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David Brooks vs. David Brooks on a Broader, Bolder Approach

A Critique of Pure Reason
by David Brooks
The New York Times
March 1, 2007

All the presidential candidates this year will talk about education. The conventional ones will talk about improving the schools. The creative ones will talk about improving the lives of students.

The conventional ones, though they don’t know it, are prisoners of the dead husk of behaviorism. They will speak of education as if children were blank slates waiting to have ideas inputted into their brains with some efficient delivery mechanism.

The creative ones will finally absorb the truth found in decades of research: the relationships children have outside school shape their performance inside the school.

The conventional candidates will give the same old education reform speeches, trumpeting this or that bureaucratic reshuffle. The creative ones will give speeches like the one David Cameron, who is reviving the British Tory party, gave last month. They will talk, as Cameron did, about the mushy things, like love and attachment, and will say, as Cameron did, “Family relationships matter more than anything else.”

They will understand that schools filled with students who can’t control their impulses, who can’t focus their attention and who can’t regulate their emotions will not succeed, no matter how many reforms are made by governors, superintendents or presidents.

These candidates will emphasize that education is a cumulative process that begins at the dawn of life and builds early in life as children learn how to learn. These candidates will point out that powerful social trends — the doubling of single-parent families over the past generation, the rise of divorce rates — mean that government has to rethink its role. They’ll note that if we want to have successful human capital policies, we have to get over the definition of education as something that takes place in schools between the hours of 8 and 3, between the months of September and June, and between the ages of 5 and 18.

As Bob Marvin of the University of Virginia points out, there is a mountain of evidence demonstrating that early childhood attachments shape lifelong learning competence.

Children do have inborn temperaments and intelligence. Nevertheless, students make the most of their natural dispositions when they have a secure emotional base from which to explore, and even the brightest children stumble when there is chaos inside.

Research over the past few decades impressively shows that children who emerge from attentive, attuned parental relationships do better in school and beyond. They tend to choose friends wisely. They handle frustration better. They’re more resilient in the face of setbacks. They grow up to become more productive workers.

On the other hand, as Martha Farah of the University of Pennsylvania has found, students who do not feel emotionally safe tend not to develop good memories (which is consistent with cortisol experiments in animals). Students from less stimulating environments have worse language skills.

The question, of course, is, What can government do about any of this? The answer is that there are programs that do work to help young and stressed mothers establish healthier attachments. These programs usually involve having nurses or mature women make a series of home visits to give young mothers the sort of cajoling and practical wisdom that in other times would have been delivered by grandmothers or elders.

The Circle of Security program has measurably improved attachments and enhanced social skills. The Nurse-Family Partnerships program, founded by David Olds, has produced rigorously examined, impressive results. Children who have been in this program had 59 percent fewer arrests at age 15. (Presidential candidates are commanded to read Katherine Boo’s Feb. 6, 2006, New Yorker article to get a feel for how these programs work.)

It’s important not to get carried away. “Enhancing Early Attachments,” a review of the literature edited by Lisa Berlin and others, is filled with phrases like “marginal success” and “modest but significant benefits.” But these programs can be expanded.

And one thing is clear: It’s crazy to have educational policies that, in effect, chop up children’s brains into the rational cortex, which the government ministers to in schools, and the emotional limbic system, which the government ignores. In nature there is no neat division. Emotional engagement is the essence of information processing and learning.

In Britain, where both David Cameron and Gordon Brown have grappled with this reality, policy is catching up with the research. In the United States, we are forever behind. But that won’t last. This year, some smart presidential candidate will help us catch up.

http://select.nytimes.com/2007/03/01/opinion/01brooks.html

Obama, Liberalism and the Challenge of Reform
by David Brooks
The New York Times
June 13, 2008

Is Barack Obama really a force for change, or is he just a traditional Democrat with a patina of postpartisan rhetoric?

That question is surprisingly hard to answer. When you listen to his best speeches, you see a person who really could herald a new political era. But when you look into his actual policies, you often find a list of orthodox liberal programs that no centrist or moderate conservative would have any reason to support.

To investigate this question, I looked more closely into Obama’s education policies. Education is a good area to probe because Obama knows a lot about it, and because there are two education camps within the Democratic Party: a status quo camp and a reform camp. The two camps issued dueling strategy statements this week.

The status quo camp issued a statement organized by the Economic Policy Institute. This report argues that poverty and broad social factors drive high dropout rates and other bad outcomes. Schools alone can’t combat that, so more money should go to health care programs, anti-poverty initiatives and after-school and pre-K programs. When it comes to improving schools, the essential message is that we need to spend more on what we’re already doing: smaller class sizes, better instruction, better teacher training.

The reformist camp, by contrast, issued a statement through the Education Equality Project, signed by school chiefs like Joel Klein of New York, Michelle Rhee of Washington, Andres Alonso of Baltimore as well as Al Sharpton, Mayor Cory Booker of Newark and experts like Andrew Rotherham, the former Clinton official who now writes the Eduwonk blog.

The reformists also support after-school and pre-K initiatives. But they insist school reform alone can make a big difference, so they emphasize things the status quo camp doesn’t: rigorous accountability and changing the fundamental structure of school systems.

Today’s school systems aren’t broken, the reformers argue. They were designed to meet the needs of teachers and adults first, and that’s exactly what they are doing. It’s time, though, to put the interests of students first.

