This is the third in the series of comments on the “reform” narrative by a reader who calls himself or herself “Democracy.”

Here Democracy explains the “reform that reformers don’t want.”

Part 3:

Hanushek, and people who cite him, say that American economic competitiveness is dependent on school “reform.” Hanushek cites economist Robert Lucas to bolster his contention. Lucas is the prototypical free market conservative who subscribes to and believes in “supply-side policies.” Lucas thinks that the economy has slowed due to “ fiscal policy that threatens higher taxes on the rich, and promises higher spending on programs like healthcare,” even though the U.S. has the biggest – by far – income stratification gap in the developed world, now spends far MORE on health care than any other developed nation, and the Congressional Budget Office says the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 will help to reduce health care spending and decrease the deficit. Lucas said economists who supported President Obama’s stimulus package “were either incompetent (“schlock economics” was the phrase) or corrupt.”

Not surprisingly, both Robert Lucas and Eric Hanushek signed onto 2008 Republican presidential candidate John McCain’s plans to make the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 permanent and to reduce corporate income taxes

Eric Hanushek has written that “if we could replace the bottom 5%-10% of teachers with an average teacher—not a superstar—we could dramatically improve student achievement. The U.S. could move from below average in international comparisons to near the top.” And, American economic competitiveness would be restored (with those trillions and trillions of dollars added to the economy). But Hanushek’ assertions don’t seem to add up. Maybe because they’re just made up; they’re not true.

The World Economic Forum (WEF) ranks nations each year on their economic competitiveness. When the U.S. drops, the WEF cites things like “a number of escalating weaknesses,” including poor business “auditing and reporting standards,” declining “corporate ethics,” “repeated fiscal deficits,” and unsustainable public debt. The WEF notes that “mapping out a clear exit strategy will be an important step in reinforcing the country’s competitiveness going into the future.”

This year (2012-13) the WEF dropped the U.S. to 7th place, citing problems like “increasing inequality and youth unemployment” and, environmentally, “the United States is among the countries that have ratified the fewest environmental treaties.“ The WEF noted that in the U.S.,”the business community continues to be critical toward public and private institutions” and “trust in politicians is not strong.” Political dysfunction has led to “a lack of macroeconomic stability” that “continues to be the country’s greatest area of weakness.”

People like Hanushek place the blame and burden on public schools, though they had absolutely nothing to do with the Great Recession, deficits and debt, and job losses. The new mantra is “Common Core.” The U.S. Chamber of Commerce says that ““Common core academic standards among the states are essential” toU.S. competitiveness. The Business Roundtable resurrects the “rising tide of mediocrity” myth of A Nation at Risk, saying (falsely) that “Since the release of A Nation at Risk in 1983, it has been increasingly clear that…academic expectations for American students have not been high enough.” Sadly Arne Duncan parrots what they say. So too do most mainstream education “reporters,” if they can be called that.

In plain speak, alleviating poverty and its pernicious effects, and providing children with high quality environments before they get to school, and following up with health and academic and social policy programs while they are in school, result not only in high-quality education but also in a high-quality citizenry….and in promoting the general welfare of the nation. This is surely not what the “reformers” want. It might – it will – require a cessation to their gaming of the “markets” and the tax system.

The public education system in a democratic republic is supposed to develop and nurture democratic character and citizenship. That’s the kind of reform we need.

But it’s exactly the kind of reform the “reformers” don’t want.

A reader who calls himself or herself “Democracy” sent in a three-part commentary, posted a couple weeks back in the Comments.

This is part 2.

“Democracy” writes:

There’s no nuance, or explanation, in Lawrence’s piece. None whatsoever.
She says nothing about the pernicious effects of poverty, which affect (primarily) minority students ins the U.S. She states simply that “These shortcomings take their toll on the economy. And then she cites economist Eric Hanushek, of all people, to “explain” the ties between education and the economy (as if he knows).

