One of the most bizarre aspects of the United States is how we organize public education at the elementary and secondary levels. For mysterious historical reasons, we leave all of the important decisions — from curriculum and testing to financing and bus routes — in the hands of local school boards. 130,000 of them, all told. The result, predictably enough, is screaming chaos. Not only do we have haphazard ideas about what to teach and how to judge how well it’s been taught, but the dispersal of resources makes economies of scale impossible, so we don’t put anything like the appropriate amount of effort into developing new techniques and training our teachers.
And it shows. Matt Miller has written a compelling article in The Atlantic, documenting how our screwy system — unique, apparently, in the developed world — has utterly failed to give our children the educations they deserve.
The United States spends more than nearly every other nation on schools, but out of 29 developed countries in a 2003 assessment, we ranked 24th in math and in problem-solving, 18th in science, and 15th in reading. Half of all black and Latino students in the U.S. don’t graduate on time (or ever) from high school. As of 2005, about 70 percent of eighth-graders were not proficient in reading. By the end of eighth grade, what passes for a math curriculum in America is two years behind that of other countries.
This dismal failure might at least be explicable if it served some misguided egalitarian impulse, but it doesn’t. This map, from Miller’s article, shows the spending per pupil on a county-by-county basis; the poorest counties spend less than $7,500 per student, while the rich ones are over $17,500. (Click for larger version.)
Is there any theory behind the idea that students should getter significantly better or worse educations based on the county in which they are born? This isn’t an issue of private vs. public; it’s a public service, paid for by taxes, just like Medicare or national defense. But we finance public education by combination of state and local revenues, rather than through the national government.
Faced with such a patently misguided system, the most common calls for reform involve the imposition of some sort of national standards, such as those featured in the No Child Left Behind Act that has lately been foisted on our schools. In principle, national standards are a great idea; in a sensible system, however, they be the last of a series of necessary reforms. It’s like a team that hires a new football coach, who addresses the team on the first day of practice by saying “Here’s the system: we’re going to win all of our games!” Without an actual playbook, appropriate equipment, and some strategy, exhortations to do better aren’t going to achieve any tangible results.
It’s obvious what is needed: a basic national curriculum that is shared by all schools, with a set of requirements that leave room for creativity and innovation by individual districts within the overall framework. (There is no reason why American math classes should be two grade levels behind European math classes.) Plus, crucially, an overhaul of the financing system so that resources are distributed fairly. Those are just the minimal reforms that every sensible person should be able to agree on; after those are implemented, we can return to our regularly scheduled debates about school choice and bilingual education. Apparently the problem is that conservatives hate “national” and liberals hate “standards,” and both are afraid of the teachers’ unions. So we should all be able to compromise and do the right thing! As Miller says, “We started down this road on schooling a long time ago. Time now to finish the journey.”
Addendum: note that I am not saying that the difference to the US is the crucial thing. There are too many other differences to be able to make that comparison. The point is that the public school systems in these countries work.
I don’t understand how anyone who has gone through public schools in this country can think that the point of school is learning. It isn’t. I learned far more in my own time experimenting with the natural world is various (sometimes dangerous) ways then I ever did sitting in a class, learning the same thing I was taught the year before, and the year before that, and the year before that…
I think public schooling does way more harm than good in terms of dissuading children from wanting anything to do with learning. It sets up a bad association with anything that’s associated with school, in particular reading.
Does anyone really think that taking a random sample of children of a given age, throwing them into a room with a single adult, will generate a learning environment, instead of a lord of the flies environment? The answer to that, of course, is no. That’s why we divide them up by aptitude. But that turns into an excuse to not waste your time with the bad kids, who “don’t want to learn anyway.” But then why have them in school? Etc.
The whole system makes no sense when you try to interpret it as teaching, and makes perfect sense when you consider it conditioning and day sitting.
But don’t take my word for. Read John Gatto’s essays. In particular, The Six Lesson School Teacher. Gatto won several state teacher awards in NY, and every acceptance speech turned into a damning critique of the ideas the school system is founded upon.
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I don’t know, I think local control of public schools is an important safety net.
We’ve left the era of fact-based politics, or even reality-based politics. How many readers of this blog would really be comfortable with the current administration setting a nationwide curriclium? Young-universe “theories” in science classes? “Teach the controversey” on climate change and evolution? Straight-up lies passing for sex-education? And lord only knows what distorted version of history they’d come up with.
