I stumbled upon this article in my reading on the internets the other day. So naturally I poured myself a Captain and diet and went back to work grading my students papers, once again wondering what is wrong with this country.
As a teacher I can't help but be driven to the bottle by the way America treats education. Just read some of Diane Ravitch's website for a cornucopia of information about what is happening. Read the Jersey Jazzman for a detailed look at how awful things are in New Jersey, and wonderful statistical analysis of exactly what the data about american education is, and exactly how it is ignored. Read Edushyster for a sarcastic look at exactly how ridiculous all of this has become, because sometimes Sarcasm is the only thing we have left.
Most teachers honestly, barely register the bigger picture of how education is being destroyed, they just see small brushfires on an increasingl regular basis. Things like excessive testing, overbearing evaluation procedures, increasing numbers of students who live in poverty, or speak english as a second language, or have moderate to severe learning disabilities. We see curriculum changes we didn't decide on, tests that we barely know anything about, that we must get our students to pass for their sake, the schools sake, and our own. All the while we are constantly asked to do more in less time, for less pay (our salary increases barely keep up with average COLA increases)
We are struggling to do a job we probably love (more on that later) on a daily basis, so trying to keep track of the systematic long game to dismantle public education is missed by us. Our career, our passion, our desire to effect change in this world one child at a time is being ripped away, and our heads are so far underwater we can barely see it happening. Then all of a sudden a neighbor, or a family member, or a friend makes an offhand remark about "teachers" or our salaries, or our summers "off" or how every member of our profession is stupid because teachers don't have high SAT scores, and our heart breaks, and our head wonders where that came from.
So I wanted to lay out the plan that has been ravaging public education for decades, try to put the pieces in place so that people can see the big picture, and maybe be inspired to work in whatever way they can to work hard to stop it in its tracks.
Part I - American Schools are the Suxxors! (look this guy can't even use real words the future is screwed!)
Before I begin this analysis I want to point out that every measure of "success" used to judge education by both sides of the argument here is a test, a test with some variation of multiple choice, and some variation of free response essay/problems. One of our biggest failures as a worldwide society is allowing ourselves to be sorted into successes and failures by tests. Any educator can tell you the inherent problems with creating one size fits all assessments to determine the progress in a students learning. Our first and biggest problem is our obsession with objective tests and rubric assessed Open response work.
That said, our need to acquiesece to the data driven world, and our obsession with appealing to economists determines that we must base our arguments around tests. So I will, but it makes my skin crawl, because no test measures problem solving or thinking skills (plenty of research on that) and the more "challenging" you make the questions in an effort to test thinking skills, the more you test only a students ability to read and decode language tricks.
So Let's talk about the failure that is American Education. Cause not only am I bad at my job, so is everyone who does it everywhere, ever. (with the obvious exception of private school teachers, charter school teachers, and Teach for American "Corps" members, privately I strive to reach their heights)
Since public education was instituted in this country, we have been bad at it. But things really started to get heated in the early 80's when under Reagan we had our Holy Grail of how bad American's were at education "A Nation at Risk." a Horror story told to mothers everywhere to remind them that if we didn't buck up and fix all of our schooling problems their children would become the underlings of this Soviet's cause they are smarter and work harder (in communist Russia education schools you!). Everyone was better then us, we were lazy, entitled and were going to lose our edge and fall by the global wayside. 30+ years later, everyone is better then us, we are lazy, entitled and we are going to lose our edge and fall by the global wayside. And this time, our military won't even be able to save us cause we are all too stupid to join.
Man the worrying is so exhausting, I can barely keep typing.
Let's get a couple of things straight. American's have NEVER been good at international tests. Since the first international mathematics test ever given, we have always scored in the bottom of the countries involved, and yet here we are the largest economy in the world (okay china and india are either right behind or have passed depending on who you talk to and when you read this, but it certainly isn't all roses there) and the biggest superpower on the world stage. The reasons for this aren't so obvious, we aren't the biggest country so it isn't just size, we aren't living off of our laurels because by any number of measures of innovation (Patents, Nobel Prize winners etc...) we are still among the most if not the most innovative. Perhaps, just perhaps these tests aren't highly correlated with economic success (a ridiculously narrow measure of success BTW) and perhaps if they aren't highly correlated, success on them certainly can't be connected in any causative way?
You know what though, let's ignore the obvious question (ha, get it cause this blog is called....oh never mind) and instead operate under the premise that these tests are in fact important, and do in fact matter to our success as a nation. According to the PISA, an organization devoted to testing children worldwide (sadists) who is affiliated with the OECD and organization dedicated to ranking countries on lots of things so we can all feel good about what we do well, and bad about what we don't, our kids are really mediocre. I mean seriously our country is the richest in the world, we spend a ton on education (really we do spend a lot depending on how you look at it) and we get THIS!?!? The low end of mediocrity?
Forget it, you know what this whole blog post was wrong, I'm going to side with the anti education people, we are doomed. See you think I'm kidding here, but I'm not. I do believe we are doomed, and that we are failing our children. I just know it has nothing to do with our education system and everything to do with our massive problems with income inequality. If you believe in the value of tests such as the PISA America as a whole is failing our children just not necessarily how you expect.
Remember how we mentioned the OECD measured different countries on factors of what they do well and poorly? Well we do real poorly for our children. Of the nations considered "industrialized" by OECD only one has a higher level of children that live in poverty, Romania. That's right our 25% child poverty rate is second only to Romania. (and some recent studies point to an even higher rate of child poverty in public schools then that)
So? you may be asking. Well research upon research upon research has linked child poverty to challenges in education. (seriously, google it and get comfortable because you will never run out of reading material) the causes are many, the effects are many, but children that live in poverty are behind the eight ball and struggle to keep up let alone excel. And no matter how hard we wish it blaming them, their parents, or their teachers won't make that go away. In fact if you look at american schools where the poverty level is 10% of the student body or lower (you know like a normal industrialized nation) we are freaking awesome! Seriously, in some instances best in the world, every other instance top 5, freaking awesome.
Don't believe those weird foreigners? (seriously who are they to judge us 'MERICA!) Let's take a look at the NAEP results. The NAEP is a test we give to a statistically valid sample of students from each state around the country (wait? math can tell us how we are doing without torturing children several times yearly? Huh shame our policy makers are idiots) every few years. Proficient on the NAEP is considered to be about B level work in a normal classroom. We have been consistently improving since at least the 90's (the improvement flatlined once NCLB started to take hold, surprise surprise) . Not only that, we had been closing the gaps associated with race (again until NCLB went into effect). And our high school graduation rates are the highest they have ever been!
Light up that cigar and pour me some scotch, because by any rational scientific measure, we are a success when schooling our children.
Except that isn't what I see in the paper, that isn't what I hear from politicians, or policy makers, or the news. Increasingly that isn't what I hear from parents. It isn't because we are failures, it isn't because we don't educate our children well, it is because our country, our society has failed our children and it is too daunting and too expensive to fix, so we need a scapegoat, and that scapegoat is us.
Please understand, our educational system is not a failure. That is a lie to push an insidious agenda on the american people, and hide the truth of where we really do fail.
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