Keep school reform in balance

For the past decade the mantra of the best and brightest school reformers has been "rigor, relevance and relationships." These three Rs are the pillars of successful schools and rising student achievement across all demographic fault lines -- income, race and culture.

Rigor refers to the need for students to reach high levels of competence in academic subjects, including a second language.

Relevance is making learning meaningful. To truly engage students, good teachers connect what kids learn to what they already know from their own cultures and life experiences. These teachers also connect learning with new doors to opportunity and higher aspirations for all students.

Relationships refer to every kid's need for mentoring and encouragement by adults, and safe and healthy friendships with their peers.

Those three elements have a powerful, synergistic effect on raising student achievement. And they represent the best sort of all-American common sense about what kids need to learn.

But in Washington, we've gotten stuck on rigor and neglected relationships and relevance. We're panicked that kids won't be able to compete with those in China or Finland, and this has driven the business community to push for ever-higher academic standards. That might not be unreasonable if the business community pushed just as hard for the other two Rs -- but it hasn't. And without balanced advocacy for the needs of whole children rather than future workers, the vision of school reform has narrowed.

We instituted the Washington Assessment of Student Learning because we wanted to measure school improvement. But after 15 years we're still ignoring what the WASL is telling us. The results are saying -- loud and clear -- that schools work wonderfully for some students, passably for others and not very well at all for far too many. We're seeing gains in reading and writing scores, and schools and teachers should be saluted for this. But frightening numbers of ethnic minorities continue to fail and drop out. And so do low-income kids of all ethnicities. In fact, low-income white kids are the biggest group with high failure and dropout rates.

Then there are the kids who have different learning styles, dysfunctional families or learning disabilities. They are often round pegs in a system that only has square holes.

These are all reasons why those other two Rs are so important: Relevance and relationships are the elements that would help every kid succeed. Relationships are lacking in high schools, where teachers are expected to teach 30 or more students in five or six classes every day, and where counselors are few and far between. And relevance is what's missing in the lives of kids who don't see their cultures in the curriculum, or any connection between learning and their own lives.

The solution to this problem is not a formula, a different test or a piece of legislation. The solution is a sense of proportion, a commitment to equity and a deep recognition of the divine spark within every child. Until we get this balance right -- until we really build schools on all three Rs -- mandating more math or higher graduation requirements won't bring us any closer to the original vision for school reform, which was to close the achievement gap and create public schools in which all students succeed.