More Reasons To Dump The Federal Education Department

Every time you turn around recently it seems you come across some news report or research report that reinforces the reality that the public education process in this country is badly broken, at least relative to the rest of the world. The latest bad news was summarized in an article from The Atlantic, written by Amanda Ripley, that appeared in the December 26, 2010 issue of the St. Petersburg Times. The main feature in the article was a bar chart that displayed the percentage of 15 year olds performing at the advanced level in math proficiency many countries, including the United States, and every one of our fifty states.

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.

However, although the picture is dismal, there were some small rays of light. Some states are taking long overdue, but solid action:

• Massachusetts made it harder to become a teacher in that state, tightening up the qualifications to teach in their state. They implemented a literacy test for new teachers that had to be passed before these teachers would be allowed into the classroom. The first year of the test, more than a third of the test takers failed.
• Massachusetts required all students to pass a  test before being able to graduate. Although it was met with fierce opposition, it required students to actually be educated before they got their diploma. Those that were having problems were provided tutors to help bring them up to speed.
• The District Of Columbia and and dozens of states reached agreement earlier this year to adapt common standards for what kids should be able to know in math and language arts, standards that were based on what successes other high performing countries are achieving.

The common thread in these small rays of light is the fact that the states have initiated these improvement programs, the Federal government and ruling political class are nowhere to be found in the improvement area. It is the states that are beginning to address the education problem and understanding root causes:

• High budgets do not necessarily make for smart kids.
• Poor teachers do not make for smart kids.
• Poor teacher training to not make for smart kids.
• Not having teacher, administration, and student accountability and proficiency testing do not make for smart kids.
• The Federal Education Department, and whatever they have been spending their annual budget on, does not make for smart kids.

But when has the political class and the Federal government ever done a root cause analysis of a problem? They certainly did not do it for Obama Care, they have not done it for the high unemployment rate, and they have not done it for any other major issue facing the country (immigration, energy policy, skyrocketing debt, etc.) so why expect them to start now. Three steps are needed to fix this national disgrace:

1. First, eliminate the Education Department and return its budget to the respective states. At least some of them are beginning to understand the root causes and take appropriate action, something the Federal government has never done.
2. Implement Step 27 from "Love My Country, Loathe My Government," which would build on some of the cooperative work already done by some of the states. This step would put together a blue ribbon commission of various subject matters experts in many fields, sans politicians and lobbyists, and pull together the necessary analyses, research, and smart thinking Americans, to finally leverage everything we know and what we can learn from others, and finally get education right in this country.
3. Step 34 would force all Congressional members who currently sit on any Congressional committee that deals with public education to step down from their committee posts and be replaced by others. In any other endeavor outside of politics, athletics, the private sector, etc., these so-called leaders would have been removed from their posts long ago for this type of disgraceful performance of our kids' education. Politics should be no different, you don't do the job, you don't hold the job.

I am not saying to axe the Education department blindly just to cut budget. I am saying axe it because if this is the kind of performance we are getting thirty years and trillions of dollars after the Department was established, we have been had.



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