(Thanks to Peter Campbell for the heads up.)
Although Barack Obama has been in office for only a month and a half, and I've promised I would give him time and the benefit of whatever doubts his policy proposals raise, his record on the economy, health care, and now on education warrants some (hopefully) constructive criticism.
Yesterday Obama spoke to the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce on "A Complete and Competitive Education." Echoing earlier conservative critics of public education, Obama mentioned the decline of American education, an assertion based almost entirely on a series of international tests that supposedly show, for example, that in "8th grade math, we've fallen to 9th place" and that "[j]ust a third of our 13- and 14-year-olds can read as well as they should."
"We've accepted failure for far too long," he told his audience.
So how does Obama propose to deal with the "failure" of our public schools? With charter schools, merit pay for teachers, higher standards and greater school accountability.
Let's look at the myths underlying those proposals for reform:
- Myth one -- International tests show that American students are falling further behind their foreign counterparts. Not true. As Gerald Bracey has demonstrated in his Kappan Reports on the Condition of Public Education, American students, with the exception of the most impoverished, have done well on tests of reading, math and science.
- Myth two -- Test scores are indicators of a nation's economic competitiveness. In fact there is no correlation between test scores and the strength of a nation's economy, unless, as Keith Baker suggests, it's a negative correlation. By all measures, the American economy is the most competitive in the world (or was, anyway). Bracey points out that
- Myth three -- Charter schools are the answer. Hardly. Research shows that charter schools, at least as measured by test scores, do no better that public schools. If Obama wants non-performing public schools to improve, then he ought to listen to real reformers like Linda Darling Hammond, not Arne Duncan, and institute teacher driven innovative reforms in those schools, reforms that respond to the needs of their mostly poor and minority students.
- Myth four -- Schools will improve with the imposition of teacher pay for performance. Suffice it to say that "performance" means test scores. Enough said.
- Myth five -- "Just a third of our 13- and 14-year-olds can read as well as they should." Outright garbage, says Bracey.
The bottom line is that most of our public school students are doing quite well. The poor and the underprivileged aren't. That's nothing new. But charter schools and merit pay aren't going to change that. In fact, they're almost certain to make matters worse.
I say to President Obama what I've said here (and here). In order to close the achievement gap, we must close the poverty gap. That's not a school issue. It's a much broader societal issue.
Blaming public education for all that ails this country helps no one.
Terry: You need to start attending the church of the believers. Obama needs to be regressive on all these issues (and on foreign policy, too) so he can be re-elected in 2012. Sure, he will kill and ethnically cleanse many people and he will destroy our remaining democratic institutions (like public schools), but that's all just prelude to what he'll do once he no longer has to run for election (except he'll have to do some more regressive stuff in preparation for the Hillary administration in 2016 - never mind.)
Posted by: Harry Kershner | March 12, 2009 at 01:00 PM
Among the litany of clunkers from Obama's speech, here's my favorite:
"Our curriculum for 8th graders is two full years behind top performing countries."
OUR curriculum?? Since when did the U.S. have a single curriculum for 8th graders? And even if such a thing existed, how could you make the extraordinary claim that this phantom curriculum is two years behind? Does this phantom curriculum have short chubby legs which prevents it from keeping up with our swift-footed competitors?
What's frightening is that Obama is simply mouthing this boiler-plate crap in exactly the same way that Dubbya did.
Posted by: Peter Campbell | March 12, 2009 at 02:13 PM
OK - one more favorite clunker:
"Just a third of our 13- and 14-year-olds can read as well as they should."
News flash: half of all kids are below average. Think about it for a second. Average suggests a point right in the middle. So half will always be above this point, but half will always be below. Reading "as well as they should" is based on a normalized distribution of scores, so half are always above the middle and half are always below. Always. The scores that Obama references are utterly devoid of meaning. But they sure sound scary!
Posted by: Peter Campbell | March 12, 2009 at 02:20 PM
Peter, you're forgetting, thanks to the bipartisan No Child Left Behind Act (with an unconscious tip of the hat to Garrison Keillor), all American children will soon be above average.
Munch on that, Canada!
God, it's great to be an American.
Posted by: Steve R. | March 12, 2009 at 05:55 PM
Like the multi-headed hydra, the teacher's union will lash out at any effort to carry out reform that threatens their political hegemony in any way, shape or form.
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