The News Isn’t Good, But Then in Education When is it Ever?

On May 4, the Colorado Dept. of Education announced the 3rd grade reading results for schools and districts around the state. The numbers scoring proficient or better dropped significantly for almost all districts. On the ten o’clock news the coverage included a third grader who was reading very well thank you, as if one kid reading well could offset the abysmal results. While there may be significant insight to be gained by parsing the data in great detail as a whole this report should finally wake us up to the fact that our education system is not doing the job acceptably.

That is hardly new. Robert Frost in his famous poem, The Road Not Taken, talks of taking a road less traveled that has made all the difference. In his case you assume a positive outcome. Our education system took a “road less traveled” at least in American education experience to that day back in the 1930s when the Progressives took control of all American schools of education. By the 1960s virtually all graduates of American high schools had been subjected to the progressive content free curricula during their whole school career. Beginning in the 1960s, SAT verbal scores plummeted and have been mired at their lower levels since then. In spite of educators’ excuses that this drop is caused by more minority and economically disadvantaged students taking the test, scores have gone down for all demographic groups.

The progressive detour from an education system that was the envy of the world has been a disaster. The work that Noah Webster and Horace Mann among others did to create the American Common School concept with rigorous curricula and high standards has been gutted and replaced by theories and curricula that simply have not worked and as E.D. Hirsch says cannot work because they are technically wrong at their foundation. I will leave it with you in the context of the Greek rioting to ponder the wisdom of the progressive approach which is designed to create a populace dependent on the state and prone to having their lives run by so called experts who know better. Greece’s current problems are a good example of what lies down the road if you create a nanny state where the people become dependent on the state for more and more and the incentives are to be anything but independent and self-sufficient. When the money runs out, and it always does, the immature citizens who haven’t learned to be independent start throwing tantrums like children.

Putting the New Results in Context

• Research has shown that if kids can’t read at grade level by 3rd grade the odds are they never will become competent readers.
• Colorado standards are at the low end of all states for rigor in both Reading and Math. Thus reading at grade level in Colorado is not the same as reading at grade level in Massachusetts.
• The gap between advantaged and disadvantaged demographic groups is large and staying that way. This has been the norm for decades in spite of throwing billions of dollars at the problem which have only gone to enrich education insiders, but haven’t helped the kids at all. Hirsch asserts correctly that the progressive content free curricula hurt the “gap kids” the most.

So Why Can’t We Seem to Turn Back to What Works in Education?

• Education schools are staffed by “true believers” in the progressive mantra and they aren’t going to change unless forced to. They teach their process only, virtually no subject knowledge philosophy to their students “like a catechism” as Hirsch describes it.
• Education is an extremely insular place. The “faithful” continue to reinforce the tragically wrong principles they were taught in education school to the exclusion of the truth. Outside input is rebuffed or worn down by well practiced delay tactics like creating committees, hiring consultants who are card carrying members of the education tribe, or even ignoring the input altogether.
• I was told by several superintendents when questioning the poor performance and the impact on kids that, “You don’t understand. Education is run for the benefit of the adults who work here, not the kids.” With that attitude, the educators have abdicated any semblance of professional responsibility or ethics to perform the function of educating kids well.
• Realize that the status quo crowd staff the state and federal education bureaucracies (they don’t want to admit their education school training is harming kids), the book publishers who find it easier to produce content free, watered down texts, the education “press” and the education researchers who access huge amounts of government and foundation money to polish the rotten apples.
• Hirsch concludes and he is right that educators will not reinstate what really works for kids unless they are forced to by outside forces.
• The constructivist curricula like Whole Language (and its renamed progeny to disguise the use of proven to be wrong methods) and EveryDay Math have been failures and will never work well. Big expensive programs like Marie Clay’s and also RTI are basically bandages on the curricula that can never work well enough. That is, a total waste of resources in an effort to try something new to deflect attention away from the core problem.

There are many other problems. Education leaders preen in the false glory of their advanced degrees even though Arthur Levine concluded in his Educating School Leaders (2005) based on a study of all degree granting education school programs that the education doctorate had no value for any public school administration job and that the schools were conferring masters on those who displayed anything but mastery and doctorates in name only. Teachers lack the subject knowledge depth that is required to teach the subjects effectively. The results being turned in make it obvious that Levine is right.

How Do We Begin to Deliver the Message That We Expect the Educators to Improve Their Performance?

Confrontation is the only way as uncomfortable as that may be. We must –
• Spread the word to neighbors, relatives, co-workers and friends that the education propaganda is just that, an effort to maintain the cushy status quo for educators.
• Write and speak at school board meetings decrying the abysmal performance.
• We must question the salary levels of administrators especially superintendents who are not performing well enough to justify half their salaries.
• We must expect contracts of poor performers to be not renewed.
• We must let our state and federal elected representatives know that we expect better performance to benefit our kids and that false education theories that harm kids are not acceptable for even a minute more.
• We must have staying power. This is not a “speak at a school board meeting or write a letter to a congressman once affair.” We must adopt a Chinese Water Torture (made famous during the Korean War) approach by “dripping” the truth on educators constantly.