Public Education: Is It Broken Enough Yet?
Last month, the New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce proposed massive, comprehensive reformation of our public educational system. Response to their report, Tough Choices or Tough Times, was tepid from a number of quarters.
From the NEA:
“Tough Choices or Tough Times has shed light on some very real issues. However, we urge caution in calling for drastic changes that could potentially disenfranchise poorer communities and eliminate community voices in the reform conversation.
[snip]
“In the end, we all must get down to the work of reforming our public schools, one step at a time.
From WaPo’s education columnist Jay Mathews:
Almost all the ideas in the report are worthy of support. Teachers salaries should be raised substantially to attract better recruits. Standardized tests should be rewritten to encourage creative thought. Independently operated public schools should be encouraged. Spending on low-income students should be increased.
The problem is the report’s fanciful notion that it would be possible — indeed, they say it is absolutely necessary — to do all these things at once.
Too much at one time. Take baby steps. Or worse:
If the report’s authors’ fears prove true, and American living standards begin to decline because of competition abroad and poor schooling, the U.S. education system will change very quickly. But we education reporters learned long ago that most national commissions are wrong. It is better to wait and let actual events, rather than well-staffed guesses, determine our next move.
So — we should wait until standards begin to decline, because then, the system will change quickly.
Great. Let’s just kick this ball down the field some more, eh?
So how will we know when standards have declined so much that it’s finally time to do something? Would dropout rates exceeding 50% in urban areas be a warning sign, do you think? Or are state-wide rates of 1/3 worrisome, as is being reported today from Texas? (My post this morning on this here.) From the Houston Chronicle:
“If you live in a city like Dallas or Houston, and half of your kids are not finishing high school, it’s a social crisis, because we know that those kids will likely live in poverty, be much more likely to go to jail, and they will have more health problems,” Coppola said.
[snip]
Sanborn from Children At Risk said, “There’s no defense — period — in terms of how we are allowing these many kids to drop out of school.”
If the current trend line is not altered, average household incomes in Texas will decline, according to State Demographer Steve Murdock.
How far are we, as a nation, willing to travel down this road? In Texas, it seems they’re willing to go a bit farther yet:
That’s why he and Sen. Florence Shapiro, R-Plano, insisted last year on giving all school districts $275 per high school student for dropout-prevention and college-readiness programs.
College-readiness programs are — or should be — completely unrelated to drop-out prevention, but Shapiro’s solution sums up our entire problem in a nutshell: Everybody should go to college, because… well… just because.
No. Everybody should not go to college (There. I said it. Still breathing?), and if we continue to pursue this narrow path, our nation will fail… not because our intentions are bad, but because we’ve built our educational system on what I see as a skewed interpretation of “all men are created equal”.
Yes, we are all equal under the Constitution, and in the eyes of the law; we all enjoy the same rights and privileges as citizens; we should all be educated to the best of our abilities… but that does not mean we are “equal”. Within even the best-performing school districts, there’s a bell curve.
We’ve trapped ourselves with educational egalitarianism.
Trades and vocations are seen as somehow “less”, and even though we desperately need all skills (at all proficiency levels) in a complex society, we don’t necessarily respect them… and this ridiculous view of ourselves is the stone that will drag us down.
The system will have to break altogether before we’ll be able to confront ourselves, I’m afraid, and when that happens, we’ll be forced into some some very hard choices. We could make them today, but we won’t. We evidently can’t.
What a shame — because the problems of today will be vastly worse in that not-so-distant tomorrow.
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10 Responses to “Public Education: Is It Broken Enough Yet?”
My sister teaches in Houston and has mentioned this before. She has noted numerous times that she no longer teaches students. Rather she teaches to a tas (sp?) test. It sounds to me like frustration is mounting on the teaching side because they are no longer teaching students, and if these students don’t perform on the tests, the teachers are to blame.
I can’t recall if the no child left behind was started back when Bush was governor or not.
After going to public school north of Dallas for a few years, my folks moved me to a private school. Best thing they ever did for me. Public education in lots of Texas schools is horrible.
Jim,
I am calling BS on you. Have you ever looked at the test that the teachers complain about. They are extremely easier and generally well below grade level. What the teachers are really complaining about is that the tests are showing what happens when social engineering and social promotion are considered more important than academic education.
If the schools would refuse to promote anyone until they are performing at grade level then the United States would know that a high school diploma means somethings. These days it just means that the student showed up to class.
Admitiedly, I am a professor, but I spend a fair bit of time looking at the K-12 level for both business and personal (volinteer fo rmy daughter’s class) reasons.
First, I LOVE the standardized tests. Our problem is that each state sets its own level so what is tough in one state is easy in another, as funding is based on results, so some states *cough* ‘low ball’ it *cough* . . . Make the national test the standard for all states period.
The other benefit is acountability. Not sure on inner city schools, but the suburbs are fiercely competitive. Before testing I know my friends and I whom grow up in the area thought of primary shool as mostly jail time. Can you imagine coloring maps in 10th grade? Oh yeah. Now its all much, much improved in every school district I checked (5 including my old one). Coincidence? I think not.
