By Logan Scisco
Education, the one social issues topic that makes most extempers as squeamish as drawing a topic on abortion, a controversial racial issue, or gender topics. The reason for this squeamishness is simple: most of your judges are educators or are parents who have children in some stage of the American education system. As a result of this, extempers are afraid of offending their audience because no teacher wants to be told for seven minutes that they are part of the problem in U.S. education and no parent wants to be told that their child is stuck in a failing education system for the same period of time. However, extempers who fall into the trap of ending up on the wrong side of a judge’s ballot often run afoul because they do not have solid facts and information to convince the audience of their viewpoint. Instead, those who often go with the advocacy position that U.S. education needs to be improved do not offer much hope for improvement at all and simply dwell on the negatives of the system. That road will lead to many lost rounds that an extemper could have won if they had researched the issue much more in depth.
U.S. education is one of those topics where an extemper already has direct experience. After all, if you are an extemper reading this brief you are enrolled in a high school somewhere in this country and (hopefully) regularly attend school everyday. There are probably teachers you like and teachers you hate and you probably have some of your own opinions as to how your education could be improved upon. Therefore, when reading information about the U.S. education system you should be able to make connections to your own learning environment. This makes reading articles about U.S. education much simpler and more intriguing for extempers (at least of the domestic variety).
This topic brief will seek to clear up any misunderstandings extempers have about the functioning of the U.S. education system. It is hoped that after reading this brief extempers will have a better conception of the issues facing education policymakers. As such, this brief will discuss:
*The history of American education
*Teachers unions
*School vouchers
*Education alternatives
*Merit pay
*No Child Left Behind
*College education issues
The History of American Education
America’s early schools in the colonial period from 1607-1775 were modeled after European schools. However, there were geographic differences in the quality of education that was provided to the population. In the southern colonies a wealthy planter aristocracy dominated and cared little for the education of slaves and indentured servants. In these colonies only wealthy male children were educated and most of these children attended private schools supported by the Church of England. In the middle colonies, composed of New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and Pennsylvania, there were different schools for peoples of different ethnic backgrounds. This was because the diverse population of the middle colonies, which represented peoples of English, Dutch, Swedish, and German origins, made communicating and forming consistent education policy difficult. In the New England colonies the population was clustered in townships unlike the other colonial settlement areas and this resulted in common schools that were based on a Puritan-style education model which had a strong belief in corporal punishment. One of the most important pieces of legislation concerning education in this time period came out of the New England area. The Old Deluder Satan Act of 1647, passed in Massachusetts, said that teaching people how to read would prevent them from becoming satanic. This law compelled the state of Massachusetts to have public schools in an area if the school age population numbered fifty or more. Overall, the colonial period for American education was one of exclusion as women, African-Americans, and Native Americans, among other groups were denied education opportunities and religion played a strong role in the education curriculum. However, despite these negatives these different colonial school systems laid the groundwork for a future public education system in the United States.
Following the colonial period, America entered the Early National Period of Education from 1775-1820. This period marked a change in education curriculum as teachers moved away from rote learning and memorization and began exploring other ways to get students to learn. A redefinition of the role of religion in the schools began to take shape as state constitutions gradually abolished the idea of a mandated state religion. States still retained control of their education systems as the tenth amendment to the U.S. Constitution proclaimed that issues that were within state jurisdiction would be decided by the states. It is also worth noting that the Land Ordinance Act of 1785 and the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 created townships of thirty six square miles (in six mile by six mile squares) and indicated that tax money collected in these townships would be put towards a public education system. Therefore, the importance of this time period was the severing of the strong ties between religion and education in public education, although religious ties to school would continue into the 1960s, control of education was officially devolved to the states, and the federal government began to recognize that education was essential to the improvement of the country.
On the eve of the Progressive Era the U.S. education system was still going through numerous changes. Avid readers of early U.S. history will note that in many areas “blab” schools existed where students of all grades went to a one room log cabin with only one teacher to preside over their learning. The schools earned the “blab” name because so much chaos was going on in the schools with children learning different levels of content than the other that all people could hear or see going on in the school if they walked in was a lot of “blab.” However, over time professionalism began to enter the teaching profession and the expectations for teachers also increased. Also, the end of the U.S. Civil War ushered in the rise of schools for minority students although these schools were very poorly funded and minorities were often pushed to pursue vocational opportunities rather than pursue higher learning. This divide would form of the basis of debate between Booker T. Washington, who urged African-Americans in his “Atlanta Compromise” speech in 1895 to pursue vocations, and W.E.B. Du Bois, who claimed that a “Talented Tenth” in the African-American race would go on to higher learning in colleges and improve the race by acting as leaders.
