Comparing, data from US and Canada schools will get you nowhere. In many countries high school is not a right but a privilege. Children pass through elementary and are streamed into a school that appears appropriate for their ability. Only top students will go to "high school", others will go to technical schools which are not counted in this data. You will probably find that the US is comparable to other countries where all children go to high school.

That first line should read, "Comparing, data from US and Canada schools to other countries will get you nowhere."

I should learn to preview my work.

You can't throw enough money on a country where it's still controversial to teach evolution as a scientific fact.

SEVERAL of my science teachers made it clear they did NOT believe in evolution (including my biology teacher in highschool). "Why Purps they found human footprints alongside dinosaur footprints so no I don't believe in evolution."

My whole fucking class was in uproar over evolution and I went to a white suburban highschool.

Science is a CONTREVERSIAL subject in this country. Math is jibber jabber for most people. It's the shit parents along with shit teachers.

I can assure you that every penny will have been wasted. The problem is not related to the quality of our schools, the ability of our teachers or the organizations that protect teacher's rights, aka unions. It is totally an issue of political correctness that refuses to put the blame squarely on the shoulders of those most to blame for the continuing decline - our society.

Oh, bosh. It's no more "society's" fault that American kids aren't learning than it is "society's" fault if an American kid throws a brick through a window. In fact, it's largely the same reason -- and it ain't teachers' unions or the Kardashians.

I find that people do not want to know - anything.

Not long ago, I revived an old large-format printer which had been laid up with a couple of problems. The result was ridiculous detail on 34" x 44" drawings. I picked one that showed the system several of our operators had to deal with every day and printed it and carried it into the field office. "You guys wanna see your system?"

They physically turned away, saying "No!"

Now, this is a government facility, where people do not have to produce, individually, in order to be paid, but the lack of simple curiousity always appalls me.

You cannot interest people in their candidate's record, the Constitution, the laws of their state or even simple articles about their sport if it involves learning something. This doesn't stop them from spouting off.

Kevin almost comes out and says it, but still doesn't quite get there, when he comments: "It's no more "society's" fault that American kids aren't learning than it is "society's" fault if an American kid throws a brick through a window."

Point: it is the fault of every individual student who does not put real effort into school, and every individual parent who allows the kid to get away with this. Individual responsibility. It is wrong to say "the teacher failed me". It is correct to say "you failed". Insofar as this lack of individual responsibility is widespread, perhaps it is a societal problem - but the blame belongs squarely on the shoulders of each individual who practices it.

What the article itself does not come out and say, and what is a genuine societal problem, is belief that children must be protected from the slightest disappointment. Missed an exam? We'll give you a make-up exam. Forgot your homework? That's ok, hand it in late. Failed every exam in every course because you never bothered to show up at school? That's ok, we'll promote you to the next grade anyway. Every parent expects their kids to be given straight A's; they do not expect their kids to have to earn those A's.

There are also other reasons that our schools pass students regardless of performance. Not least of these is another PC-reason: race. Whites and asians perform better in school and have fewer discipline problems. The reasons don't matter, this is simply an observable fact. However, schools are pressured to ensure that this doesn't show up anywhere in the numbers. So they fail to discipline problem kids, and they pass out grades like candy. Stupid.

Finally, teachers. There are great teachers and there are poor ones. However, another unpleasant fact: The intelligence of education majors (as evidenced by their average SAT scores) is one of the lowest for any profession requiring a college degree. Too many teachers are dim bulbs. If they don't understand the material themselves, how the devil are they supposed to teach it? There is a lot of truth to the statement: the fastest way to improve a school is to fire the worst 10% of the teachers.

So: Insist on individual responsibility, reward performance (and punish lack of performance), fire bad teachers. Finally, discipline and grade all students the same, regardless of race; if the results look racist, the problem lies elsewhere.

There isn't much excuse anymore. If your child has a poor teacher, there is the Khan academy online, where your child can learn what his teacher and his parents can't teach. Few will bother.

The problem took generations to create, and will take as long to fix. My guess is that it won't be, and our long slide into mediocrity will continue.

The gap is not overstated. I saw my Japanese niece's 12th Grade math textbook. I've taken math through Differential Equations and I couldn't understand some of the problems. She was an above average but not elite student attending a rural High School.

The advent of "political correctness" is largely to blame as well. When you abrogate peoples' personal responsibility in the name of "political correctness", the people will fall all over themselves to use that excuse as the "reason" why they can't achieve. And how freakin' sad is that? My #2 has been grounded since the 2nd week of school for getting F's on her progress report (2 of them, no less!) and I told her she will stay grounded (and her iPod will stay in my pocket) until she brings those grades up. Which she has done with one of them; I'm still waiting for the other. In the meantime, she's pulling an A- in environmental science, and a B+ in algebra II. So there's hope, anyway. But I keep telling her "I already went to school and did my work. Now it's your turn to do yours."

The US doesn't value smart people. Smart people get picked on in High School, and in life. Hey, even in the Presidential elections people tend to downplay that they went to an Ivy League school. America hates nerds. It got better in the 90s, but not better enough.