Can a school teach to a test? To a degree, yes. But have you atually looked at the tests? I have for several states (OH, CA, TX). And I concluded that there is only so much you can teach too. The rest is simply do they read? Can they apply logic? and can they calculate?
The other point supporting standardized tests is China and Japan. ? Japan? Gee standardiuzed tests eh? And their poor kids do so bad educationally right?
This is a very nice post, polimom. I agree with you (I think) in that college is not the proper destination for all. I say this as I’m working towards my doctoral degree, which I note simply to indicate that I value college education tremendously. However, it just isn’t true that all people would benefit from college, especially at 18, or that all worthwhile employment requires a college diploma. Having never studied the issue at all (that’s my caveat), it seems that you truly only need a universal standard education through about 10th grade. IF the system is working, all students at that point should be able to read at a fine level, write coherently (not wonderfully just coherently), perform basic algebra and geometry, and know the basic history of their nation and world. When you start going past this, you are quickly increasing the proportion of study that very likely will not be used in future life.
Moreover, a lot of kids simply are not ready for college at 18. They will not take advantage of it and hence it will be a waste of their time and their parents’ / taxpayers’ money. I believe everyone should have the opportunity to go to college – and critically they should have the opportunity when they are ready at 35, not just when they are 18 – but being prepped for college is not the beginning and end of education. (I should restate that more carefully. I think that society would benefit if all who wish to take advantage of advanced education in a productive manner can take such advantage.)
I should also explain my “standard education to 10th grade” comment. The key word there was “standard”. Probably further education should be available universally past that point (at the 11th and 12th grade level), but it might be best if it was highly individualized. I benefited from taking trig and reading literature and studying physics in 11th grade. But I think there are a lot of 16-17 year olds who might benefit even more from getting a job and taking a couple classes on finance and entrepeneurship. Or classes in the morning where they study Spanish and CAD drafting tools with an internship in the afternoon. I assume people get the point with these examples. 10th to 11th graders should be becoming adults by this time, and one size simply does not fit all anymore.
superdestroyer, you can call BS on me all you want. I’m simply stating the complaint of a master degreed teacher w/ 12 years experience in Houston schools. You, or anyone else on here can tell me that teachers don’t teach to a test, but unless you’ve been there 8 hrs a day the past 10+ years, I’ll take her opinion over yours. And looking at how they test doesn’t mean squat. Every state is different with different demographics. Texas is large enough that those demographics change from city to city, and within each city. It is what happens in the classroom that matters. If they spend a fair amount of time worrying about how the school/district scores on the test, and if that makes a difference in pay, which I believe TX is trying to do, you can be damn sure the principal of every school is going to have the teachers focusing on that test.
That is what I hear Teachers complaining about. That a test and resultant scores may determine pay/promotions for them.
Most of it, likely is the parenting at home, but it doesn’t change the fact that the tests and how kids score is how schools are now being “graded”.
How you and I were taught back in the 80s/90s is different than how they are taught today.
Lucky for me I was sent to a Jesuit HS where teachers had essentially free reign to teach as they saw fit, within certain limitations of course. So I agree that certain kids are not ready for College at 18, I went to a college prep school and was barely ready myself.
And DaveA, can we really compare our schools to Japan? I had always been under the impression they went year round, and their class time is longer as well. Could be wrong on that, but that has always been my assumption. If that IS true, imagine how much additional information you would have received by the 5th/6th grade. That simply would put you much further ahead of American students.
I’ll try to get back here tomorrow, Wife is on the way home, gotta go fix dinner!
pacatrue — I agree with a great deal of your comment, and although I’m not sure that some folks are intellectually suited for college at any age regardless of desire, something you said triggered another thought.
Some of the resistance to comprehensive reform seems to be a pushback against routing kids various directions early in high school (i.e. academics for higher ed, trade schools / vocations, etc.). From the linked Mathews column:
I suspect this is held over from the “career for life” social and economic structures of prior years. Today, however, employer / employee relationships tend to be fairly fluid, and people are re-inventing themselves in new careers with greater frequency.
Combine this more flexible modern work ethic with the related theories of detaching health care and pensions from employment, and a possible scenario for the future starts to take shape.
Polimom and pacatrue,
I agree with a lot of what you’re saying but I wondered about how this could be structured. Would it be completely optional, a choice for the kid (and with or without parental consent?) Or would it involve testing like the O levels in some European countries, to determine which tract each kid would take?
C Stanley –
I suspect a combination of choice and supporting grades / test results would make sense. If “Johnny” isn’t able to read and analyze materially critically by high school (even if he could master it one day with more time and focus), it’s obvious that the track to college is moving too quickly — although a test to check these assumptions would be the right thing to do.
The military has an interesting model. When one enlists, s/he undergoes a battery of tests. These are related to intelligence, interest, and skills suitabiity… and all these results are then mapped to organizational need.
But just because one isn’t on the “college track” right now doesn’t have to close doors to a bright future or interesting and fulfilling careers, and I think that’s partly where we’ve gone somewhat off-track.
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