During the Progressive Era, there was a large concern in the United States over how to deal with ethnic minorities and their opportunities for education. For Native Americans, the U.S. government formed boarding schools in an attempt to have them conform to American values. When this eventually failed by 1930 the federal government pushed the issue of Native American education over to the states which often were unsympathetic to Native American concerns. For African-Americans, the debate between Washington and Du Bois was never resolved but African-Americans continued to fight for equal education opportunities for their children by petitioning businessman such as John Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie to give funds for the building of black schools. Furthermore, Latinos and Asian-Americans often had their heritages ignored in the education curriculum and were also placed in separate classes with very poor learning opportunities compared to white students.
Shortly after World War II the U.S. government began to believe that a stronger role by the federal government was needed in education. The government became concerned that too many Americans were not receiving equal education opportunities in each of the fifty states and that too many young people were not learning to read and write. The fear of the U.S. falling behind the rest of the world in education was expounded by the launch of Sputnik by the Soviet Union in 1957. Americans demanded that math and science be better included in the curriculum and there were also calls for problem solving and computation to be put to the forefront of learning. As a result, the Cold War spurred on math and science development in education and also began to reintroduce critical thinking skills into the classroom.
Today, the U.S. education system is subject to public scrutiny and has become a major political issue. Americans are growing anxious about the lack of improvement in test scores by American children in skills such as math against other countries. Also, as globalization increases economic competition between countries, a highly educated populace is needed to further economic development. Today’s education system is also filled with teachers who are educated professionals and are skilled in the methods and techniques to reach as many learners as possible. Today’s schools are also more diverse with special needs children being mainstreamed into regular classrooms with assistants to oversee their development and racial integration, sometimes achieved through unpopular means such as busing., of schools allowing more children of different backgrounds to learn together and socialize with each other.
Teacher’s Unions
If there is someone the media has loved to pick on for the lack of educational success America has had over the last several decades it is teacher’s unions. The two most known unions are the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers. The purpose of these unions are to protect the rights of teachers from unfair hiring and dismissal practices and to secure better pay, pension, healthcare, and other benefits. Depending on the state, teacher’s unions can be deemed very powerful or very weak. Usually, the farther north you go in the United States the stronger and more militant teacher’s unions tend to be. These areas tend to have the most work stoppages but also the best benefits for teachers. However, the further you move south teacher union power is not as strong. For example, in the state of Kentucky it is against the law for teacher’s to strike which takes significant bargaining power away from the teacher’s unions there.
Critics of teacher’s unions allege that all these unions attempt to do is preserve the status quo, a status quo these critics argue is not working in education. Teacher’s unions typically oppose school choice, voucher plans, privatization initiatives, increased testing standards (depending on what benefits their members are being offered in return), and concepts such as merit pay (a concept that will be discussed later in this brief and that some unions allege is an unfair measurement of teacher performance). Unions argue that they oppose these initiatives because they offer many losses and not many benefits for their members. After all, unions get money from regular teacher dues and it is there job to represent this constituency.
Looking into the functioning of teacher’s unions is vital for extempers. Teacher’s unions are at the forefront of education reform packages offering opinions about what needs to be done and trying to persuade politicians about how they should vote. As a result, knowing the power of teacher’s unions, how representative they are of the teaching profession as a whole, and what issues they support and oppose and why can add more depth to an extemper’s speech about U.S. education. A good rule of thumb: if you are giving a U.S. education system speech without mentioning teacher’s unions you have a major problem.
School Vouchers
School vouchers are a very controversial education initiative that was jumpstarted in the 1990s. The most notable location of a voucher system being used on a wide basis was Cleveland and experts still are arguing about the success and failures of that program. In the recent election cycle, Utah’s attempt to create a statewide voucher program was defeated by voters after a well funded and executed campaign by the NEA flooded the airwaves about how this voucher scheme would lead to a decline in the quality of public education in the state.