Certainly, there ARE some bad teachers. Certainly, students would prefer to do less work rather than more in areas they don't particularly like or find dull (personally, I really never got into art classes). Parents mostly do expect more of the schools and have less to give (be it by choice or necessity) in time & help to their kids. Kids do have every excuse in the book available to them - and so do parents and teachers (it's a triangular blame game).

I think a big thing is that so much time is spent on behavioral issues. Teachers don't have any real means of punishment available to them, which doesn't help (and may be why small class sizes are so popular, because it's a lot easier to keep a few kids in check w/o serious punishment arsenals).

All that being said, it sometimes IS the teacher's fault. Example: I had a Calc.3 Prof in college who mostly talked about his wife. I learned that she often fell down when hiking, got chased by dogs when she went bike riding, etc.

HOWEVER, since most kids (and parents) whine about how hard everything is, when some one complains about an actual problem, they are hard to believe. I complained to the department chair about the above professor. I was taken half seriously because I had the (paraphrased), "most articulate complaint" he'd ever received with the most detailed examples. I was not doing well in the class, but had done well in Calc.2. I was allowed to withdraw from the class. When I took it the next semester and got a solid A, the guy I had previously was dismissed from teaching (his position was not full faculty, but he was a "lecturer" or something). So, in effect, I wasn't really believed until I showed solid proof that it wasn't me. Even though this guy really was NOT teaching, how could the administration know since EVERYONE (it seems) complains that the classes are too hard?

Amid all this there is pressure (since we have to value ALL types of abilities equally, I'm sure) to be high performing in ALL areas of life & subjects in school. That means being great at PE, Art, Music, AND the other (actual academic) stuff.

However, I am surprised at the number of kids who can't read by this far into first grade. My son is one of the youngest kids, but he wasn't going off to kindergarten w/o being able to read at least a little!

We also have problems at the top of the spectrum, because most schools can't or don't give harder stuff to the kids who are naturally bright (or whose parents push academics so they outpace their peers). Even when they do, it often isn't enough. For example, my son is in a pull-out enrichment program in first grade (great that they have it), but he's still pretty bored in class. He is doing basic division in his head at home (20 is a fifth of 100), but has to "count to 100" in school.

How can we advance if we don't let kids who have a natural talent or high interest just take it and run? What good does it do to make them sit around bored doing things that are so far behind their level that the whole subject becomes boring??

Lots of people having kids, even though they shouldn't be.

Whether or not it's crappy teachers the unions prevent from being fired, kids who think they can do "whatever they dream" , or parents that don't make their kids do shit right and let them sluff of, a lot of it is related to one common trait - we are no longer a society that prizes excellence as much as we used to.

Particippation awards, not only reasonable second chances (hey, kids miss school) but multiple second chances, yelling at teachers when the kids fail, etc....

I agree with Shannon. I look back at my elementary education and feel like I was kept with my peers strictly for the purposes of improving the standardized test scores for the school. However, I'll bet if I wasn't such a good boy and had started acting out in class, disrupting it and getting into fights, the school would have only been too happy to ship me off somewhere else where I could have gotten a more challenging education.

"The US doesn't value smart people. Smart people get picked on in High School, and in life. "

This, and several other commenters touched on it. It pains me to see how badly humanities education has become so utterly debased. These days, if you are humanities major in college, it is a given that your professors will be unrepentant Marxists, and that as long as you parrot the Marxism back to them and don't ask any hard questions, you will get good grades. They haven't quite managed to debase the natural sciences and its related fields yet, but they have managed to brand anyone (except medical doctors) who is good at these subjects as a "dweeb". The message is that these people are haters who should not be invited to parties, and if they are male, women should avoid and belittle them.

Great comments all. I'm heartened that none of them assigned blame exclusively to one area. There's plenty to go around.

Of course, with plenty of blame to go around, there are an awful lot of opportunities to lament and finger-point. I sympathize, up to a point. Would I want to be a teacher saddled with huge responsibility, but no authority? Would I want to be a high school kid these days, being told that aspiring to anything less than a top university is somehow inadequate, and that you'd better take the AP classes, lead the clubs, and do the activities no matter what?

Would I want to be a parent who's somehow expected to facilitate the kid's hopes and dreams even if it means being in debt for life? Oh wait, I am one of those. We're working on the whole expectations thing these days.

Meanwhile, in the Pacific Northwet:

http://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2012/11/business_alliance_to_schools_t.html

For years, the business community has repeatedly been asked to come to the table to provide resources for schools. Not only have we supported campaigns for local levies and bonds, including the Multnomah County i-tax, operating levies and this year's capital bond, we also worked at the state level to provide more resources for schools. The business community's support for education funding has always come with the caveat that the district must effectively manage teachers and other personnel to ensure the best outcomes for students and prudently manage its budget. We are not seeing those objectives being met so, until the district and the union take meaningful steps to demonstrate that their actions are motivated by the best interests of students and not on preserving the entrenched status quo, the Alliance will suspend its efforts to support further funding requests.

A couple more thoughts (yeah, I have lots from 17 years of having nothing to do)...

Had a "hard-ass" teacher in AP biology. Rule was, lowest test score is dropped, the rest averaged & that's your grade for the quarter (ok, 85% since 15% was quizzes). No make-ups allowed.

