Delivering a speech to Woodridge Elementary and Middle Schools in Washington, D.C., President George W. Bush made several points about education deserving of greater scrutiny.
First, he raises concern over our global competition and focuses his attention on two unlikely competitors. “We’re living in a global world,” Bush said. “See, the education system in America must compete with education systems in China and India.”
This seems to reveal to what extent Bush plans to take his education reform, which will also have far-reaching effects on our nation’s liberty. Education is important for far more than securing jobs and ensuring the nation’s “intellectual capital.” As President Lincoln once said, “The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.” Do we want our next generation’s philosophy of government based on China’s and India’s philosophies?
Bush’s second point is on the importance of measurement.
By measuring, it helps us determine whether or not a curricula works. Is the reading curriculum you’re using working? That’s a fundamental question a parent ought to ask, or a principal ought to ask, or a teacher ought to ask. The best way to find out is to measure to determine whether or not a child can read at grade level. And that helps you determine whether or not your curriculum are working.
Minor grammatical note: curricula is plural and curriculum is singular. Other than that, I agree. Measurement is the only way to find out if the students have learned anything. A good teacher assesses to see what a child knows, takes that information into account while designing lesson plans and assesses afterwards to see what the child has learned. Good teachers have a variety of assessment strategies, from monitoring daily work, listening during class discussions, different forms of tests and talking to students on an individual basis. The U.S. Department of Education really does not need that kind of information in its database.
If the goal were to assess individual reading curricula in order to see how they were performing and to give districts more information for their purchasing decisions, every child would not need to be tested. They could test anonymously and randomly.
Third, because we measure, the President informs us, we know that:
In reading, nine-year-olds have made larger gains in the past five years than at any point in the previous 28 years. That’s positive news. In math, nine-year-olds and 13-year-olds earned the highest scores in the history of the test. In reading and math, African American and Hispanic students are scoring higher, and the achievement gap is closing.
These statistics keep coming up. They come from the individual states who are allowed to set their own definitions for proficiency and choose their own test. In June 2006, The Civil Rights Project from Harvard University published the study, Tracking Achievement Gaps and Assessing the Impact of NCLB on the Gaps: An In-Depth Look into National and State and Math Outcome Trends. Rather than relying on the state tests, the researcher looked at results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress to give a reliable measure accross states and over time as to the effectiveness of No Child Left Behind.
This report concludes that neither a significant rise in achievement, nor closure of the racial achievement gap is being achieved. Small early gains in math have reverted to the preexisting pattern. If that is true, all the pressure and sanctions have, so far, been in vain or even counterproductive. — Tracking Achievement Gaps and Assessing the Impact of NCLB on the Gaps: An In-Depth Look into National and State and Math Outcome Trends (PDF)
There has been a 52% increase in spending on the key provision and an unprecedented amount of federal control taken over education. And all we have to show for it is trends that were evident before the act took effect? It isn’t worth the cost and it certainly isn’t worth the loss of our state’s rights in education.
Finally, we come to the necessity of highly qualified teachers in every classroom. President Bush said: “Here are some ways to improve the law: In order for every child to get up to grade level, there must be a quality teacher in every classroom.”
Quality teachers have largely been defined by their certification levels, forcing districts to let go of teachers who had not yet become fully certified to replace them with (sometimes non-existent) certified teachers. But certifcation does not always equal quality. The program he outlines provides incentives to successful teachers and to attract successful teachers into high need areas. So far, NCLB seems to be having the opposite effect on struggling school districts. Again, from the study quoted above:
Particularly in low income schools judged as failures, there often is a tendency to move into highly formulaic and rigidly programmed curriculum, boring to both students and teachers, and, worse yet, to spend time not on teaching their subjects but on drilling on test-taking strategies. Teachers have long tended to transfer out of low-income minority schools as they gain experience. Excessive test pressure tends to accelerate this process, compounding the schools’ problems since experienced teachers are a precious resource for schools. We found this pattern in our teacher surveys. — Ibid.
If this trend continues, struggling districts already despearate for teachers are going to lose those with experience that are so vital to their students and for mentoring new teachers. The “achievement gap” can only broaden in such a system, unless we are successful at so devastating our education system that no one has any hope of an adequate education, allowing for a complete and equitable dumbing down of our students.
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Q
Oct 07, 2006
it’s not just what they learn but how they learn. their attitude toward education, to them it is a blessing and honor to learn and be taught.
jtg
Oct 10, 2006
The Underground History of American Education
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/index.htm
Michael Hampton
Oct 10, 2006
jtg, you should stick around for a while. We all know about that already.
Dana
Oct 17, 2006
Q, I think at one time there was greater respect and appreciation for education here, as well. It is interesting to note the cultural difference between China and America…I hadn’t thought much about it. I did find it interesting that China’s improvements in education seem to have occured since Deng Xiaoping (sp?) decided that decentralization of education was an important aspect of modernizing China. Of course, his decentralization left a system far more centralized than our own, but I did find it interesting. That and his predecessor had so completely transformed education into a vehicle solely for the purpose of indoctrinating the youth with communist ideology, making party loyalty more important for advancement than achievement.
That is all from Wikipedia, and I don’t know enough about the system to really speak on it, but those were two contributing factors to China’s improvements in education I found interesting.
Oct 28, 2006
Spellings plan to prepare us for the “new flat world” - Homeland Stupidity
Tony
Nov 13, 2006
The proof about quality teachers is more common sense than not. If you don’t believe me, take a look at college professors. Noone is denying that they are intelligent human beings(for the most part) but being intelligent doesn’t make you a good teacher. I have had many adjunct professors(usually high school teachers that teach at a university for extra money) that have been profoundly better teachers in the respect they actually taught me. They weren’t the brightest professors I had by any means but they knew how to teach.