The concept behind vouchers is that the government will provide funds to parents of children in failing schools and allow them to go to other schools, mostly private schools that offer their children better education opportunities. The biggest contention with vouchers is that it takes public money that was directed for the public education system and transfers that money with the student to a private institution where the state has no significant degree of control. Opponents fear that vouchers is the gateway to the privatization of education where the government will not have any control over what is being taught and what standards all teachers are going to have to live up to. Opponents also fear the overcrowding of good schools by having a flood of children from poorly performing schools which would lead to larger class sizes and most likely a fall in the quality of instruction provided. Critics of vouchers also allege that the vouchers might be enough to pay for students tuition to private schools but they do not pay for transportation, clothing, and materials that those schools require. The last major contention by opponents of vouchers is that the solution to improving failing schools lies in giving them more money, not less, which is what would happen if the student left the school.
Proponents of vouchers argue that children, mostly of lower-class backgrounds, should not be locked into failing schools because teacher’s unions are squeamish about vouchers. Proponents allege that allowing vouchers will increase the levels of achievement in education as children will get better educated in private schools from better teachers and surrounded by better students and it is worth the sacrifice of a failing local school in order to accomplish that. Furthermore, proponents argue that many of these lower-income students in failing schools are minorities and giving them admission to private school systems will increase racial integration and promote diversity in these institutions.
As a whole, vouchers are the one education issue that will not die. Free market supporters, who wish to apply that model to education, continue to push vouchers as a less radical idea than a full privatization of the education system. These supporters represent a strong education lobby and although a statewide voucher scheme has never been enacted in the United States that is not to say that the issue will not appear on other state referendums in future elections.
Education Alternatives
While there are many critics of public education in the United States they do not agree on what is the best course of action to take to fix the system. Some critics argue that change has to occur within the system, starting with the federal government’s Department of Education and working down through the education bureaucracy. Others say that our conception of public education should be abolished completely in favor of other models. Those models will be discussed in this section.
The Privatization Plan
The first alternative advocated by public education critics is the idea of privatization. This idea is often propagated by the Libertarian Party, the largest third party outfit in the United States. Advocates of this idea hold that the principles that govern the economy should be placed into education and that results would see an improvement. This school of thought sees public education as a legalized monopoly. After all, if parents are not rich enough to afford private school tuition or if parents do not have the time to educate children in their own homes then they must send them to public schools. If a parent happens to live in a poorly performing school district their child has little chance of escape unless their city has a voucher system and most do not. Advocates of privatization decry this “travesty” in public education because monopolies disrupt the efficiency of the marketplace and often abuse their power. This group insists that a true market needs to be placed in education. The government should contract education services out to corporations who will run their own schools on a for-profit basis with those profits coming from the government from testing results and the funds the school gets for each student. In this model, parents would have free reign over what schools they want their children to attend and if parents feel their student is not getting a good education they should be able to move their child to another school. By allowing parents to move their children, poorly performing schools would lose their student body and would become extinct while good schools, with good teachers, would thrive. Advocates of privatization allege that this system would raise teacher pay and provide more prestige to the education profession.
Opponents allege that aside from destroying the public education system, the privatization model would harm students. This side holds that there was a reason the government was needed to oversee the economy beginning with the Progressive Era: workers were being abused by corporations working them to death in unsafe working conditions for a profit. In an education system run by corporations largely outside of government control lower performing students would often not get the education they need as the corporations running the schools would see their poorly performing test scores as a liability and might try to kick them out of school before the tests much like a poor worker is fired for poor performance. Also, how these schools would deal with the needs of special education students is a subject of much controversy. Critics also allege that if the public believes that teaching to the test is a major problem in education today it would be even more of a problem in a privatized system. After all, if corporations were being paid for their results on standardized tests, then they would be teaching to the test all of the time in order to maximize profits. This would constrain the subject matter that teachers could teach and hinder academic creativity.
Charter Schools
Charter schools are schools that receive public funding but are presided over by sponsoring organizations made up of an independent group of parents, teachers, or members of a particular community or organization. These schools have much autonomy in what they teach students but they must achieve certain results so that they may remain open. Cities around the country are experimenting with charter schools, most notably New Orleans in response to Hurricane Katrina, and there has been much debate over whether charter schools are better or worse at achieving education standards versus public schools.
The major criticisms of this model hold that there are not enough standards as in public schools for charter schools. Much criticism is also concerned with the idea of taxpayer money being used to fund schools that are not exclusively under state supervision.
I would encourage all extempers to read the article about New Orlean’s charter school experiment contained in the cards section of this brief. It is a very enlightening read on the functioning of charter schools and how the New Orleans model could potentially be used in other big cities that are facing education problems in the United States.
