Mitt Romney is out on the campaign trail, pushing vouchers and charters and online learning and for-profit schools and larger class size as the answers to our “failing” public schools.
I wish someone would give him some actual facts to work with. Are our schools failing? No, they are not.
According to the latest federal data, the high school graduation rate is now at the highest point in our history for every group: for white students, black students, Hispanic students, low-income students, middle-income students, and high-income students.
According to the National Assessment of Education Progress, test scores in reading and math are at their highest point in our history. Forgive me if I quote an earlier blog from this site:
“Proficient [on NAEP] is akin to a solid A. In reading, the proportion who were proficient in fourth grade reading rose from 29% in 1992 to 34% in 2011. The proportion proficient in eighth grade also rose from 29% to 34% in those years. In math, the proportion in fourth grade who were proficient rose from 18% to 40% in the past twenty years, an absolutely astonishing improvement. In eighth grade, the proportion proficient in math went from 21% in 1992 to an amazing 35% in 2011.”
“When the scores are broken out by race, you can really see dramatic progress, especially in math. In 1992, 80% of black students in fourth grade were below basic. By 2011, that proportion had dropped to 49%. Among white students in fourth grade math, the proportion below basic fell in that time period from 40% to only 16%.”
“The changes in reading scores are not as dramatic as in math, but they are nonetheless impressive. In fourth grade, the proportion of black students who were below basic in 1992 was 68%; by 2011, it was down to 51%. In eighth grade, the proportion of black students who were reading below basic was 55%; that had fallen to 41% by 2011.”
These numbers tell a story not of failing schools, but of steady–and in some cases, very impressive–progress.
Should we do better? Of course. But people don’t do a better job if you keep telling them (falsely) that they are failing. It is important to acknowledge success if you want to keep moving forward.
Mitt Romney tried pushing his education policies at a charter school in West Philadelphia. He probably thought that what he was offering would be greeted with cheers, but he looked very foolish when he told his audience that class size didn’t matter.
Steven Morris, a music teacher at the school, said: “I can’t think of any teacher in the whole time I’ve been teaching, over 10 years — 13 years — who would say that more students would benefit them. And I can’t think of a parent that would say ‘I would like my kid to be in a room with a lot of kids,’” Morris said. “So I’m kind of wondering where this research comes from.”
Romney knew better than the teacher, it seems, because he cited a study by McKinsey saying that class size doesn’t matter. No doubt, he also had heard the same from his stable of uber-conservative think tank experts.
Had Romney consulted a wider body of research, he would have known that class size does matter.
Had he thought about the choices he made for his own children, he would have not been so foolish as to suggest that class size doesn’t matter. I don’t know where they went to school, but I have read that they were educated in private schools. I am willing to bet they had class sizes of 12-18. (A reader informs me–see comments below–that the Romney children attended an elite school where average class size was 12. Wonder how that would work in the public schools of Detroit, Cleveland, Fresno, Philadelphia, and Baltimore?)
Why would Romney propose that children who need as much or more attention as his own children should get less?
Diane
It is we, as a society, who are “failing” education. Thanks for this post. The “failing” meme is something I’ve blogged about too (http://audsandens.blogspot.com/2011/08/failing-public-schools.html) and is something we should all be doing our best to dismiss.
Across the board in every grade, social promotion is higher than it has ever been. In the high school level, students merely take “credit recovery” classes to pass courses they either didn’t attend, or did none of the work. I spoke to a HS principal the other day who vehemently complained about the lack of preparedness of incoming freshmen from middle school. This is mostly the fault of the “Ed reformers” who use grad rates as a standard to assess the quality of their efforts to date. They started with this nonsense when their testing scams failed. Again,,the next time you hear Bloomberg or any other brag about “grad rates” KNOW you are being scammed. If teachers were allowed to fail those that deserved it….the grad rates would be MUCH lower. Currently, principals make deals with individual teachers on percentage of flunks they can give. So, even those not taking credit recovery are being propped up. So, this worship of “data” is only worsening the quality of public Ed.
Agreed. Campbell’s Law rules.
“The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor.”
Using graduation rates as a measure of success will encourage people to game the graduation rates and to give diplomas to unprepared students. Thus, in New York City, the graduation rate is rising, but 80% of the graduates who enroll in local community colleges require remediation.
NAEP scores are hard to game, however, because no one knows who will take the test, nor can they prep for it.
Diane
Romney kids went to Belmont Hills School – average class size -12. of course.
Why is “ed reform” the one occurence of agreement between the two major Presidential candidates? Do we get to look forward to them trying to “out-reform” each other on the backs of students and teachres?
If Obama had not built his education policy on top of NCLB, he could argue with Romney. But the only point of disagreement between them in K-12 policy is vouchers.
Diane
sorry – should’ve been teachers.
So you’re saying there has been amazing progress during the era of increased competition and accountability.
No, the greatest gains were made before NCLB. The rate of progress slowed after NCLB was put into place.
The greatest gains for blacks occurred in 1970s and 1980s, before there was any accountability system at all. See Paul Barton, “The Black-White Achievement Gap.”
[…] My first thought was that Russ might be responding to my blog lacerating Mitt Romney’s education plan in the New York Review of Books. It went online that very morning, about four hours before I got Russ’s email. Russ is an adviser to the Romney campaign on education issues. Would he react that quickly? Then I remembered that I had written two other pieces critical of Romney on my own blog, the first appearing on May 25. […]