I’m sure someone from the opposite side of the political spectrum could come up with their own examples. But, my real point is that it’s harder for periods of national madness to mess up 13,000 separate school boards than one national one.
What I find bizarre about the United States is that we have a Constitution that our office holders swear to uphold and yet at the same time we have things like a federal Department of Education that is simply not allowed by the Constitution. (Of course education is just one of hundreds of major activities of our federal government that are similarly unconstitutional.)
I am tired of the lawlessness of our government. We need a return to a federal government that adheres to the small set of enumerated powers listed in the Consitition. Then if people want “national education” or “national health insurance” or “a national identity card”, then fine — they can work to amend the Constitution to allow it. That is the lawful process that we set up for ourselves.
Sadly “The United States of America” as once envisioned is no longer functional. Instead we have “The American Empire” which is really not my cup of joe.
@ RockHoward (#30): The Department of Education gets its authority from the Interstate Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution (Art. 1, Sec. 8, Para. 3). It’s very easy to argue that the education of the populace has a huge effect on commerce both national and international. Thus Congress has legal authority in this area. In fact, most of Congress’ regulatory authority comes from this clause.
The same argument can be made for national health insurance.
Matthew, as this is a science blog I’m sure you will appreciate some data. On public health levels there is now some very good data at gapminder, the general patern is clear, health increases with wealth till an income of about 10.000$ per capita per year, then it levels of and we see many countries with a variety of public/private systems at roughly the same level. Many countries with public health beat the US on the criteria of
Infant mortality, under 5 year mortality, and Life expectancy.
As a matter of fact the US often trails the entire rest of the medium to high income world.
PISA is the authorative study on what children actually learn, here is the most recent executive summary.
The top performers here are:
Finland, Canada, Japan and New Zealand and the partner countries/economies Hong Kong-China, Chinese Taipei and Estonia.
If you want a very entertaining and interesting talk about the actual state of the world this is a good place to start:
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/92
excellent talk.
Re: #31
What’s the point of Congress having limited, enumerated powers if the ‘interstate commerce’ clause can be used to justify any act that Congress deems beneficial to the U.S.? Might as well be honest and ditch the whole notion of constitutional limitations on government.
In the wake of Sputnik, a great deal of money and effort went into improving American schools with good results. No doubt there was plenty of waste and abuse, but the take away message from the era is that determined efforts yield results. It matters if you require lots of math, science, and foreign languages in high schools. Indeed, it matters that you make education attractive to kids by including art, music, and physical education in the curriculum. In the late 60s and especially in the 70s, we just stopped trying and also got stingy, especially out here in California. The enthusiasm for testing of the last few years hasn’t mitigated our abdication of responsibility. Testing is just a cheap way of avoiding real commitment: it’s a gimmick that can and is being gamed all across the country.
A note on homeschooling: it’s no wonder that homeschooled children do better than public school kids. One of the best predictors of academic performance is the amount of time that a child spends talking to adults. It would be take a miraculous public school system to duplicate the effect of three or four hours a day spent talking to an adult, almost any adult.
Equal distribution of funding doesn’t solve anything either really.
There are plenty of examples of public schools in rich neighborhoods that do poorly, and the contrapositive.
As we already mentioned, many of these schools in poor neighborhoods recieve more funding per capita than most places in the rest of the world, so its disengenous to imply that equal funds will somehow cure the problem.
The US university system is the best in the world, and its almost completely privatized as well, further contradicting the nationalization claims.
Now having much higher nationalized standards (with penalties and incentives) strikes me as the obvious first step. Also its unclear to me why teachers salaries are so low, since there should be rampant competition for them if there are penalties and such. The teachers union is so powerful it almost erases any semblance of balance in the system.
Also the funding appropriations is completely fubar, with so much emphasis on sports. It really doesn’t make sense.
I found the graph quite honest in regards to the southern states and Louisiana, where I live. The problem I see is the mismanagement of government, federal and state, funds. Louisiana had the highest tax revenue last year, since Hurricane Katrina. Gov. Kathleen Blanco (an ex-teacher) saw fit to cut about 7 million from Louisiana school funds and appropriate them to the development of golf courses and tourism.
This hurt the rural area of Louisiana excluding Shreveport/Bossier City and Baton Rouge. According to the graph, those are the only 2 parishes shaded darker than “light gray.” What else is new?
