First, let's look at a typical report on the relative success among a select group of nations with regard to student performance in mathematics. (Although the scores go back to 2003, later assessments show basically the same results. Since results in reading and science are comparable, in the interest of brevity and for the purpose of this post, math results will suffice.)
International Comparison of Math, Reading, and Science Skills Among 15-Year-Olds
More than 250,000 15-year old students from 41 countries participated in the assessment. The countries included all major industrialized nations (results for Britain were not available) and 11 other nations that chose to participate. The test scores are from 2003.
Mean Performance on Mathematics Scale
| Range of ranks1 | ||
|---|---|---|
| Country | Upper rank2 | Lower rank3 |
| Hong Kong (China) | 1 | 3 |
| Finland | 1 | 4 |
| South Korea | 1 | 5 |
| Netherlands | 2 | 7 |
| Liechtenstein | 2 | 9 |
| Japan | 3 | 10 |
| Canada | 5 | 9 |
| Belgium | 5 | 10 |
| Macao (China) | 6 | 12 |
| Switzerland | 6 | 12 |
| Australia | 9 | 12 |
| New Zealand | 9 | 13 |
| Czech Republic | 12 | 17 |
| Iceland | 13 | 16 |
| Denmark | 13 | 17 |
| France | 14 | 18 |
| Sweden | 15 | 19 |
| Austria | 16 | 20 |
| Germany | 17 | 21 |
| Ireland | 17 | 21 |
| Slovak Republic | 19 | 24 |
| Norway | 21 | 24 |
| Luxembourg | 22 | 24 |
| Poland | 22 | 26 |
| Hungary | 22 | 27 |
| Spain | 25 | 28 |
| Latvia | 25 | 28 |
| United States | 25 | 28 |
| Russian Federation | 29 | 31 |
| Portugal | 29 | 31 |
| Italy | 29 | 31 |
| Greece | 32 | 33 |
| Serbia | 32 | 34 |
| Turkey | 33 | 36 |
| Uruguay | 34 | 36 |
| Thailand | 34 | 36 |
| Mexico | 37 | 37 |
| Indonesia | 38 | 40 |
| Tunisia | 38 | 40 |
| Brazil | 38 | 40 |
1. Because data are based on samples, it is not possible to report exact rank order positions for countries. However, it is possible to report the range of rank order positions within which the country mean lies with 95% likelihood.
2. Rank based on top two levels of proficiency (out of six) on mean scale of mathematical performance.
3. Rank based on lowest two levels of proficiency (out of six) on mean scale of mathematical performance.
Source: Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, OECD PISA (Program for Student Assessment) 2003 database
Read more: International Comparison of Math, Reading, and Science Skills Among 15-Year-Olds — Infoplease.com http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0923110.html#ixzz1vlE0xEI4
Web site: http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0923110.html
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We've all seen this or similar charts. We have in fact been bombarded with such statistics, the publication and announcement of which is inevitably accompanied by hand wringing, hair pulling and keening over the terrible condition of U.S. schools. "Why," the rhetoric goes, "is the most powerful nation in the world faring so badly?" Before analyzing the chart above, let us keep in mind that two prominent figures emerged in recent years to spearhead the attack on public education in this country--Milton Friedman and Michelle Rhee. Along with numerous other true believers, they became the poster children for an attack which, as we shall see, has been only tangentially, if at all, focused on what ails our schools but very interested in destroying the remnants of a once powerful union movement in the United states. Thus Friedman and Rhee's answer to the puzzle is that what is wrong with the schools are the teachers. It is hard to tell whether the better literary reference here is to George Orwell or Lewis Carroll, but forced to come up with an explanation for the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression after thirty years of having its way with the American economy, the right wing would point to the chart above and say, "None of this would have happened had it not been for the teachers (or, more to the point, the fact that teachers are unionized and actually have [defined benefit!] pensions)." Why is the U.S. ranked between Latvia and Russia in the above rankings? Because those benighted teachers have been leaning on their shovels, collecting enormous pensions and moreover setting a terrible example for working class Americans who, dating back to Ronald Reagan's busting of the Air Traffic Controllers Union, been gradually deprived of their unions and such outrageous benefits as health plans and pensions. No hedge fund and derivatives traders have been tried in our courts after bankrupting the world economy, but in the court of public opinion, teachers are now Public Enemy No. 1 (although they may be in a narrow tie for that distinction with irresponsible Black men and women who were bilked out of their savings by being lured into "no-doc" mortgages in an attempt to find adequate housing). From New Jersey's Governor Christie to Wisconsin's Governor Scott Walker, across the nation, the cry has gone out, "Get those damned teachers!"
