From: dtriplett@juno.com
Date: Monday, September 09, 1996 5:51AM
What Is Really Happening in Public Education?
While there are public school systems in the United States struggling to
provide a quality education for all children, there are many more who 
are doing as good a job educating their children as the countries to 
which we like to compare ourselves. In "Comparing Apples to Apples: What
International Studies Tell Us," (1996) a key finding is sited. The 
article states that "8th grade proficiency scores in Iowa, North Dakota,
and Minnesota were the same as those in the top-performing countries of 
Taiwan, Korea, and the former Soviet Union. Achievement in the lowest-
performing states--Arkansas, Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi--was 
about the same as in the lowest-performing country, Jordan." So to make 
a blanket statement that American Public education is not doing its job 
is unfair. Some states are doing a very good job. To lump all states 
together and brand them all failures is not fair or accurate.
To what can we attribute the difference? Why are some states doing well 
and others not so well? Bracey ( May 1995) lays the blame on social 
factors. "...social factors, not instruction or curriculum, account for 
most of the variation between states, according to research... Four
factors--parental education, family structure, poverty rates, and 
community type--can predict a state's ranking in NAEP scores with better
than 99 percent accuracy..."
Bracey claims that unfavorable comparisons of U.S. schools with the 
schools of other industrialized countries have been "ill-founded or 
distorted." The media reported that U.S. 14 year-olds scored 8th out of 
31 countries in reading. The report failed to mention that the 
differences in scores were not statistically significant except in the 
case of Finland. The report failed to mention that nine year-olds had 
scored second of 31 in the same study. (Statistical significance refers 
to differences in scores that are so small that they can't be considered
significant. Think of statistical significance by thinking of top 
performers in the 100 yard dash in the Olympics. While one country may 
come in 3rd or 8th, the differences in finish time are so small that it 
is impossible to label the runner who placed 8th a poor runner.) And, it
was noted, that Finland does not have the linguistic diversity of the 
United States.
Berliner and Biddle (Feb. 1996) make similar assertions when they cite 
the comparisons of U.S. 13-year-olds' math scores compared to Japanese 
13-year-olds. "...the typical Japanese 13-year-old has taken algebra 
whereas the equivalent American student has not, thus aggregated
mathematics cores for students of this age show Americans to be at a 
disadvantage; but when the American data are disaggregated to display 
achievements for students who have and have not taken algebra, the 
achievements of the former look quite similar to those of Japanese 
students, Surprise!"
The favorite comparison made almost universally when assailing American 
education is the decline of SAT scores through the 1950's into the late 
60's and early 70's.  What those who point fingers fail to mention is 
that the population of students taking the tests before the 50's were
almost universally middle to upper middle class white students from 
affluent families. It was in the late 60's and early 70's that a much 
broader spectrum of students began taking SATs. Bracey points out that 
"SAT scores are higher now than when the tests were introduced, although
the population taking SATs is no longer the economic elite it originally
was."
Berliner and Biddle also point out that this is the period during which 
young people began receiving daily doses of television viewing. They 
point out that the first generation to grow up with TV began graduating 
from high school at the same time that SAT scores began to drop. "In a
clever series of studies he (Keith Stanovitch) shows that there is a 
high correlation between exposure to print and many kinds of 
performances on paper and pencil tests of general verbal information. If
exposure to print went down in the 1950-1965 period, then a reduction in
verbal aptitude test scores would be expected. That is exactly what 
happened. And if the exposure-to-television hypothesis has any 
predictive power, then the verbal aptitude score decline should be 
greater than the decline in mathematics aptitude score. And that 
happened too."
At the same time that other factors were coming into play to effect test
scores, the drop out rate was falling. Despite appalling statistics 
concerning drop out rates today, we are doing considerably better than 
we did at the turn of the century when 75% of all students who began
school never finished. In 1950, 50% didn't finish and today the rate has
dropped to 25-30%. We still have a long way to go, but we ARE doing 
better. With more students staying in school, we have a more diverse 
group of students to serve than ever before. Educating U.S. students has
become more challenging in a time when we can no longer feel comforted 
to know that students who don't finish school can find jobs in local 
factories or on family farms. Those opportunities are
fast disappearing.
