Public School Challenges in 2004-5

We appreciate the solid and noble achievement of dedicated teachers and administrators throughout the educational system who have struggled successfully to improve their students' lives. Nevertheless, neither these teachers nor our educational services will resolve the urgent problems of American Education. Authors like John Taylor Gatto, Charles J. Sykes, Myron Lieberman, Allen Bloom and Thomas Sowell have shown the decline of standards in American education more adequately than is possible here. STAR tests suggest only minor improvements in student scores, which are well below even the grade level standards those tests uphold. Lance Izumi and Matt Cox of the Pacific Research Institute gathered recent, California-specific data data from a great variety of respectable statistical and journalistic sources in its outstanding 2003 report, California's Education Report Card, which give a picture of the educational plight your children would face in the public schools:

The Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) shows American eighth graders in 1999 ranking nineteenth in math and eighteenth in science amongst 38 nations. We trail not just Asian countries, but Slovakia and the Russian federation. At least we beat the Phillipines.
Nineteenth century farmers, educated at home or in one room schoolhouses, frequently read literature that challenges today's college students: e.g. novels by Charles Dickens and Walter Scott, science by Herbert Spencer and Charles Darwin, philosophy by Emerson and the Federalist Papers. The Appleton School Reader challenged fifth graders to read the Bible, Thoreau, Emerson, Jefferson, Walter Scott and Shakespeare. Perhaps we should bring back these readers?
"Viewed in an international perspective..." wrote the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, "the average achievement scores of American children range from mediocre to poor, depending on the subject matter... While it is true that American Schools do a particularly poor job of educating blacks and Hispanics, one should not conclude that white students in middle-class suburbs are uniformly well-served. In mathematics and science...the nation's top high schoolers rank far behind much less elite samples in other countries." (OECD Economic Survey, Nov. 1994, p. 85).
According to the NCES, "The United States had the second-lowest upper secondary school graduation rate of the five countries reporting data in 1999. The graduation rate of 78 in the United States was 17 points below the rate in Japan (95), 14 points below the rate in Germany (92), and 7 points below the rate in France (85). Only Italy, with a rate of 73, was below the United States on the graduation rate (figure 1)."
In 1999, U.S. principals of schools that had eighth-grade students reported two behaviors most frequently that threaten a safe and orderly environment: classroom disturbances and intimidation or verbal abuse of other students. Sixty-nine percent of eighth-grade students were in schools whose principals reported at least a weekly occurrence of a classroom disturbance and 46 percent were in schools whose principals reported intimidation or verbal abuse.
The National Education Commission discovered, in a two year study, that American students studied basic subjects only about half as many hours as their German, French and Japanese counterparts.
Students in traditional schools frequently get less than fifteen minutes of individual attention a day.
In 1993, the Department of Education found that only two cents out of every dollar went to gifted students.

California's Public Schools

Public furor over the poor performance of public schools around the country caused politicians to consider making important changes: increasing funding, lowering class size, changing SAT requirements, increasing special education assistance, raising standards, increasing testing, implementing vouchers, opening Charter schools etc. The teachers' unions have fought any reform which increases parental choice or which gives principals the right to shift employees into optimal positions, to fire incompetant teachers, or to reward the best teachers with merit pay. Schools can't hire teachers who have shown competence outside of education school, and the education schools still churn out graduates who favor faddish curricula rather than time-honored wisdom. Yet California's success at teaching English, and its desire to raise standards, somehow suggest hope for the system.

While many parents march with their feet to the large school with the big football team and the most extensive social life, crime continues to rise in those same large schools, perhaps because it is hardest for students to find meaningful relationships with teachers and staff. According to Izumi, "Crime rose 16 per cent from 1999–00 to 2000–01. Among the subcategories, battery rose 18 percent, assault with a deadly weapon increased 14 percent, and sex offenses rose 19 percent. Robbery/extortion fell 14 percent." Most of the victims, of course, are students. Comparin 2000 with 1995, "drug and alcohol offenses climbed 14 percent. Use of alcohol/drugs jumped 19 percent, possession of drug paraphernalia rose 53 percent, sale and/or furnishing of alcohol or drugs increased 25 percent..."