Homeschooling
Some parents have become so disaffected with the public education system in the United States that they have pulled their children out of school and are educating them in a home environment. Children that are homeschooled must still past state certification examinations so that they can pass certain grade levels and can earn their high school diplomas. Proponents of this model argue that parents do not have to worry about the problems of school violence or other discipline problems in the classroom affecting their child. Furthermore, homeschooling allows children to receive one-on-one tutoring by those who know them best and that they can achieve much more in a home setting.
Critics allege that parents are misguided in taking their children out of the public education system. Anti-homeschool advocates argue that some parents are very ill-suited to educate their child. They cite the fact that many parents who homeschool their children do not have education training and do not know the best ways to achieve learning objectives. However, the largest argument against homeschooling is that children who are homeschooled are socially awkward and are not well placed to succeed in the “real world” where they are going to have to interact with their peers. Most of this comes from the socialization that occurs in a regular school environment and the denial of the opportunity for children to participate in athletics, academic teams, and other activities after school.
Merit Pay
Merit pay is a concept that is meant to motivate teachers and produce good results on standardized test items in public schools. Merit pay is meant to reward teachers whose classes have good scores on state testing examinations thereby indexing their pay scale based on performance. Depending on which teacher’s union you talk to they may be for or against this idea.
Proponents argue that indexing teacher pay to performance will get teachers to be more excited about teaching and that they will go to great lengths to ensure that their students know the material that they are learning. Meanwhile, critics allege that merit pay is an unfair concept. After all, is it fair to compare the performance of a special education teacher’s students and a teacher who teaches a litany of Advanced Placement (AP) courses? The disparity in this pay rewards scale would most likely discourage special education teachers or teachers who get stuck with lower-level learners and that might harm the motivation that these teachers would have in getting those students to learn. Also, the unions who oppose merit pay argue that financial awards should be given to all teachers in a school if performance increases instead of individual teachers because awards that are given to individuals foster resentment and do not encourage teamwork in schools.
Recently, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has created a merit pay system that is scheduled to be utilized in fifteen percent of New York City’s schools for the 2008-2009 school year. The awards for teachers in this system would be privately financed and would be given to teachers whose students improved on standardized testing instruments. However, critics allege that the bonuses will not be used to reward good teachers because committees in each school will be able to divide up a pool of bonus money at their leisure and those committees could theoretically equalize the bonus money each teacher received regardless of performance. Nevertheless, the committee idea was most likely the only way Mayor Bloomberg could have overcome teach union opposition to his merit pay proposal.
No Child Left Behind
When President Bush and Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA) were able to successfully negotiate No Child Left Behind (NCLB) in January 2002 it was seen as a milestone for the Bush presidency. During the 2000 elections President Bush had promised education reforms that would give more power to local governments yet this law seemed to strengthen the power of the Department of Education and impose more stringent standards on state and local school bureaucracies. This marked the beginning of Bush’s experiment in “big government conservatism” and his emphasis on increasing the role of the federal government in education marked a turning point for the Republican Party on the issue as President Ronald Reagan and Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich tried, unsuccessfully, to abolish the Department of Education. Over the last five years this law has been criticized by educators and despised by state education boards who are currently pushing for a Democratic Congress to abolish NCLB or significantly adjust it.
What Is It?
NCLB has four basic principles behind it. First, schools will be held to higher accountability standards. Second, local schools are to be given more flexibility and control. Third, more options will be given to parents to assist the development of their child’s education and improve their ability to move them out of a bad school. Finally, teachers will be encouraged to focus on teaching methods that have been proven to work in the past.
In terms of accountability, NCLB mandates that states establish standards for reading, math, writing, history, and science for students in each grade level. States are then required to create appropriate tests aligned with the standards that they have created. Schools have to meet their average yearly progress (AVP) targets, which are determined by the state, by raising the achievement levels of subgroups of students such as African-Americans, Latinos, low-income students, and special education students to a state-determined level of proficiency. All students must be proficient by the 2013-2014 school year. Students in grades three through eight are tested annually with one additional test administered in high school. The results of this test are used to measure the progress of learning in various subject areas. For progress reports, the main subjects being tracked are reading and mathematics and the key grade levels are fourth and eighth grade. The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), commonly known as the Nation’s Report Card, is the yardstick used to measure learning in each state and across the country Additionally, performance by schools will be public knowledge and schools will receive a report card on the results of the student’s scores. If schools fail to meet their targets, accountability provisions of the NCLB are implemented in an effort to turn failing schools into better achieving ones. All of these tests are meant to improve the education system by giving officials a mechanism to evaluate school’s performance and the different subcategories are meant to ensure that states do not cover up a lack of minority achievement by pointing to generalized figures that say that their students are performing at proficiency or above. Therefore, by regularly assessing schools it is the belief of the advocates of NCLB that school’s will become more transparent and that they can be better scrutinized to correct problems.