Friedman, coming out of the Rockefeller haunt at the University of Chicago, breeding ground for the group of economists who wished to lobotomize the U.S. in an effort to make them forget the New Deal and embrace nineteenth century laissez-faire economics as well as the so-called neo-liberal cabal that sees as its mission the making of a world safe for the U.S. and Israel, went to his deathbed bemoaning the fact that, try as he could, he had failed to destroy teachers' unions and privatize American schools.
Michelle Rhee, a Korean-American capitalizing on the perception that Asian culture has some magic potion* they feed to their kids to make them excel in school, proceeded to institute a reign of terror in the Washington, D.C. school system for teachers she characterized as poor performers. Ms. Rhee, catching the scent of a career opportunity, has gone on to recreate herself as a guru for the whole litany of right wing prescriptions for reinventing education in America--vouchers, charter schools, teaching to the test, merit pay, doing away with tenure, and so on. It is a prescription for basically complete privatization and the utilization of techniques in schools taken from the pages of the kind of corporate manuals that make chicken farming so attractive a sector of the growing unregulated, non-union U.S. economy. *(After all, statistics do not lie. The student population at New York's Stuyvesant High School, probably the toughest ticket for admission to an elite public school in the nation, is now 75% Asian. And no one is readier to believe in the genetic intellectual superiority of Asians than these kids. If anyone needs further examples of Asian superiority, take a look at enrollment figures at MIT or a host of other prestigious U.S. schools. Few Americans truly understand the Asian "secret." Having visited many schools throughout Asia, I can testify to the fact that their superior results have almost nothing to do with the quality of their teachers or even the educational material in their schools, both of which suffer by comparison with the best that the U.S. has to offer. It has a lot to do with family pride and face and far more days and hours spent in school supplemented by countless prep academies given the job of sharpening skills and getting their students into the best high schools, colleges and universities. Few if any U.S. children would tolerate the regimen imposed on kids throughout Asia.)
Historically, over the latter half of the twentieth century, no group was more critical of the short-comings of American education than the left. Their critique, however, centered not on the failings of teachers but rather on the failings of a system that had basically turned its back on the millions of black and brown and poor kids who, in many of the nation's cities, left behind in the dust of white flight to the suburbs, were relegated to schools that were grossly underfunded to meet their needs. In fact, many of the most severe critics of urban public schools were the very teachers working within them. This often proved to be so much the case, that conservative union leaders like the late Al Shanker, (as well as his hand-picked successors), had to take on the usual role of an American labor leader, that of gatekeeper, doing his best to tamp down the "radicals" within his rank and file. Like so many other American movements, the movement within the unions to take a more aggressive stance in behalf of their young charges ran into a wall in 1968. That was the year a three-month long teachers' strike grew out of another Rockefeller inspiration. Former JFK cabinet member, McGeorge Bundy, (ever alert to opportunities for pacification programs) and his Ford Foundation issued a report on Community Control of the Schools. What was a barely disguised effort to entrench segregation in Northern schools was seen as an opportunity for the ambitious within many of the target communities and an excuse to purge white teachers among the many already employed as teachers in those communities. The schools, race relations, teachers' unions, the public image of school teachers and lot more would never be the same after that long and ugly strike.
And, in an effort to give a full picture, some time should be taken to address one other player in the great school debate as we have seen it play out over the last fifty years. In effect transcending the differences between right wing and left wing critiques of our schools, this third group devoted itself to pointing out to an innocent American public that, wholesome as their faith in the power of education might be, it was, at bottom irrelevant as a determinant for success or even social mobility. What mattered far more was class.* This, of course, is the nasty little secret hidden under the cover of the Norman Rockwell quilt stitched on the Great American Dream Machine. The implications of this school of thought are enormous. If true, then spending more money on what were once called "ghetto schools" was just throwing good money after bad. Judged by cold statistics, all of those bleeding hearts (another popular phrase of the period) were just wasting their time.
*(No surprise, Christopher Jencks, the leading proponent of this analysis, was a product of Exeter, Harvard and the London School of Economics. He was, and still is, a leading figure among that group of intellectuals given the assignment of responding to left wing (Marxist) analyses. Doling out such assignments to truly loyal Americans is one of the major roles of our elite universities, often with considerable help from such governmental organizations as you can probably imagine and need not be listed here.)
To some extent, this argument had some weight for both right and left wing educational critics. Certainly the left, schooled in the literature of class warfare, had to admit that there was some merit to this viewpoint. It seemed a rather depressing and demoralizing turn in the pedagogical literature--unless all that was being offered was an academic version of "the poor shall always be with us." The only problem was that no one seemed prepared to put the theory to the ultimate test by actually funding schools for poor kids at the same level their brother and sister American kids enjoyed in Scarsdale or Chevy Chase or Ann Arbor.
Next: A Close Look at The Chart
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