Math and Science

With these social distractions in mind, not to mention television and video games, it is not surprising that the public schools are failing to educate the majority of California's children. In 2002, the California Standards test in math showed that only thirty five per cent of our fourth graders scored at or above the proficient level. The NAEP math test for fourth graders compared California with ethnicaly-similar Texas: "Five percent of California Hispanics were proficient and 36 percent were at or above basic, while 14 percent of Texas Hispanics were proficient and 68 percent were at or above basic." California has raised expectations in math in its new standards, but these standards fail now to help the majority attain proficiency. In the mandatory Spring 2002 Exit exam: while of the 248,328 10th-graders that took the math section, just 32 percent passed.

Perhaps the curricula explain this? According to Izumi, only 46 percent of California’s 2000 high-school graduates took Algebra II/Integrated Math III, a three-percent drop from the 1996 percentage. Of the 30 states plus Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia that reported statistics, California beat out only Minnesota, Alabama, and Puerto Rico in this category. For comparison, 72 percent of Texas graduates had taken Algebra II/Integrated Math III, while the national average was 62 percent. Of the 32 states and the District of Columbia reporting statistics, California ranked next to last in the percentage of 2000 graduates who had taken First-Year Chemistry.

If the majority of our states' children avoid the tough math and science courses, how can we expect them to move on to positions of leadership? Though we welcome help from abroad, we are ashamed that our schools could not produce the scientists and engineers that fueled the last Silicon Valley boom. The next boom may be elsewhere.

English

Statistics from California and our nation show California's poor performance in relationship to other states, including ethnically-similar Texas, and to other countries. The California Standards test shows that, in 2002, just 33 percent of students scored at or above the proficient level in English/language arts....Thirty-one percent of 11th-graders scored at or above proficient in 2002, two percent better than the year before. On the eighth-grade NAEP reading exam, reports Izumi, "only 20 percent of California eighth-graders scored at the proficient level versus 31 percent nationally. California’s scores on the 2002 NAEP fourth- and eighth-grade reading exam ranked the state in the bottom 10 nationwide.

Though less data exists, the picture in social studies is equally dismal. In 2002, NAEP social science scores in grades nine and 10 were significantly below the national average, 44 and 38 respectively, while the score for grade 11 was 57.

In spring 2002, "...of the 182,515 10th-graders that took the English/language arts section of the exit exam, 54 percent passed..." This means that roughly half of our high school students fail to show proficiency in English. And remedial education is equally problematic, writes Izumi: "37 percent of second-graders, 30 percent of fourth-graders, 33 percent of eighth-graders, and 39 percent of 11th-graders scored below basic or far below basic on the 2002 English/language arts exams."

College Admissions

The NCES and the teachers unions like to boast that, in 1999: "...the United States ranked first among the G-7 countries in higher educational attainment..." Yet, in 2002, 37 percent of first-time freshmen required remedial math and 49 percent needed remedial English. Combined, Izumi writes, :a shocking 59 percent of CSU freshmen had to take remedial courses in English and/or math." And these people are not dummies. The California State University (CSU) system admits students from the top one-third of the state’s highschool graduating class. The majority flunk placement tests in English and math. This makes us wonder if college admissions are merely a mask for failed high school education. And authors like Thomas Sowell and Allen Bloom complain that college itself has been dummed down.

Since 2001, the University of California has devised standards which (thwarting the spirit of the ability-based Proposition 209), have increased African-American admissions by nineteen per cent. The new "comprehensive review" system looked at "life experiences" and other non-academic factors in reaction to the fact that Asian Americans comprised about forty per cent of the undergraduate population (but eleven per cent of the state population). UC president Richard Atkinson actually championed eliminating SAT I scores from the UC admissions process because, writes Izumi its results “can have a devastating effect on the self-esteem and aspirations of young students.” The Regents eventually compromised by convincing the College Board to rewrite the SAT. This had been done in the early nineties to mask flagging scores. Now they are eliminating analogies, but asking more challenging (Algebra II) math questions and forcing children to write essays. Of course, they had already been doing these tasks on the required SAT II's.

