The Deep Performance Problems With American Public Education

This posting continues a debate begun in two earlier postings here and here.

How bad is the public education performance problem in America? Consider this information from Robert J. Herbold of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology and formerly the Chief Operating Officer of Microsoft:

There are some very worrisome trends in the United States with respect to our global share of science, technology, engineering and mathematics expertise. Our share of this expertise is decreasing significantly, both at the bachelor’s and at the Ph.D. levels...

...among 24-year-olds in the year 2001 who had a B.S. or B.A. degree, only five percent in the U.S. were engineers, compared to 39 percent in China and 19 percent or more in South Korea, Taiwan and Japan. If you look at the actual number of engineers...China is producing three times more than the United States...

Another disturbing trend is in the numbers of individuals receiving a Ph.D. in physical science and engineering. In 1987, 4,700 U.S. citizens received these degrees, compared to 5,600 Asians. In 2001, the U.S. figure had dropped slightly to 4,400 and the number of Asians had risen to 24,900...

Why are these figures important? Traditionally, it has been our technical human talent that has driven our industrial success. Basic science, technology, engineering and mathematics knowledge is vitally important in the business world...physical science and engineering capabilities at the Ph.D. level typically drive the kind of highly prized innovations that lead to the emergence of new industries. With expertise in these fields declining in the U.S. while rising in other parts of the world, we risk seeing our industrial leadership weaken...

One of the main reasons why U.S. production of science and engineering talent in universities is low in comparison to other countries is that U.S. K-12 math and science skill levels are quite weak. Note the data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) from the year 2000...scores of U.S. students across the 4th, 8th, and 12th grade levels are abysmal. For example, in science, only two percent of our 12th graders are rated advanced and only sixteen percent are rated proficient...Thirty-four percent of our 12th graders are only partially proficient in science, and almost half are below partial proficiency...

...the results of the International Math and Science Study. It rates the U.S. versus other countries and provides the percentile our students achieved. For example, in mathematics, our 12th graders rated at the 10th percentile. In other words, 90 percent of the countries did better than the U.S., and only 10 percent performed worse. While we do well in grade 4, we do mediocre in grade 8 and very poorly in grade 12...

Weak K-12 results in the U.S. are not a new problem. Twenty years ago, a famous report entitled "A Nation at Risk" was published and highlighted similar findings. Recently, the Koret Task Force of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University considered the failure of that report to bring about reform. The following is a key paragraph from their report summary:

"A Nation at Risk" underestimated the resistance to change from the organized interest of the K-12 public education system, at the center of which were two big teachers unions as well as school administrators, colleges of education, state bureaucracies, school boards, and many others. These groups see any changes beyond the most marginal as threats to their own jealously guarded power.

In light of this, we need the K-12 teaching community (the union leaders, the administrators and the teachers themselves) to take responsibility for the poor results they are achieving. We need them to get serious about accountability and teacher qualifications...We need them to implement the recommendation of the National Commission on Excellence, requiring three years of math and two years of science at the high school level. We need them to support new routes for teacher certification in order to increase the number of teachers qualified to teach math and science. We need them to ease their opposition to vouchers and charter schools, which will bring about the kind of competition that generates broad improvement. And we need them to stop promoting unprepared students to the next grade level.

Probably most important, the K-12 teaching community needs to implement good management practices, such as performance appraisal systems that identify superior teachers. It should then reward these top teachers with salary increases of 10 percent or more per year, leading to annual wages of over $100,000. Equally as important, it needs to isolate the bottom 5-7 percent of teachers, put them on probation, and – if no progress is made within a reasonable period – terminate them...

We need for the K-12 teaching community to take responsibility and implement these reforms in an urgent manner. If they do not, all of us in our individual communities need to hold that community to account. Failure to address our immense shortcomings in science and math education is unacceptable and will inevitably lead to the weakening of our nation.

A November 24, 2003 Wall Street Journal editorial entitled "Witness Protection for Teachers" (available here for a fee) shows how deep the problem is within American public education:

[New York City Councilwoman Eva] Moskowitz, a Democrat who heads the Council's education committee, recently held four days of hearings on the union rules and mandates that beleaguer New York's 1,200 schools and 1.1 million students. What she says she found is that "many of the rules are indefensible."...

Union officials...launched a media campaign to intimidate Ms. Moskowitz into canceling her unprecedented hearings...Many [teachers and principals] were willing to criticize the contracts privately, but most requests to testify were met with, "I'm not that brave," "I might be blacklisted," "Are you kidding?" and the like...Keep in mind these are teachers, not members of the mob.

The unions have operated for decades without public scrutiny or accountability, which has enabled them to impose work rules that any average person would recognize as...well, insane...