If a school fails to meet its standards, NCLB’s reforming mechanisms kick in. There are four tiers which failing schools can fall into depending on the number of consecutive years in which they have not met all of their AYP goals. First tier schools have fallen short of their goals for two consecutive years, Second tier schools failed three years in a row and schools in the third tier missed four consecutive years. Schools in the fourth tier missed five straight years. Penalties for these failing schools range from officials having to notify parents and allowing pupils to transfer schools, a school district having to provide tutors to underachieving students, the lengthening of the school year, and in serious circumstances the takeover of a school by the federal government for restructuring which could result in the firing of the entire school staff.
Additional flexibility under NCLB is provided to the states and their school districts in terms of management and budget concerns. This provision of NCLB is designed to cater to public opinion that favors local schools being given more control over internal affairs since they are on the front lines of the battle to improve American education. It is believed that giving local school districts more flexibility over material as well as budget concerns will improve student performance by funneling resources into problem areas that only local schools would know about. After all, having a “one size fits all approach” in regards to American education would tend to work rather poorly considering how schools face different challenges in regards to racial composition, ESL students, and disproportionate revenues allotted to them by differing tax bases. Thus, a claimed benefit of NCLB is that it greatly empowers local leaders to solve local problems.
NCLB has also created more options for parents in an effort to give them more power over their child’s education. Before NCLB, parents had three options for handling their child’s education. First, parents had the right to send their child to public school in the area where they live in. Second, parents could send their child to a private school. Finally, parents could choose to home school their child. Unfortunately, though, those parents who oversee a single parent household or live in a lower socioeconomic status could not afford to send their children to a private school or choose to home school them. In other words, parents didn’t have much of a choice at all when it came to their child’s education. However, due to NCLB parents can send their child to a better and more reputable school, if they currently attend a Title I school that falls short of meeting state standards or is simply inadequate. If the school continues to fail, parents also have the option of using Title I funding, where assistance is provided from a private or public sector. This increase in school choice has the potential to allow greater opportunities for poor and minority students and for parents to see a greater chance in social mobility for their children.
Also, states and school districts are encouraged to use teaching methods that are scientifically proven to be successful in teaching students to read, write, and perform arithmetic. Federal money is to be spent only on effective, research based programs, performances and practices. It is believed that while teachers should still have flexibility in their classroom, they should be using methods that have been proven to work before instead of adopting different methods that could alter student learning in a negative way. In this regard, it will be important for America’s new teachers to adhere to new guidelines over what they teach and how they can go about teaching it, not only to improve student performance, but also to avoid causing the school to have low test scores which could result in their dismissal. Therefore, the teaching methods provisions of NCLB demand that school districts pay closer attention to what their teachers are doing in their classrooms which should improve the quality of teaching as older teachers and administrators assist new ones in instructing students.
The Controversy
While the Bush administration stands by NCLB and believes that it will improve schools through a combination of high standards and more accountability; parents, state governments, and educators are less than pleased with it. All of them fear that the new law is under funded and that it penalizes schools who don’t meet its standards too harshly instead of trying to improve them through more positive efforts. Therefore, to understand the uproar over NCLB it is important to look at the perspectives of parents, state governments, and teachers concerning NCLB.
First, parents are concerned that NCLB is harming their children more than it is helping them. For example, seventy-nine percent of parents disagree with the “transfer penalty” of NCLB that allows students to transfer to another school if their respective school is labeled as “underperforming” for two consecutive years. Parents fear that if students are allowed to transfer to other schools then it will drain revenue from failing schools and as a result those schools will continue to decline while better schools will continue to improve because of more revenue going to them. As a result, this penalty could widen the education gap in American schools instead of leveling the playing field. Moreover, according to the same study, sixty-eight percent of parents do not agree with NCLB placing an entire schools future on a single test. These parents argue that schools would be better assessed through a series of tests or a combination of different evaluations because throwing all of a schools future funds and reputation into a “testing basket” could force educators to teach to the test and give an incentive for school districts to cheat on the tests thereby hurting the incentive for students to learn. Most troubling, though, the same article writes that a vast majority of parents still don’t know many of the specifics of NCLB. This shows a lack of outreach on the part of the federal government and local boards of education which is disappointing because parents are on the front lines of the battle to improve education. Therefore, not only do parents not trust NCLB but they also are ignorant of the specifics of what the law actually says.
