In 2010, Katharine Birbalsingh gave a speech at Britain’s Conservative Party conference, after which the school where she was employed asked her not to return. She eventually established her own school, which now regularly boasts the highest growth scores of any K–12 educational institution in England. Buck recently spoke with her about her school's success.
Katharine Birbalsingh has many monikers: the founder and headmistress at Michaela Community School; chair of the Social Mobility Commission, an advisory body in England’s Department for Education; Commander of the Order of the British Empire; honorary fellow at New College, Oxford; Britain’s strictest headmistress; and of course, Miss Snuffy.
In 2010, she was tapped to give a speech at Britain’s Conservative Party conference, after which she was asked not to return to the school where she was employed. She eventually resigned and established her own school in 2014. A decade later, The Michaela Community School, a British free school comparable to an American charter school, which serves roughly 800 students ranging from eleven to eighteen, regularly boasts the highest growth scores of any K–12 educational institution in England.
Even with all those demands on her time, I had the opportunity to sit down with her recently for a conversation to figure out what exactly her school does to achieve such success.
I want to start at the beginning of your career with Michaela. You’ve resigned from your previous job. You’ve decided to found a school. Talk us through what that was like for you.
Well, in 2010 when we started, we had protestors outside and infiltrating our parent information events. They would shout to drown us out when we were trying to explain the new school to the potential parents who were interested. And it was really shocking, actually, because the parents were all Black moms from the inner city and the detractors were all White middle-class people, often from outside London, who had been bused in to destroy the hopes of these poor Black moms who were just looking for another option.
They would campaign outside with signs. They had picket lines with signs calling me names. We had to hire bouncers to protect us. When we finally opened, they stood outside and gave flyers to the children telling them their lives were in danger because health and safety standards had not been met in the building. So I went to the photocopier and copied the flyer 120 times and gave it to all the kids and then I said, “when you leave this evening, wave it in their faces and say, my headmistress has already given me a copy.”
That was the fun and games of 2014. We have been fighting with people ever since to stay alive.
Critics suggest that you’re imposing the strict discipline for which you have become known on students because they’re poor or Black or minorities, that teaching children to work hard and be nice is only teaching them to comply and be subservient. How do you respond?
Well, we are an inner-city school. Gangs are a problem. Alcoholism is a problem. Drugs are a problem. But you wouldn’t believe that if you came inside. The students are so well behaved, and they know so much—more than the children at the private schools.
Children like to be safe and looked after. When children feel safe, they’re more likely to push the boat out when it comes to their learning, like putting their hands up in lessons to trying out an interesting answer. If they feel that the bullies are in control, however, then the child will not expand their learning or take risks to try out new types of thinking.
Similarly, people don’t like the fact that our corridors are silent. They imagine that children normally skip through the corridors chatting about Aristotle. But I can tell you that, in the inner city, that is not what’s happening. Normally they’re pummeling each other, sending each other to hospital, screaming, shoving, and bullying. If children are safe in the corridor, they are much happier.
I think the people who make that criticism have never spent any time in the inner city or simply don’t know what it’s like to be in a school. If they were to spend any time there, then they would realize that what we do is what works.
Perhaps the polar opposite, at least rhetorically, to the discipline proponents is the “it’s all about relationships” crowd. Are relationships important?
Absolutely. It’s the number one thing we talk about at Michaela. When new staff come, we inundate them with training around relationships. If a child does not feel loved, and if the child does not love his teacher, he will not work for that teacher.
But we need to ask what enables a teacher to have strong relationships with their children. You need behavior systems that are applied equally and fairly to every child at all times. You will always have some teachers who are really great with kids, and they just have a way about them. And then there are other teachers who don’t have that skill. The consistency of the behavior systems enables all of your teachers to be able to build those relationships and to have an atmosphere of love.
It’s all well and good talking about relationships, but if you then deny schools consistent high-standard behavior systems, then you will never be able to connect with all of your children in a loving way.
Michaela is known for its discipline, but that’s not the only thing that sets it apart. What makes your instruction unique?
People think that in order for a child to be creative and think for himself, you must just let him go, that he’ll just figure it out and discover his love for French or science. That isn’t actually how children learn. They learn and get inspired when a passionate teacher gives them lots of knowledge, so our desks are in rows facing the teacher. The teacher is at the front of the classroom facing the children, leading the learning.
A more progressive classroom has the desks in groups where the children are looking at each other, not at the teacher, and it’s the children who are leading the learning. But when the teacher is leading the learning, they are able to teach the children so much because of course they know a lot more than the children. They have been doing this for many years, they have degrees, and the children are able to feel successful and happy.