I was forced to pull my son out of public school due to lack of discipline and qualified teachers/principals that actually gave a crap about the education and safety of their student body. I’m now working more hours and spending less time with my family just so my kid can have a decent education at a local religious private school. The teachers there are qualified and decent. Then again, I’m paying their salaries directly instead of relying on the state to hire someone that just shows up for a paycheck. I say the problem lies in the government as well as the uselessness of the school board heirarchy.
Just another dumbed down Southerner fighting against the government agenda.
Later Gators “
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Re Haelfix
“The US university system is the best in the world, and its almost completely privatized as well, further contradicting the nationalization claims.”
This statement doesn’t even that the decency to be wrong. It is, in fact, a lie. The majority of college students in the US attend state universities or state colleges.
I’ve spent a fair bit of my life in New Hampshire, and my friends there say the system in NH is that all the property taxes go to the state, and then the state distributes the pot evenly amongst all the districts (ie the local districts still have control). I always thought this was a great idea personally, as I never understood why kids who arguably need all the help they can get coming from poverty get the least amount of money to help them there.
(I should also note at this point that I am very libertarian in my politics, but always insist that education should be more evenly distributed. Why? Because no one gets a choice as to where they’re born, and everyone knows it’s better for society to have people who make something of themselves rather than end up in jail.)
I will also note that I’ve spent a good deal of time in the Hungarian school system back in the day- one of those countries that leaves the US in the dust- and I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that in an American school teachers usually teach to the lowest common denominator, whereas in Hungarian schools they teach to the highest one. I still remember in disbelief how I was in one of the best school districts in the country in 4th grade and I was forced to spend months learning simple addition and subtraction again because “we’re trying to make you see how fast you can do them.” Everyone knew even with 4th grade intellect that it was because some of the kids in the class hadn’t yet mastered 4+5, so we were all going to waste our time as a result.
And as a final note, for the love of God we need to get more money into the teaching profession. I know several wonderful, talented physics students who will be graduating college this year and would want nothing more of life than to teach high school physics to the benefit of everyone involved… but can’t pay loans off if they become teachers, so it’s off to industry. It gets more and more upsetting at each new occurrence.
For our education system to truly prosper, we also need better child rearing in addition to fixes to the system.
A few years ago a friend from Russia asked the question, “why don’t you have a national agency defining what your children should be taught?” My response was, “Do you want someone in Washington deciding what your child would learn, or would you prefer to keep it local, close to you, where you have a say?” He never asked again.
The system has problems, but I think strongly dictated national system will encounter resistance from an old American belief. There is a belief, probably not supported by the facts, but that is why it is a belief, that we are all self made, we control our own destiny. As a result, we seem to want the most control over our most critical decisions. What our children are taught is one of those decisions.
In the global economy, education reform may help, but I do you really think it could happen? The United States is much large and, much more individually focus then Europeans. We don’t have centuries of culture to bind us. We have the romance of the Old West and spirit of the ’49s. For better or worse, here we are.
Now on the plus side, maybe everyone getting a different take on the world is one of the reasons we are so inventive. None of us see the same problem the same way, and those different views lead to different solutions, and sometimes its the odd ball solution that actually works.
I think that this idea that local control makes it easier to watch over what our children are being taught has it exactly backwards. Most parents do not have time to pore over state standards and individual lesson plans, and there’s no way that appropriate supervision can occur over 130,000 districts. Whereas, if there was a basic national curriculum, all sorts of relevant watchdog groups would be working to keep it sensible.
To judge whether our current system is effective, we can simply compare it to other similar countries. Our system is terrible; the data don’t lie.
There’s also a middle road that wouldn’t involve amending the Constitution. We could move school control from the local level to the state level. This would have another advantage over nationalization in that there would be 50 different experiments running at the same time.
Sean wrote (my emphasis):
Let’s assume, everything else remaining equal, that there is an economy of scale to be gained by aggregating local public schools into larger administrative units. What, then, is the ideal size of the administrative units that we should be aggregating local public schools into to maximize this economy of scale? Why should the United States adopt a specifically national public school administration when some form of sub-national — or perhaps supranational — school administration would maximize economies of scale?
I think you can see where I’m going with this. If Sean wasn’t just blowing hot air when he suggested that economies of scale could be important for the performance of the public school system, then that’s an argument for market reforms to seek the optimal economy of scale for the system.