Second, state governments who have to oversee the enforcement of NCLB are openly rebelling against the law. To date, forty-seven states are rebelling in some form against NCLB. For example, Utah’s state legislature has passed an order that its education laws take precedence over NCLB. Also, Colorado’s state legislature has allowed local school districts to opt out of the laws requirements. The main reason the states are rebelling against NCLB is because of money. States are complaining that the federal government has not funded NCLB as much as it promised and therefore they are left with millions of dollars in testing bills. The requirements of NCLB stipulate that children must be tested every year from third grade to eighth grade and then be tested once in high school. This has left states such as Connecticut with forty million dollar budget shortfalls and this is only going to grow worse as the federal government is expecting a thirty-nine billion dollar shortfall in funding NCLB by the end of this year. Since state governments are hard pressed for cash in paying for tests, a greater burden is being thrown into the hands of local school boards who are hard pressed for money as well. Local school boards are having problems because if schools fail under NCLB they are required to pay for tutors or to transport students to better schools. This can be very expensive and damaging to impoverished schools. As a result, state governments are openly rebelling against NCLB and a tenth amendment battle seems to be brewing over who controls the education apparatus: the national government or the state governments.
Finally, educators feel that NCLB is harming their ability to teach effectively and feel that the law sets them up to fail. Educators say that the goals of NCLB are unobtainable because by 2014 it expects one hundred percent of students to be proficient across forty-two different subgroups based on race and economic class. Educators fear that this high level is too idealistic and has setup nearly ninety-nine percent of schools to fail. Also, the educational establishment fears that with NCLB assessing school performance on the basis of one test it will encourage more teachers to “teach the test” which will constrain curriculums and possibly eliminate subjects that don’t lend themselves to multiple choice tests such as art or music. Furthermore, educators are angry over NCLB because they cannot determine whether their school is failing or succeeding. For example, last year sixty-two percent of Florida schools failed to make progress under NCLB, but of those sixty-two percent, thirty-seven percent were good enough to earn a grade of “A” or “B” under the standards of the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test. This has left educators scratching their heads over what standards they should be following. After all, if they are good enough to earn a high grade in their respective state how can they be deemed as failing under federal guidelines? As a result, it is feared that a combination of pressure, bureaucracy, and headaches left by NCLB could drive more educators out of the profession which may leave schools in worse shape then they were in before, especially in failing areas that desperately need teachers.
The Results (2002-2005)
In researching this brief I used the 2005 National Report Card as a benchmark for assessing the positives and negatives of NCLB. I used this measurement because the data that I found was clearer and more recent than any other data sets I could find. However, extempers should only look for the general patterns in these results and should be careful about extrapolating them into 2007 because education conditions are in constant flux and things may have gotten better or worse since this time period.
The 2005 National Report Card shows steady growth and gains by America’s schoolchildren, particularly among younger and minority students. The results from the NAEP 2005 benchmark exam of fourth and eighth graders confirm that real progress is being made in classrooms across America. The Nation’s Report card tracks progress through two different components, a long-term trend in which results are released every five years, and the short-term trend in which results are released every two years.
Additionally, reading scores for students in fourth grade increased between 1992 and 2005 for white, black, Hispanic, and Asian/Pacific islander students. Between 2003 and 2005, the gap between white students and black or Hispanic students decreased. Females scored higher than males, but males increased by three points. Reading scores for students in eighth grade were higher in 2005 than in 1992 for white, black, and Hispanic students.
Furthermore, math results improved for the nation as a whole, the majority of states, and many student groups. Average scores for students in fourth grade were one point higher between 2003 and 2005. Average scores for students in eighth grade were also one point higher between 2003 and 2005. In math, short term progress (2003-2005) assessed in all fifty states, jurisdictions, and Department of Defense shows average scores for students at grade four increased in thirty-one states and both jurisdictions. Results showed that white fourth graders scored higher on average in math than their black and Hispanic peers in 2005. The scores for all racial/ethnic groups were higher in 2005 than in any previous assessment year. Male students scored higher in math test than female students on average. Both male and female fourth graders average scores were higher in 2005 than in any previous assessment year. Average math scores for white, black, and Hispanic eighth graders were higher in 2005 than any other year before. Average scores were higher for both male and female eighth graders.
