Why schools must stop chasing shortcuts
By Shavar Jeffries
Fatima Minor has been teaching for more than 20 years, but when she started a new job at KIPP University Park Elementary in Stockton, California, she told her principal that she wanted to learn everything there is to know about reading instruction.
She records herself teaching, seeks extra observations, and when something isn’t working, treats it like a puzzle. Her kindergarteners have absorbed that ethic, practicing letter sounds and blends, celebrating when they hit goals, and pushing to go further.
For two straight years, 100% of Minor’s students finished the year reading at or above grade-level benchmarks, well ahead of last year’s 67% national rate. Those results reflect deliberate decisions about instruction and culture that lead to stronger student outcomes.
And behind those decisions is an obvious truth: learning requires hard work—hard work from students who grapple with complex texts and challenging problems; hard work from educators who plan, teach, and refine their craft; and hard work from leaders who foster high expectations and the conditions to reach them.
Unfortunately, education is being pulled in the opposite direction. Over the past decade, technology has surged, promising to accelerate learning, but something isn’t adding up.
The latest national Education Scorecard shows students performing worse than a decade ago in much of the country, with reading scores down in 83% of districts and math scores down in 70%. Recent NAEP results are more mixed, but still sobering: progress is uneven, and achievement remains far too low.
It doesn’t have to be this way. From the mid-1990s to the mid-2010s, achievement grew steadily, graduation rates rose, and college attainment increased, with the greatest gains among students who had historically been left behind.
Those earlier gains, and the progress still happening in schools that held the line, reflect a commitment to high standards, research-backed instruction, pairing rigorous expectations with genuine support, and accountability for results.