For an education that produces real, not merely theoretical, social justice

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Paco Benítez

“Please, respect our students—do not make things too easy for them”. These were the words of Colombian teacher Jorge Enrique Ramírez from the city of Cúcuta, addressed to Gregorio Luri prior to a lecture the latter was due to deliver to his students on Socrates (Luri, 2024: 8).

One of the enduring patterns across education systems worldwide is that students from socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds—those belonging to ethnic minorities, immigrant families, or unstable home environments—consistently obtain lower academic outcomes than their native-born, middle- and upper-class peers. This phenomenon has been thoroughly documented over decades. As early as 1961, the British sociologist and linguist Basil Bernstein observed that children from low-income households exhibited more limited linguistic development, both in semantic range and syntactic complexity. This meant they began their schooling at a distinct disadvantage, confronted with an educational system that operates through a richer, more structured and precise academic register—one largely unfamiliar to them in their everyday lives.

Such structural inequality in educational achievement is a daily reality in our classrooms. Teachers see it year after year. But far from being a reason for resignation, this reality must compel us to act—to do everything in our power to ensure that the material and personal disadvantages some students face at the starting line do not end up crystallising into long-term inequalities in academic success and, ultimately, in life opportunities.

This is no simple task—on the contrary, it is enormously complex. But the magnitude of the challenge demands an unwavering commitment. There are, however, documented cases of students from disadvantaged contexts achieving academic results on par with, or even superior to, those from public schools. These experiences deserve careful attention. It is worth asking what allows these educational centres to become, in effect, “islands of educational equity”. Understanding this could help us identify practices that might be meaningfully adapted and implemented in the state education system—always with due regard for the specificities of each context and student population.

There are, in fact, well-known cases in which the equation of disadvantaged students and high academic achievement holds true. One example is Michaela School, located in the Wembley district of London; another is the many charter schools in the United States that serve overwhelmingly African-American and Latino student populations—groups that have historically recorded lower academic performance relative to their white peers. These schools lend credence to the view, widely held by educators, that high expectations for both academic standards and student behaviour can result in substantial improvements in learning outcomes. As Sowell (2020: 47) observes: “In many cases, the disparities in educational outcomes between New York City charter school students and traditional public school students, educated in the same buildings, were greater than the black-white educational differences so widely discussed elsewhere. This may suggest that there are many reasons for educational disparities, and the reasons for these educational outcome differences cannot be reduced to those that are mentioned most often, or most loudly”¹.

It is hardly surprising, then, that many American families have lost confidence in traditional district state schools—particularly in light of the academic standards commonly observed in these settings. The 2018 report The Opportunity Myth by The New Teacher Project (TNTP), which tracked and analysed the experience of 4,000 students across five different school systems, revealed a deeply concerning reality: the academic tasks assigned to students were frequently undemanding, and even those receiving top grades were often not being adequately prepared: As the authors write: “Students’ lives are slipping away more each day, without their knowledge or their families’, not because they can’t handle challenging material, but because they’re rarely given a real chance to try. Students spent more than 500 hours per school year on assignments that weren’t appropriate for their grade and with instruction that didn’t ask enough of them — the equivalent of six months of wasted class time in each core subject”.

Despite such findings, there are still those who deny the decline in academic standards, boldly asserting that “schools have never been better [since] every indicator confirms this: early school leaving, repetition, graduation rate, promotion rate”. One is left to wonder—rhetorically, of course—whether an educational system that restricts grade retention, facilitates automatic promotion regardless of actual learning, and allows students to complete lower secondary education teetering on the edge of functional illiteracy can truly be held up as evidence of a golden age in schooling.

In Spain, the process of academic decline is regrettably following a similar trajectory. Families who can afford to do so are moving their children into state-subsidised (concertada) schools—which, it must be said, are not free, as evidenced by the so-called “voluntary” contributions— a key difference from American charter schools—, or into private schools, in search of higher quality education. This leads to a concentration of working-class and immigrant students in the state sector. It is neither appropriate nor helpful to blame families for this or to accuse them of elitism. The state education system ought to offer the highest possible standards of academic excellence. Families simply want the best for their children, and the teaching provided at the local state school your child has been assigned to is substandard, it is entirely understandable to seek alternatives. While it is true that the existence of the concertada sector and the resulting segregation it engenders is deeply damaging to public education, the example of the charter schools demonstrates that even in contexts of segregation, educational excellence can still be pursued and achieved.

