Adults Who Say the Kids Are Alright Get It Wrong
By Vicki Alger • Wednesday July 18, 2012 5:12 PM PDT • 14 Comments
Former New York City Board of Education Chancellor Joel Klein recently penned a compelling Time editorial lamenting the prevailing—and apparently growing—complacency about American students’ lackluster academic performance. He rightly points to research showing the failure to improve basic skills among students hurts their future earning potential, U.S. GDP, and even national security.
While some so-called experts struggle to justify why average performance scores are good enough, students make no excuses for why they don’t do better: they’re bored.
A new report from the Center from American Progress finds that more than one-third of fourth graders say that their math assignments are too easy. More than one-third of high school seniors report that they seldom write about what they read in class. And, close to three out of four eighth grade science students say engineering and technology aren’t being taught. (See here also.). In brief, students are not being challenged in school.
This conclusion squares with previous surveys that found almost nine out of 10 high school students said they would work harder if their schools demanded more, set higher standards, and raised expectations. Ninety percent of students want opportunities to take challenging classes, and four out of five students think passing graduation exams in English and math would improve American high schools.
Other surveys have found that the overwhelming majority of high school dropouts left school because they were failing—to be challenged. Most students said they might not have dropped out if their schools offered better instruction (81 percent) and fostered an academic climate (65 percent). Not being challenged increased student boredom and absenteeism levels. As one respondent put it, “They just let you pass, anything you got.” (See p.6 here.)
Results from international reading, math, and science assessments appear to substantiate that claim. Math and science results over the past 15 years, and reading results over the past decade, reveal that American primary school students (ages 9 and 13) and secondary school students (age 15) have consistently performed near—or slightly below—the various international averages.
- American 9-year-olds perform above the international averages in reading, math, and science by as much as 8 percent, 6 percent, and 8 percent higher, respectively.
- American 13-year-olds generally perform above the international averages as well, up to nearly 2 percent higher in math, and up to 5 percent higher in science. They are not assessed in reading.
- American 15-year-olds, however, generally perform at or below the international averages. In reading, they score up to about 1 percent higher than the international average, but they perform as much as 5 percent below the international math average, and as much as 2 percent below in science
However popular it may be to accept average performance as good enough, a more sobering picture emerges when American students’ internationally average performance is considered alongside the country’s above-average per-pupil spending.
The United States spends far more per student than the international Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) average at both the primary and secondary levels. As of 2008, the latest year available, the United States spent more than $10,000 per primary student and more than $12,000 per secondary student. In contrast, the average OECD country spent about $3,000 less, at about $7,000 per primary student and $9,000 per secondary student. In terms of real percentage differences, the United States spends over 40 percent more than the average OECD country at the primary level, and over a third more per student at the secondary level. (All figures and percentages are based on inflation-adjusted 2010 dollar amounts.)
There are a handful of countries that currently spend more than theUnited States (See table 429). Luxembourg now spends the most of any OECD country, $13,807 per primary student and $20,130 per secondary student. Compared to the U.S. expenditure of $10,099 per primary student, Norway spends $11,206; Iceland spends $10,723; and Denmark spends $10,198.
At the secondary level, the U.S.spends $12,238 per student compared to Switzerland, which spends $18,034, and Norway, which spends $13,223. None of those countries, however, has been a top performing country over the past 10 to 15 years.
Top-performers over the years include Chinese Taipei, Finland, Hong Kong, Japan, the Republic of Korea, the Russian Federation, Singapore, and Sweden, depending on the subject, assessment year, and student age level.
Compared to these top-performing countries the United States spends nearly a third more on average (32.2 percent) at the primary level and close to a third more on average (30.8 percent) at the secondary level.
Close to 80 developed and developing countries now regularly participate in international assessments. It is worth considering how much longer we can afford to pay more for more of the same. However change-averse some adults in the American public-schooling system may be students and taxpayers are clamoring for better.
*Note: Average international performance and spending comparisons are the author’s original analysis to be included in a forthcoming Independent Institute publication.
The government school system is working exactly the way it was intended. It aims to crush individuals, creativity and inquisitiveness and to crank out drones for the corporate labor force, cannon fodder and murderers for the military and compliant tax-producing sheep who will not object to being sheared.
Paul | Jul 19, 2012 | Reply
Some schools are crushing creativity in students but compare it to schools where the students struggle to understand the basics.
The problem is all schools are supposed to teach the same thing the same year to pass state mandated testing. Because those test score give the school funding, schools aren’t able to teach other things. Government should back off the schools and let each district cater to its students needs rather they be advanced or below the average.
