April 21, 2008

New Report Decries Lack of School Improvement Since 'Nation at Risk' Study

Twenty-five years after the landmark “A Nation at Risk” report spurred widespread calls to reform the nation’s elementary and secondary schools, “stunningly few” of the report’s recommendations actually have been followed, according to a new analysis published with the support of several leading philanthropies.

The chief obstacle to school reform has not been a lack of knowledge of how to improve elementary and secondary education, but political resistance to necessary change, according to the analysis by Strong American Schools, a public-awareness campaign established by Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors and supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation.

“We have enough common-sense ideas, backed by decades of research, to significantly improve American schools,” the report concludes. But, it says, “too often, state and local leaders have tried to enact reforms of the kind recommended in ‘A Nation at Risk’ only to be stymied by organized special interests and political inertia.”

The new analysis, “A Stagnant Nation: Why American Schools Are Still at Risk,” cites several examples of cases where well-organized special-interest groups have blocked changes advocated in the 1983 “Nation at Risk” report, which was issued by the National Commission on Excellence in Education, appointed by the education secretary at the time, Terrel H. Bell.

“A Stagnant Nation” notes, for example, that “A Nation at Risk” said that school districts and state legislatures should strongly consider lengthening the typical school day from six hours to seven and the school year from 180 days to between 200 and 220 days. A quarter-century later, the report says, only Massachusetts has taken action to significantly expand the time schools devote to learning, as other states have given in to resistance from special-interest groups such as resort owners and companies that employ teenagers.

“A Stagnant Nation” is especially critical of the nation’s teachers unions, which it blames for the failure of most states and school districts to follow the “Nation at Risk” report’s calls for the adoption of performance-based pay, career ladders, and recruitment incentives to improve the supply of teachers.

The group behind the new report, Strong American Schools, has been criticized by some prominent education analysts — including Gerald W. Bracey, a fellow at the Education and Policy Interest Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder — who accuse it of overstating the problems of American schools to promote policy changes favored by corporate interests. —Peter Schmidt

Comments

1. No one is surprised by this report. The “stagnant nation” describes America in general. Until we rid ourselves of the leprosy of multiculturalism and teachers-as-social-workers, and get back to challenge and performance-based outcomes in our schools, our kids will remain stupid.

   Johnny can’t read or do math because nobody requires that he do so.

   — Muap Conners    Apr 22, 07:58 AM    #

2. “A Nation at Risk was a seriously flawed document with poor research methodology. It was a POLITICAL document not a research report. Therefore anything that proposes reference to it is suspect.

   That is not to say that our schools are in crisis and don’t need fixing, but ANAR is not the benchmark to begin from.

   — GG    Apr 22, 08:25 AM    #

3. I can’t believe that anybody has the incredible gall to claim that this report overstates the problems of American schools. How in the name of heaven would it be possible to overstate the problem? The report sounds spot-on to me. Thanks to special interests covering every aspect of the question except of course the matter of whether Johnny and Joan can read, write, or do math, not to mention anything else. I’ve seen enough grammatical and spelling errors in materials from many of my daughter’s teachers over the years that I recognize at where at least part of the problem lies. So long as the teachers union are (rightfully in my opinion) having to take their medicine, I think the education departments of higher education should have to take theirs. I cannot believe that there could be anything deadlier to the mind or to the desire to teach than the tarted-up drivel being dished out in ed psych, philosophy of ed, and I thankfully don’t even remember the other idiotic courses I had to take in order to get my teaching certificate. The one course worth a damn was methods. Aside from methods, you could improve public education simply by (a) eliminating the education departments, (b) substituting two semesters of methods combined with student teaching, eliminating the sink-or-swim aspect of the latter, and © firing the deadwood asap.

   The truth is, inconvenient as it may seem, that teaching has been torn for the last forty years between two contradictory impulses: unionism or professionalism. Meanwhile, nobody’s been teaching the kids, and now the kids who haven’t been taught have been trying to teach the next crop, and here we are, a nation of American-Idol watchers.

   — Dan    Apr 22, 08:37 AM    #

4. It is not the lenth of the school day nor the length of the school year that matters. Restore order and high expectations in the classroom and you will reach the goals set 25 years ago.

   — Jim    Apr 22, 09:11 AM    #

5. The teacher’s unions (e.g., the NEA and AFT) are usually blamed as “special interests” blocking reforms such as longer school days or more days in the school year. But these reforms are generally proposed without the expectation that the teachers would be compensated for the extra time they are working.

