Report: US only average at educating students

By Matt Buccelli

A recent sample of test score data from around the world is causing significant concern among American education observers and public officials.  The report, which tallied the math, science, and reading scores of 15 year-olds in each of the 34 countries within the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development [OECD], demonstrates mediocre results for the United States, and shows us lagging behind many other Asian and European countries.  On the 1,000 point scale of the International Student Assessment, we scored a 500 in reading, 502 in science, and 487 in math. 

The results sounded alarm bells for many public officials.  Education Secretary Arne Duncan referred to the results as "a massive wake-up call."  Added Duncan: "Have we ever been satisfied as Americans being average in anything? Is that our aspiration? Our goal should be absolutely to lead the world in education."

Representative George Miller [D-CA], the outgoing chairman of the House Education Committee, expressed similar distress. "Average won't help us regain our global role as a leader in education. Average won't help our students get the jobs of tomorrow. Average is the status quo and it's failing our country."



The disappointing results also drew attention from President Obama, who called for a new "Sputnik moment" to stimulate US investment in math and science education and scientific research in general.  In case you've been contributing in the last several years to our country's average test scores, Sputnik was the Soviet satellite launched in 1957 that caused widespread panic and outrage that our then-Cold War rivals had beat us to space.  As everyone knows, we quickly stepped up our game and put a man on the moon just 12 years later -- largely the work of rocket scientists and engineers who were mostly under 30 at the time.  If this transformation was a testament to the power of our country to course-correct and better educate our young people then, President Obama is clearly trying to channel those same energies now.

But what needs to be done to improve the country's academic performance?  Weren't we in this same position when we enacted No Child Left Behind over 8 years ago?  How many new reports need to come out before we can find a series of real solutions to an educational crisis that seems to get deeper by the day?

If this report tells us one thing, it's that mediocrity and failure within the American school system extends way beyond the thousands of "low-performing schools" across the country.  We do need a new "Sputnik moment," but we can't just throw more money at a school system that clearly isn't doing its job.  We need to comprehensively rethink our approach to education in the United States, from what and how we teach students to the way we choose to assess them, and we need to start doing it right now.

LINKS:

International test score data show US firmly mid-pack [Washington Post]
House Education Chair: US School System is 'Failing Our Country' [HuffPost]
Obama cites 'Sputnik' moment, calls for investment [Yahoo! News]

Educating America in the New Decade

By: Jonathon Munoz

The new decade finds America traveling on the long road of economic recovery. It is hard not to ignore the immediate effects of such a crisis. For example, as of Dec. 2009, 15.3 million Americans were unemployed with an unemployment rate of 10%[1]. At the beginning of the recession in December 2007 the unemployment rate was 0.5% with 7.7 unemployed Americans. It is important to mitigate the immediate negative effects of the crisis for obvious reasons, but there is a big difference between the semblance of economic stability and the real thing. With so much money being poured into the economy to promote stability and increase consumer confidence it is easy to focus on the symptoms of the crisis while ignoring its causes.

The current crisis gives us a unique opportunity to fundamentally change the way the country learns. If fiscal responsibility is truly a long-term goal for America, it must invest in education. We must create educational policies that foster innovation while promoting accountability, both on the part of local and state officials. A study by the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northwestern University recently reported that students who dropped out of high school were 63 times more likely to be in prison than students with a four-year college degree. Also, “on average, each high school dropout now costs taxpayers more than $292,000 in lower tax revenues, higher cash and in-kind transfer costs, and incarceration costs relative to the average high school graduate.”

[2]

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the most recent stimulus package, is a piece of legislation worth $787.2 billion.[3] Now, it is not certain if this will completely save us, but it is fairly certain that it will get the markets moving with consumers doing what they do best. A study by McKinsey & Company showed that if students in states that scored below-average on the NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress) in 1983 had improved over a 15 year period, so that they performed at the national average, America’s GDP would be 3 to 5% higher. That amounts to $425 billion to $700 billion.[4] It is quite clear that educating students should not only be considered a moral or social responsibility but also an economic one.

Today only 40% of American adults earn a two-year or four-year degree and about 30% of students drop out of school without a diploma. That means that in a class of 20 students six of them will probably not make it to graduation, and only about eight of them will earn a degree. These are staggering results, especially in the light of the fact that education is the number one expenditure of states (21%).[5] Obviously, funds in the educational system are not being properly utilized. However, this is not only a state by state problem—it concerns the entire nation. In light of the economic situation, the Department of Education has been given $10 billion dollars in discretionary resources to incentivize state and local reforms. These state-oriented resources exceed all previous funding for any given administration combined. This is a great opportunity to improve our schools.

There are approximately 95,000 public schools in the U.S. Of those schools, about 2,000 high schools account for half of the nation’s dropout rates and three-quarters of our minority dropouts.[6] Knowing this, we should really begin to wonder why educational measures haven’t helped out much. We could blame student surroundings, and this often becomes a default response. In a recent article about Teach For America in The Atlantic, a local D.C. elementary teacher said this concerning her underperforming students: “The kids in Northwest [D.C.] go on trips to France, on cruises. They go places and their parents talk to them and take them to the library… Our parents on this side don’t have the know-how to raise their children. They’re not sure what it takes for their child to make it.”[7]

It is easy to blame parents, and it is even easier to blame socio-economic conditions. However, it is this very tendency of “localizing” the problem that is the cause for the discrepancy in performance. If America wishes to regain its edge in education it must counteract this blame-game by focusing on reforming the system. Education in the new decade should see a higher degree of cooperation between states. For example, sharing data systems that track student success and growth, or sharing results of schools which have modified the school structure (e.g. extending the school day). We should all work at innovating the system through purposeful reforms that reward high-performing schools instead of only punishing the bad ones (which is the current practice under No Child Left Behind). Education in the new decade should incentivize teachers, districts, and states to innovate. We can already see this happening with the Race to the Top Fund (a competitive fund rewarding states for educational reforms).

Even in this competitive apparatus we must not forget that education is a collective endeavor. We must not localize problems; doing so can only ensure that we keep treating the symptoms while never getting to the cause of the educational dilemma. We must interact with a student as if she were all students; her individual success is not without its global consequences. We have a social responsibility to educate America, and unless we realize that we also have a personal responsibility then we might as well give up now.

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[1] Bureau of Labor Statistics U.S. Department of Labor. News Release: January 8, 2010. http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm

[2] From “Lawmakers Who Lead-Secretary Arne Duncan’s Remarks to the National Conference of Legislatures.” http://www.ed.gov/news/speeches/2009/12/12102009.html

[3] From Track the Stimulus. http://trackthestimulus.com/Economic_Stimulus_Plan.aspx

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Ripley, Amanda. “What makes a great teacher.“ The Atlantic. http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/201001/good-teaching/?pid=ynews