In addition to all of these increased scores, the achievement gap between white and Hispanic fourth graders narrowed, reaching an all time low in reading and matching its all time low in math. The achievement gap in eighth grade math between white and African American students, and between white and Hispanic students, narrowed to their lowest points since 1990. The achievement gap between white and Hispanic students in eighth grade reading narrowed to its lowest point since 1998.
In fourth grade reading, more progress was made from 2000 to 2005 (up six points) than from 1992 to 2000 (down four points), driven by gains among Hispanic (up thirteen points) and African American students (up ten points).
In fourth grade math, nearly as much progress was made from 2000 to 2005 (up twelve points) as from 1990 to 2000 (up thirteen points), driven by gains among Hispanic (up eighteen points) and African American students (up seventeen points). Since 2003, African American and Hispanic fourth graders have made significant gains in both math (up fourth points each) and reading (up two points each). Overall, fourth grade and eighth grade math scores rose to all-time highs. Overall, fourth grade reading scores matched the all-time high.
African American fourth graders posted the highest reading and math scores in the history of the test. Hispanic forth graders posted the highest reading and math scores in the history of the test. African American eighth graders posted the highest math scores in the history of the test. Hispanic eighth graders posted the highest math scores in the history of the test. In fourth and eighth grade math, higher percentages of Asian/Pacific Islander students performed at or above “proficient” levels (as defined by NAEP) than in any previous year. In forty-three states and the District of Columbia students either improved academically or held steady in fourth and eighth grade reading and math.
College
It is possible that extempers could run into a question about the nation’s colleges during a domestic social round this year. These questions would most likely focus on college tuition or the lack of standards in college education so those two issues will be discussed below.
College Tuition
There are significant and well founded concerns that college tuition is getting much too high in the United States. Social commentators fret that this is creating a two-tiered education system between those who can afford college and those Americans who are poor and cannot afford to attend. For the last several years college tuition has outstripped inflation and last year alone according to the College Board tuition and fees at four-year private universities climbed 6.3% to $23,712. This figure was compared to an inflation rate of 2.8%. This “pricing out” of education for lower economic classes has prompted Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards to unveil a “college for everyone” plan whereby the government would pay for tuition for the first-year of any student attending a public university who worked and did not cause trouble. While some skeptics might see Edwards proposal as pandering, there is a demographic out there that his words are having great appeal to.
Colleges counteract the claim that tuition is rising too quickly in pointing out how tuition increases increase technology on campus and pay for professors (thereby encouraging better professors to stay or choose to teach at certain institutions) and building projects vital to campus such as new dorms and academic complexes. Colleges claim that if caps are put on their tuition or if they lower tuition increases then the quality of their educational “product” would suffer as they would not be able to upgrade as many facets of campus activity.
Tuition costs are not the only problem, though, facing college. Textbook costs are also on the rise and when coupled with housing and food costs it is no wonder that many are fearing that students cannot afford higher education. The controversy over student loans and the rates of interest students are charged on those loans only magnifies this point and there are concerns that students are leaving higher education with a large debt burden that will take them decades to pay off. Therefore, due to the rising costs facing both private and public universities, college tuition has the potential to be a serious presidential campaign issue in 2008 as there is rising anxiety among America’s population that something must be done to control college costs so that they do not continue to spiral out of control.
Standards Debate
With more and more American students attending higher education there has been a small push by education experts to increase the level of standards in the college curriculum. Often times professors are left to their own devices when setting up their classes just like in high school. However, unlike high schools, professors do not have to be certified teachers. Instead, being conferred a doctorate degree grants one teaching privileges and there have been concerns that not having these instructors certified in education theory leads to some boring classes dominated by one to two hours of lecture and a lack of other learning experiences other students may find vital.
There has also been a push to start a standardized testing regimen in colleges. As a college student I find this idea absolutely ridiculous but it has nevertheless been proposed in order for the government and for aspiring students to see how much a college graduate really learns in the span of four years at a public university. These advocates point to classes outside of the general education curriculum and wonder what college students are really learning from classes such as “a survey of witchcraft” or “a history of beer.”
Cards:
Gaouette, Nicole. “A Juggling Act on No Child Left Behind.” The Los Angeles Times. 30 October 2007. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-nochild30oct30,1,7971551.story?coll=la-headlines-nation&track=crosspromo.
