Is Educational Pluralism The Way Forward?

Welcome to Scholastic Alchemy! I’m James and I write mostly about education. I find it fascinating and at the same time maddening. Scholastic Alchemy is my attempt to make sense of and explain the perpetual oddities around education, as well as to share my thoughts on related topics. On Wednesdays I post a long-ish dive into a topic of my choosing. On Fridays I post some links I’ve encountered that week and some commentary about what I’m sharing. Scholastic Alchemy will remain free for the foreseeable future but if you like my work and want to support me, please consider a paid subscription. If you have objections to Substack as a platform, I maintain a parallel version using BeeHiiv and you can subscribe there.

Educational Pluralism Defined

Broadly speaking, educational pluralism is a system of education that includes a broad variety of schools, methods, curricula, and values. In politics, pluralism is the acceptance for a diverse polity and diverse political movements. In social sciences, pluralism means diverse people, communities, ways of living. Crucially, every form of pluralism (at least that I’ve encountered) requires respect for differences. Educational pluralism follows suit and argues that differences in schools should be tolerated and respected.

The current center of educational pluralism in the United States is at the Johns Hopkins University Institute for Education Policy. They offer a more specific vision of educational pluralism for America:

First off, they offer educational pluralism as a structure. As opposed to, say, a curriculum or a set of practices or whatever, the Institute for Education Policy wants wholesale structural change to American schools. Next, this is a policy change enacted through the government and the change is that the government directly funds all kinds of schools. What we have now is what is called a “uniform structure” whereby the vast majority of students matriculate through a single system of locally managed public school and the government only funds those schools. The government is not going to fund a parochial school, a private academy, and so on. Educational pluralism would change that and fund any school that meets whatever criteria are set by the government to qualify for funding. Lastly, we have the phrase “high academic standards regardless of their model.” So, any school receiving government funding is held to the same standard as the rest. An example I’ve heard is that if you run a southern baptist school and don’t want to teach evolution or the scientific history of the earth’s formation then you don’t get funding.

You might be saying, “oh wait, if there are standards then that’s kind of a curriculum, isn’t it?” You’re right. This kind of education pluralism does entail “the government” setting some kinds of standards and the mechanisms by which they are enforced. We’ll return to that in a bit, but let’s talk about what is plural within JHU IEP’s version of educational pluralism.

Plural values and practices, not content

Ashley Berner, a professor at Johns Hopkins school of education and the director of their Institute for Education Policy, is a leading voice in favor of educational pluralism. She recently published a book about it, Educational Pluralism and Democracy: How to Handle Indoctrination, Promote Exposure, and Rebuild America's Schools. She routinely makes the point that the US is an outlier in terms of developed nations because of our uniform structure. Throughout the OECD and especially in Europe, it is more common for the national government of some countries to fund a variety of schools and use a set of standards, assessments, and school evaluation to ensure all schools are providing adequate education. She argues that these countries education systems are successful because they allow for some kinds of pluralism while limiting others that could hinder education more broadly. Namely, she points to values and practices as the plural components of these systems.

Values means a few things within educational pluralism. First off, it means supporting different kinds of school communities. Some schools may be more embedded in communities of faith, others might be in geographical communities, ethnic communities, and so on. That is to say, some kind of shared identity or affinity drives school formation. Secondly, it means schools can uphold unique values from those communities. Some schools can have prayer in school while others wouldn’t. Some schools can specialize in, I dunno, agriculture or the arts, or Buddhism or whatever. Berner points out that the Netherlands funds 36 different kinds of schools that each respond to the unique needs and desires of specific communities. The big “but” here is that students at all 36 types of school are required to meet the same standards for knowledge, skills, and other criteria. If they don’t then schools will lose funding.

Likewise, educational pluralism would not prescribe any specific set of practices that the schools must follow but instead fund many models. One school might have strict discipline while another takes a restorative approach. One school might follow more traditional grade levels and subjects whereas another would blend ages and subjects around a inquiry model. Some schools may prepare kids for college while others focus on career and technical education. The whole point is that different kids and their families can find schools that match the practices they think best. However they want to do it, schools are still subject to the same standards.