I’m a new teacher, ending year two, and I feel that to improve education it needs to be supported at home. Our nation’s families are falling apart, and when families fall apart so does everything- especially education. How often are parents not involved enough? How often do teachers hear “less homework,” and get mad at a teacher when their son/daughter does poorly- just to move them to an easier class for the easy “A.” We need families that care about education enough to sit down and teach their children. We need families that stick together and don’t give up. We need families to work so education and everything else will work.
SLC, the best universities are mostly private. Indeed, where it not for the competition that they bring, I suspect that things wouldn’t be as rosy for the US.
Places like Princeton/Stanford et al have greatly benefited the U Chicago’s/U Michigans of the world over the years
Otoh the majority of nationalized places like community colleges and so forth, im less enthusiastic about. There are some serious dumps amongst that lot.
Apparently the problem is that conservatives hate “national” and liberals hate “standards,” and both are afraid of the teachers’ unions.
Disclaimer: I’m a member of a local school board, so I have a certain bias here…
I definitely agree with the first two thirds of Sean’s t summary of the problem. The same point was made by Checker Finn (with whom I don’t usually agree) who said that “Compromises needed to pass NCLB left the law laid-back about standards yet fussy about what states and districts should do when those standards aren’t met.”
In fact, the compromises the NCLB is built on provide perverse disincentives against raising standards. As a case in point, California’s recent decision to redefine “Algebra I” to be an 8th grade standard , rather than a 9th grade standard, has made compliance with NCLB significantly more difficult.
However, I don’t see either local school boards or teacher unions as the root of the problem — or nationalization — at least until it can come up with something less insanely counter-productive than NCLB — as the answer. At the moment, parents and teachers provide some of the most forceful counterpoint to the simplistic mentality on which many of the NCLB sanctions and interventions are based.
In addition, the American Federation of Teachers is one of the strongest advocates stronger content standards (see, for example, here ). They, and Diane Ravitch, are probably the strongest voices heard in education circles for the sorts of things Sean describes as “the minimal reforms that every sensible person should be able to agree on.”
I would argue that the biggest impediment to a strong public school system is, in many respects, a strong streak of anti-intellectualism found both on the left and right of the political spectrum in the U.S. We don’t have good schools because, as a nation, we don’t respect the work of educating children, or believe that something more that basic math and reading proficiency is really needed by most of the population.
Affluent, educated parents are willing to spend a lot of money to ensure that their children are well educated — either through local property taxes and public schools were that is an option, or through tuition at private schools when demographics or funding structure make that difficult. Hence, the suburban enclaves of New York and New Jersey that willing vote each year to increase property taxes to maintain some of the highest per-pupil spending in the country.
Ironically, states like California which have reduced spending inequities may not have actually improved education for any students because districts are equalized at a fairly low level. In California, 1/3 of the State Assembly or 1/3 of the State Senate can effectively veto a budget, so the Republican minority in the legislature has a very large voice in the overall funding level for California schools. Individual districts look for ways to supplement this (and effectively raise the level of inequality between districts) but their ability to do this is pretty limited.
I don’t see an easy answer, particularly to the funding question. Stronger national standards maybe a part of the equation — but I think building a national commitment to the type of education that most readers of this blog would like to see is going to be a long, hard slog. But my main motivation for running for school board was to try to see that, at least in my small piece of the world, public education didn’t decay on my watch, and I suspect there are thousands of other people like me on local school boards across the country.
Performance cannot improve without accountability. There is less accountability in government then any other form of monopoly. Centralizing management does remove the ability for small groups of citizens to make a difference and hence hold their government schools accountable.
Haelfix:
Do you even live in the United States?
First off, University of Chicago is a public school.
Second off, by what metric are you using to say that Private Universities are among the best in the United States?
The fact of the matter is, the United States is blessed with world-class public institutions that have probably done more for the United States and its individual states than any private universities could have done.
Case in point: what is the number one patent holder in the United States? It isn’t IBM, it isn’t Merck, it isn’t Pfizer. It’s the University of California system.
And speaking of which about the University of California system, just one campus (Berkeley) can count 25 of its graduates as Nobel Laureates. Not many Universities (private or otherwise!) can compete with that.
Really, are do you have any data to back up your claims? I could go on and on about the University of Michigan, Texas, Virginia, North Carolina, Massachusetts and how they’re just as good (if not better) than any other private University.
Er, that’s of course meant to say that the University of Chicago ISN’T a public school.