Stop the School-to-Amazon Pipeline, Pt. 2
Three (relatively) easy solutions and two super hard ones.
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In part 1, I wrote about what I called the school-to-Amazon pipeline. You can read about it here. If you can’t be bothered because spring has sprung and you DGAF I mean are fully vaccinated and just want to go outside, here’s the gist:
The school-to-Amazon pipeline is the path students follow who graduate high school → enter college → drop out early → end up working low-wage, low-skilled jobs. Think Amazon warehouse or delivering burritos for Grub Hub.
It disproportionately affects low-income minority students, who have a frighteningly low college graduation rate of 11% and make up a greater share of the low-wage workforce than other demographic groups.
It traps more boys than girls, who at this point have much higher college enrollment and completion rates than males.
It is inequitable and, given the achievement and socioeconomic gaps the pandemic has widened into gaping maws, it will get worse.
But it’s fixable. Solutions abound. And if there is one thing I will avoid in this newsletter, it is the pessimism that so often shades education commentary (and generally makes the teacher’s lounge smell so bad), so I’d like to offer a few things educators can do to stop the school-to-Amazon pipeline.
Let’s start with the big one.
First, we can start by asking why every student in this country needs to take Algebra. I don’t mean this literally (at least I don’t think I do), but it’s worth taking a look at state graduation requirements, which are pretty much the same from Maine to Alaska, have been for a while, focus on academic, classroom-based outcomes (as opposed to hands-on, work outcomes) and, I might argue, are based on a theory of public education that hasn’t scaled to our absolutely enormous, messy, multicultural, post-industrial society.
Do we really need every student in California, for example, to take the same number of credits in math? And English? And Social Studies? How important is it, after a certain point, that students take P.E.? It’s worth asking whether this approach best serves the needs of our students and also of society.
The (admittedly oversimplified) argument in favor of this model, as far as I can tell, is that this is the best way at prepare people to live in a democracy since, in a democracy, you need people to be literate and numerate so that they can be informed voters. As we have seen in the past year, when people aren’t informed, they make bad decisions. (To put it lightly.) So I won’t argue with that, but I will question the premise that the traditional liberal arts syllabus is the only way to get people there.
And the biggest problem with this approach is that it channels everyone into the same track in high school and in doing so forecloses other more promising opportunities for those students who just might not care for formal education all that much.
Because the truth is is that school as it is currently designed is not for everybody. Large numbers of people find school boring and irrelevant and simply aren’t interested in sitting in classes, listening to lectures and writing essays.1 There’s no getting around the fact that that’s what much of what school looks like from elementary school to college, and there’s no avoiding, as William James wrote, that there is “in all schoolroom work a large mass of material that must be dull and unexciting.” We educators love to talk about “student engagement” and “culturally relevant pedagogy” as a means to get kids excited about school, and I’ve noticed that those who pooh-pooh those ideas the quickest are almost always fantastically uninspiring teachers, addled by a deficit mindset or just in it for the summer vacations, but . . . there is a limit to what pedagogy and curriculum can accomplish, and teachers, particularly those with the savior mindset, sometimes deny that. I’ve turned somersaults trying to make certain lessons more relevant and engaging for my students, but in all of my years in education, I was never able to do it successfully for all of my students all of the time repeatedly and more often than not, I wasn’t even able to do it for most of my students most of the time. Some people just don’t like meatloaf. Whatcha gonna do?
So, two, the second thing we can do to break the school-to-Amazon pipeline, yes, I’m sure you saw this coming, is . . . increase access to trade school. Or vocational school, technical school, CTE. Whatever you want to call it.
We can facilitate this best by offering multiple pathways to graduation. Let’s shake up those grad requirements! Broadly outlined, this would mean that parents and students, starting in, say, 8th or 9th grade, could choose2 between a traditional, academic-focused high school or a career and technical-focused high school. (Or even an arts school!) I’m not the only one with this idea: there’s this, this, this, and especially this, all of which offer variations on the same theme.
But the big idea is the same: let’s not wait until after high school to offer career options for students. That’s what we do now and it is not working.
