THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, September 25, 1995 TAG: 9509210009
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A6 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Another View
SOURCE: Albert Shaner
LENGTH: Long : 136 lines
Successful school systems in other industrialized countries are effective because they have four essential elements: student discipline, rigorous national or state academic standards, external assessments and strong incentives for students to work hard. There is solid evidence to believe that our school system could be just as effective if we did the same. What are the chances? Not good, given that both liberal and conservative politicians are caught up in faddish and radical schemes for reforming schools. Very good if we look at where the American public is on these issues.
The first essential element is the refusal to tolerate disruptive student behavior that regularly interferes with education. In other industrialized countries, a student who constantly disrupts a class is suspended or placed in a separate class or school. That such disruptive behavior goes unchecked here can be seen in the fact that Americans constantly cite discipline as the top school problem in the Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup polls. The public holds parents responsible but also wants schools to act: 77 percent want chronically disruptive students transferred to a separate facility.
Yet this solution remains politically incorrect in the United States. We are told that we must allow one child to destroy the education of 30 others because a major mission of schools is social adjustment. Or that separating these students would persecute them for having a disability beyond their control. Or that enforcing standards of conduct would have a disparate impact on minorities. (Actually it would: They would benefit disproportionately.)
So efforts to remove chronically disruptive students are few. When they occur, advocacy groups mount lengthy, expensive legal challenges. And courts are apt to side with the ``repentant'' offender rather than the unseen victims - the other students. Few cases even get that far, since there are powerful incentives for schools not to report problems that would give them a bad reputation or tie up principals and school boards in court. Failure to act only encourages more students to misbehave.
The second essential element in effective school systems is existence of academic standards at the national or state level. These specify what is taught in each subject at each level and the quality of student performance required. Students are taught to the same standards in the early grades, but at some point (between grades five and nine, depending on the country), students are put in different tracks, each demanding, on the basis of their achievement.
There are no such standards here. Efforts to establish national standards have been particularly controversial, but if other democratic countries with a range of political ideologies have been able to work them out, couldn't we? The public seems to want us to. The Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup Poll has included different questions about national standards, and support has ranged from 69 percent to 83 percent.
State standards have made more headway, but almost none of them gives real guidance to teachers. Many are vague: e.g., learn to appreciate literature. Some are so encyclopedic that each teacher has to decide what to do.
The public demands more. According to the 1994 Public Agenda survey, 82 percent of Americans favor ``setting up very clear guidelines on what kids should learn and teachers should teach in every major subject.'' And the 1995 Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup Poll shows that 87 percent of Americans think students ought to meet ``higher standards than are now required in math, English, history and science in order to graduate from high school.''
The disconnect between the public and public officials is also large on the issue of tracking. American schools, like school systems in other countries, track students, but we do it poorly and unfairly. One way to turn that around is to do what other nations do: Have common high standards in the early grades and ensure that students in different tracks in the later grades all have challenging standards to meet and second chances to move to higher tracks. Instead, public officials are jumping on the de-tracking bandwagon, the idea that a 10th-grader who is at, say, a fifth-grade reading level should be taught in the same class as students at the 10th-grade level. Why? To avoid the harmful effects of labeling some students as ``slow,'' or to see if lower-achieving students will rise to the level of high achievers.
This is clearly unworkable. What's a teacher supposed to do - teach the same lesson to all? Divide the class into groups, and give each group only a small amount of attention? Ah, we're told, with lots of time, training and other expensive changes, teachers may learn new methods that work.
The public is not buying. According to a 1994 survey by the Public Agenda Foundation, ``only 34 percent of Americans think that mixing students of different achievement levels together in classes . . . will help increase student learning. People remain skeptical about this strategy even when presented with arguments in favor of it . . . (because it) seems to fly in the face of their real-world experiences.''
The third essential element of successful school systems is external testing that is administered by state or national government. Secondary-school students abroad know that being admitted into a university or technical institute or getting a good job depends on passing rigorous external exams. Most nations' college-entrance exams cover four to seven subjects, each taking six to eight hours of essay writing and problem solving. About 30 percent of students pass them. There are also rigorous exams to enter technical schools.
In the United States, we have no comparable curriculum-based exams, though the old New York State Regents exams came the closest. The Advanced Placement exams are somewhat comparable but are not required; only 7 percent of students take them. Standardized reading and math tests given in all schools measure only those skills and don't measure students' performance against objective standards. Minimum competency tests for 12th-grade graduation typically measure seventh- or eight-grade skills. None of this satisfies the public's demand for high standards.
The fourth element of successful education systems is high stakes for student achievement - the glue that holds the other elements together. Students in other countries study hard because they know that unless they pass exams, they will not get into a college, technical institute or apprenticeship program. They may not even get a job because employers hire on the basis of school records.
In the United States, almost nothing counts for students, - not grades, not behavior, not even attendance. There is a college willing to take all hopefuls in America, no matter what courses they took or what grades and SAT or ACT scores they received - 89 percent of four-year colleges offer remediation. Those not headed for college needn't worry either. Employers do care whether the applicant is a graduate or dropout, but they don't ask for the student's academic and behavioral records.
Without high stakes, students won't work hard and, therefore, won't learn much. But this is not on the American political agenda. Liberal politicians say it is unfair to hold children accountable until we equalize the resources spent on them. Conservatives seem no more eager than liberals. They spend their time placing blame for low student achievement on teachers' unions, tenure and government monopoly of education - each of which is present in successful school systems.
The liberals' solution for low academic achievement is to push social engineering first, which has little public support. The conservatives' solution is to push vouchers, which haven't improved achievement and which, according to the 1995 Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup Poll, are opposed by 65 percent of Americans. And both sides, for different reasons, are embracing an even greater degree of the local control that brought us to this state of low achievement in the first place.
The American public and parents want high standards of conduct and achievement in our public schools. Surveys of teachers show the same. They're right: Discipline and academic standards work and are workable. Smart politicians should propose this as an Educational Contract With America and deliver. MEMO: Mr. Shanker is president of the American Federation of Teachers.
by CNB