Americans pay more for education at all levels than most other nations, but the results are inadequate. The New York Analysis of Policy and Government takes a two-part look at the reasons.
There are few areas of governmental endeavor within the United States that have fared as poorly as the education system. Despite committing vast sums, American schools have produced stunningly poor results.
Marc Tucker, writing for Education Week, l has noted: “…high school textbooks that used to be written at the 12th-grade level for 12th graders are now written at the 7th– or 8th-grade level. I cited a report that said that many community college teachers do not assign much writing at all to their first-year students because they cannot write. I revealed that the community college course called College Math is not college math at all, but is in reality just a course in Algebra I—a course that is supposed to be passed in middle school in most states—with a few other topics thrown in, and many community college students cannot do the work. I pointed to data that says that the students who go to the typical four-year college are no better prepared than those attending community colleges. I then pointed to another study that says that for close to 40 percent of our college students, the first two years of college add virtually no value at all, and ‘not much’ value for the rest. I ended by pointing out that, if this is all true, then colleges are typically teaching most students what we used to teach in the high school college-bound track and are not doing it very well…What I have just described amounts to an across-the-board collapse of standards in American education over the last 40 to 45 years…”
The problem is not new. In 2012, James Marshall Crotty, writing in Forbes, summarized findings from the Council on Foreign Relations:
- The United States invests more in K-12 public education than many other developed countries, yet U.S. students remain poorly prepared to compete with global peers.
- More than 25 percent of U.S. students fail to graduate high school in four years; for Hispanic and and African-American students, the number approaches 40 percent.
- Only 25% of U.S. students are proficient or better in civics, as measured by the National Assessment of Educational Progress.
- Only eight in ten Americans only speak English (with no foreign language capability at all).
- According to a recent report by the not-for-profit testing organization, ACT, only 22 percent of U.S. high school students met “college ready” standards in all of their core subjects; these figures are even lower for Hispanicand African-American students.
- 63% of aerospace and life science firms report shortages of “qualified workers.”
- 75% of U.S. citizens ages 17-24 cannot pass military entrance exams because they are not physically fit, have criminal records, or because they lack critical skills needed in modern warfare, including how to locate on a map military theaters in which the U.S. is fulsomely engaged.
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The culprit is not something inherent in the national character. Nonpublic schools, including many parochial schools with far less financial resources, produce superior results.
The problem is one of priorities. As the New York Analysis of Policy and Government has previously noted, within the public educational system the actual task of educating students is the lowest priority. Fulfilling union contracts for principals, teachers, janitors and custodians and responding to the ideological whims of progressive politicians are higher on the list, as is engaging in noneducational activities more appropriate for social welfare agencies. Add in the increasingly politicized bent of the standard curriculum, a problem exacerbated by Common Core, and the recipe for failure becomes obvious.
In October, U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, in a speech to the Washington Policy Center, noted “ the American Federation of Teachers tweeted at me. The union wrote ‘Betsy DeVos says public should invest in individual students. NO we should invest in a system of great public schools for all kids.’ The union bosses made it clear: they care more about a system – one that was created in the 1800s – than they do about students. Their focus is on school buildings instead of school kids. Isn’t education supposed to be all about kids?”
The Report Concludes Tomorrow.