WASHINGTON – Rep. George Miller (D-Martinez) has never been one to back away from a brawl — he once warned an adversary that if he wanted to fight, it was going to take a while, so he’d better bring lunch. But as Miller pushes to renew the landmark education law known as No Child Left Behind, he faces so many fights that the fate of the bill is increasingly in doubt.
As chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, Miller is sparring with Republicans who see his proposed changes as an unacceptable watering down of the law’s core standards.
Baker, Peter. “An Unlikely Partnership Left Behind.” The Washington Post. 5 November 2007. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/04/AR2007110401450_pf.html.
It felt familiar, as if the past five years had not happened — the Republican president and the Democratic senator together again, plotting ways to reshape the nation’s education system. As they sat in the Oval Office that day back in January, President Bush and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy put their schism over the war behind them and focused on the agenda at hand.
“We’re going to get moving on this, right Ted?” Bush asked.
“LAUSD Stalls Its ‘Transformation.'” The Los Angeles Times. 2 November 2007. http://www.latimes.com/news/education/la-ed-brewer2nov02,1,4963675.story?coll=la-news-learning.
Supt. David L. Brewer has not done much to inspire confidence in his year at the top of the Los Angeles Unified School District, but one initiative that seemed to convey an appreciation for the district’s urgent need to think differently was his plan to declare 44 secondary schools a “transformation district” and lavish them with resources. Appropriately, he chose the city’s lowest-performing schools and touted his proposal as part of a larger vision for desperately needed improvement districtwide.
Chan, Sewell. “Mayor Announces Plan for Teacher Merit Pay.” The New York Times. 17 October 2007. http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/10/17/mayor-announces-plan-for-teacher-merit-pay/.
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg announced this afternoon what he called the biggest program of merit pay for teachers in the nation. Under the program, 200 schools – about 15 percent of all schools in the system – will be eligible this academic year for $20 million in privately financed bonuses if student performance improves by a certain amount. In the 2008-9 school year, 400 schools will be available for the bonuses.
Cook, David. “Margaret Spellings: ‘No Child Left Behind’ Faces Political Head Winds.” The Christian Science Monitor. 2 November 2007. http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1102/p25s01-usmb.html.
There is growing doubt whether Congress will reauthorize the No Child Left Behind law in the waning days of the current session.
Even Education Secretary Margaret Spellings is tempered in her confidence. “I have worked hard to get a reauthorization,” she told a Monitor-sponsored breakfast with reporters on Thursday. “The bad news is that we are attempting to do it … on the eve of a presidential election.” Congress is supposed to make revisions in the law and reauthorize it every five years.
Milfred, Scott. “Milfred: Parents Prove Charter Schools Work.” Wisconsin State Journal. 3 November 2007. HTTP://WWW.MADISON.COM/WSJ/HOME/OPINION/INDEX.PHP?NTID=255011&NTPID=1.
The magic of charter schools isn’t so much the innovation they strive to achieve. The magic is the effect these schools have on parents.
At the Nuestro Mundo charter school on Madison’s East Side, you have to win a lottery to get your child into the program. This is true even for parents like me who live just a few blocks from Allis Elementary School, where Nuestro Mundo (which means “Our World ” in Spanish) is housed.
Peyser, James A. “The Schools That Katrina Built.” The Boston Globe. 14 October 2007. http://www.boston.com/news/education/k_12/articles/2007/10/14/the_schools_that_katrina_built?mode=PF.
THE FLOOD WATERS that submerged New Orleans two years ago also sank the local school district. What had been a system comparable in size to Boston’s, with more than 60,000 students and 125 schools, resurfaced in the spring of 2006 at just a fraction of the size, with only 11,000 students and 26 schools.
The destruction of the New Orleans public schools was part of the larger human tragedy that befell the Crescent City, but it is not a loss that many residents are mourning. Before the flood, New Orleans had become a poster child for what is wrong with urban education in America, with a long list of failing schools, the worst test scores in the state, and a history of corruption and fiscal mismanagement. The public schools in New Orleans were under water long before the levies broke.
De Roda, Cindy. “Vouchers Would Improve Education, Benefit Society.” The Salt Lake City Tribune. 3 November 2007. http://www.sltrib.com/opinion/ci_7362167.
I have been a licensed classroom teacher in a Utah private school for eight years. The thesis I completed for a master of education degree at Westminster College concerned equity in education.
I initially considered the merits of the proposed voucher program, Utah State Referendum 1, from historical and educational philosophy perspectives. During the past months I have also reviewed the issue in the light of personal experience. My conclusion is that every voter should support Referendum 1.