But the rules that most damage learning are those that give primacy to seniority for teachers. Seniority-based transfers...result in the most inexperienced teachers serving the most challenging schools. A seniority-based, lock-step compensation structure bans merit pay for the large majority of teachers who meet or exceed performance expectations. So teachers with high-demand skills...are pushed into the private sector, where they can be paid what they're worth...

The City Council lacks the power to change union work rules, but never underestimate the uses of public embarrassment.

Or, consider these excerpts from a February 25, 2004 Wall Street Journal editorial entitled "Paige's Point" (also available here for a fee):

A fact of political life today is that if you favor meaningful educational reform, you can automatically count yourself a political enemy of two groups: the teachers' unions that prefer the status quo and too many politicians who depend on them for financial support...

Teachers unions are among the most powerful lobbies in American public life. In political influence they rank alongside the Teamsters, the AARP and the NRA. And they use the exact same hardball tactics to try to get what they want, which in their case is to preserve their monopoly on public education.

The NEA has 2.7 million members from whom it collects hundreds of millions of dollars in involuntary dues and spends tens of millions on political activities, some 95% of which goes to Democrats. Its 1,800 designated political directors use an integrated command structure...to coordinate national, state and local activities for Democratic candidates...

It's easy to forget that all but 8% of education spending occurs at the state and local level, and that's where the teachers unions wield most of their power by pressuring legislatures, defeating state ballot initiatives, supporting campaigns and even getting their own members elected and appointed to education committees...

Back in Washington, NEA President Reg Weaver stands ready to describe any criticism of the union as an attack on public school teachers. "We are the teachers; there is no distinction"...the typical teacher, who earns a fraction of the $334,000 Mr. Weaver reportedly took home last year, may beg to differ...

"There are two big interesting education reform ideas in America today," says Chester Finn, a former Education Department official. "One involves standards and tests and accountability; the other involves competition and choice. The NEA is against both, and they will unflaggingly work to defeat both kinds of reform."

Terry Moe has written an extensive piece on how the teachers' unions operate:

Their influence takes two forms. First, they shape the schools from the bottom up, through collective bargaining activities that are so broad in scope that virtually every aspect of the schools is somehow affected. Second, they shape the schools from the top down, through political activities that give them unrivaled influence over the laws and regulations imposed on public education by government...teachers unions are...absolutely central to an understanding of America's public school. Despite their importance, the teachers unions have been poorly studied by education scholars...

A December 15, 2004 Wall Street Journal editorial entitled "America's C-" (available here for a fee) reinforces the mediocrity of America's public education system:

The report, conducted by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, tested the math, science, problem-solving and reading skills of 15-year-olds in 41 countries. Only a generation ago, U.S. high school students ranked No. 1. Today, their performance has fallen below the OECD average - except in reading, where Americans manage to eke out an "average."...Less publicized has been why U.S. scores are so low. The OECD researchers identified several key characteristics that most successful school systems share - namely, decentralization, competition and flexibility...schools are given a large degree of autonomy over curriculum and budget decisions...teachers...have a large degree of autonomy and responsibility, which leads in turn to a high degree of professionalism. It is not simply a matter of renumeration. Teachers in Finland get paid relatively little, but...there is a strong professional ethos and teachers routinely exchange experience to improve their skills...

With an ever-higher percentage of the work force expected to be employed in knowledge-based industries, school reform is a question of U.S. economic survival...

If we want to maintain our standard of living, we'd better change...

Can genuine reform be achieved? Consider the following success story in an article from The American Enterprise:

While New York City public schools face an epic shortage of good teachers, many private schools in the Big Apple have no trouble attracting candidates. The School of Columbia, for instance, received 1,700 applications for 39 teaching positions in its first year of operation...

Unlike public schools, the School of Columbia does not offer tenure; there is no union; there is no guaranteed salary increase each year; how much teachers make depends on their performance, not their seniority; teachers are expected to come in early, stay late, and show up on weekends to do their job well; and there are no guaranteed breaks during the day.

Those do-what-it-takes-to-succeed expectations are standard in most of white-collar America today...

Offering merit pay means you also have to give teachers enough flexibility to distinguish themselves. The curriculum at Columbia includes a set of skills and "key facts" that students at each grade level must master, but teachers are allowed to use their own individual methods to get students to that point. If their method doesn't work, all the seniority in the world won't get them a promotion. And the fact that half the kids come from a depressed inner-city neighborhood is not accepted as an excuse for failure.

Teacher assessments are done every year or two. Every instructor must put together a portfolio demonstrating student progress, including test results, videos of students reading aloud, student performances, etc. A peer evaluation team sits in on several classes and submits recommendations. School administrators consider all this information and then make a final decision.

The world of public education could be so different - and better. We are paying a huge price for such mediocrity - by limiting people's access to the American Dream and by putting our nation's leadership position in the world at risk.

Why do we continue to tolerate such nonsense?