DeBoer’s message is clear: “Put more simply and sadly, nothing in education works.”
Academic achievement, deBoer believes, is largely genetically determined. Even when education interventions are effective in the short term, many of the benefits fade out over time or simply shift the entire distribution—increasing performance across the board, without closing the gap between top and bottom performers. Students’ relative positions in that distribution remain “remarkably static over time, even in the face of massive spending and intense intervention, and . . . this persistence fatally undermines modern assumptions about schooling, its purpose, and its potential.”
DeBoer is a skilled writer who combines an entertaining style, cheeky barbs, and apparent substantive expertise. It is easy to see how he has built such an impressive following and why many of his arguments may seem persuasive to a lay reader. And deBoer is right to criticize education reformers for exaggerating the likely impacts of even their most effective policy proposals. As the Fordham Institute’s President Michael Petrilli acknowledged recently, “we have overpromised and underdelivered.”
But dig into the details, and it becomes clear that deBoer’s most fatalistic critiques of reform efforts are either greatly exaggerated or simply incorrect and the evidence he marshals to support his claims either cherry-picked or just made up.
To understand why progress in closing achievement gaps is possible, it is important to examine each major element of deBoer’s argument and see where he goes wrong.