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IT'S BACK TO SCHOOL REFORM TIME
By Pete duPont
IntellectualCapital.com, August 20, 1998

Millions of children head back to school in the next couple of weeks. But will another year in school advance or retard their abilities?

It depends, of course, on the student, the school and the teacher. But thanks to a report published last month by the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, authored by University of Illinois professor Herbert Walberg and based on statistics compiled by the International Association of Educational Achievement, we know two things.

First, American students perform at the bottom of the pile compared with students in other economically advanced nations. Worse, between the eighth grade and the final year of secondary school, U.S. students "slipped further behind those in other countries." In other words, American schools seem to be hurting, not helping students.

Table I shows what happens to science students from 16 nations between eighth and 12th grade.

In these rankings, U.S. students fell from eighth place in eighth grade to 15th place in their final year of school, bettering only Hungary.

In math rankings, the Fordham Foundation study shows that the U.S. drop was not so precipitous -- but only because U.S. students had fallen to 14th place by the eighth grade and could fall only two more spots. Which, of course, they did, coming in dead last at No. 16.

Walberg found that U.S. students have the "smallest year-to-year gains in academic achievement" in spite of the fact that per-student spending in the United States was "third highest among more than 20 advanced countries."

According to Walberg, "in reading, science and mathematics through eighth grade, U.S. schools ranked last in four of five comparisons of achievement progress." In the fifth comparison, they did better, but just barely, coming in next to last.

The data for reading skills were assembled differently and addressed different time periods, but the results are similar. U.S. students increased their reading skills from age 9 to age 14 at just three-fourths the level of the average international increases. These are ominous statistics for a nation worried about its ability to continue to lead in the new global economy.

A Nation Still at Risk

It has been a decade and a half since A Nation At Risk alerted us to the failing state of education in our nation. Since then, we have tried all sorts of "fixes" with little or no success.

The educational bureaucracy said we needed smaller class sizes, so we tried them, and our students continued to perform poorly. The educational bureaucracy said we needed more math and science courses, so we added them, and our students still continued to perform poorly. Teachers needed higher pay, so we tried that, too, but again to no avail.

Most of all, the educational bureaucracy said we needed to spend more money, so we did. Walberg tells us that the United States spends 75% more per pupil than the international average at the primary-school level and 54% more at the secondary-school level. But, Walberg adds, this high level of spending, coupled with continuing poor performance, means that "U.S. schools can fairly be termed the least productive among those in economically advanced countries."

Crucial to this discouraging data is the quality of U.S. teaching. As Terry Dozier, an advisor to Education Secretary Richard W. Riley, has said, "If we don't focus on the quality of teaching, other reform efforts won't buy us what we're hoping for."

Recent studies in New York and Dallas found what we really have known all along -- that the ability of a teacher to teach is one of the most significant factors in the success of that teacher's students. Yet the schools that train our teachers seem to be failing us, graduating too many would-be teachers without the tools necessary to have a positive impact on student performance.

In June, 59% of prospective teachers in Massachusetts failed a basic competency test, filling their test papers with frightening violations of grammar, spelling and syntax. Of course, the response by some in the education bureaucracy was to call the tests invalid, unfair and racially biased.

Some educators called for simply lowering standards so that more teachers would "pass." It was only a loud public outcry that stymied an attempt by the State Board of Education to do just that.

The problem is not just in Massachusetts. In Philadelphia, almost one-fourth of the applicants for high-school English teaching positions failed the essay portion of a competency test. At some teachers' colleges in the City University of New York system, only about half of the graduates can pass the state's liberal arts teachers' competency test.

Nor does our system of training teachers require those who wish to teach subjects like chemistry or history to take enough courses in those subjects to truly master them. Too many schools of education teach diversity, multiculturalism and self-esteem instead of professional skills. Almost 40% of American teachers teaching science do not possess either a major or minor in that field. The same is true of a third of mathematics teachers and a quarter of English teachers.

Perhaps all of this is old news, but that does not make it less true. America's schools are failing America's children.

Only persistence by America's parents can achieve full reform. So when you introduce yourself to your child's teacher next week, reintroduce yourself to your state legislators, too. They can help you fix our schools.

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Pete du Pont is the editor of IntellectualCapital.com. He is a former Republican governor and congressman from Delaware. His e-mail address is petedupont@intellectualcapital.com.

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