There was a test the last day of a quarter and I wasn't feeling well. My tests had all been mid-to-high 90's so I didn't go to school, knowing a zero would be dropped and I was doing fine. When I got back, the teacher (who was one of the best I ever had) sort of scolded me for missing it. I looked at him and said something about, "you made the rules, I'm following them. I didn't need it and I was sick. I was better off in bed. My choice." He was pretty good, so he did accept this with a nod to my decision-making, but he shouldn't have chastised me to begin with.

I'm all for letting kids do make-ups if they're out sick (schools are germ-factories after all) or something. I even think parents should encourage (maybe a token award or praise) participation mattering and trying one's best being important (but not awarding not-winning, they have to have a goal after all!). But I've seen some ridiculous things.

Student in COLLEGE, didn't turn in assignments, had a medical issue on the day of the final, scheduled a make-up, didn't show, didn't respond to inquiry, and so earned an F. Turned out there WAS no F on the grading scale. Just Withdraw-Fail (withdrawing after the deadline and/or with a failing grade - and the student didn't withdraw) or a "no credit received." You literally could NOT fail. This wasn't some party school either.

If you can't fail at something, you really can't succeed either.

"He was pretty good, so he did accept this with a nod to my decision-making, but he shouldn't have chastised me to begin with."

Betcha a nickel he was more interested in your decision-making process than he was in your missing class!

@MarkD: "There isn't much excuse anymore. If your child has a poor teacher, there is the Khan academy online, where your child can learn what his teacher and his parents can't teach. Few will bother."

I remember being a little startled when one of my daughters told me she'd found out how to solve a particular algebra problem via a YouTube video. The knowledge is out there and accessible in ways I couldn't have imagined at that age.

Now the question is where is education in the federal constitution?

What about most state constitutions?

Where does the concept that your child has to attend X school because you live in X location exist?

What if I told you that the only grocery store you could go to was supermarket X because you live in this zip code. But supermarket Y has a better selection has a better selection of steaks. No -- you can't go there because it is in a different zip code.

This is what you are arguing about.

We need to destroy the public education system and create a privately run and funded schools dependent on the children's needs.

Jim P. Says:

"We need to destroy the public education system and create a privately run and funded schools dependent on the children's needs."

I've heard arguments like this many times, but to be honest I don't see how "free market" ideas actually help fix the educational system.

If you want to make parents and students "consumers" of education and schools "suppliers" of education one really needs to consider what it is many of the "consumers" are actually interested in purchasing.

As it currently stands, our economy rewards good high school transcripts more than it rewards real comprehension of the subject material.

Given this reality, what are the “consumers” going to be interested in buying? Given the choice between a school which inflates grade point averages while watering down educational standards versus a school which grades more stringently but provides a rigorous curriculum, what is the consumer going to choose?

The children “need” good transcripts in order to get into prestigious colleges in order to increase their chances of landing a high paying job. As a result, this system is actually set in opposition to the goal of fostering enhanced student comprehension.

We already see the immense problems of grade inflation within the private university system, by contrast that problem doesn’t really exist at publicly funded universities precisely because the incentives to inflate grades are vastly reduced. This is because when parents are paying 40K a year to send their child to a university and that university knows the parents can send their child elsewhere given the proper motivation, that university is highly incentives to do things like inflate grades and look the other way when students cheat or plagiarize. The professors jobs depend upon drawing students into the school which is enhanced when parents believe that the transcripts will look impressive (regardless of the quality of the education their child actually received).

At universities students already have the option to take courses which are known to be "easy A's" versus substantive and challenging courses that might bring down their gpa... take a wild guess which courses are vastly more popular?

The fantasy that “free market” thinking can resolve most of the problems with the educational system is flawed on a wide variety of levels, but most fundamentally it is flawed because it assumes the consumers are more interested in buying a quality education rather than merely the appearance of a quality education.

I'm with Orion. The problem is too-what if certain schools decide not to teach established subjects like science because it doesn't agree with the communities religious beliefs. I know that would have been the case in my richy school and it was the most powerful parents that ran it.

Grades were inflated, there was favoritism etc. Plus poor or working class parents don't have the means to drive their kids far for schooling.

Truly though what matters is parents that are honest and fair. We know this is not the case but if we are publicly funding schools we need set guidelines.

The problem is fundamentally the parents though. In my case I doubt they even knew what school I went to or if I bothered to show up.

There is one place that deserves a big chunk of the blame that no one (at least not that I have seen) has pointed to; school administrators.

W. Edwards Deming (anyone remember him?) a statistician and internationally famous expert on improving quality noted that management was responsible for 85% of the problems in any company, and the work force was responsible for only 15%. Education could be the poster child for this principle.

I know a number of present and former teachers, most of whom work very hard to see their students succeed. However, they spend ridiculous amounts of time navigating pointless, duplicative paperwork and information systems so poorly designed any business worth its salt would kick the vendor out and probably sue them.

School administrators, in my experience, and with multiple kids I've had some, generally exhibit the following behaviors:

1. Cover their own butts
2. