Where We Stand

When I was a kid growing up during the Depression, there were signs in public places and advertisements in the newspapers saying, "No Jews Need Apply," "No Catholics" and "No Colored." After World War II, they disappeared, but recent events connected with choosing a chancellor for the New York City schools raise a question about whether the practices continue even though the signs and advertisements are gone. 

The recent international human rights conference in Vienna was like a reprise of the Cold War in at least one respect. Once again, we heard some nations advancing the old line that democracy and democratic ideals are cultural and Western.

International examinations designed to compare students from all over the world usually show American students at or near the bottom. This is not, as some people say, a result of the exams' being unfair. We can see the same poor performance if we look at results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), which tests representative samples of American students in a variety of subjects.

American students are performing at much lower levels than students in other industrialized nations. This has led to our current effort to create world-class standards that will be as good and as tough as those of other countries. However, most of our efforts involve locking a bunch of people in a room and asking them to develop standards. Rarely, if ever, do we consider what the rest of the world is doing.

The achievement of U.S. students in grades K-12 is very poor. Schools are a government monopoly, so they have few, if any, incentives to change this. However, our colleges and universities, which are forced to compete, are the best in the world. If our elementary and secondary schools were subject to the discipline of the market--if they were forced to compete--they, too, would be excellent. This is the outline of an argument that is often made by supporters of vouchers, private school choice and Whittle schools, and it's a frequent editorial theme of the Wall Street Journal.

For a moment, let's suppose. Suppose the United States were the only industrialized country that did not participate in the Olympics. A number of reports informed us that this was a major disaster. Fewer American kids engaged in sports than youngsters in other countries, fewer exercised and fewer had good eating habits. It was clear that the physical well-being of our nation was at risk.

It's easy to see why the U.S. is having so much trouble solving its education problem. Other industrialized democracies try to educate youngsters to the maximum of their potential. You would think that would be our goal, too. But is it?

Irving Harris, the well-known businessman, philanthropist and child advocate, tells a parable about some people picnicking beside a river. Suddenly they see an enormous number of babies being carried down the river by the current. Their first impulse is to jump in and pull out as many of the babies as possible. But the kids keep coming, and the rescuers can't save them all. Finally, someone is smart enough to run up the river to see who is pushing them in. 

Just as we were about to straighten out our educational system, some members of Congress and the education community have been talking up a hot, new idea that could torpedo needed school reforms. The reforms would create a system similar to the one common to other industrial countries that outperform us. It includes defining what students should know and be able to do (content standards); assessments that tell us who is or isn't making it; and consequences. The last are designed to get students to work as hard as they do in other countries because they know something important--like college admission or access to a good job -- is at stake.

The President's education bill -- Goals 2000 -- is an essential piece of legislation for turning our schools around. Unfortunately, there is a struggle now going on in Congress that could seriously compromise its value.

The other day, I received a brief article from Gus Tyler, a nationally syndicated columnist. It was called "Kids: Don't Balkanize the U.S.," and it said volumes about some of the foolish ideas adults have about race and ethnicity--that even 12-year-olds can see through. 

Recently I re-read "A Nation At Risk," the landmark report that started the education reform movement, and I was surprised at what I found. After IO years, some of the words and ideas were still familiar, but I wasn't prepared for an exposition of what we would now call "systemic reform": figuring out what we want students to know and be able to do and making sure that all parts of the education system -- standards, curriculum, textbooks, assessments, teacher training -- move simultaneously toward the achievement of agreed-upon goals. This is the way successful school systems in other industrial democracies work, and it is why their students achieve at a much higher level than ours.

The scene is a tenth reunion and three college friends run into each other. They are all teachers, and soon they begin to talk shop .. Two of them are fed up. One says she is a-stickler for the rules and pushes her students as hard as she can. The other admits that she tends to be easy on her kids because "They have enough problems already." But as different as their approaches are, the two agree that most kids nowadays are hopeless; they can't or won't learn.

Many articles and books are written about how tenure or a particular union rule or regulation gets in the way of giving youngsters a good education. People find stories on this theme very satisfying, but when you look at the stories closely, they often turn out to be just plain wrong.

The U.S. has the worst school-to-work transition system in the industrialized world. It would be more accurate, in fact, to say that we have no system at all. For high school students planning to go to college, we have an elaborate system of supports. Guidance counselors advise them on what courses they need and how to prepare for SAT or ACT examinations. When the time comes to apply, these kids get advice on how to ask for references and fill out college applications and forms for grants and loans. In other words, we put a big investment into getting these youngsters ready for college.

I have been and still am an ardent integrationist. That's why I'm so concerned about the desegregation suit in Hartford, Connecticut. The plaintiffs, a group of minority youngsters, accuse the state of Connecticut of denying them an equal opportunity for education because the Hartford schools are segregated.

A decade ago, there were headlines all across the country about merit pay for teachers. The president of the United States and the secretary of education were pushing for the idea. So were governors and legislatures and school boards, and a number of merit pay plans were put through. We haven't heard about merit pay for a long time until a couple of weeks ago when the Fairfax County, Virginia, school board voted to terminate its merit pay plan. There are some lessons to be learned from the Fairfax story.

College professors have often expressed alarm about the number of entering freshmen who need remedial courses, and now administrators are joining in. The most recent figure, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education (February 24, 1993), was 30 percent--or about one college freshman in three.

A few months ago, the Economist ran an article about school bureaucracy in New York City (December 19, 1992). It pointed out that per-pupil expenditures in 1991 were $7,414--more than in all but a handful of other big metropolitan areas. But despite the relatively generous spending, the article said, public education in New York City is in bad shape because the bureaucracy eats up much of the money that should be going to students. 

Why do our kids do so badly in school? Lots of people will tell you it's because they spend too much time in front of a TV set. And it's true that the numbers are staggering. In 1990, one in four 9-year-olds spent six or more hours, seven days a week, watching TV. That's more than most adults spend at work and certainly more than these kids spent in school. It's also true that kids who watch lots of TV have poor test scores. What should we do?