ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, December 22, 1996 TAG: 9612240015
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: 3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ROBERT C. SMALL JR.
POLITICIANS, self-appointed experts, extreme liberals, fundamentalist preachers - many such and others claim that American schools have failed our children.
These critics of education, in what Gerald Bracey calls "school-bashing," claim high-school graduates can't read and write, and they point to "studies" that support their contentions.
Especially important to them are what they claim are studies showing our children don't score as well on reading, writing and mathematics tests as children from other countries. They also point to what they say are declines in the Scholastic Assessment Test scores of students hoping to go to college.
Those claims are phony, and those so-called studies are bogus. Every time a parent or educator challenges one of those claims, the Basher of Education either refuses to say who did the study and where it can be found, or cites another critic who cites another critic who finally points not to a study but to a position paper by a think tank.
One well-known TV talk-show critic of nearly everything, when challenged about a study he claimed supported his bashing of schools, casually admitted that, well, he didn't really know of any such studies but if they were made, he was sure what they would show. He didn't see any reason why he couldn't cite those potential studies.
Let's take a quick look at the findings of real studies carried out by competent and experienced researchers, reviewed by other researchers whose reputations are on the line, and published in magazines read by critical experts - magazines like Phi Delta Kappan and Educational Research.
A decline in SAT scores is perhaps the most common false claim. In fact, average SAT scores in recent years have risen in mathematics and remained the same in other areas. What the Bashers fail to understand - or perhaps choose to overlook - is that many times more students take the test now than 20 years ago. You can't compare the scores of all the students taking the test today to the scores of all the students taking the test then.
Moreover, the SAT is not designed to measure how well a school is educating its students. Its only purpose is to predict how well a student is likely to do in college. Schools do a lot more than prepare students for college. To claim, based on SAT results, that American schools are doing their jobs less well than in past decades is either a misunderstanding or an intentional misuse of the test.
Twenty-five years ago, less than half of high-school graduates went on to colleges and universities. Today, that figure is more than 60 percent. Scores on the Graduate Record Exam and the Graduate Management Admission Test, taken by students applying to graduate schools, are higher than ever. More students are going to college and more are measured by tests to be well-prepared.
Let's look at a few other measures of a successful education system.
Critics claim students are dropping out in droves, but are they? No. More than nine out of every 10 adolescents are in school. More than three-quarters of adult citizens are graduates of high school, the highest number ever. When I was born, around 1940, only about half of those citizens old enough to graduate from high school had done so.
How many citizens are literate today compared to that time in the 1940s when the Bashers claim schools were so good? The illiteracy rate today is a fifth what it was in 1940. That's 80 percent lower. Doesn't sound like the work of failed schools to me.
How our students compare with students in other countries, particularly students in those countries with which we compete economically, is obviously important. Critics of our schools repeatedly claim our students are significantly weaker than students in those other countries. It just isn't so.
The distortion comes from the way test results are used to compare our students to theirs. We test nearly every student; they test the relative few who continue in school. If we compare the upper 10 or 15 percent of our students to the upper 10 or 15 percent of their students, we see our students do as well as or better than students in most other countries. Tests of mathematics knowledge and skills taken in 1992 placed our students in about the top 5 percent, and reading tests from that year placed our students second among students in all the countries where the tests were given. The top country? Finland.
Moreover, recent studies show our students are taking the difficult subjects they are often said to avoid - more mathematics, more of the sciences, more advanced English courses, more foreign languages, than 10 or 15 years ago.
Do those test results, graduation figures, literacy rates and other measurements reveal a school system that is failing? Clearly not! Despite increasing numbers of children living in poverty, despite larger numbers of single-parent families, despite homelessness and other social ills and despite declining financial support for schools in many communities and states, the schools of America are doing a better job than ever of educating our children.
Why do the Education Bashers claim our schools are failing us? Some may be misinformed. Others, I fear, want to prove schools are failing for political, philosophical or religious reasons. If schools are failing, well, what changes do they propose? Vouchers funneling tax dollars into private and religious schools are popular with many of the Bashers. Home schooling is another popular solution. And "ELECT ME AND I'LL SOLVE THE PROBLEM" is frequently heard in the land.
But facts are facts. And every fact regarding our schools demonstrates they aren't failing, but rather are in general a great success of democracy. They try, usually with success, to educate all the children of our country, not just those of a political, social, economic elite or those with parents with certain beliefs. Perfect? Of course not. But far better than the Bashers claim and vastly better than schools would be if the Bashers' solutions were put in place.
When we worry about our schools, rather than issuing lamentations we should find out the facts and, equally important, find ways to support the schools in our communities. Sitting back and bashing won't help one student learn one more skill or see the meaning of one more idea. Instead, each of us should try helping our schools do better what they are already doing so well.
Robert C. Small Jr. is dean of the College of Education and Human Development at Radford University.
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