Battling myths about American public education

Those of you who subscribe to Terry Stoops’ regular CommenTerry about public school issues might enjoy a column Joy Pullman has posted at The Federalist website. Like Stoops, Pullman pokes at myths surrounding public education.

Lie 1: America’s rich, suburban schools are high quality

The United States’ best schools are mediocre compared to their international peers, even though the United States spends more money than any country in the world on K-12 education. The Global Report Card has recently layered specific, nationwide figures upon broader comparisons that have long demonstrated our mediocrity. Its authors give Beverly Hills as one example. It represents most affluent suburban districts, which Americans typically think contain great schools. But they don’t. “If Beverly Hills were relocated to Canada, it would be at the 46th percentile in math achievement, a below-average district. If the city were in Singapore, the average student in Beverly Hills would only be at the 34th percentile…” The schools everyone thinks are so great are only so because we compare them to our truly awful urban districts, rather than to actual peers. In short, America suffers from the Lake Wobegon effect. …

… Lie 2: Poverty is the root of America’s education problems

Teacher unions and other education determinists keep insisting mediocre education quality is not teachers’ fault. It’s society’s fault. American kids perform poorly because they don’t have enough healthcare, school counselors, museum visits, money, and parenting. This is an attractive belief for people who want to avoid responsibility. And it’s not fair to blame teachers for the increasing numbers of parents who will not give their children a stable, married home and its requisite emotional and academic structure, but teachers and schools can overcome poverty and neglect. We know because some have, and not at random. For example, giving a child who lags two years behind his peers an excellent teacher (defined as a top-25-percent teacher) four years in a row will catch him up. This would close the nation’s persistent black-white achievement gap.
The achievement gap largely comes down to a vocabulary gap, which means a knowledge gap, because words name things.

Perhaps the best argument against this blame-shifting defeatism has been advanced by self-described liberal and public intellectual E.D. Hirsch Jr. His works collate decades of research into one resounding thesis: The achievement gap between black and white, rich and poor is not due to lack of money. It largely comes down to a vocabulary gap, which means a knowledge gap, because words name things. …

… Lie 3: Schools should teach generic skills like “critical thinking” and “real-world application”

So why don’t schools overcome the knowledge deficit? Because prevailing education theory, which has stood strong now for about half a century, preaches that children don’t need knowledge. They need skills that can apply to any knowledge.

For a selection of what this content-free philosophy sounds like, I looked at just two days worth of reporting on how schools are putting into place new national education goals called Common Core. It would “have students practice critical thinking, curiosity and creativity instead of merely memorizing content”; “It focuses on how deeply a student understands the content presented”; “The Common Core State Standards focus on key topics, allowing teachers to go much deeper, with an emphasis on real world skills like collaboration, communication and critical thinking.” The standards are said to teach children “how to apply what they’ve learned to real life… ‘It’s skills now, not just content. It’s not just rote memory anymore.’” In all the reporting on Common Core, no contrary examples were reported.

Doesn’t it sound good? No more rotten memorization! Just living, breathing, real-world skills! Unfortunately, as Hirsch shows, there are no skills that apply to any knowledge indiscriminately. Believing that, however plausible it sounds, is the intellectual equivalent of asking a carpenter to apply his chiseling skills to gardening, or horseback riding.

Follow the second link above to find three more lies Pullman documents in her column. And be sure to subscribe to Stoops’ education research newsletters for more insightful analysis of the latest education news.