While we wait for those two things to happen (I’m not holding my breath), there’s a third, simpler solution to ending the school-to-Amazon pipeline. Guidance counselors, teachers and administrators can have honest conversations with their juniors and seniors about what the best post-secondary options are for them and use free and widely available data to steer them away from schools that have garbage graduation rates. This is clearly not happening.3
Another thing high schools can do, especially those serving large populations of low-income students, is up the rigor of their classes so that their students graduate more fully prepared for college-level work. Now, struggling with the difficulty of college-level work isn’t the only factor keeping kids from graduating, but I think it’s probably a big one. Too many high school classes are easy. Worksheets, airy-fairy group work and multiple choice tests still abound. We can change this by increasing the number of AP classes and enrolling more students into those classes, even if, by first glance, those students don’t seem like AP material. Jay Matthews, a veteran education reporter, who created the Challenge Index in order to (begrudgingly) rank America’s high schools based on how rigorous their course loads are, writes that “no other high school options, with the possible exception of IB, teach critical thinking and analysis as much as AP does” and there’s a boatload of research showing in unequivocal terms how beneficial AP courses are for all students, whether they pass the murderous exams or not. In my own experience, I’ve never heard a student claim their AP class did not prepare them for their college classes, even if they didn’t particularly enjoy the experience. Smooth seas don’t make good sailors.
(And say what you will about the nefarious College Board, but they have made AP syllabi pretty freaking easy to implement. Plus training is bountiful and the amount of free, teacher-made resources online is staggering. Teachers are as larcenous as they are generous. AP is the closest thing to a national curriculum that we’ve got and it should grow. Plus, any skilled teacher can easily modify the syllabus for their subject without sacrificing rigor, so any anxiety about the work being too difficult for “those kids” is bunkum.)
Last, colleges can improve services for underrepresented groups in order to reduce drop-out rates. Paul Tough has written amply about successful interventions, especially in the University of Texas system, and the City University of New York system found incredible success with their ASAP program, which doubled graduation rates. And I’m sure there are lots of other shining examples elsewhere I’m omitting. The best part about many of these interventions -- mentoring, vouchers for books and transportation -- is that they’re pretty cheap, pretty easy to implement, and (not sure I’ve heard anyone talk about this before) already widely in use in K-12 schools and have been for years. Successful building-level and district-level administrators already know how to help poor kids succeed in school. (We call these “wraparound” services.) Why not create more partnerships between districts and local colleges to share knowledge and create “K-16” interventions?
I’ve heard someone (I think John Dickerson?) compare the pandemic to the tide that, on its ebb, reveals all the garbage at the bottom of the bay. The pandemic has shown us just how stark the inequalities in our society are, and exactly where they are. We have an opportunity to reimagine what high school can be for many of our students, especially those most vulnerable, and to prevent them from suddenly finding themselves in a merciless, swiftly changing world with few other options but to deliver packages for Amazon. Let’s not let this opportunity go to waste.
Above image by Nicholas Nixon.“Greg Maher, Sam Nixon, Tobin School, Cambridge.” 1993
Fredrik deBoer tackles this taboo idea with far more daring than I am willing to do here in his breezy Marxist jeremiad, The Cult of Smart, even going so far as to recommend lowering the legal dropout age to 12 (omg!): “Forcing [students] to [continue formal schooling] not only impinges on their freedom but wastes time, energy, and resources better spent on those who want to be in school.” Not sure I would go that far, but I take his point.)
In educationese, “school choice” means choosing between the public school in your neighborhood and the charter school, but that’s basically choosing between Coke and Sprite. At the end of the day, you’re still getting a soda.
One such option not touted enough in my opinion is to . . . just not go to school right away and wait a year or two. The major argument I’ve heard against this is that if students stop going to school they’ll never go back. To which I would respond: but right now students are not stopping going to school and not finishing. So, um? I think there’s a greater likelihood that many students, after taking a break and seeing what limited options exist for them without a post-secondary degree or credential, would return to school wiser and with a renewed sense of purpose.