John Creighton

Some people are more institution dependent than others.  I have come to believe that this is one of the many growing disparities that exist in our society.  People talk about the education gap, the technology gap, the income gap.  The same divide exists when it comes to institutions.

Some people are dependent upon institutions to do things for them.  Other people use institutions to augment what they can do for themselves.  The trend is moving toward more people being less dependent upon institutions as I explained in my post A Citizen Centric World.  But, the transition is not complete.  Many people still rely heavily on the work of institutions.

The institution gap comes into stark relief when one works in the realm of k-12 education.  Low income students tend to be far more institution dependent than their high income peers.  That’s a generalization, of course, but one that typically plays out in practice.

Low income students do not have access to the same sorts of learning opportunities outside of school as their peers.  Private tutoring in the basics is not an affordable option for many families.  Working parents have less time to read to their children and help with homework.  What’s more, students whose families lack resources aren’t able to participate in activities such as scouts, go to museums or go on vacations to a variety of destinations as easily as their higher income peers.

The result is that low income students fall behind during breaks from school.  As Malcolm Gladwell wrote in his book, Outliers, “America doesn’t have a school problem.  It has a summer (vacation) problem.”

That is why there is a growing consensus that the best way to serve low income students is to intensify their institutional experience.  Schools that are celebrated as being “no excuses” schools, helping at-risk students lift themselves to levels of achievement they might not have previously imagined, have one thing in common.  Almost all of these schools require longer school days, weeks and years.

Here’s the rub:  In many school districts across the country, there is a bias toward sameness, meaning that all students should be treated essentially the same – especially in terms of time and resources.

What’s more, it has been my experience, that high income families do not want their children to have more intense institutional learning experiences.  They want the opposite.  Even trial balloons of increasing the days and hours students are required to attend schools raises concerns among higher income parents.  A majority of “voters” on a Parade Magazine’s website poll oppose extending the length of the school year.  The result doesn’t surprise me.

U.S. students spend far fewer days in school than their peers in many countries.  Countries whose students perform better on standardized tests than American students go to school as much as 40 more days per year according to the National Center on Time and Learning. These types of statistics don’t tend to impress American parents.  Comparisons to other countries do little, if anything, to sway attitudes.

Higher income parents want their children to have the flexibility to pursue handpicked learning experiences in the afternoons, on the weekends and over the long summer break.  Mandatory time at school is seen as an obstacle to enrichment not as an opportunity to boost student achievement.

Here’s another rub: Families that are institution dependent don’t tend to vote and don’t tend to lobby members of the school board.  Families that are less institution dependent do vote and are vocal.  Political pressure tends to lead people in leadership positions to focus more on the needs of vocal, voting families and less on silent, non-voting families.

There are no silver bullets to improving education.  Increasing the number of days students attend school alone will not provide the educational lift that many students need to flourish in later life.  But, arguing over school days is not really the point I wish to debate.  The point is that some people do need institutional support than others.  But, there is a lack of political will to provide this help.

Public leaders need to find ways to combat the bias toward sameness so that we can provide people with the support they need.

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Picture Credits: School’s Closed by Flickr user 19melissa68.