The Problem in Public Education: Standardizing Profits

The past few posts have been somewhat political in nature, and I admit that I have shown some views that would side with liberals.  I'd like to think this post will be different.

In my academic career, the facts to which I have been exposed have opened my eyes to the true faults of our system of education in the public sector.  No, they don't lie with the teacher unions - though the unions do get targeted a lot.  I did once think that the unions had too much power and say over the course of educational development.  But, alas, those are not the true roots of the problem.  It's not the kids; it's not the parents; it's not even the social dilemma of teaching children one thing at school to have them see the opposite on TV and in video games.  It's the way we measure success in schools, and how we come about showing students as numbers to help us quantify the quality of education.  It's the people trying to find a profit in the education of our students.

Gardner's multiple intelligence theory relates the idea that every student has a different way of learning.  Not everyone can learn through lecture, discussion, or reading.  Most elementary schools in the nation have adapted to include Gardner's theory in their classrooms - several have found new ways to teach using his approach to learners.  New developments have been made in determining the true intelligence of the students teachers educate on an everyday basis.  However, as the age of the student progresses, the differentiation of the education lessens.  As students move into high school, we find less and less in the way of diversity in educational deliberation, and more lectures, readings and tests.  Though the early development of specific intelligence does encourage improved scores on tests, very few high schools, colleges and universities apply the theory to their own work.  Many times, the traditional form of educating a mass of students is upheld, and if one does not conform to the method, one does not often succeed.

To take that notion one step further, the way we measure the success of our students has not changed in the 50+ years in which we've been measuring student performance: The standardized test.  Why?  We have surely found that intelligence is much more complex than the ability to memorize and regurgitate facts - when we can agree on what the facts are.  Is testing so valuable and worthwhile that we just need to do it in order
to feel like we can put a value on the amount of learning that has taken place?

I got a glimpse of why we've kept doing the same thing in my graduate studies, and it started with the IQ test.  When we first learned how to put a number on a person's ability so we could adequately compare one to the other, we began doing so across the nation.  From the IQ test came the SAT, the ACT, and then the state standardized tests.  Since then, we've been using the same formula, expecting different results - Einstein's definition of insanity comes to mind.  We test our kids with new questions, but keep the same format - they sit and read and fill in little tiny bubbles, all of which will be graded by some master computer, and the student will have a number assigned to their ability, which will indicate how the teacher teaches, how the school prepares the student for life, how the student responds to education, and whether or not the schools are effectively doing their job.

So, in spite of the new understanding of intelligence, we use the same old methods of measurement.  Why have we not figured out a new way to understand the potential and understanding our students have of the knowledge we teach?  We continue to blame schools for failing to meet standards when the number of low-income families are on the rise - and the educational studies show that students of low-income families perform worse on standardized tests than those in families with adequate to substantial means.  In this age of personal responsibility and independence, should we not be looking more at the students and their parents than the people attempting to educate them?  We like to show the teacher who gets to sit back for three months out of the year and go on vacation and live the cushy lifestyle, when in all reality, the free time teachers possess is taken up by grading papers, creating lessons, researching new ways to educate the students, or filling out paperwork for special needs students who've been included in the general classroom.

Regardless, we've come to the notion in our society that we spend too much on teachers who don't do enough.  We've started embracing the idea of charter schools in districts that fail to show their progress.  No Child Left Behind did a lot to create this idea of failing schools, in that it required EVERY student to be tested, and that EVERY student - regardless of whether or not the student had special needs - meet or exceed state standards.  What that means is the child on the autism spectrum who cannot read well, or the intellectually low-performing student who doesn't understand abstract concepts, must perform at the same level as the student who correctly answers 80% of the questions on the state standardized test.  That mandate meant that over 80% of our public schools would fail to meet the Annual Yearly Progress demanded by the legislation, and that they would all be defunded in favor of charter schools, private school vouchers, or state controlled districts.  Why would such a law be allowed to pass through Congress?