Schools that spend their time with self-esteem lessons are wasting their time. All they need to do is teach the children properly. When children learn, it boosts their self-esteem. They feel really clever and successful. If you do it progressively, however, the child often thinks, “why am I so stupid?” And the ones who don’t have the same cultural capital coming from home sit in the classroom feeling very inadequate, eventually misbehave, get sent out of the lesson, and then that’s it for them. When they fail, we say it was because they were poor or Black. It is not because of those things. It was because we never taught them properly in the first place.
What does art look like at Michaela?
A progressive view of art instruction would be, “look at the fruit bowl and draw it.” Now, I remember being in art lessons at school where I would sit and think, “I don’t know how to draw a banana.” The fact is, I was never taught, for instance, that there are several different positions and places where you can hold a pencil, which allow a far lighter or darker shade on the paper. We start with those basics and build up from those basics so that the children actually learn how to draw.
It’s the same mentality that we have when teaching history. We will teach them the basics—some dates and general information. And over time, chronologically, we are building up their historical knowledge. That is what I think teaching should be. You break it down to its smallest component and then you build it back up again.
There seems to be this broad, progressive movement that’s just taking over education, be it instructionally progressive—let the kids do whatever they want—or very politically progressive—everything’s racist, we need to dismantle every system, deconstruct all of western society. Are we fighting a losing battle?
Well, you should never go down without a fight. I do think we are losing, but it doesn’t matter. You only have a hundred years if you’re lucky on this planet. You want to reach that age of 85 or 95 and look back on your life and think, I contributed. I made the world into a better place. That’s all you can do. It doesn’t matter if we lose. What’s important is that we contributed to the fight.
What’s next for Michaela?
Well, we have tried many times to expand. We tried to open a primary school. We were blocked. We tried to open a secondary school. That was stopped. We tried to set up a leadership program for other school leaders in the country, and that was blocked. So right now, we just want to survive.
I’m particularly concerned because the Labor Party will soon be coming into power. We were blocked at all those stages under a Conservative government, so you can imagine my worries with a Labor government. I’m hoping that they’ll just ignore us, given that we are very successful and we also hold values that tend to be the opposite to what they think. But you never know. Maybe they’ll come and see the school and be convinced and change some of their ideas. I do hope so.
Editor’s note: This was first published on the author’s Substack, “citizen stewart,” which covers race, education, and democracy.
Every year, without fail, someone sounds the alarm about the “resegregation of American public schools.” It’s a problem with deep roots and nasty downstream consequences for students in communities with less social capital.
Some of the discussion is grounded in solid, authoritative research. But then you get the terrifically ditzy takes, like a recent Vox article blaming charter schools—serving just 7 percent of U.S. students—for the complex systemic issue of racial segregation. That’s like blaming a storm shelter for the hurricane.
People who genuinely want to solve “the problem we all live with” often resort to shallow, careless analysis. Researchers agree that segregation has escalated to alarming levels over the past three decades. Despite the landmark Brown v. Board of Education ruling in 1954, which declared racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional, schools today are more racially and economically isolated than ever. However, simple explanations that indict charter schools as the culprit are unserious.
Let’s start with a little historical context
The 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision marked a significant victory in the fight against racial segregation in public schools. Chief Justice Earl Warren’s unanimous ruling declared that state-sanctioned segregation violated the Fourteenth Amendment. This decision overturned the “separate but equal” doctrine established by Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896 and catalyzed the Civil Rights Movement. However, despite the Court’s clear mandate, there was considerable resistance to desegregation, and implementation was slow and fraught with challenges.
As time passed, the complexities of achieving integration became more evident. Dr. Kenneth Clark, whose research influenced the Brown decision, later acknowledged the underestimated resistance to integration. James Coleman’s studies in the late 1970s revealed mixed results regarding the effects of desegregation, with positive impacts in the South but more destructive effects in the North. These historical perspectives suggest that the integration imperative may not be the sole solution to educational inequality.
Shifting perspectives on integration
In 1969, most Black Americans supported integration across various aspects of life, including schools, workplaces, and neighborhoods. However, over the decades, skepticism about integration has grown within the Black community. Contemporary Black thought increasingly questions whether integration is the best path to achieving educational and social equity. Black families challenge the sentiment that Black children need to attend school with white children to succeed. Many Black parents and educators now advocate for quality education in predominantly Black schools, emphasizing the importance of culturally affirming environments and community control over schooling.
Brown should have never suggested that Black schools with Black teachers were inherently inferior due to the absence of whiteness. It’s one thing to say that excluding Black people from attending integrated public schools is racist and wrong, but it’s another to say that only schools with whites can be successful. Many district and charter schools prove that wrong every day.
