- In 2006, the Program For International Student Assessment (PISA) conducted their tri-annual study of educational attainment by fifteen year old kids from fifty seven nations.
- In science literacy, the United States finished below the overall average and trailed the scores of kids from twenty two other nations.
- In mathematics literacy, the U.S. finished well below the overall average and trailed the scores of kids from thirty one other nations.
- Countries such as Estonia, Slovenia, and Macao finished higher than the U.S. in both categories.
The output from the graph was based on the work of Stanford economist Eric Hanushek and two others. They were very careful to accurately adjust and slice the raw data from the testing that was done to exclude the impact of the following factors, factors that had been used as excuses for the poor performance of American kids in the past:
• They only looked at math test scores since math is math, it is not affected by language or culture, as much as language skills.
• They adjusted for household income and wealth using reliable proxies.
• They adjusted for whether or not the there was a college educated parent in the child's household.
• They adjusted for whether or not there was a race impact.
• They adjusted for how much each state spends per student in their states' public schools.
The bottom line conclusion after trying to look at the data from every conceivable angle? Now matter how you cut it, the United States does a horrid job of preparing public school students for proficiency in math. How bad is it:
• Only 6% of U.S. 15 year olds performed at an advanced proficiency in math.
• This places them behind 30 other nations including Estonia, Lithuania, Slovenia, and Slovakia, far poorer countries.
• The top three performing countries, Korea, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, had about four times as many of their students performing at high math proficiency.
• Only two states, Massachusetts and Minnesota, had more than 10% of their kids performing at high levels which were behind sixteen other nations.
• New York state, which spends the most on public education per student, $17,000 per year per student, had only 6.3% of their students perform at high proficiency, trailing 30 countries and 15 other U.S. states.
• A 2010 study found a very high correlation between how well teachers are trained and how well students perform. In the United States, researchers tested 3,300 middle school math teachers-to-be in almost 40 states. They found that these future math teachers performed at about the same levels of would be teachers in Oman and Thailand and far behind teachers in Taiwan and Singapore. (Note: for Thailand, only 1% of their 15 year olds perform at a high proficiency level in math; for Oman, it was not even listed in the graph discussed above).
Pathetic, much like other parts of our government and political class, we spend and waste a lot of taxpayer dollars for very mediocre results. And I know of no plans by the Federal Education Department to fix any aspect of this poor performance and none was mentioned in the lengthy article.
But these poor test results should not be a surprise to anyone in the political class or in the industry if educating our kids. Consider a quote from a Reagan expert panel from 1983, the National Commission On Excellence In Education, that was commissioned to study the failure of public education in American almost three decades ago:
"The education foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a tide of mediocrity that threatens our future as a nation and as a people."
The commission produced a detailed blueprint on how to remedy the deficiencies in public education, circa 1983.
Fast forward ahead to 2012 and we see that the entire Federal political class and the Federal Education Department has failed miserably to fix a thirty year old crises, even though they had a custom, detailed blueprint on how to do it. After three years, it is also pretty apparent that the Obama administration will be no better or more motivated to fix this national disgrace than all of the Congresses and Presidents since 1983.
The nation cannot afford to wait another thirty years to see if the political class can eventually get around to solving the problem with a top down, Washington-centric approach. The rest of the world is advancing faster and faster when it comes to modernization and education. We cannot expect to remain a world leader across the board if we continue to allow countries like Estonia, Slovenia, and Macao to out educate our kids.
Thus, we need a serious, coherent upheaval to the education process in this country if we expect anything to change and we stop wasting about $70 billion a year via the Federal Education Department. Such an upheaval would include the following principles:
- Within four years, the Federal government would be totally out of the education process in the United States. After thirty years of failure, the Federal political class, government, and Education Department no longer deserve to spend $70 billion a year with nothing in return.
- In year one, most of the $70 billion budget would be directed to each state in block grants to improve their state and local education processes. In the second year, the $70 billion would be reduced by one third to about $46 billion which would also be block granted to the states. In the third year the states would get one third less, or about $26 billion, to improve their local and state education processes.
- After the fourth year, the states would be on their own, but in a much better position to improve their own schools and education processes.
- The savings from eliminating the Federal Education Department would be set aside to either reduce the national debt or would be rebated back to taxpayers. Under no conditions would the savings be allowed to flow back to the political class in Congress and the White House to be wasted like the sitting politicians would almost certainly do.
- In ten years, the Federal government's spending would be reduced by more than half a TRILLION dollars under plan, reducing our deficit spending habit. In the next ten years, we would have permanently removed about $700 billion from the government's expense stream.
- The state and local school officials could use the block grants for any number of purposes including updating education supplies, updating and enhancing current teachers' teaching abilities, enhancing and improving the education curriculums at the state's universities, exploring non-traditional teaching approaches (home schooling, remote teaching, charter schools, etc.), updating technology capabilities, and refurbishing school infrastructure.
- The conditions of receiving the block grant money would include 1) the elimination of traditional teacher tenure programs (i.e., jobs for life regardless of teaching ability and effort), replacing it with an approved performance review process, 2) the money could not be used to increase teacher salaries since this effort is to improve the teaching environment, not the teaching salary structure, 3) the money could not be used to increase the salaries of current administrators or increase the number of administrators and 4) the number of non-teaching staff in a school would have to be below approved thresholds before the money would be granted.
- High performing domestic schools and foreign countrys' schools would be extensively benchmarked and investigated to identify why successful schools, both in the United States and across the world, are successful while most of our pubic schools are not. These benchmark studies would be compiled into a blueprint for success and be made available to local and state school entities for incorporation into their respective teaching processes.
These are definitely radical changes. But what other approaches are viable? Business as usual just continues the current process of under educating our kids. Business as usual wastes of $70 billion for little in return. Business as usual allows the political class to have another political football to pass around and eventually fumble. Business as usual does not work.
This approach makes for better trained teachers, better training of teachers, better teacher performance reviews, better teaching facilities and equipment, better curriculums, and benchmarks for excellence against the best in the United States and in the rest if the world. The nation's resources are much closer to the source of the problem without the inefficiencies, waste, ineffectiveness, and bureaucracy of the Federal government.
Taking the Federal government and the politicians that operate it out of the education equation has to be better than what we have today. The above plan gives us at least a fighting chance of catching Estonia, Slovenia, and Macao when it comes to giving our kids a better education.
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” Albert Einstein
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The United States Of Purple's website also provides you the formal opportunity to sign a petition to begin the process of implementing a Constitutional amendment to impose fixed term limits on all Federally elected politicians. Only by turning out the existing political class can we have a chance of addressing and finally resolving the major issues of or times.
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http://www.reason.com/
http://www.repealamendment
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