That said, pursuing excellence requires a radical overhaul of current educational legislation and school behaviour policies—policies that have led to large numbers of functionally illiterate pupils obtaining secondary school qualifications, and to school environments that are disruptive and unconducive to learning. And herein lies the secret to the success of charter schools: their autonomy from general regulations enables them to do precisely the opposite of what pedagogical orthodoxy often recommends. These schools set the highest academic and behavioural expectations for all pupils, making no excuses for the frequently severe personal challenges their students face. In other words, rescuing public education in Spain depends upon a complete reorientation of educational policy.

The state education system needs to improve, for if it proves incapable of fulfilling its formative role—as is sadly the case today—it will eventually disappear or be reduced to a residual function. And once again, there are examples that point the way forward. One such case is known as “The Southern Surge”, an educational shift initiated in the state of Mississippi and followed by other southern states such as Alabama, Louisiana, and Tennessee. Mississippi, long considered one of the poorest-performing states in terms of educational outcomes, passed a set of educational policies around a decade ago that placed a strong and targeted emphasis on early reading instruction—a foundational skill that shapes pupils’ future academic trajectories. As Luri (2024: 262) explains, the reform “sets out the conditions under which pupils who show serious reading comprehension difficulties in Year 3 are required to repeat the year [those who fail a literacy test after three attempts]; it guarantees targeted support for pupils with dyslexia, and provides teacher training to ensure that children in preschool through to Year 3 are accurately identified and offered help as early as possible”.

The results, after nine years, have been remarkable: in 2022, Mississippi’s Year 4 pupils rose to the top of national rankings in reading attainment—and, as a secondary effect, also in mathematics. And although one of the pedagogical establishment’s arguments is that grade repetition increases dropout rates, the truth is that since implementing these policies, Mississippi’s graduation rates have soared, standing 10 percentage points above the national average. “Mississippi has shown that raising standards is possible. And above all, that it is possible to do so in a state previously only known for topping the rankings in poverty, child hunger, and teenage pregnancy. Should this not be cause for celebration? The evidence shows that pupils who repeated the year adapted well to their situation, and no increase in truancy has been observed among them. The greatest beneficiaries have been Black and Hispanic pupils. Today, in the United States, people refer to the “Mississippi miracle”. Thus, the excuse of poverty as a justification for poor academic results can only be used as an admission of a lack of effective educational strategies—in other words, as a confession of intellectual poverty on the part of policymakers (Luri, 2024: 264–265).

Educational debates are often reduced to simplistic slogans, such as “repetition: yes or no” but the key always lies in the details. In Mississippi, schools were required to provide intensive intervention and support for pupils who repeated the year, and also to assign them high-performing teachers in the following academic year—these are the “minor details” that make all the difference. Is this a better approach than automatically promoting pupils with major learning gaps, leaving them to face increasingly complex content the following year with no additional support, as currently happens in Spain? The results speak for themselves. In 2003, Mississippi ranked 49th nationally in reading proficiency among Year 4 pupils; today, it ranks 9th. Mississippi now shares third place in reading achievement for disadvantaged pupils. In 2003, Black Year 4 pupils in Mississippi ranked 43rd nationally; today, they rank third.

A particularly important fact is that all these extraordinary advances were achieved despite Mississippi ranking 46th out of 50 states in per-pupil spending—further evidence that effective educational policy, which need not entail any additional economic cost, can lead to major academic improvement (although, logically, greater investment will always help to strengthen the system).