The current narrative around segregation is all wrong. It’s obsessed with shuffling students of color into predominantly white spaces instead of empowering marginalized communities. This viewpoint misses the mark on addressing the real roots of educational inequality and ignores the potential for building self-determination and choice within these communities. The idea that poor Black kids can’t succeed without white students around is not only flawed but downright harmful. It perpetuates the myth that Black excellence needs whiteness to thrive, undermining the value and potential of predominantly Black schools.
Positive all-Black spaces are important for the healing and development of African American students and adults. Look at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), Black churches, and Black fraternities and sororities. These institutions show the immense power of culturally affirming environments. They provide role models, community support, and a sense of identity vital for Black children’s development and success. They also produce the lion’s share of our desperately needed doctors, lawyers, and teachers.
Creating empowering Black educational environments is an option we can’t overlook. The focus must shift towards improving school leadership, quality teaching, and culturally affirming classrooms. Every student deserves the chance to succeed; these environments can help make that happen.
Segregation is a problem with no easy answers
I concede that segregation in public schools is rising. There is a research basis for seeing that trend and worrying about the implications. And, yes, integration is a noble long-term goal. But what does that mean for the average Black and Latino student currently in predominantly nonwhite schools, scraping by with less compared to their peers in whiter schools? What do we do for them now?
The 2020 census tells us the U.S. is more diverse and urbanized than ever, but our schools do not reflect that reality. The chance that two random people are from different racial or ethnic backgrounds has hit 61.1 percent, but you wouldn’t know it walking through most public schools. The urban-rural divide is growing, and the non-Hispanic white population is on the decline, complicating any real push for educational equity.
What’s the urgent solution for students stuck in schools with low expectations, inadequate teaching, sub-prime curricula, ineffective leadership, and a low-key defeatist attitude that swaps academic achievement for the morphine of mediocrity? I mean the schools with fewer resources, teacher shortages, higher student-to-counselor ratios, less access to Algebra, fewer AP class options, and teacher strikes every other year that steal learning time from academically behind students?
Can we fix the ill effects of racist urban planning and social engineering at the root of segregation?
Can we change the hearts and minds of middle-class homebuyers who see life as a foot race between their kids and ours?
Is there a massive change in political will to restructure society so that children of different backgrounds are evenly distributed among schools?
I’m skeptical.
Charter schools: Controversial but effective
Love or hate them, charter schools have proven to be a lifeline for many Black and Latino kids. Nestled in marginalized communities, these schools often provide culturally affirming, safe, and supportive environments where students can thrive. Their success flies in the face of the idea that integration is the only path to educational equity. Sadly, charter schools have to constantly battle ideological wars and accusations from opponents and journalists about perpetuating segregation (and worse).
The Brookings Institute report bluntly states, “High-poverty, high-minority [charter] schools produce achievement gains substantially greater than traditional public schools in the same areas.” This isn’t just a fluke; it highlights the crucial role of school quality over racial or economic makeup. Charter schools offer a tangible solution for improving educational outcomes long before the pipe dream of perfect integration becomes reality.
Taking the charter school option away from families who choose them would barely nudge segregation figures—by a measly 5 percent—but it would rip away a world of opportunity for their students.
Blaming charter schools, school choice, and civil rights groups for stepping back from failed desegregation efforts is not just a misdiagnosis; it’s a dead end. It does nothing for a public school system that’s increasingly nonwhite and poorer.
Empirical evidence on schools and segregation
A comprehensive study looking at school enrollment by race from 1998 to 2015 found that more kids going to charter schools leads to a slight bump in segregation among Black and Hispanic students within districts.
Specifically, a 1 percentage point increase in charter school enrollment raises segregation by 0.11 percentage points.
Statistically significant? Yes. Game-changing? Not really.
The study found some interesting variations based on geography. Charter schools slightly increase segregation in towns or counties, but the effect is negligible in metropolitan areas. This means charter schools might bump segregation within districts but help decrease it between districts in the same metro area.
The debate over charter schools and segregation should weigh these potential drawbacks against their successes in serving vulnerable populations.
As America gets more diverse and urbanized, achieving true educational equity remains a beguiling riddle. Integration is a noble goal, but we also need to empower marginalized communities and ensure quality education where students are.
We must champion self-determination and community empowerment to create educational environments that meet the needs of all students, regardless of race or background.
Editor’s note: This was first published by EdChoice.
The end of the school year is rapidly approaching, and teachers are more pessimistic than ever about the state of education in the United States. This downward slide of teacher morale may be a canary in the coal mine—and, at the very least, points us towards important classroom issues that have presented serious challenges for teachers over the course of the school year.
