"Behaviorism," says the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "purports to explain human and animal behavior in terms of external physical stimuli, responses, learning histories, and (for certain types of behavior) reinforcements. . . . To illustrate, consider a food-deprived rat in an experimental chamber. If a particular movement, such as pressing a lever when a light is on, is followed by the presentation of food, then the likelihood of the rat's pressing the lever when hungry, again, and the light is on, is increased. Such presentations are reinforcements, such lights are (discriminative) stimuli, such lever pressings are responses, and such trials or associations are learning histories."
Many educators dislike this view of teaching and learning. Children, they angrily observe, are not lab rats. They insist that love of learning should motivate youngsters and that love of children - and professionalism - should animate teachers and principals.
Indeed, the tenets of behaviorism are broadly opposed to the progressive ideas that rule the education profession. That's one reason why behaviorist pedagogies (such as direct instruction) are unpopular despite their effectiveness. Though most classrooms have elements meant to discourage bad behavior and reward good behavior - a "time out" corner for naughty kids, gold stars for those who do well, etc. - the basic doctrines of the field are quite different.
Yet standards-based reform is notably behaviorist in its view of education and human nature. It rewards children for attaining standards, doing well on tests, etc. (They get good grades and praise, they get promoted to the next grade, receive their diplomas, and so forth.) It sanctions them when they fail to meet standards: holding them back, making them come in on Saturdays or during summer, denying their diplomas, etc. Where politics doesn't block it, standards-based reform also rewards and punishes teachers, principals and other adults according to whether their pupils learn what they should, as prescribed in pre-determined standards and as measured by external assessments.
Like it or not, these are straightforward applications of behaviorist theory to the stimulation of learning by K-12 pupils and of effective instruction by their teachers. But does behaviorism work on institutions as well as people? Can it alter the practices of schools, school systems, entire states? Standards-based reform says it can and must, and No Child Left Behind rests squarely on this premise. It presupposes that Uncle Sam can construct incentives, rewards, interventions, and sanctions that will change the behavior of states that, left to their own devices, were not satisfactorily educating all their children. That states can do the same with faltering school systems. And that school systems can and will alter the practices of unsuccessful schools.
Thus, on the up side, schools (and systems and states) that change as they're supposed to and produce the desired results will (a) get (or keep) federal money, (b) reap praise and favorable comparisons, (c) attract more pupils (and thus bigger budgets), and (d) keep their jobs or get raises, promotions, re-election, etc.
On the down side, those institutions that fail to produce results may (a) lose money (either through its being withheld by higher authority or its erosion as students leave), (b) be subject to embarrassing disclosures and invidious comparisons, (c) be intervened in, reconstituted, or taken over, (d) lose enrollments, and (e) lose their jobs.
But how sure can we be that institutions respond to such stimuli in the intended ways? Obviously, that only occurs when the people who run, work in, or are responsible for them alter how they operate. A school's principal reorganizes the curriculum. A superintendent tells his principals that their jobs depend on their schools making adequate yearly progress. Board members insist on after-school tutoring to get more of their schools off the state hit list. A state "chief" deploys turnaround experts to help troubled LEA's devise reform plans. A governor is moved by his state's weak NAEP showing to persuade the legislature to re-cast the school finance system to reward strong performance or rewrite the teacher-certification rules.
People are the direct objects of behaviorist policies even when the policy goal is to change institutional practices. But this theory is open to challenge on three grounds:
First, it assumes that the affected people have sufficient leverage over their institutions to combat the forces of inertia, i.e., that the rat is strong enough to press the lever that dispenses the food. In many cases, that's so. Even with limited resources and minimal administrative support, a teacher can change the climate of his/her classroom. Principals can exert leverage on teachers, superintendents on principals, and so on up the chain. This works more often than you might think. (See http://www.edexcellence.net/gadfly/issue.cfm?issue=118#1483 for a recent example.) But the chain grows long - the relationship between state chief and local district is very different from that between principal and teacher - and pressures to change are resisted not just by human nature and bureaucratic distance but also by tenure laws, seniority, pay scales, due practice and much else.
Second, the theory assumes that the people whose behavior is meant to change possess sufficient know-how to take the actions that will yield better results, i.e., they have the savvy to replace a broken lever with one that is known to work. Well, some do, some don't. If the principal knew how to make her teachers more effective, perhaps he or she would already have done so. If the superintendent knew how to intervene in struggling schools, fewer would be in that condition.
Third, those being pressed to change are also pushed in the opposite direction by, for example, the perverse tendency of Title I and other funding formulas to "punish" successful schools by withdrawing dollars from them; the pressure from parents not to lengthen the school day or year; the money dangled by legislators for schools that take time to celebrate Wisconsin cheese or Maine lobsters; the dollars to be raised by pausing in reading and math to make room for the school carnival or magazine sale; the status problems that follow when a basketball team loses because its players are cramming for state proficiency tests - and on and on and on.
Over the years, I've gradually embraced a behaviorist view of educating children. Charming as I find the image of girls and boys as wild flowers that bloom when ready, we'll get farther by seeing education as systematic agriculture that requires regular plowing, planting, fertilizing, and weeding. Some people learn some things because they want to - but more people learn more things because tangible rewards accrue when they do and unpleasantness follows when they don't.
But does this work with institutions, too? That's the big unanswered question for standards-based reformers. And, come to think of it, for choice-based reformers, too.