   If you go to any group of employees, and say to them, “Hey, we want you to work 25% (or 30% or 40%) longer for the same pay,” what do you think their reaction would be?

   If school districts are willing to come up with the funding by increasing taxes in order to fairly compensate teachers for the increased hours — who, let’s face it, are not highly compensated in many cases already — maybe we can have an honest discussion about some of these so-called “reforms.”

   — Don    Apr 22, 09:22 AM    #

6. There is irony in a report that attributes stagnation to a lack of political will to implement the recommendations of A Nation at Risk, which was itself the product of a politically inspired commission. Further, both reports are based on spurious data (e.g., the international comparisons of achievement) or shallow, if not purposefully distorted, interpretations (e.g., of the NAEP data), as Bracey and others (e.g., Anderson & Biddle) have convincingly argued. For example, the “stagnation” of achievement data on the NAEP over the years (actually there are small increases), reminds me of a friend who has been working out in the gym for the last 30 years and who, now at 60, complains that he can’t lift any more weight than he did when he was 30. Just as my friend’s physiology has changed, the demographics of the US have changed considerably since the inception of the NAEP, including an influx of non-English speaking students in our schools. Such changes give perspective to what a shallow interpretation might conclude is stagnation, but in reality might be interpreted as noteworthy, if not celebratory, progress. On the other hand, it is unlikely that such a perspective will deter the majority of Americans who believe unquestioningly the unrelenting reports that we are facing a crisis in educational achievement, although who also typically believe that the schools their children attend are pretty good. A genuine and productive consideration of education’s status in this country and what might be done to stimulate improvements requires considering a broader range of data sets including those documenting inequities in opportunity and showing poverty to be a strong predictor of poor academic achievement. Even these are not the whole story. As Mark Twain admonished, “First get all the facts, then you can distort them as you please.” We also need a national discussion about our national goals for education. For example, is it exclusively to create workers who can compete in a global economy or is it also to create democratic citizens? The latter goal suggests a much different set of indicators than are typically rolled out to document a crisis in achievement. There is much room for improvement in education, but substantive, and politically feasible, improvements will elude us if we take the relatively narrow perspectives offered by this latest report.

   — David Reinking    Apr 22, 09:28 AM    #

7. Postmodernism and political correctness have decimated our educational system from the inside, while the rot of popular culture determines what kids think, do, & value.

   We’ve had “scholars” touting the value of pop new wave, new age “ways of knowing”, which were nothing more egocentrism dressed up in theoretical language. Putting down math, science and scientists was a popular means of establishing yourself as an intellectual in the humanities, and there is still a thriving cohort that continues that smug tradition.

   The very fact that kids were commonly referring to teachers trained during the 70s and 80s as “feminazis” was among the myriads of unheeded warning signs.

   Parents blame teachers, teachers blame parents, and both are right in their indictments (WITH EXCEPTIONS, of course).

   It didn’t take a genius to see this situation coming, and it will probably get worse before it gets better.

   — KDR    Apr 22, 09:34 AM    #

8. “If you go to any group of employees, and say to them, “Hey, we want you to work 25% (or 30% or 40%) longer for the same pay,” what do you think their reaction would be?”

   Well believe it or not MOST employees work 9:00 to 5:00 everyday, not just until 3:00 with every holiday and all summer off. So that extra time you are being asked to work is long overdue. You’ll just be expected to do now what every other working person has been doing for the last 100 years or so…

   It shouldn’t be a big deal.

   — NYMOM    Apr 22, 11:08 AM    #

9. I haven’t read any commentaries that recognize the differences that often exist between metropolitan area public schools and those in mid-size towns across the country. In towns of 25,000 to perhaps 300,000, there are generally pretty decent schools. I suspect (no data) that the problem schools tend to be in the very small towns that lack resources, and in the major metro areas that have a host of other social issues going on.

   But if NYMOM thinks that teachers go off shift at 3:00, she doesn’t know much about teachers. We have loaded so many social agendas on our K-12 schools that it’s a wonder they get any teaching done. If we unbundled their jobs and just let teachers teach, many problems would fall away.

   — Al    Apr 22, 11:33 AM    #

10. I asked my son’s high school math teacher why proofs were no longer done in Geometry. “The school board thought that was too hard. Not the teachers, but the board did.” Low expectations produce low results.

    Find a college catalogue from the early 1900’s and see if your children coming out of high school today could meet the entrance requirements back then.

