Back in 1983 the economy was not particularly healthy, and
countries such as Japan and Germany seemed to have passed us by
economically. Someone had to be at
fault. A group was convened during
Reagan’s administration to determine how our education system could be the
problem. This group issued a document
titled A Nation at Risk. One of
the conclusions of the report was that average SAT (Scholastic Aptitude
Test—used for college admission) scores had been falling for a considerable
period; therefore our schools are failing us and putting our national security
at risk. This is just what Republican
politicians wanted to hear. They wanted
to be able to blame liberals for all the nation’s troubles and they wanted to
divert the massive education funding devoted to public schools in a more
conservative direction.
Since this report was issued the propaganda machines of
political parties and varied moneyed interests have propagated the notion that
public schools are heading steadily downhill and taking our students with
them. The problem with this story is
that the conclusion of the report was false.
Whether from malice or stupidity, the authors performed a statistical
analysis that would have received an F grade in any of the public schools they
had criticized. It is well-known that
SAT scores correlate closely with parental income. Once college attendance was a benefit
reserved mainly for the financially well-off.
As time went on college attendance became available to many more people
of lower financial status. As a
consequence, the average SAT score began to drop. But did this mean that the schools were
falling in performance?
It is possible for average scores to drop for a given
population while scores for all subgroups within the population are rising
provided the population of the subgroups is changing. For some reason, a group of scientists in the
Department of Energy (DOE) was asked to reevaluate the data considered in the A Nation at Risk report. When the students were broken into groups by
income level, the scientists showed that all income groups were actually
improving in performance over time—exactly the result a healthy school system
should be providing. However, the DOE
study did not provide the desired answer and the report was buried, only to
appear in an obscure publication years later.
More on this topic can be found here
and here.
The net result has been decades of sniping at traditional
public schools and the teachers who work in them. One of the latest to bemoan this situation is
Erika Christakis in an article for The
Atlantic. The piece was titled The War on Public Schools in the paper
edition and changed to Americans Have Given Up on Public Schools. That’s a Mistake for the online version.
Christakis describes the low esteem granted to our public
schools and then provides some needed perspective.
“….contempt for our public
schools is commonplace. Americans, and especially Republicans, report that they
have lost faith in the system, but notably, nearly three-quarters of parents
rate their own child’s school highly; it’s other people’s schools they worry
about.”
“….Americans tend to exaggerate
our system’s former glory. Even in the 1960s, when international science and
math tests were first administered, the U.S. was never at the top of the
rankings and was often near the bottom.”
“Since the early 1970s, when the Department of Education began collecting
long-term data, average reading and math scores for 9- and 13-year-olds have
risen significantly.”
“These gains have come even as the student body of American public schools
has expanded to include students with ever greater challenges. For the first
time in recent memory, a majority of U.S. public-school students come from
low-income households. The student body includes a larger proportion than ever
of students who are still learning to speak English. And it includes many
students with disabilities who would have been shut out of public school before
passage of the 1975 law now known as the Individuals With Disabilities Education
Act, which guaranteed all children a ‘free appropriate public education’.”
Perhaps the
worst of the anti-public-education invective is directed at teachers’ unions.
“In 2004, Rod Paige, then George
W. Bush’s secretary of education, called the country’s leading teachers union a
‘terrorist organization’.”
“Our secretary of education,
Betsy DeVos, has repeatedly signaled her support for school choice and
privatization, as well as her scorn for public schools, describing them as a ‘dead
end’ and claiming that unionized teachers ‘care more about a system, one that
was created in the 1800s, than they care about individual students’.”
Teachers and their unions are an easy target for assigning
blame.
“Our lost faith in public
education has led us to other false conclusions, including the conviction that
teachers unions protect “bad apples.” Thanks to articles and documentaries such
as Waiting for ‘Superman,’ most of us
have an image seared into our brain of a slew of know-nothing teachers, removed
from the classroom after years of sleeping through class, sitting in
state-funded ‘rubber rooms’ while continuing to draw hefty salaries. If it
weren’t for those damned unions, or so the logic goes, we could drain the dregs
and hire real teachers.”