I have done countless hours of research into why schools are performing worse and it all involves national and local policy and is usually based on a comparison next to other countries that perform better than we do.It doesn’t help that education is not properly funded.
NCLB is an ideal policy that looks good on paper but when actually applied “throws a wrench into the works” whcih is left for the next generation to clean up. It actually is just a 20 year old policy given a new name to help revitalize it and get it going. It didn’t work then and from what we see right now, it is going to be a repeat of when it first when initiated 20 years ago.
State and Federal legislators need to be aware of WHY schools are failing not WHERE, or WHO, or WHAT subject. Understanding why a school is failing will lead to better legislation(hopefully if those legislators can think as well as they swoon voters) and improvement in schools will most likely go up. But, legislators need to be aware that postive results are not imminent. When policy changes it does take time for things to settle and work efficiently.
Education is for students to learn, think critically, and comprehensively and letting them be aware of all the potential careers out there even if the majority will end up working in an office setting.
Anne
Nov 19, 2006
Hi:
I am a middle school mathematics teacher. Since the TIMMS math testing
results threw educators and politicians into a panic, we have been
endlessly analyzing our curricula and teachers, but have we really
looked at the Chinese system of education? From the information I
have been able to obtain, Chinese students are only required to complete
9 years of school. A sizable percentage of them choose to attend a
vocational school rather than pursue a college prep course of classes.
Of course, since our leaders allowed American corporations to take both
skilled and unskilled manufacturing jobs out of the country without
penalty, those jobs, still available to the Chinese, are not available
to our kids. Instead, we are telling our kids that they will not
survive unless they can compete with the best and brightest of the
Chinese and Indian students. The problem is that not all of our kids can
compete with the best and the brightest from other countries, and it is
an unreasonable expectation that they should. Think back to when you
were in grade school. Do you think every kid in your school could have
earned a college degree? Of course not. This is just Bush’s justification
for why Americans can’t find work, and it’s a lie. Manufacturing and
service jobs still exist–just not in our country. The fix is to
re-instate import duties/tariffs and taxes (disappeared during Reagan’s
tour) on goods manufactured in other countries so that it is no longer
cheaper to take the work overseas. It’s not that I don’t think we should
work to improve our education system–that should be a constant ongoing
process. But we shouldn’t be lying to these kids. Not every single one
of them is capable of completing college prep math and earning post-
secondary degrees in math or science. And the fact of the matter is
that every single one of them could have an engineering degree
but if an Indian or Chinese Engineer will work for less, that is where
the work will go. We need to start demanding that our government protect
the interests of its citizens instead of the interests of its corporations.
Dana
Nov 22, 2006
There is no real comparison between the Chinese and American systems. We
are completely different cultures. Education is not the means to an
economic end…it is the means to a political end. Nowhere is this clearer
than in China, but it is increasingly clear in the United States.
I don’t know how much tariffs will do for anything. I’ll leave the debate on
that topic to people who have followed it for longer than I, but it seems
to me that we have had a history of promoting free trade throughout the
world, with our first ambassadors (Jefferson and Adams in particular) quite
concerned with issues of free trade.
And seeing as our unemployment rate is lower than the more realistic estimates
of China’s unemployment rates, I don’t know if the argument that the curren
trade sanctions or lack thereof are doing us any particular harm.
Dec 01, 2006
Closing the achievement gap - Homeland Stupidity
Jan 03, 2007
Education initiative widens funding gap - Homeland Stupidity
David
Sep 28, 2007
I hate these discussions because they never bring up the issues that matter. First, why are we comparing our education system with China’s? Last time I checked China was still WAY behind us in science and technology. That would be like comparing an NFL team to a junior high football team because the junior high team scored more touchdowns. It doesn’t matter that most Chinese kids can read better than most American kids can. In almost any acedemic field it is ONLY the exceptional people that make the real gains and America is doing just fine. Second, you can’t make legislation that will force kids to learn or force parents to care about their child’s education. All you do with added legislation is give teachers bigger headaches, and less time to teach. Third, the “achievement gap” is ridiculous. You can’t expect equal outcomes for different groups of people. Are black and hispanic people as smart as white or asian people? Probably, I don’t know though because nobody in their right mind would do that research and publish the findings unless the results were PC, and it wouldn’t matter anyway because on an individual basis the statistics would be meaningless and probably harmful. Assuming they are equally intelligent, nothing the government could do would matter anyway, because as I’ve already said you can’t force people to learn. The US is suffering from a God complex that doesn’t make sense to me. It seems like we are obsessed with equality but the world isn’t fair, and we seem to want to fix things that aren’t broken even more. You wan’t to help with education? Fine, vote for more funding for education and just as important MAKE SURE that the money they are getting is going to the classrooms, because I’m sure if you checked, you will find that most of it isn’t. Get active in your childs education because you as a parent are the only person that can make sure that he or she takes it seriously. Think of it this way, if a teacher gives a test and five people out of thirty ace it, does that mean that the test was flawed or that the teacher wasn’t doing his or her job? No, it means that five kids really paid attention and did the work. If I passed a law saying that every kid had to pass that test or the teacher would be blamed what do you think the teacher would do? Probably teach the test instead of the subject. That wouldn’t benefit the kids, but after the short term improvements (in test scores only) it would definitely benifit the politicians who passed the law. I could go on but I just remembered that most people are stupid and I don’t care anyway. My kid is doing just fine in school.