    — A Parent    Apr 22, 11:39 AM    #

11. The kids who do well are still doing well. The problem is the ever increasing number of students who are clueless about the academic register, have not gone to school consistently in whatever third world hell hole they came from and do not speak English well enough to deal with a standardized test. Couple this with the absurd notion that equality of outcome will emerge because of wishful thinking by a bureaucrat and you have the crux of the problem. If the students were strictly judged on unmitigated performance, many would fail and the districts won’t allow it. In real life people fail all the time, in schools it is forbidden.

    — David Holland    Apr 22, 11:49 AM    #

12. It is very interesting to read these comments and keep them in perspective of both an educator in a college environment and a parent of a soon-to-be-school-aged child. Simply – America’s public schools are ROYALLY screwed up AND have been for quite some time. In the early 1980’s, I was in middle school and had to do a brief stint in the local public school. At least they had a drama class as part of the regular curriculum for my grade level (6th), but they were teaching skits from Saturday Night Live – inappropriate in more ways than one!!!! The reason I focus on public is because that seems to be the discussion, but, quite honestly, the quality of private schools has declined significantly since I was enrolled in them in the 80’s as well! Around here (Peoria, IL) they’re not much better than the publics, but you’re paying a whole lot more for the “education”.
    I’m one of those people who is honestly of the opinion that as long as America, as a whole, insists on prioritizing entertainment over education, we’re pretty much out of luck. Face it – the new American dream is to be so good at a sport that a professional league drafts you straight from high school, and you skip college entirely to make millions… Our administrations and the REAL special interest groups (the athletic associations for high schools) are the ones that are pushing students to accept these values – I say this because I just recently helped one of the college administrators find materials to support his thesis (for a presentation) that athletics departments are vital to the community college because they get students attending the college, and then the college can encourage them to get a 4 year degree. Not a bad thought, but still supporting those backwards priorities. Incidentally, speaking of America’s priorities on entertainment, we’re one of the colleges that’s recently added a 2-year certificate for computer/video game design… <sigh> America needs to WAKE UP or we’re going to become the world’s largest Third World country when it comes to the educational level of our citizens…

    — LKM    Apr 22, 12:05 PM    #

13. Teachers don’t work seven hour days. They work much longer. They are at school an hour or two before the students, and if you think they quit working at 3pm, you are a clueless moron. They either continue to work in their classrooms, grading papers and preparing lessons and tests, or they take the work home. They are expected to attend evening parent/teacher conferences, faculty meetings, open-houses, concerts and other performances, and may or may not receive compensation to coach or sponsor extra-curricular activities. They lead field trips, which may include out-of-town trips covering weekends. They participate in in-service workshops when the students get a day off and they take continuing education during the summers. They are expected to handle 18-28 kids in a classroom with students having a wide range of interests, abilities, backgrounds and socioeconomic and home situations, not to mention special-needs students who are mainstreamed. If you think teachers work less than you do or are over-compensated, you obviously don’t have any idea what a teacher does.

    — Deborah    Apr 22, 01:25 PM    #

14. Mymom, if you really believe that teachers work from 9 – 3, you are clueless. My wife, a teacher of 22 years, works from 7:30am to 8-10pm most days, with breaks for meals. Really, as a previous poster quoted Mark Twain, “you should get your facts straight before you distort them.”

    — Alan Morris    Apr 22, 02:21 PM    #

15. Look at the two examples cited. First, American children attend more hours of school each year than children from other industrialized nations. Second, performance based pay, career ladders or whatever you want to call it has been tried for years in different ways. It never seems to work for a variety of reasons. As far as number 10’s response, anyone who thinks the typical child in 1900 was better educated than current children should invest in a history book. Most children at that time were never exposed to algebra. Today’s physical science, math, and engineering majors are expected to begin college ready for calculus. Reports like this are straw men comparing apples with oranges. Certainly, there are problems, but as pointed out by others, our whole society has problems. Unfortunately, none of them are going to be easily solved

    — E. G.    Apr 22, 02:27 PM    #

16. Most of the commentary here fits the older generation’s view in the mid-20th century that “when I was your age, I had to walk 5 miles to school through the snow”. This is not to mention their lamentations regarding the loss of Greek from educational requirements, along with the Dewey Decimal System and history viewed through the lens of Victorian morality. Times have changed and the paradigm has changed. There certainly are things we could be doing better in public education, but I don’t think for a minute the education I received many years ago provides any answers other than perspective. I’m not a public school teacher, but have observed enough of them in action to have developed a great respect for what they are accomplishing under incredible duress. I’ve also dealt with enough CEO’s to lose a great deal of respect for what they accomplish for the outlandish compensation many of them receive. These are both symptoms for a society at risk. Unfortunately, the Strong American Schools group seems unable to recognize that “reform” in the absence of societal change will take us nowhere.