To better understand the current perspectives and opinions of teachers, EdChoice, in partnership with Morning Consult, surveyed a nationally representative sample of K–12 educators (N = 1,031) from March 28–April 3, 2024.
In this wave of our teacher survey, we asked teachers to share their opinions on a range of topics including attitudes toward the teaching profession; daily experiences in the classroom; student use of cell phones and social media; and school choice. Additionally, we asked new questions to find out how teachers are being impacted by recent state and local regulations on curriculum content.
Read the full report, and here are some of our major findings :
Teacher morale has hit a record low
Teacher optimism about the overall direction of K–12 education has hit the lowest point in four years of our polling, sharply plummeting since May of 2023. Only 19 percent of teachers think education is going in the right direction nationally, and 39 percent of teachers feel positively about the state of education in their own local school district.
This corresponds with a general drop in public mood towards education. Our February poll of American adults indicated a four-year low 22 percent of Americans feel positively about the direction of education across the country. This time last year, 35 percent and 53 percent of teachers felt positively about K–12 education at the national and local levels, respectively. Teacher outlooks have turned more grim during the course of this school year. Back in the fall, a less overwhelming 53 percent of teachers expected the state of K–12 education to get worse in the future according to an October survey of K–12 American public school teachers by the Pew Research Center.
(All images of figures and their corresponding text come from the full report.)
Unsurprisingly, these feelings correspond with how teachers view their jobs and how likely they are to recommend the teaching profession to others. This spring, only 15 percent of teachers say that they would recommend teaching to a friend or family member—once again marking the lowest point we have recorded in four years of our teacher surveys. In our polling last spring, 36 percent of teachers were likely to recommend the teaching profession. This parallels the sharp drop in teachers’ feelings about education as a whole.
This morale crisis may reflect the challenge teachers face in keeping their students on track. Teacher views of student progress are similarly gloomy. Twenty percent of teachers report that their students are progressing very well academically, with only 17 percent and 14 percent saying the same about social and emotional development respectively. Across these metrics, teacher confidence has fallen by approximately 10 percentage points since last spring. When asked about the current school year, three-fourths (74 percent) of teachers say they are doing a substantial amount of catch-up work to bring students up to speed academically. In short, the vast majority of teachers believe that their students are falling behind in the classroom.
Inside the classroom in 2024
To understand the context of this rampant pessimism, we need to take a closer look at what’s going on inside the classroom day to day from the perspective of teachers.
Curriculum laws have become an elephant in the classroom for teachers. Forty percent of teachers say they’ve modified their curriculum or classroom discussions because of state laws, and 35 percent of teachers said the same about district policies. About a third (30 percent) of teachers say that new regulations have limited the books/educational content they can use in class. Teachers are also making adjustments to classroom content of their own accord. Nearly half (49 percent) of teachers limited classroom discussions about political and social issues in class over the past year. Curriculum restrictions, both mandatory and self-imposed, appear to have taken root in today’s classrooms.
Teachers are also grappling with absenteeism and student behavior, and they report that matters are only getting worse. When asked about student absences compared to this time last year, 40 percent of teachers say absences are more frequent now—12 points higher than in the fall.
Nearly half (47 percent) of teachers say that student misbehaviors are more frequent now than this time last year, up 8 points from last fall. In comparison, private school teachers have a rosier point of view, with only 27 percent saying they feel student misbehaviors have increased since last year, an improvement from last September (36 percent).
Finally, we asked teachers about the daily classroom environment, revealing key differences in the perspectives of teachers and their students according to our recent survey of American teenagers. Compared to teens, teachers tend to underestimate how many of their students are bored (19 percent versus 70 percent) and use their phones in class (25 percent versus 55 percent). Teachers also overestimate how many of their students want to be in school (48 percent versus 19 percent). Whether teen students are overly pessimistic about their fellow students or teachers have a sunnier outlook than perhaps is warranted, there is a clear disconnect between how teachers and students view the classroom.
Silver linings
While news from the classroom seems discouraging, teachers remain positive. Two-thirds of teachers feel a sense of purpose (69 percent) and hopeful (64 percent) when thinking about the future, and the majority of teachers are happy (56 percent). It is encouraging news that most teachers feel happy in their personal lives, despite their concerns about the current direction of education.
Teachers are also open to new ways of approaching education. Sixty-two percent of all teachers express interest in tutoring students outside of school hours. Hybrid schooling also appeals to teachers. Half of teachers (50 percent) would prefer to teach outside of the traditional in-person classroom for at least part of the week. Furthermore, about 70 percent of teachers support education savings accounts (ESAs), a type of school choice policy that gives families greater flexibility in their educational spending. From this positive reception, perhaps we can take away that teachers are optimistic about finding ways to reimagine what education can look like.
