could then have two marshmallows. …. The children who waited longer went on to get higher SAT scores.”

Two and one-half weeks later (May 25 th ), Brooks penned, “Of Love and Money,” wherein he wrote,  “The people who do well not only possess skills that can be measured on tests, they have self-discipline (which is twice as important as I.Q. in predicting academic achievement, according to a study by Angela Duckworth and Martin Seligman).” For this study, Angela L. Duckworth and Martin E.P. Seligman, “Self-Discipline Outdoes IQ in Predicting Academic Performance of Adolescents,” Psychological Science , vol. 16, issue 12, Dec. 2005, pp. 939-944.)

Interestingly, both Brooks’ columns and this study sound a bit like the hypothesis proffered over three decades ago by Edward C. Banfield. In his book, The Unheavenly City: The Nature and Future of Our Urban Crisis (1970), Banfield warned school reformers that their proposals to improve student learning were bound to run into a brute fact— large numbers of children in the United States were the product of “lower-class culture.”  To be clear, by “lower class” Banfield did not mean “poor.” Rather, Banfield argued, “a person who is poor, unschooled, and of low status may be upper class; indeed, he is upper class if he is psychologically capable of providing for the distant future.” While “upper class culture” imbues a long view of life and goal orientation, lower-class culture has a live-in-the-moment ethos. Thus, youths reared in lower class culture tend to find school difficult because their parents failed to help them develop the mindset that enables them to sit still and learn.

When Banfield’s book came out, he was roasted by the Left, who denounced him as a hard-hearted bigot who did not care about the poor. Too bad. Whatever one might say about The Unheavenly City as a whole, it is clear that in the chapter on education and schooling, Banfield was on to something. Both common sense, and now science, tell us that children need to come to school prepared to learn.

Before policymakers set about to rework the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), they should keep the issue of culture in mind. Here’s why. NCLB, ostensibly, aims to raise student achievement by improving the operations of schools and state education systems. In exchange for federal dollars, states must establish standards and test students. All this is good and fine— but, NCLB also requires schools to get 100% of children proficient in reading and mathematics by 2014 and delivers punishments to schools where children fail to meet achievement targets (“adequate yearly progress”).

Washington , we have a problem. The idealism of “No Child Left Behind” is on a collision course with reality. NCLB aims only at the institutional side of the schooling formula; it does not, though, attempt to elevate “lower class” culture or turn all parents into good nurturers. Nor, quite frankly, is it clear how NCLB or any policy could.  Schools, especially those serving large numbers of children whose parents don’t well prepare them for learning, cannot possibly see to it that 100% of children reach proficiency. To insist that they do is to imagine that a government institution can obliterate the effects of culture and parental child-rearing.

Hence, the goal of 100% proficiency must be lowered. How low should it be set? That is a question worthy of serious discussion. Some politicians and advocates might balk at any such discussion, grousing that setting a lower goal is tantamount to capitulation to what President Bush called “the soft bigotry of low expectations.” But, as Professor Banfield intoned, “[F]acts are facts, however unpleasant, and they have to be faced unblinkingly to improve matters…”

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Posted by jonjayray on Thursday, June 15, 2006 at 10:00 AM in
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