    — CW    Apr 22, 02:47 PM    #

17. And what planet, NYMOM, do you live on? I echo what others who have an idea about teachers’ hours have written. I taught for many years and averaged more hours in a year than any CEO getting paid 10X my salary. And we wonder why so many students are clueless.

    — Eric    Apr 22, 03:38 PM    #

18. Can we first accept these facts as truth:
    1. Most teachers care, work hard, and want to see their students do well.
    2. Today’s students have distractions such as sports, video games, computer time, cell phones, etc. many of us never had; which is a challenge to keeping their attention.
    3. School curricula have expanded a great deal, further challenging a student’s focus on fundamentals.
    4. Social pressures such as lower income, bilingualism, divorce rates, gang membership, etc. work against education goals.
    5. Dropout rates and low achievement are real problems that must be solved. NOW — How about quitting the finger pointing and working on solutions like EDUCATED grown up people are supposed to do.

    — Bob - Professor Emeritus    Apr 22, 04:37 PM    #

19. Bob, well put, except that I would argue in most urban areas number 1. would better read “many” as opposed to “most”. The irony of it all is that as much as we say we value education, our spending sends a completely different message…I believe a parable once said “show me where you spend your time and treasure and I’ll show you what you love”…I guess we are loving Iraq right now instead of American teachers and students, huh?

    — Roger    Apr 23, 10:34 AM    #

20. NYMOM (comment #8) — that’s a common refrain. But the fact is that teacher compensation has been based for decades on the academic year and a school day. And forget the fallacy that teachers only work 9-3; most work many more hours than that.

    So the fact remains that if you want to extend the work day or year, they should be given extra compensation. It would be like taking somebody who currently works a 9-5, 50 week a year job, and telling them they have to work an extra 3 hours/day with no additional compensation.

    — Don    Apr 23, 05:05 PM    #

21. In response to both Don (comment #5) and NYMOM (comment #8), it seems to me that both speak from their points of view with out understanding the perspective of the other. I am not a full-time teacher, but I have worked in schools for over 15 years. My job is a traditional 12 month job my official work house from 8:00-4:00 (of course I don’t remember the last time I left at or before 4:00).

    Anyway, as someone who works closely with teachers, I’d like to remind NYMOM that the workday of good teachers is not just the time spent in the classroom or even in the school building. (While the term good teacher doesn’t apply to all as could be said about any field there are plenty of good teachers out who are union members.) Much grading and more importantly preparing to teach and developing curriculum and methods happens at home at night or on weekends. SOME people who work other 9:00-5:00 jobs would feel very put out if they were expected to bring work home every week, many weekends, and during vacation periods without extra compensation. I think that is pretty much the norm for many good teachers during the school year. With regard to summer breaks, many teachers even spend time planning, thinking, and even attending workshops related to teaching during that time. And even for those who don’t, then consider teaching a 10 month job. For comparison sake, assume the salary of a teacher in 2/12 higher and compare it to 12 month jobs and see how they stack up. I think you’ll find some people getting paid more in non-educational jobs that have less impact on the future of our society.

    As for Don’s comment, there are plenty of people in professional positions who aren’t paid an hourly wage (or earning overtime for extra hours worked) who work more than 9-5 on a regular basis. I think most teachers consider themselves professionals (I consider them as such) as opposed to hourly paid employees who are just supposed to do what they can while on the time clock. Good professionals have a job to do or expectations to fulfill that are not tied to just being at a job from 9-5. If they don’t get the required tasks accomplished they are not going to keep their job (or be considered a good employee) even if it takes some extra time to meet the expectations and goals. If a teachers job is to properly educate students and that requires a little more time to get the job done properly than teachers’ unions (as representing a group of professionals) shouldn’t stop teachers from doing so because they are not getting an extra hours pay for working an extra hour. That said, increased compensation should be considered if a lot more time is required especially in districts where teachers are somewhat underpaid, which is not all districts or not all teachers in all districts. (However, remember that compensation is not just salary. I have multiple friends in suburban districts who pay little to nothing for better health care than I have after I pay hundreds of dollars a month. I don’t begrudge them for that, but that is not an insignificant part of some public school teachers’ compensation.) I don’t think union roadblocks to doing a little more work without every little thing earning extra compensation such as a manufacturing related union might need do to prevent worker exploitation is appropriate for a union representing a group of white collar professionals who should be in the field because they want to be and enjoy their work (at least much of the time).

    — Bill    Apr 30, 07:51 PM    #

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