Christakis exults in referencing a study that actually
demonstrates that school systems with strong unions do a better job of
maintaining teacher quality than weak or nonunionized systems. They do this by
campaigning for higher wages that attract better teachers. The higher wages make the tolerance of poor
teachers more expensive, thus encouraging them to eliminate subpar performers
before they gain tenure. Besides
encouraging the dismissal of the weaker teachers, the higher wages encourage
the good performers to stay on the job. These results are derived from the work
of Eunice S. Han: The Myth of Unions' Overprotection of Bad Teachers: Evidence from the District-Teacher Matched Panel Data on Teacher Turnover.
Han provided a long and detailed study.. A succinct summary is more easily accessible
in an interview of Han that was reproduced in a Washington Post piece by Valerie Strauss: Think teachers can’t be fired because of unions? Surprising results from new study.
When asked to describe her results, Han provided these
comments.
“By demanding higher salaries
for teachers, unions give school districts a strong incentive to dismiss
ineffective teachers before they get tenure. Highly unionized districts dismiss
more bad teachers because it costs more to keep them. Using three different
kinds of survey data from the National Center for Education Statistics, I
confirmed that unionized districts dismiss more low-quality teachers than those
with weak unions or no unions. Unionized districts also retain more
high-quality teachers relative to district with weak unionism. No matter how
and when I measured unionism I found that unions lowered teacher attrition.
This is important because many studies have found that higher-quality teachers
have a greater chance of leaving the profession. Since unionized districts
dismiss more bad teachers while keeping more good teachers, we should expect to
observe higher teacher quality in highly unionized districts than less-unionized
districts — and this is exactly what I found. Highly unionized districts
have more qualified teachers compared to districts with weak unionism.”
When asked about the four states that had restricted or
eliminated collective bargaining for teachers in 2011 and whether that offered
data to support her results, Han had this reply.
“Indiana, Idaho, Tennessee and
Wisconsin all changed their laws in 2010-2011, dramatically restricting the
collective bargaining power of public-school teachers. After that, I was able
to compare what happened in states where teachers’ bargaining rights were
limited to states where there was no change. If you believe the argument that
teachers unions protect bad teachers, we should have seen teacher quality rise
in those states after the laws changed. Instead I found that the opposite
happened. The new laws restricting bargaining rights in those four states
reduced teacher salaries by about 9 percent. That’s a huge number. A 9 percent
drop in teachers’ salaries is unheard of. Lower salaries mean that districts
have less incentive to sort out better teachers, lowering the dismissal rate of
underperforming teachers, which is what you saw happen in the those four states.
Lower salaries also encouraged high-quality teachers to leave the teaching
sector, which contributed to a decrease of teacher quality.”
If highly unionized systems produce better teachers, then
there should be evidence in student performance. When asked about this Han had this reply.
“Since there’s currently no data
on student performance by school district levels with nationally representative
samples, I use high-school dropout rates as a measure of student achievement.
My study found that unions reduce the dropout rates of districts. This is where
my study differs from some earlier ones that found that unionism either had no
impact or had a negative effect on the dropout rate. I define unionism more
broadly than those earlier studies. It’s not just collective bargaining that
matters; it’s the union density of teachers in a district that’s important.
Union density measures the strength of the union, because even when teachers
can’t engage in collective bargaining they can use their collective “voice” to
influence the educational system. What I found was that union density
significantly decreased the high-school dropout rate, even in districts without
collective bargaining agreements.”
Let us return to the notion that there is a war being
waged against public education.
Christakis pleads with us to not allow that war to be lost. The real issue is not the performance of
individual students but the performance of the nation as a whole.
“My point here is not to debate
the effect of school choice on individual outcomes: The evidence is mixed, and
subject to cherry-picking on all sides. I am more concerned with how the
current discussion has ignored public schools’ victories, while also detracting
from their civic role. Our public-education system is about much more than
personal achievement; it is about preparing people to work together to advance
not just themselves but society. Unfortunately, the current debate’s focus on
individual rights and choices has distracted many politicians and policy makers
from a key stakeholder: our nation as a whole. As a result, a cynicism has
taken root that suggests there is no hope for public education. This is demonstrably
false. It’s also dangerous.”
Christakis ends her piece by referring to a comment from Benjamin
Barber issued in 2004.
“America as a commercial society
of individual consumers may survive the destruction of public schooling. America as a democratic republic cannot,”
The interested reader might find the following articles
informative:
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