A dynamic economy is much more than the sum of its test scores. It's part of a culture that rewards innovation and risk-taking, and values unconventional problem-solving. Much of this is nurtured in our schools, even if it can't be quantified on a test.
This is a quote from a piece by Paul Farhi in the Jan. 21 Washington Post entitled Five Myths About U.S. Kids Outclassed by the Rest of the World. It is well worth reading.
Please understand: there are many things about American education that I think need to be addressed, which is why I am part of the effort to do so for yearlykos (see sdorn's diary today for some background). But we cannot be misled by the scaremongers who want us to think everything is horrible.
The article went through a series of allegations often relied upon by those who insist that American schools are failing. Often these critics are seeking to advance a particular point of view. Far too often the point of view is hostile to the idea of public schools. Thus it becomes important to realize the inaccuracy of the claims they make. I strongly urge anyone interested in public education to read the piece, bookmark it, and send it on to others. Let me give you a taste, and then offer some commentary of my own.
The first issue cited is that US students compare poorly with those around the world. We have seen this in a variety of news reports on international comparisons. First, comparisons on international tests are frought with difficulties, a point not addressed in this article, but evident in the work of Iris Rotberg and Gerald Bracey, among others. Even so, the comparisons do not rate us at the bottom, but rather in the middle of industrialized nations in sicence and math, and far higher in things like civics and reading.
We are NOT falling behind, but either holding our own or actually improving in most measures.
Accusations that our educational system is not preparing students for the workforce have been around for at least half a century, and are not reflected in the continued productivity of the American workforce (oh, and the date given for the Life Magazine article cited by Bracey should be 1958, not 1957).
The idea the bad schooling has undermined America's competitiveness. This of course was the big stick used in the 1983 report A Nation at Risk, that our poor schools would make our economy fall ever further behind, that we we were doomed in comparison with the Asian Tigers, Anyone who has paid attention to what has happened around the world economically in the past few decades will realize how erroneous that fearmongering was. And here I note that the claims, which appeared in the executive summary of the report, were in fact NOT supported by the data in the report.
Let me offer just a few comments and observations of my own. I teach high school social studies. We are seeing an increasing number of students arriving in 9th grade with insufficient background in social studies, because the domain is NOT tested under NCLB, so time that should be devoted to providing basic background is used to prepare students for tests in reading and math. The solution is NOT, to have tests for social studies, which inevitably will be at the lower level (recall) and which would also become a battle ground on which "facts" were necessary to be tested (and here one need only think of the battles over the history standards that were part of our recent educational history).
We have now had about 5 years of operating under NCLB, and contrary to the claims of the administration the law has NOT been a success, which is why it is frightening to even see Democrats like Senator Jeff Bingaman be willing to consider expanding it to high schools. At a recent conference on the law, former Assistant Secretary of Education Diane Ravitch probably put it best. In a November conference at AEI on whether NCLB was working, she summarized the the findings that no part of the act was working as intended. Not the choice toole, not the Supplementary Education Services, not the restructuing, and that no real headway has been made ine closing the "achievement gap." And yet the administration is pushing for reauthorization on an expedited basis. One positive note was the lack of enthusiasm in the response of the Congress after the President in his State of the Union address asked for reauthorization.
Let me offer what Farhi wrote on the 4th point, right after the blockquote with which I began this diary:
Recently, Newsweek International's Fareed Zakaria noted Singapore's success on international math and science exams, but asked Education Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam why Singapore produced so few top-ranked scientists, entrepreneurs, inventors, business executives and academics. "We both have meritocracies," he replied. America's "is a talent meritocracy, ours is an exam meritocracy. There are some parts of the intellect that we are not able to test well -- like creativity, curiosity, a sense of adventure, ambition. Most of all, America has a culture of learning that challenges conventional wisdom, even if it means challenging authority. These are the areas where Singapore must learn from America."
Our current (and past) economic success suggests something that educational alarmists and their sky-is-falling friends in the news media seem reluctant to admit: American schools may have a lot to fix, but they may be doing a few things right, too.
My greatest fear is that No Child Left Behind is precisely contrary to developing the risk taking, encouraging the creativity, and the other things that have enabled our economy to be successful, that have also empowered our society to be far more open than those of most other industrialized nations. Let me highlight from the last block quote the following words Most of all, America has a culture of learning that challenges conventional wisdom, even if it means challenging authority. If what we are doing in education is contrary to this basic principle, then what we are doing is wrong, and destructive.
I have never been a great fan of competitive rankings in any domain. Such an approach inevitably means that we begin to view people or institutions not as offering something different but rather as somehow inferior. The 5th point Farhi addresses is our compulsion to believe that international rankings somehow matter for national pride. Rather than summarize, let me simply offer the words with which he closes his piece:
Yes, we're a nation of strivers and self-improvers; the American drive to be the biggest and the best in everything seems part of our national character. But if being No. 1 in education is our goal, shouldn't we also want to be No. 1 in all the things closely linked to academic achievement, such as quality of childhood health care and reduction of childhood poverty? National pride can be a destructive concept, especially when it views learning as a zero-sum game ("their" gains are "our" losses, and vice versa). Continuous improvement should be our goal, regardless of whether we're No.1 in the test-score Olympics.
We cannot address education in a vacuum. There are things we do need to change. There should not be only one model of how we do things, because our students, and our communities, are not all the same. That is part of what fuels my passion to address issues of educational policy. It is why I am willing to take on the tasks of things like educational panels at Yearlykos, why I often write online about education, and most of all, why I encourage others to get actively involved in the effort. If we do not speak out, we run a real risk of seeing the public education system that has allowed America to be great, that has empowered many to upward mobility, that has been major engine of creating and sustaining the middle class, destroyed as those who seek partisan or personal advantage force upon it changes that will impoverish our nation and many in it.