A September/October Saturday Evening Post article by Diane Ravitch, Research Professor of Education at New York University and a historian of education, was a case study on the problem of education. I do not mean that she presented a case study on the problem of education in her article, but in fact the article and Ms. Ravitch herself is a case study on the problem of education.What is the first thing you think about when you think of “education”? If you are a parent, like me, with school aged children, or you are not in the field of education you probably freely associate education with a subject, like math, or a child sitting at a desk. Maybe you recall the smells of tempera paint and paste or the pangs of walking into class having left your essay at home. In other words, you think of school and of learning. That is not the kind of thing that Ms. Ravitch and other educational experts are referring to in phrases such as “What is good for education?” or “Education in America”. They are referring, instead, to the profession and institution represented by the term “education”. And therein lies the problem.
Education (“schools”) in America will never improve until educational professionals disassociate their careers and their industry from the process of learning. To them, learning is inextricably linked to the education industry. When the industry declines, children fail to learn and when the industry grows, children succeed in learning. But we have ample evidence that this direct relationship does not exist. The education industry has been growing wildly with per student annual spending commonly above $10,000. Yet anyone who tries to argue that the public school system is providing even an adequate education for the majority of American children is disconnected from reality. The body of evidence that gets the most attention is standardized test results. But we also have graduation statistics, drop out rates, college success statistics that rate homeschoolers well above public schooled children, examples of homeschoolers demonstrating superiority in competitive endeavors like national spelling bees, and college entrance exam results. Then, to make the point even more poignant we can look to the growth of charter schools and homeschooling, a direct result of the loss of faith in public schools.
The problem with the educational system is further exacerbated by the professional educator’s belief in his unique and exclusive qualification in defining and assessing learning success, evidenced by a comment made by the head of Washington D.C.’s union Nathan Saunders in an interview with John Stossel. “I know my kids are learning by the look in their eyes.” A ninth grade student may not be able to correctly identify the Civil War president on a multiple choice history test, but a professional educator can see the student’s progress through that twinkle in her eye!
People like Mr. Saunders and Ms. Ravitch assume a certain level of expertise and ownership that they believe commands respect and endows them with control. Their advice must be heeded, their ideas implemented, their demands met. And I can sympathize with the attitude. After devoting large amounts of money, time and dedication to one’s career, most professionals would not want laymen to challenge what they believe they know. Legitimate criticism of a veteran educator or education “expert” by a “man on the street” might suggest that their decades of effort were irrelevant, obsolete, wasted. It weakens their credibility. An expert with no credibility is oxymoronic.
But the consequence that educational experts fear the most is the effect criticism has on their job security and their earnings. If the public believes that the education industry is no longer essential to the learning process, they will no longer support the exorbitant funding increases cities across the nation and the federal government have been granting year after year to the public school system.
So rather than admitting that their industry is a bloated one, that it wastes large amounts of money, and fails to run efficiently, that its unions demands are unreasonable, that its certification requirements are in some cases unhelpful, unwarranted and ineffective, that its fear of competition prevents innovation and creativity, the industry blames testing. They blame a lack of funds. They blame the culture. They blame educational choice. And, as with Diane Ravitch’s article, they offer no evidence. No data. No sources for their opinion that these things are in fact to blame.
Their tendency toward self-protection and desire for job-security is easy to understand, easy to relate to. But education does not exist to give individuals career options. This is exactly where the layman departs from the professional educator. The institution of education exists to teach children, a task that it is demonstrably failing based on every reasonable criteria including testing, statistics, college course offerings, and the observations of parents, employers, teachers and administrators alike.
Many, especially teachers, might argue that teaching and learning are two opposing sides of the same coin, and a failure to learn does not necessarily indicate a failure to teach. That is true. In nearly every class of children, regardless of the talent, dedication and passion of the teacher, someone will fail. Sadly, some children are simply not equipped, not supported, not free to succeed. But no reasonable person would define some as a majority or even a large minority. In April of 2007 the state of Washington postponed until 2013 the requirement for seniors to pass the now defunct state math and science assessment as a condition of graduation because the class of 2008 failed the test in large numbers. Understand, this was not an academically rigorous test, but designed to assess basic knowledge. Yet 44% failed the math portion and 62% failed the science.
Large numbers of teens in America drop out of high school. Large numbers of teens are illiterate. Most high school aged Americans have no working knowledge of history, no familiarity at all with the great philosophical ideas of Western culture, and very little understanding of civics or economics. And even if they become financially successful in life, their ignorance contributes to the slow steady decline of republican democracy, America’s cultural morality and the pursuit of truth. In 2005 Bill Gates blasted U.S. high schools in a speech to the National Governors Association for not adequately preparing 66% of the nation’s children for citizenship and the workforce. And while parents, students and society at large certainly do bear some of the blame, this is not simply a failure to learn.
On the other hand, we are not talking about failures that can be attributed specifically to teachers, either. The educational establishment would want us to believe that educational critics are blaming teachers. We aren’t. We are blaming the bureaucracy and institutional culture within which teachers operate that ties learning success directly to education industry growth rather than classroom support, discipline and high standards. We are blaming the association of learning failure with industry streamlining, accountability, competition, challenge, and loosening of monopolistic control. What’s good for the bureaucracy is not good for the kids. If it were, our children would be the best educated kids on the planet.
Special note: Since writing this article, I have come across a newly published book that makes the same point. Although I have not yet had the opportunity to read it, and incorporate any of its supporting data into this article, I thought that my readers may be interested in doing more research on their own. Check it out: Push Has Come to Shove: Getting Our Kids the Education They Deserve--Even If It Means Picking a Fight by Dr. Steve Perry
Image: Arvind Balaraman / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
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