In addition to the features of educational pluralism above, she also makes a historical argument. Tax-funded schools preexisted Horace Mann’s advocacy for mass public education, but they existed as a kind of pluralism. Each community would fund and provision a school for the members of that community. Berner argues that the uniform structure we all think of is not necessarily the true origin story of schooling in the US. That said, some of what Horace Mann was working to do was instill a more uniform curriculum across all schools. The high degree of variability from school to school or town to town made it hard to know which kids were being properly educated. So, while Berner may be technically correct that there is historical precedent for educational pluralism in the US, it fell by the wayside for good reason. I am not sure she makes a good case that these independent community-based schools were delivering a “remarkably consistent” curriculum and suspect that the consistency was primarily in the religious nature of most of these schools.

Still, Berner reminds us that public schools in the US are partly an attempt to de-Catholicize immigrants in the northeastern states, especially Massachusetts. Schools there were teaching using the King James Bible and refused to use a Catholic bible for instruction. In some places, such as Philadelphia, the dispute over attempts to exclude Catholic texts and doctrine even turned deadly, with riots killing about 20 people in the 1840s. Separating church and state was one way around this conflict but Berner points to Europe where some countries simply funded Catholic and protestant schools so that each faith community could have it their way. The US could have done the same back then and maybe should consider it now.

Educational Pluralism is a Compromise

You’d be forgiven for thinking that this sounds a lot like school choice. After all, isn’t one of the points of school choice that parents choose schools that fit whatever preferences they have? Educational pluralism differs from school choice in several key ways. First, school choice in the US generally follows a system that funds the child, not the school. For example, Arizona’s system of ESAs pays parents back for wherever they send their kid. In Florida, their choice program operates as a voucherized subsidy paid to schools when a kid enrolls, public or private. Under this version of educational pluralism, the government would only fund schools directly and only if they met certain criteria.

In Educational Pluralism and Democracy, Berner argues this is a way out of our current impasses, controversies, and disputes around schooling. These problems, she says, are largely problems of different values held by different communities. Instead of a single system that can’t make everyone happy, why not fund many systems that offer what each community may want? Implementing European style education is, she says, a “Grand Bargain”. Indeed, one of the main reasons I’m thinking about educational pluralism is because it is pitched as a bargain and I am interested in thinking of education reform in terms of a recently voided grand bargain. It does seem attractive and, as educational pluralism’s proponents remind us repeatedly, all these different kinds of schools would need to uphold high academic standards so that we aren’t graduating a slew of under-educated students who aren’t good members of society. Who doesn’t want a way out of the present moment in education?

The compromise would look a little something like this. Liberals and the left would have to agree to taxpayer funding of religious schools, especially Christian ones. They would have to continue their multi-decade ambivalence toward teachers unions because many of the schools receiving government funding would not be unionized. Conservatives, on the other hand, would have to agree to end the war on public school funding, including rolling back voucher programs because funding would flow through schools instead of following kids. They would also have to agree to accountability measures such as requiring religious schools to ensure their students can pass state exams, learn the required curriculum, and maintain adequate facilities. Liberals would gain future financial security for public schools and succeed in arresting the full privatization of schooling. Conservatives would gain taxpayer funded schools that they like, especially religious schools. Notably, both sides would gain a system of comprehensive school evaluation and quality control. Now, because this is the US, this kind of radical restructuring would have to be done at the state level. You could imagine different states taking different approaches to whatever standards they set, what they were willing to fund, and so on. But that’s the basic sketch. Everyone potentially gets a school that aligns with their values, ethics, and preferred educational practices in exchange for requiring strict standards.

Educational Pluralism seems Hopelessly Naive

One problem I have with everything I’ve read about educational pluralism is that it’s light on the details. For a proposal that comes from an institute for policy, there really isn’t much in the way of concrete policy. I think that’s by design because educational pluralism and its proponents are not equipped to deal with the challenges of actually implementing anything close to this kind of structure. You really have to buy into their interpretation of recent history (as well as early American educational history) in order for their proposed structure to make sense. So, strap in for a long section about my problems with educational pluralism.

Let’s begin with the values and practice pluralism that will supposedly let us stop fighting about schools. My question is are our disputes about values? I’m sure there is a values component to it but I am not convinced that, say, Moms for Liberty is working to take over school boards just because of their values. What they change when they get in charge is the curriculum. Or, to put it another way, they want a curriculum that represents their values. When educational pluralists come in to impose their strict academic standards and those standards require a curriculum (like, say, an African American studies component? A unit on LGBTQ+ rights? Latin Heritage month?) that goes against Moms for Liberty’s values, what happens? What if I don’t want my tax dollars funding a school that promotes women staying out of the workforce to become homemakers even if my kid never goes there? Aren’t we just back to the same disputes educational pluralism is supposed to move beyond? How does educational pluralism avoid recreating deeply segregated schools? Unfortunately, proponents of educational pluralism don’t have much to say in response to this. Indeed, Berner dodges the problem: under educational pluralism, schools, sort of by definition, have to comply with the standard curriculum and taxpayers, by definition, have to be okay with funding schools with values they may abhor. That’s what makes it a compromise but also what makes me wonder if this kind of educational pluralism is even possible. Given conservatives present ascendancy, do they even feel the need to compromise?