The above example demonstrates how investment in teacher training and curriculum improvement—among other reforms—can significantly enhance educational outcomes, with pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds gaining the most. Today, Louisiana has the second-highest reading proficiency rate in the country among low-income Year 4 pupils. E.D. Hirsch Jr. (1988) has been warning for over forty years that when pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds are deprived of the foundational knowledge their more privileged peers typically acquire at home, they are placed in a position of permanent disadvantage—something that many other scholars have repeatedly confirmed (Wheelahan, 2010). A knowledge-rich curriculum ensures that all pupils, regardless of background, have access to the cultural and intellectual capital required to participate fully in civic and professional life. Possessing a broad base of knowledge is a prerequisite for educational equity. It is not elitist, as some pedagogical ideologues claim; what is truly elitist is, in Hirsch’s own words, “to encourage the segregation of knowledge”, as the state education system is currently doing. “The shared knowledge revival in early grades is wrongly conceived as politically conservative; rather, the shared knowledge approach is an essential path to equity in a democracy”² (Surma et al., 2025: viii).

Poverty does not equate to cognitive disability; we must not accept poverty as an excuse for educational decline. This is how genuine educational equity is achieved—not by producing masses of functionally illiterate pupils, most of them from working-class and ethnic minority backgrounds, as our current system is doing. As teachers, we must always keep our pupils’ long-term interests in mind and avoid falling into the kind of short-term, sentimental benevolence that treats them with condescension and undermines their present academic development—and therefore, their future personal development.

Individualised learning and pupil-centred approaches should not be reduced to the simplistic pedagogical mantra that pupils should “choose what they want to study” or “learn at their own pace” (which only increases the Matthew effect); rather, we must intervene to strengthen their weaknesses with even more teaching and higher expectations. And the sooner this is done, the better—otherwise, by the time they reach secondary education, the learning gaps will be insurmountable.

What is more traumatic: a teacher correcting homework and exams in red ink (one of the many absurdities peddled by pedagogical influencers on social media), or the daily, weekly, and yearly experience of feeling ignorant and inferior to one’s peers, as increasingly happens to pupils who enter lower secondary school with knowledge and skills several years below the expected level? Pedagogical dogmas are destroying educational equity and social justice, even as they are cloaked in a veneer of well-meaning idealism. What is easy, pleasant, and well-meaning in the short term is often superficial and misleading—and rarely beneficial in the long term or in a meaningful way.

Schools can play a role in social transformation, but not by lowering standards and allowing pupils to study whatever and however they wish. Transformation is achieved by giving pupils what they need. Let us provide the education every child deserves—for failing to do so is inexcusable and a dereliction of duty. Less empty rhetoric, and more transformative action.

References:

Bernstein, B. (1961). Social class and linguistic development: a theory of social learning. In A. H. Halsey, J. Floud and A. Anderson, Education, Economy and Society, (ed), New York, 288.

Hirsch, E.D. (1988). Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know. New York: Vintage.

Luri, G. (2024). Prohibido repetir. Una propuesta apasionada para salvar la escuela. Rosamerón, Madrid.

Sowell, T. (2020). Charter Schools and Their Enemies. New York: Basic Books.

Surma, T., Vanhees, C., Wils, M., Nijlunsing, J., Crato, N., Hattie, J., Muijs, D., Rata, E., Wiliam, D. & Kirschner, P.A. (2025). Developing Curriculum for Deep Thinking: The Knowledge Revival. SpringerBriefs in Education. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-74661-1_3

TNTP (2018). The Opportunity Myth: What Students Can Show Us About How School Is Letting Them Down—and How to Fix It. https://tntp.org/tntp_the-opportunity-myth_web/

Wheelahan, L. (2010). Why knowledge matters in curriculum: A social realist argument. Routledge.

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¹ In many cases, the disparities in educational outcomes between students attending charter schools in New York City and those attending traditional state schools—despite being educated in the same buildings—were greater than the widely discussed differences in educational attainment between Black and white individuals elsewhere. This may suggest that the causes of educational disparities are numerous and cannot be reduced to those most frequently or forcefully cited.

² The revival of shared knowledge in the early years of schooling is wrongly perceived as a politically conservative move; in reality, the shared knowledge approach is an essential path to equity in a democracy.

Source: educational EVIDENCE

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