One word - money.  If one looks at the current Common Core Curriculum that passed through Congress, one can see that a few companies stand to make billions in profits.  Most notably, Pearsons - the company that makes textbooks, standardized tests, and intelligence tests for our schools - as well as Scholastic and Houghton Mifflin, who will possibly make hundreds of millions in the first year of the Common Core's roll-out.  When going back through the educational reforms we've seen in the past forty years, we see that privatizing education has become more and more prevalent throughout the country, as 'failing' schools are overtaken by charter schools run by private companies.  The charter schools hire non-union employees with less certification than public schools, and pay them roughly $20,000 less per year on average.  I fail to see how this creates a more conducive environment for learning.

When I delved into how and why these companies got their way, I found it all went back to politics and lobbying.  Our schools weren't failing, but we had a private company fund a study that said they were, and we stuck by the faulty findings.  It first happened when our institution addressed the idea of school funding with the Coleman Report of 1966, which used murky language and problematic comparisons to argue that money did not matter in schools.  Rather, it was the student population and their community that mattered.  However, studies have shown the opposite - schools that can hire more experienced teachers can bridge the gap between low-income and high-income schools.

The next big faulty study came with "A Nation At Risk" that tried to show our public schools were failing, when really they were on the rise.  The study was funded by private corporations looking to get a piece of the $600 billion the country spent on education, and was supported by Reagan who introduced the idea of school vouchers.  But, the math was flawed.  The first test area used 250 students from each level of income to show their start, then used a higher percentage of low-income students as a test group in the next year to show the dropping scores - they tested only 100 students of high income, 200 students of middle and low, and 500 impoverished students to make the 1000 student number they used.  However, the tests they showed had each sector of student performing better than the previous year - but because the concentration of high performers was lower than that of the low-performers, the average was skewed to show public schools decreasing in performance.  This article from Yes! Magazine shows the math failure.  But the companies needed something to show the schools were failing so they could get in on the action, and thus funded a faulty study.

Moreover, we constantly like to point out that public schools are doing worse than other countries.  But we don't take a good look at the reasons why they show better numbers - we just see that we don't perform as well and see it as the need to change things. For instance, in European countries, such as Finland or Poland, we see they score better because a.) they have less students per class on average, b.) only the high-performing students take standardized tests, and c.) they focus less on school work and more on learning real-life tasks.  Asian countries that show better scores than us typically have a.) less students per family, b.) more focused time on educational needs, and c.) significantly less students in their public education system.  Asian schools also record only the top ten percent of their students when showing their numbers for educational comparison.  When we take our top ten percent against the rest of the world, we find that we are in the top five of math, science and reading.

But again, we test every single student, regardless of their disability, income, or ability.  We also educate every student in every subject up through high school.  When we see the bigger picture, we find that our schools are NOT failing us. When we compare public schools to the vaunted charter schools, we see that levels of performance are nearly the same.  Private schools can show higher numbers in some cases, but most of those cases show the private school refusing special needs students because they "do not have adequate facilities" to accommodate the special needs.  When tested, of course the private schools will perform higher because the public schools have to test each capable student - including the ones with special needs.  So, when we look at the numbers, we take the facial image without seeing why the schools are different.  Of course, there are those areas where the public schools do end up out-performing their charter counterpart, only leading to prove the claims wrong.      

Yet, we continue to believe public schools are failing because private companies - with significantly more advertising money than public schools, and greater ability to lobby politicians and the American populace with faulty reports - convince us of such.  They lob attacks against teachers for being overpaid and under-worked - they attack the unions for being corrupt lobbyists trying to take the taxpayer's dollars.  But who are the people gaining the most out of the push for privatization?  Who stands to gain the most out of privatization - the student or the company running the charter school?

We have not always been a country that valued profits and money over doing the right thing - but I am afraid of what the culture of the wealthy is doing to our schools, and how they will affect the way student success is measured.  We know how the wealthy and most of our American society measures success - money.  They determined it would be best to measure the success of schools on standardized testing outcomes - to make each person a single number.  Some schools have rebelled against it - and I fear if more do not, the public school system will truly fail.  Not because it will fail our students, but because we, as a society, will fail the students.  It's time for us to begin measuring school success differently so we can find a way to truly educate our students, instead of giving away our students' futures to people who want to make a buck.