Education in America Gets an F -- Again

by Herbert I. London
May 17, 2010 at 4:00 am

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/1196/education-in-america-gets-an-f-again

Recently the American College Testing [ACT], an independent organization that provides assessment, research and program management in broad areas of education, issued a statement on the "essentials for college and career readiness."

It found what evaluators of education in the United States have been saying for decades: Despite an enormous per capita national expenditure for education, exceeded only by Switzerland, "high school learning standards are still not sufficiently aligned with postsecondary expectations."

Across the curriculum, college instructors and high school teachers differ on the level of preparation for college assignments, with many more high school teachers than college instructors reporting that graduates are prepared.

At the same time, while college math and science instructors agree that reading is one of the most important skills needed for success in this century, "overwhelming majorities of them report spending little or no time teaching reading strategies in their courses."

Findings indicate that students are shortchanged in high school and post-secondary courses, despite many high school teachers believing that their students are adequately prepared for higher education. There is still a huge disparity between skill-level and performance-expectations.

To address this concern, the ACT contends that high schools should focus on fewer - but essential - college and career readiness conditions, and that a rigorous core curriculum should be mandated for all high school graduates. These recommendations have been advocated for at least half a century. The key question is: Why haven't these recommendations been put into practice if everyone - or almost everyone - knows what should be done?

There are several factors that might account for this state of affairs:

- Student readiness is not related to faculty compensation. Worse, merit pay, which could be related to readiness, is consistently opposed by the teachers' union.

- Relatively little time is spent on "hard subjects" such as math and science. The curriculum is more a mirror of national social conditions. If there are fatalities on our highways, driver education is encouraged. When rates of illegitimacy rise, sex education is emphasized. As rates of drug abuse accelerate, drug education is introduced.

And, of course, political correctness crosses all disciplines, even the sciences.

In most high schools, there are pep rallies prior to the Friday night football game; announcements of various kinds during the school day and, of course, the required weekly assembly program.

Additionally, distractions prevail. Texting is widespread; there are also video games, e-mails, Facebook, sororities, fraternities, parties, television programs that trump study.

Further, high school teachers are among the most marginal students in their college classes. Although there are superb teachers, the profession lacks the prestige that accompany other professions.

Last, perhaps most noteworthy, is the nation's social life. Divorce, illegitimacy and various forms of social deviancy have so disrupted home life that mom at the kitchen table with cookies and milk at 3 pm is as rare as two-dollar bills. Mom is probably working; no one is there to guide Johnny and Mary when they return from school except Oprah Winfrey. Homework is for autodidacts: most teachers do not even count on homework assignments, a bygone vestige of education in another era.

The "Leave It To Beaver" family is buried, and with it, attention to student performance. Parents may have expectations for their children, but the conditions necessary to achieve these goals are lacking. Schools do not concentrate on subjects that matter: distractions make learning a chore and the social structures that aided educational accomplishment are in trouble.

Clearly the ACT should be commended for pointing out what should be done to improve educational performance, but we have heard all these claims before. Until there is recognition of what our problems are, there will be many more reports in our future, but little progress in student achievement.

Herbert London is president of Hudson Institute and professor emeritus of New York University. He is the author of Decade of Denial (Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2001) and America's Secular Challenge (Encounter Books).

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