The reformers want to change the structure of the system, not just spend more on the same old things. Tough decisions have to be made about who belongs in the classroom and who doesn’t. Parents have to be given more control over education through public charter schools. Teacher contracts and state policies that keep ineffective teachers in the classroom need to be revised. Most importantly, accountability has to be rigorous and relentless. No Child Left Behind has its problems, but it has ushered in a data revolution, and hard data is the prerequisite for change.

The question of the week is: Which camp is Barack Obama in?

His advisers run the gamut, and the answer depends in part on what month it is. Back in October 2005, Obama gave a phenomenal education speech in which he seemed to ally with the reformers. Then, as the campaign heated up, he shifted over to pure union orthodoxy, ripping into accountability and testing in a speech in New Hampshire in a way that essentially gutted the reformist case. Then, on May 28 in Colorado, he delivered another major education speech in which he shifted back in a more ambiguous direction.

In that Colorado speech, he opened with a compelling indictment of America’s school systems. Then he argued that the single most important factor in shaping student achievement is the quality of the teachers. This seemed to direct him in the reformist camp’s direction, which has made them happy.

But when you look at the actual proposals Obama offers, he’s doesn’t really address the core issues. He’s for the vast panoply of pre-K and after-school programs that most of us are for. But the crucial issues are: What do you do with teachers and administrators who are failing? How rigorously do you enforce accountability? Obama doesn’t engage the thorny, substantive matters that separate the two camps.

He proposes dozens of programs to build on top of the current system, but it’s not clear that he would challenge it. He’s all carrot, no stick. He’s politically astute — giving everybody the impression he’s on their side — but substantively vague. Change just isn’t that easy.
Obama endorses many good ideas and is more specific than the McCain campaign, which hasn’t even reported for duty on education. But his education remarks give the impression of a candidate who wants to be for big change without actually incurring the political costs inherent in that enterprise.

In Washington, Mayor Adrian Fenty has taken big risks in supporting a tenacious reformer like Rhee. Would President Obama likewise take on a key Democratic interest group in order to promote real reform? We can hope. But so far, hope is all we can be sure of.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/13/opinion/13brooks.html

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Letters to the editor in response to this column

The New York Times
Letters to the Editor
In Search of the Education President

To the Editor:

Re “Obama, Liberalism and the Challenge of Reform” (column, June 13):

To decide whether Barack Obama is serious about change, David Brooks decided to evaluate his policies on education. Fair enough. But to do so, he presents a dichotomy within the Democratic Party of “status quo” versus “reformist” thinkers.

I’ve spent a career trying to improve learning in the schools, so I was a little confused when I couldn’t figure out which team I was on. I contacted several colleagues, including ones I often argue with, and they couldn’t locate themselves either in this portrait.

Thus Mr. Brooks has painted a clear border through a complex landscape and then concluded that Mr. Obama is wishy-washy because he has footprints on both sides.

Perhaps this maneuver will convince a few more that Mr. Obama’s talk of change is only rhetoric. But I trust that neither Mr. Obama nor John McCain will buy into this simplistic distinction. Education is too important an issue.

Clifford Konold
Amherst, Mass.

The writer is a research professor at the Scientific Reasoning Research Institute, University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

To the Editor:

David Brooks perpetuates stereotypes that plague our country’s serious efforts to close the achievement gap among America’s highest-need students.

We strongly disagree with Mr. Brooks’s characterization of our effort. The statement he refers to, “A Broader, Bolder Approach to Education,” is gaining hundreds of signers daily, representing a broad coalition of people with diverse views who agree that the “schools only” reform strategy embodied in the No Child Left Behind Act has historically failed and will inevitably continue to fail.

Our approach does not represent the “status quo,” as Mr. Brooks proclaims. The approach endorses “school improvement plus” and focuses on the three “plus” areas of early childhood, health, and after-school and summer programs, while the competing Education Equality Project promotes the “schools only” strategy that is the current policy.

As our statement notes, and no one contests, “There is no evidence that school improvement strategies by themselves can close these gaps in a substantial, consistent and sustainable manner.”

So, who represents the status quo?

Helen F. Ladd
Pedro Noguera
Tom Payzant
Durham, N.C.

The writers are co-chairmen of the “Broader, Bolder Approach to Education” initiative.

To the Editor:

David Brooks challenges Barack Obama’s supposedly contradictory rhetoric concerning his education policy.

Mr. Brooks suggests that Senator Obama’s speeches were designed to appeal to both the “status quo camp” and to the “reform camp” of the educational debate to avoid alienating either side.

Nonetheless, Mr. Obama may wish to incorporate ideas from both the reform and traditional camps in order to enhance the quality of education in this country.

As such, a clear identification with either side is unnecessary.

Moreover, the criticism of his education policy as ambiguous at this stage seems unfair, particularly in light of the statements on his Web site (providing a detailed pre-K to 12 plan and a college affordability plan) and given the dearth of commentary on the issue by John McCain’s camp.

Stephen Jeffrey Weaver
New Brunswick, N.J.

To the Editor:

David Brooks asks which camp Senator Barack Obama is in regarding education issues: the traditional Democratic position supporting only the government educational monopoly, favored by teacher unions, or choice with public charter schools?

But Mr. Brooks doesn’t mention the real alternative, supported by Senator John McCain, of educational tax credits and scholarships giving poor and middle-income parents full choice to select any school, including a private or parochial school, and doing so with a fraction of the dollars spent per pupil in public schools.

This would benefit students, parents and taxpayers.

That’s a real alternative, although one union-controlled Democrats could never tolerate.

Frank J. Russo Jr.
Port Washington, N.Y.

The writer is on the executive committee of Long Islanders for Educational Reform, a regional taxpayer group.

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