Rae | Jul 19, 2012 | Reply
Grades 7-12 can become a combat zone during breaks between classes when bullies ruthlessly bump, shove, trip, swear, demean, etc., etc. Unaware teachers remain in their classes. Students are more than intimidated and sometimes scared to death. You can imagine what this does to learning. Schools with hall supervisors help, but they’re often too few. Parents need to be aware of what’s happening in their schools and take action. Your kids won’t tell you. Go to your school between classes and see for yourself how well the school cares for their students. If it horrifies you, go directly to the principal, superintendent, etc., en mass with other parents who have seen the fray, and make a whole lot of noise! This may be all it takes to raise your child’s grades in every class. – A Teacher
Karen Graves | Jul 19, 2012 | Reply
Here’s my list of the top causes of boredom in public schools.
#1: Elimination of “tracking” by ability
When I was in grade school in the 1960s, by second grade the students were grouped into classrooms based on their abilities. The brightest group (25 or so) were in one classroom, the next brightest in another classroom, and so on down to the kids with IQs in the 70s. Boredom was minimized because the students in each classroom had approximately equal abilities and their teacher could set a pace that fit their abilities.
Today, tracking is not allowed. (It’s elitist and racist!) Teachers also have mandates to fail almost no students. That combination means that teachers must set a pace that can be handled by below average students. The average students are bored. The above average students become so bored that they hate school.
#2: Government mandated ‘learning’ objectives
Many of the topics and skills that school children are required to learn are irrelevant, propagandistic, or beyond grade level. Teachers are required to cram those topics into the general curriculum. This results in superficial coverage of topics and forced memorization of trivia by the students. Even if one is interested in a subject, learning only a little bit and memorizing trivia is boring.
#3: Poor teaching
Many grade school teachers are abysmally bad. They deliver textbook-derived lectures that are no more interesting than the clucks and cackles of chickens. They take in-class breaks by assigning repetitive tasks in workbooks or having the students read textbook chapters (which is really boring for those who read the chapters at home). The bad teachers dislike creativity, curiousity, and skepticism. They also dislike the students (mostly boys) who fidget or fuss when required to sit quietly for hours. (That’s why one sixth of boys get inappropriately diagnosed with attention deficit disorder and take amphetamine-like drugs.) With such teachers, it’s no wonder that schoolchildren become bored and/or disruptive.
MingoV | Jul 19, 2012 | Reply
“There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.” – — Henry Thoreau
Separation of school and state is the answer, but few seem willing to pull the curtain back and tell the wizard to go to hell.
Paul | Jul 20, 2012 | Reply
To teach , one must know. To know, one must learn. To learn, one must get educated. To get educated one goes to a university, not a colledge of education. Public school teachers are not properly prepared to teach , primarily because they do not have the required knowledge.
richard | Jul 20, 2012 | Reply
It is inappropriate to compare the US to European and Asian countries. The US, like Brazil, is a multi-ethnic country of immigrants with many kinds of people; you must look at the demographic cohorts. Our Europeans outperform Europe’s; our Africans outperform Africa’s; our Mexicans outperform Mexico’s; and our Asians outperform Asia’s. We are #1 if you slice the data correctly. Obviously, our Mexicans don’t outperform Brazil’s Germans, any more than Brazil’s neolithic tribesmen don’t outperform our Japanese.
Frantz Fanon | Jul 23, 2012 | Reply
Correct. But to force teachers to take subject-matter competence tests would have a “disparate impact” and is thus illegal! All teachers are created equal.
Frantz Fanon | Jul 23, 2012 | Reply
It always infuriates me to see some idiot-written letter to the editor decrying our state’s ranking for the number of dollars spent per student — as if the goal were to spend the most money, not to provide the most effective education. It’s too bad that the average American just doesn’t get it.
Henry Bowman | Jul 23, 2012 | Reply
Well said Rae. Two quotes for you:
“...healthy students often redouble their resistance to teaching as they find themselves more comprehensively manipulated. This resistance is due...to the fundamental approach commom to all schools – the idea that one person’s judgement should determine what and when another person must learn.” Ivan Illyich, Deschooling Society.
“The American professor deals with his students according to his lights. It is his business to chase them along a prescribed ground at a prescribed pace like a flock of sheep. They all go humping together over the hurdles with the professor chasing them with a set of ‘tests’ and ‘recitations’, ‘marks’ and ‘attendances’, the whole apparatus apparently copied from the time-clock of the businessman’s factory. This process is what’s called ‘showing results’. The pace set is necessarily that of the slowest
, and thus results in what I have heard Mr Edward Beatty describe as the ‘convoy system’ of education.” Stephen Leacock from My Discovery of England (1922).
John Harrison | Jul 24, 2012 | Reply