With these challenging classroom conditions in mind, it is no wonder that teachers are feeling concern about their students’ progress and the direction of education. Nonetheless, teachers remain open towards new approaches to schooling. These valuable perspectives can point us towards what to look out for as we move into next school year. To explore more of what teachers had to say this spring, read the full report.
The use of technology in education—in place before the pandemic but increased in magnitude and ubiquity since 2020—is drawing increasing scrutiny from many sides. The villagers are lighting up their torches and coming en masse for cellphones, online learning platforms, Chromebook-based assignments, Smartboards, and more. A trio of researchers from the University of Michigan suggest another log to stack on the pyre: electronic grade books. Their new research shows, among other things, how even the bedrock of the English alphabet can be weaponized when brought in contact with the white heat of technology.
Specifically, the researchers look at more than 31 million grading records submitted to a learning management system called Canvas by graders from an anonymous large public university in the United States between 2014 and 2022. Canvas is the most popular system of its type, in use at 32 percent of all higher education institutions in the United States and Canada in 2020. To avoid biasing the analysis, the researchers include only human-graded assignments, removing assignments and courses that have either massive numbers of grades or an extremely small number of grades, as well as assignments graded offline and only submitted electronically. The final data set still contains a whopping 31,048,479 electronic grades covering 851,582 assignments, 139,425 students, and 21,119 graders. Data include both numerical values and textual values (comments from the grader). Timestamps allow the researchers to determine both the order in which assignments are submitted and in which they are graded. Additionally, the Canvas platform includes any comments entered by students in response to the grades after they are made available.
The bedrock finding is that electronic grading of student work appears to be a slog for most humans cursed with the task, and that using a system like Canvas—designed to ease the burden—only compounds the problems. This analysis indicates that negative impacts of electronic grading can accrue to specific individuals as a matter of course. Students whose assignments were graded later in the process—however that process was sequenced—received lower marks and more negative comments than their peers. Surname alphabetical order grading, the default setting for Canvas and comprising over 40 percent of the submissions analyzed, tells the tale clearly. Students whose surnames started with A, B, C, D, or E received a 0.3-point higher grade (out of 100) than did students with surnames later in the alphabet. Likewise, students with surnames W through Z received a 0.3-point lower grade than their earlier-in-the-alphabet peers—creating a 0.6-point gap between the Abdullahis and the Zimmermans of the world. Robustness checks among different graders, including a small group (about 5 percent) who happened to have graded in reverse alphabetical order and exhibited the same gap, confirmed this pattern. That might seem a small difference, but if it happens to the same students on every assignment in multiple classes over multiple years, the small gap could grow into a much larger one.
Grader comments on assignments evaluated later in the sequence were found to be more negative and less polite (the handful of examples included in the report would be truly disheartening for their unfortunate recipients) than those given earlier in the sequence. Grading quality seemed to deteriorate down the sequence, as well. Students with assignments graded later were significantly more likely to log questions and challenges about their marks in Canvas. Specifically, students graded between fiftieth and sixtieth in order are five times more likely to submit a regrade request compared with the first ten students graded, no matter in what order the grading is done.
While the surname alphabetical grading order illustrates sequential bias most clearly and sensationally, the same pattern was also observed across assignments graded in quasi-random order. The more assignments that must be graded, the more likely students at the end of the sequence are to be impacted. And in the case of learning management technology, that largely means students whose surnames are late in the alphabet. As noted, Canvas (and its three closest competitors) defaults to alphabetical order and must be manually changed by graders or institutions to avoid this. Together, these four systems accounted for over 90 percent of the U.S. and Canadian market at the end of 2020, so the potential negative impact to the Whites, the Williamses, and the Youngs is huge.
The researchers end with three commonsense recommendations. First, creators of learning management systems should switch their products’ default from alphabetical to random order (with educational institutions doing so manually until that time), although that would only diffuse the sequential bias effect across more students. Second, graders should be trained on the nature of sequential bias and strategies to avoid it in their work, which still leaves the problem of the slog. Finally, to address the problem fully, institutions should limit the number of assignments evaluated by any one grader. Eliminating electronic submission and grading entirely—bound to be popular with many stakeholders looking to limit technology in education—may be the most obvious option not suggested here.
SOURCE: Zhihan (Helen) Wang, Jiaxin Pei, and Jun Li, “30 Million Canvas Grading Records Reveal Widespread Sequential Bias and System-Induced Surname Initial Disparity,” Management Science (March 2024).
Cheers
Jeers
