|
| Click to Go Back |
Throwing the Book at Education Myths
By Eric Wearne
In the spirit of school accountability, here’s a short test that may help highlight the level of proficiency education policy-makers have concerning American public schools.
Which of the following statements is true?
Actually, the answer is: none of the above. Jay Greene, Manhattan Institute senior fellow and head of the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas, makes that eminently clear in his new book, “Education Myths: What Special-Interest Groups Want You to Believe About Our Schools and Why it Isn't So.”
As he reviews current opinion and research on 18 education policy issues, Greene works to dispel these widely held views for two reasons: because they harm children and prevent public schools from improving, and because the evidence simply doesn’t back them up. Four of the misconceptions Greene takes on highlight the book’s mission.
The Myth of Decline: Many people believe that schools are getting worse and worse. Actually, student achievement hasn’t declined over the past 30 years. It’s remained flat. Scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), the SAT and graduation rates have all been relatively stable since 1970.
This sounds like better-than-expected news at first. Then Greene reminds us that to keep that level of achievement, spending on education has multiplied in that period. Scores may not be declining but schools, as measured by testing and graduation outcomes, have become much less productive.
Even if decline is a myth, however, “It is one thing to say that our schools have not strayed from an earlier path of greatness,” says Greene, “and quite another to ask whether the level of performance they have consistently displayed is a good or even acceptable level.” In other words, it may well be that our schools haven’t gotten worse, but we should still ask whether they’re doing as well as we’d like.
The Money Myth: Starting from zero dollars, increased spending will, of course, help improve schools. But it seems we’ve long since passed the point of diminishing returns on school spending. Greene cites the National Center for Education Statistics, which shows inflation-adjusted spending on students averaged $4,479 in 1970 but was $8,745 in 2001. With student achievement flat over that time, the question should be how this money is being used.
One change in the structure and climate of American schools over the past 10 to 15 years, and especially since the passage of No Child Left Behind, is the introduction of high-stakes tests that have real consequences for schools. Believers in the “High-Stakes Myth” assert that such tests are not credible due to cheating or “teaching to the test,” so holding schools accountable for their results is not meaningful.
Greene cites two forms of teaching to the test: browbeating students, forcing them to memorize facts they forget as soon as the test is over. This is clearly not good. The other – adopting a deep, rigorous curriculum, following content standards and ensuring that every student can understand and interpret questions based on this content – would do a lot to prepare more students with background knowledge and a work ethic that will serve them well in their future endeavors.
Greene also explores several school choice myths. Critics often argue that school choice could work, but is risky and its effectiveness hasn’t been proven. But of every random-assignment experiment (the most-reliable design) conducted to date on school choice programs, all but one showed positive results for students; the other showed positive, but statistically insignificant results. None showed negative results.
The evidence shows that school choice programs produce positive testing results for students enrolled in them as well as students who remain in traditional public schools. Other benefits include improvements in civic participation and tolerance and more racial integration, Greene points out.
Greene clearly sets out not to bash public schools but to point out how they could serve their students much better. First, however, education leaders must get behind the facts instead of honing in on the opinions of some special interests. The underlying problem with many education policy reforms, in his opinion, is the policy-makers and interest groups that won’t accept that hopes and unsupported beliefs don’t create better schools; positive, well-planned and well-researched actions do.
Perhaps his most important point is taken from Economics 101 and the common sense of every hardworking American: Incentives matter, as much in education as in any aspect of society.
“Education Myths” reinforces the need to eliminate the myth-laden discussions on education policy reform in America and focus on the high-quality evidence. And, “The power of incentives to change behavior, and therefore to improve outcomes when properly harnessed and to harm outcomes when improperly aligned, is a pattern that emerges across the whole body of evidence in education,” Greene writes.
At the risk of teaching to the test, the take-away message from the book, again, is this: Incentives matter. And, in an exception to the rule, browbeating this simple message into education policy-makers would do a lot to improve America’s public schools.
© Georgia Public Policy Foundation (October 28, 2005). Permission to reprint in whole or in part is hereby granted, provided the author and his affiliations are cited.