Abstract
“Given the critical importance of education for individual and societal success in the flat world we now inhabit, inequality in the provision of education is an antiquated tradition the United States can no longer afford” (Darling-Hammond, 2010, p. 327).
The Flat World and Education: How America’s Commitment to Equity Will Determine Our Future (2010) by Linda Darling-Hammond is a must read for all educators from K–12 through higher education because it offers a comprehensive synthesis of the effects inequality has on education at every level. Policymakers and educators alike will appreciate the balance between large-scale research data and case examples that demonstrate how several critical issues play out in schools for teachers and students. Education faculty should consider using this text with aspiring teachers and leaders, even though it is dense at times. The messages in this book resonate for every education professional whose goal is to not reenact education as it has been but to assist our nation’s youth in leading productive lives in an increasingly flat world.
Darling-Hammond’s latest book begins with an introduction that brings attention to the current status of America’s educational system by highlighting how and why we are losing ground on the world stage. Chapter 2 dissects the anatomy of inequality by exposing how factors such as high poverty, low social supports, unequal school resources, tracking, and lack of access to high-quality curriculum in conjunction with unqualified teachers perpetuate the opportunity gap in our educational system. Chapter 3 highlights how the use of high-stakes testing without investing financially has created an educational climate that blames the victims: students. Chapter 4 focuses on funding issues, and provides evidence that when money is used appropriately, student success is achieved. Chapter 5 details the educational success of Connecticut and North Carolina following targeted investments in education, and offers California as an example of unwise and inadequate funding decisions. To build on cases presented in the previous chapter, Chapter 6 highlights successes in three countries (Finland, South Korea, and Singapore) that stem from dramatic changes to their educational systems with smart, purposeful investments that have created strong public education systems. Chapter 7 discusses the various ways systems and school leaders can recruit, develop, and support effective teachers, and Chapter 8 describes how redesigning how schools are organized will support teacher and student learning. Finally, in Chapter 9 Darling-Hammond explains the importance of a paradigm shift in educational policy that will equalize access to education.
Darling-Hammond provides strong evidence that inequality and inequity pervade the landscape of education in America, providing a convincing argument that the educational system in the United States is in crisis because it mirrors and perpetuates the imbalances in access and opportunity present in society. Very often the disparity begins with funding. Examples include the conditions of schools that are falling apart and the lack of adequate resources for books and other essentials. Overwhelmingly, underresourced schools are found in poor urban areas that serve a high population of students of color. Darling-Hammond states, “students least likely to encounter widely available educational resources at home are also least likely to encounter them in schools” (p. 22).
Throughout this book, Darling-Hammond elucidates the primary social and political factors condemning schools most in need of professional expertise and describes the revolving door of poorly qualified teachers. Research data from multiple studies support the conclusion that inexperienced, uncertified, and underprepared teachers have significant negative effects on student achievement, even after controlling for factors such as poverty and language background. In addition to disparities in funding and resources, the preponderance of inexperienced and unlicensed teachers working in urban schools ensures students’ lack of access to high-quality education. In contrast, areas with ample resources have more highly qualified and licensed teachers who remain with the system long enough to hone their content and instructional skills. Schools and systems populated by low-quality teachers are marked by high levels of turnover, instability, and lack of institutional knowledge that further harm their students.
Finally, Darling-Hammond questions America’s overreliance on standardized tests to rate and rank both students and teachers. When students lack access to qualified teachers, effective teaching practices, and adequate resources, Darling-Hammond argues, they should not and cannot be expected to perform on the same academic level as students with all of the educational advantages necessary to succeed. The outcome of pairing subpar teachers with high-needs students in a test-driven environment seems to be scripted curriculum, focus on compliance and acquisition of low-level skills, and entrenched tracking that places meaningful academic achievement beyond the reach of most students. By “testing without investing,” we are violating a student’s right to educational equality (Darling-Hammond, 2010, p. 73).
To counter such problems, Darling-Hammond identifies teaching as the primary factor influencing students’ learning trajectories, but takes care to avoid scapegoating teachers or positioning them as the cause of systemic dysfunction in the nation’s schools. Citations from numerous studies build the case for the importance of quality teaching, such as a North Carolina study demonstrating that students achieve at significantly higher levels when their teachers earned full certification, completed a teacher preparation program, scored higher on the teacher licensing test, graduated from a competitive college, taught for more than 2 years, and attained national board certification. Each factor alone increases teacher effectiveness, but in combination the effect is larger than the effects of race and parent education combined, revealing a powerful key to closing the achievement gap. Not only must teachers be well prepared and fully licensed, they also must receive targeted preparation and support in reaching students whose socioeconomic and racial backgrounds may differ from their own.
In addition to effective and culturally relevant preparation, teachers require ongoing support and professional development, particularly during their early years in the classroom. Darling-Hammond highlights this as a profession-wide commitment to building teacher expertise and a hallmark of high-functioning education systems in Finland, South Korea, and Singapore. Rather than providing occasional workshops or trainings, high-achieving systems make a commitment to providing teachers adequate time, ample resources, and an appropriate workload so that they can become collaborative, self-directed professionals capable of developing curriculum, planning instruction, and using assessment to support student learning. Nations that make this systemic commitment to teacher professionalism also offer competitive salaries and tuition support that draw higher-achieving university students to the field.
These issues placing the American education system on shaky ground certainly have been raised previously in the literature. However, the strength of this book is in bringing together multiple arguments, each supported with copious research, to accentuate the overlap between policy, funding, teacher preparation, high stakes assessment, curriculum, leadership, and school design. Darling-Hammond succinctly merges these myriad lines of research to assert that although each element is harmful, it is the additive effects of inequality on students in struggling schools that reinforce and widen gaps in achievement, access, and opportunity.
Although Darling-Hammond’s catalogue of widespread, ingrained, and politically charged sources of inequality can feel overwhelming, she also provides meaningful solutions for righting the educational inequities threatening the nation’s most vulnerable students. Her answers hinge on coordinated reforms that simultaneously address improvements in teacher preparation, opportunities for ongoing teacher learning, support for high-quality leadership, implementation of thinking-oriented curricula, personalization of schools, equitable distribution of fiscal resources, and modifications to policy in order to foster innovation rather than regulation. The sweeping scale of proposed reforms offers a compelling vision for education in the United States; however, it also stands as one of the few critiques of this work. That is, teachers, school leaders, teacher educators, and others who are committed to this vision may find few points of access for tackling these matters on a small scale. The issues in education as proposed have so many moving parts and are so interconnected, it seems that solutions must originate at federal, state, and system levels. Although Darling-Hammond features several innovative models that have successfully turned around individual schools, she also points out the problems with scalability and maintenance of effective programs over time within a system that privileges uniformity over individual needs.
Ultimately, Darling-Hammond calls on states and school systems not only to support teachers’ professional learning in order to better meet the needs of students but also to restructure the fundamental design of schooling to acknowledge changes in the diversity of the student population, shift to the knowledge economy, and broadened expectations for access to rigorous curricula. She calls on systems to organize for success by relinquishing antiquated factory-model educational design in favor of learning goals, curriculum, and deployment of resources aligned with 21st-century demands.
Rather than doing their best to get by in a broken system, teachers, school and system leaders, teacher educators, and policymakers can build on Darling-Hammond’s suggestions to advocate meaningful reform that makes the opportunity gap in American education a thing of the past. In a political environment that tends to oversimplify the issues in education or turn a blind eye to the systemic social factors influencing student achievement, educators will be well served by using this significant work as a foundation for building and articulating their professional perspectives.