Where We Stand

Cutting federal education funding now, President Clinton said in a recent speech, would be like cutting the defense budget at the height of the Cold War. What he meant was that with the threat of armed conflict and totalitarianism in those days, slashing resources would have both weakened us and shown a lack of resolve. As it turned out, sustaining our defense effort was exactly what worked.

People who are convinced that nothing good is happening in U.S. education should take a look at a little pamphlet that was just issued by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). "High School Students Ten Years After A Nation At Risk" presents data about student course taking and achievement that are surprising and encouraging.

How come Asian students do so much better in math than American students? It's not just that they score at the top of international exams designed to compare math achievement--while our students are somewhere at or close to the bottom. Every measure we have shows
that Chinese, Japanese and Taiwanese students achieve at a higher level than American students, beginning in first grade.

Could we improve student achievement by lowering class size? Parents and teachers have always thought this idea made a lot of sense, but most researchers have found little evidence to support it. And because reducing class size is expensive, policymakers have cheerfully embraced what researchers said. Now, it looks as though the parents and teachers were right all along.

When Education Alternatives, lnc.(EAl)--the private for-profit company that says it can do a better job of running public schools than the current management and make money on the deal--began to market this claim five years ago, there was no way to evaluate it. The company itself was an unknown start-up and there weren't any others doing what it proposed to do.

This week's guest columnist is Norman Wetterau, a physician who practices medicine in Nunda, New York. Dr. Wetterau's article originally appeared in the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle on May 4, 1995. It is reprinted with that paper's permission.

One thing we know is that education programs are already badly squeezed under current budget schemes. The House budget proposed for next year would make big cuts in K-12 education: New York City schools alone would lose $135 million in funding. That would mean 3,200 teachers cut and loss of services for 200,000 children, including 118,000 fewer meals served every day. Comparable cuts would affect school districts across the country.

Some seniors must attend summer school to make up failed courses so they can graduate. If non-Regents courses were still available, these same students would have been able to graduate with their class--but only by taking lower-level classes, putting in minimal effort, and meeting only minimal standards. Extra effort is required for them to pass the Regents exam, but this shows they can achieve a solid level of proficiency in a subject, not just squeak by.

Many school reformers believe that raising academic standards will mean keeping kids in school for more hours a day and more days a year. Students in countries we compete with master more challenging curriculums and outscore Americans on tests in most core academic subjects. These countries all have a school year that is a lot longer than the U.S.'s 180-day average. (In Germany, for example, teachers work 225 days; in Japan and Italy, 215; in England, 195; in Canada and Norway, 190.)

Do colleges lie in order to attract students? That's what a Wall Street Journal story says although it puts the case more politely: "Colleges Inflate SAT and Graduation Rates in Popular Guidebooks: Schools Say They Must Fib to US. News and Others to Compete Effectively" (April 5, 1995).

Whenever there is a push to raise educational standards, we hear cries from the opposition. What is the point of raising standards when so many students cannot meet the current low standards? Doing that is like raising the bar on the high jump to 6 feet 8 inches when most of the contestants can't even clear the bar at 6 feet. The objection sounds reasonable, but it's wrong.

Several years ago, the state of New Jersey said it couldn't stand by any longer and watch the Jersey City and Paterson school districts doing a lousy job educating their students. In addition to poor student achievement, it was reported that the districts were mismanaged and corrupt. So the state came into Jersey City in 1988 and Paterson in 1991 and took over the districts' operations. It got rid of the school boards, dismissed the superintendents and proposed to do for Jersey City and Paterson what Chapter 11 is supposed to do for a business on the verge of bankruptcy. But obviously turning around a troubled urban school district is a tougher job than New Jersey had bargained for. Now, the state is having to explain why things have not worked out as planned.

A recent New York Times story found that employers don't believe schools are preparing young people for their workplaces. But this may be the result of a phenomenon known as the "self-fulfilling prophecy." Self- fulfilling prophecy is a sociological term used to describe events that occur because people believe they will. The classic example is large numbers of people making a run on a bank because they believe it is failing. Their run makes the bank fail.

The proposed Virginia social studies standards, which were published earlier this year, have been greeted warmly by conservative parents. They are pleased by a "back-to-basics" approach that focuses on the details of history and requires kids to learn names and dates and plenty of other facts. But professional educators call the standards rigid and old-fashioned and say they will discourage student learning. Who is right? Both sides are, but both are also missing something important.

Almost every industrial nation requires students to take subject-matter examinations created at the regional or national level, but many American educators strongly oppose the idea. "You can't fatten up cattle by weighing them. You have to feed them," is a typical U.S. response. Who is right? Do externally administered exams help raise achievement or are they another example of a quick fix?

Ask the American public about the Number One school problem and you get a clear answer: violence and disorder. Of course the public knows that there is violence everywhere and some of it is bound to take place in schools. What it cannot understand is why students who are known to be violent and who come to school with weapons or drugs are permitted to stay in school after a mild punishment or no punishment at all. Nor can they understand why students who destroy the education of all the others by ongoing disruption--shouting obscenities, hitting or threatening to hit other students or the teacher--remain in class.

New York City schools are doing something different. They've given students school report cards to take home to their parents. The purpose? According to School Chancellor Ramon Cortines, parents can "use the Annual School Report ... to ask better questions of the leadership of their local schools." The high school reports include the number of students in the school, percent graduating, percentage who meet state reading and math requirements, average attendance, number of pupil suspensions per 100 students, student-staff ratio, percentage of teachers with five or fewer years of experience, SAT scores and the number of librarians and guidance counselors. The idea is a good one and shows an openness that is often missing in our schools.

Educators are always looking for a magic bullet -- a hot, new idea that will take care of all the problems with our education system. That accounts for the love affair with vouchers and market schools, EAI-type ventures into privatization and, most recently, charter schools. And we can be sure that next year it will be something else. Like people who are always eager to try the latest miracle diet, they think that the next fix will be the one that finally turns things around.

Goals 2000 is the most significant piece of education legislation we've had, but there are signs it's in trouble. The most obvious is the effort by some members of Congress to take back over 40 percent of its funding for this year. But the general confusion about what Goals 2000 means and how it will work may be a bigger problem.

Most Americans probably agree that the government needs to be more careful about the way it spends their money. So when members of Congress propose taking an ax to programs that have already been funded for this fiscal year, they look very tough and very prudent. But I wonder how many people realize exactly what's being done in the name of good management. Some of the proposed cuts, or rescissions as they are called, are downright mean -- like the elimination of heating subsidies for poor elderly citizens. Others -- like some of the education cuts -- will destroy or endanger important long-term goals and should make the American public question the sense of priorities they reflect. In terms of education cuts, I don't know which is more shameful, the 43 percent cut proposed for Goals 2000 or the proposed zeroing-out of the Safe and Drug-Free Schools act. I'll talk about both.