Speaking of curriculum, educational pluralists do not give us a clear understanding of what that curriculum would look like. We know that some other countries use a complex system of school oversight that sends government officials into all the schools to evaluate their effectiveness. Most also have content exams at some point which students must pass and incorporate those pass rates into whether schools continue to receive funding. If there are tests about content, then you’d better believe that’s going to drive curriculum. What’s amazing to me here is that there is little discussion of recent education reform history in the US. We are coming off a period of time in which we had standardized curriculum and frequent large-scale testing and it didn’t really accomplish much besides pissing people off and making kids suicidal. The only real change mentioned in this new standard curriculum would be a push for centering content knowledge rather than skills (Common Core was largely skills focused). They don’t tell us what knowledge should be centered and moreover, there are no details about how oversight would work. If every school needs to be visited and evaluated regularly by the government, who’s doing that? Who makes the exams and decides what knowledge matters for inclusion? Who makes sure they’re teaching the standard curriculum? Districts are already stretched pretty thin and they have an incentive to pass their own schools. Maybe it’d be officials from the state DOEs? Nonprofits? Universities? Who knows? They don’t say. Concrete proposals are needed.

Not only that, but so much of the present "revolt” in education is a revolt against what is commonly seen as outside forces imposing tests, curriculum, rules, and values on schools that are nominally locally run. Replacing that with a system that implements a statewide or nationwide curriculum (written by, presumably, the same kinds of people who made the Common Core?) and then enforces it with some kind of big government (non-profits? private third-parties like ETS?) bureaucratic oversight structure seems like it would, well, cause a revolt. The public likes our long tradition of public oversight of schools through locally elected school boards. The more they perceive their power is shifting away from local control, the more upset they become. As with the values above, it is not clear to me that this new structure would avoid any conflict and may even fan the flames as parents and communities lose democratic control over their local schools.

We also have to evaluate the political situation around schools in the US, especially the school choice movement that’s gaining ground in more conservative states. So far, none of these states want to spend significant time or effort creating and enforcing rules on private schools that now receive public finding. In part, this is ideological. Parents choose the school and are expected to make a determination of the schools’ quality. If it’s bad, change schools, the money goes with your kid. Are parents good at evaluating school quality? Who knows? The evidence is all over the place. The other reason, still ideological, is that creating and enforcing rules would require an increased role for government, not a decreased one. For many conservatives, this is undesirable and minimizing government involvement is a key value. As I just explained, enforcement will be complicated. Again, why would conservatives come to the table and empower oversight when they’re more or less getting everything they want?

I think you get the picture, and this post is getting fairly long. As much as educational pluralism is presented as a compromise to extricate us from our current educational disputes, the details of the policy matter and need to be fleshed out. Moreover, there are obvious, mutually exclusive ideological differences driving current legislation about schools and it’s not all that clear how pluralism gets past those differences. Indeed, pluralism may still entail too much state control for many on the right who are pressing forward with school choice.

Quick Closing Remarks

So, why do I bring this up even though I think it’s naive? Well, for one, I agree with Berner that some kind of new compromise is needed. Schools, like it or not, are ground zero for our culture war and it’s getting ugly out there. I worry that lasting damage is being done to public education as a whole and that many states, even more moderate or liberal states are going to face pressure to adopt voucher schemes. We risk a death spiral of funding cuts if that happens. Just take a look at Ohio. What interests me about educational pluralism is that it argues for public schools to receive funding and that funding doesn’t change just because a kid leaves and goes to a private school nearby. To me this is a more realistic approach because for the most part schools can’t quickly save money. A class with 30 kids that goes down to 29 because one goes private doesn’t pay the teacher any less. It doesn’t need fewer chalkboards or whatever. There are many fixed costs that don’t go away with a moderately smaller student body. And, I expect that under educational pluralism, just as with today’s school choice schemes, the vast majority of students will remain in public schools. I just don’t know if Berner’s vision has quite enough detail to get us a program that would have broad appeal AND displace the current conservative movement in education.

Thanks for reading!