Poverty as a Variable in Educational Outcome
Distortion is only one part of the problem. For some reason, the media 
and public figures like to blame the schools for the poor performance of 
students in public education without considering the variables that may 
have an impact on performance--variables that lay outside the school's
doors. One quarter of all children in the United States under the age of
six live in poverty and children comprise 40% of all people living in 
poverty. Bracey points out that "The United States has more than twice 
the proportion of children in poverty than all other industrialized 
nations. In the United States, 53 percent of black children and 42 
percent of Hispanic children are in poverty. But economics is a greater 
factor than ethnicity, he added. Well-off African American students 
score higher, on average, than poor Asian students, for example."
Renchler (May 93) documents the negative effects of poverty on learning.
"One study revealed strong links between family income levels and 
children's I.Q.s. Studying a sample of 900 children born with low birth 
weight, Duncan found that those who lived in 'persistent poverty' during 
their first five years had I.Q.s averaging 9.1 points lower than the 
I.Q.s of children in the sample whose families were not impoverished. 
Duncan concluded that "there is little doubt that child poverty is
scarring the development of our nation's children."
In addition to the effects of growing up in poverty on I.Q., poor 
children frequently suffer from the effects of living in communities 
where schools are underfunded compared to schools in communities 
attended by primarily high socio-economic status students. "One 
recent study used new cost analysis models to review spending patterns 
in eighty-four academic high schools in New York. For each additional 
$100 spent on classroom instruction, students gained as much as 18 
points on the combined scores for mathematics and verbal sections of 
the scholastic Aptitude Tests after adjustments were made for student 
socioeconomic status and teaching experience of school staff (Harp 
1993b)....It seems self-evident that if poor children attend poorly 
funded schools, they are not likely to achieve at the same levels as 
their counterparts attending better funded schools."
Funding for Public Education
Another criticism that the public schools frequently endure is that they
are funded at a rate above that of other industrialized countries. 
Bracey offers evidence to the contrary. He points out that when measured 
as a percentage of per capita income, the United States ranks 14th among 
15 of the industrialized nations in education spending. He points out 
that factored into that spending is money spent on busing, which is not 
considered part of the budget in other countries.
Conclusion
So, while no one would suggest that the public schools have no 
improvements to make, it seems that there may be factors outside their 
control that effect student achievement. It shouldn't be suggested that 
because there are very big challenges that we should just throw up our 
hands and give up. Neither should the public schools have to shoulder 
all of the blame for those challenges. Pointing fingers, distorting the 
facts or running away will not improve American public education.
The wide-ranging and awesome responsibilities required of American 
public schools in educating its children should at least require that 
facts be stated as facts and not be misrepresented or misinterpreted.
Sources:
______. "Comparing Apples to Apples: What International Studies Tell 
Us." 
Education Update.
Summer, 1996. pg. 8.
Berliner, David C and Biddle, Bruce J. "Making Molehills Out of 
Molehills: 
Reply to Lawrence
Stedman's Review of The Manufactured Crisis." Education Policy Analysis 
Archives. Arizona
State University, Tempe. Feb. 96. 4-3.
Cohen, Deborah I. "New Study Links Lower I.Q. at Age 5 to Poverty." 
Education Week. April,
1993. 12, 28.
Cohen, Philip. "Bracey Defends Public Schools." Education Update. March,
1995. pg. 1 &6.
Harp, Lonnie. "Dollars and Sense: Reformers Seek to Rethink School 
Financing 
To Make It a
Powerful Lever of Change." Education Week. March 31, 1993. 12, 27. 9-14
Renchler, Ron. "Poverty and Learning." ERIC Digest 83. May 1993.
Dan
--- GEcho 1.11+
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