Eric Hanushek is a conservative economist. He touts all of the conservative, corporate-style “reform” ideas for public education: school vouchers, more standardized testing, valued-added teacher evaluations, and “accountability.” There is little if any research to support these initiatives (and much to reject them), but that never gets in the way of Hanushek (or his brethren).

Hanushek has been caught fudging (and this is the polite term for it) his “research” on class size and achievement. He dismissed the results of Project STAR –– the rigorous, well-designed Tennessee state study that found significant achievement gains as a result of small class size in early elementary grades –– because “the kids were not tested before the program began,” that is, BEFORE they even entered kindergarten.

Hanushek has said that we have to stick with the “reforms” of No Child left Behind, because even if those “reforms” have yet to yield much, if any, of a return on the huge increases in time and money spent on the “accountability” of high-stakes testing, “over 75 years even a reform that takes effect in 20 year… yields a real GDP that is 36 percent higher ” than without “reform.” Hanushek even makes the claim that gains as small as 0.08 standard deviations result in (as Jay Mathews of The Post described it) “trillions of dollars more in the gross domestic production.”

If that’s the case (and it isn’t), then why have achievement gains over the last three decades, at the same time that the student population has become much more diverse, not led to robust economic growth, healthy budgets and well-funded social programs, and prosperity for all citizens in this country?

[Note: Hanushek makes the extraordinary statement that “Bringing all countries up to the average performance of Finland, OECD’s best performing education system in PISA, would result in gains in the order of USD 260 trillion.” Of course, what Finland does educationally to attain its achievement scores is antithetical to Hanushek’s conservative ideological dogma, and is directly contrary to the kinds of “reforms” he supports.]

A reader who calls himself or herself “Democracy” has written an interesting series of comments on the current attacks on public education and their sources.

Here is Part 1:

Robert Samuelson’s column is a prime example of poor-quality economics reporting. I wrote previously on this blog about about the sorry state of education reporting in the U.S.

See: https://dianeravitch.net/2013/08/31/david-coleman-the-most-influential-man-in-u-s-education/comment-page-1/#comments

Now comes another egregiously-bad example, linking education “reform” and economic competitiveness. Lee Lawrence at the Christian Science Monitor has the lead piece, titled “Education Solutions from Abroad,” in “cover story project” that purports to outline “global lessons for American schools.”

Lawrence’s first paragraph notes that students are heading back to school “amid an intensifying debate as shrill with urgency as the bell urging them to their desks: how to ensure that they will be able to compete in a global market when they graduate.”

Here’s the beginning of her second paragraph:

“Study after study in recent years suggests that American children fall well behind kids from Seoul to Helsinki, putting them at a great disadvantage in an increasingly knowledge-driven and global economy. The United States ranked 30th in mathematics literacy, 20th in science, and 14th in reading in the 2009 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), a test administered every three years by theOrganization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)”

See:http://www.csmonitor.com/World/2013/0901/Education-solutions-from-abroad-for-chronic-U.S.-school-problems

Reading is considered to be a key to learning and school achievement. Let’s see what the data really show. Below are 2009 PISA reading scores (disaggregated for the U.S., which has an incredibly large, diverse, and increasingly poor student population:

Average score, reading literacy, PISA, 2009:
[United States, Asian students 541]
Korea 539
Finland 536
[United States, white students 525]
Canada 524
New Zealand 521
Japan 520
Australia 515
Netherlands 508
Belgium 506
Norway 503
Estonia 501
Switzerland 501
Poland 500
Iceland 500
United States (overall) 500
Sweden 497
Germany 497
Ireland 496
France 496
Denmark 495
United Kingdom 494
Hungary 494
OECD average 493
Portugal 489
Italy 486
Slovenia 483
Greece 483
Spain 481
Czech Republic 478
Slovak Republic 477
Israel 474
Luxembourg 472
Austria 470
[United States, Hispanic students 466]
Turkey 464
Chile 449
[United States, black students 441]
Mexico 425

[Note: data can be gleaned athttp://nces.ed.gov/surveys/pisa/pisa2009highlights.asp ]