Lance Izumi rightly argues that minorities suffer more from failure to take the core curriculum -- the A to G requirements described elsewhere --demanded by the Regents than from biases in testing. In 1999, sixty five per cent of the students avoided this this core curriculum: " In 1999–00, only 24.7 percent of African-American high-school graduates, less than a quarter, had taken the A-F/G university preparatory curriculum, a drop from 29.1 percent in 1996–97 and 25.4 percent in 1989–90. The rate in 1999–00 amongst Latinos was even worse, with only 21.5 percent taking the curriculum, the lowest rate since the beginning of the decade. On the other hand, 54 percent of Asian-American graduates and 40.2 percent of white graduates in 1999–00 completed the curriculum." California seniors have compensated for the paucity of university openings by taking college classes in high school, one of the few ways they can demonstrate the quality of their coursework. In 2000, 58,871 took an exam which had attracted only 19,633 in 1986. "As a proportion of all high-school graduates," writes Izumi, "the percentage of AP test-takers has increased from 7.8 percent in 1986 to 19 percent in 2000." Clearly, the men and women of ability must work harder and harder just to find the place they deserve.

Neglect of the most obvious solution: Parental Choice.

State standards are only worthwhile if they can be defended against the state's political interests. In 1999, Gov. Gray Davis actually tried to raise standards by requiring graduating high school students of 2004 to pass a test. Passing scores were lowered to sixty per cent in English and fifty five per cent in math, and the math consisted merely of Algebra I, a subject which state standards now wish taught in eighth grade. Students can take the exam over and over again beginning in the tenth grade. According to Mr. Izumi: "Combining the overall 2001 and 2002 results, only approximately 48 percent of students scheduled to graduate in 2004 passed both parts of the exam, with 64 percent passing the English/language arts section and 52 percent passing the math section."

With Gray Davis and Delaine Easton safely out of office, Jack O’Connell, the new state Superintendent of Public Instruction, refused to give the July testing session of the exit exam or to hold students to the state standards. No matter what the problem, teachers, unions and administrators will tell you that budget is at fault. Yet, Izumi notes that total K–12 spending per pupil rose from about $5,500 in 1995 to around $9,000 by 2000. "Total education funding per pupil in 2002–03 amounted to $9,216, which is a 28.7 percent real inflation-adjusted increase over total education funding per pupil in 1992–93." Funding problems like this should not be surprising in a world where nearly half the educators are not classroom teachers and where construction costs have been allowed to soar with graft and meddlesome regulations. Izumi shows that the National Education Association (NEA) itself states, in 2001–02, that "California ranked first among all states in teacher salary with an average salary of $53,870. The national average was $44,499, with 36 states paying salaries below that level."

In California, three out of 10 students do not graduate from high-school. In their groundbreaking 1993 study, Nobel prize-winning University of Chicago economist Stephen Cameron and his colleague James Heckman discovered that: "GED-certified persons are much less likely than high-school graduates to attend four-year colleges or undertake any postsecondary education. Even those GED-certified persons who do go on to higher education are less likely than high-school graduates to finish the programs they begin....Perhaps most worrisome, though, was the finding that GED-certified persons were indistinguishable from high-school dropouts in their performance in the labor market. According to Cameron and Heckman, both dropouts and exam-certified persons had comparably poor wages, earnings, hours of work, unemployment experiences, and job tenure."

If Americans dislike their grocery store or car manufacturer, they turn elsewhere for satisfaction. In education, we are all forced to support the public monopoly; we are taxed enough to make private school choice prohibitively expensive to overtake the public juggernaut. The unions, the administrators, the school boards and the lawyers know that they have the money and prestige to keep the system in place. When the public demands standards, they find ways to look good while subverting standards; when the public gives money, they keep it out of the classroom. The San Jose Mercury reported that parents refused to take children out of failing schools even when Bush's No Children Left Behind Act let them; of course, they were only given the option of other public schools. As a Board Member of California Parents for Educational Choice, I urge parents everywhere to take back the genuine choice they deserve in their children's future.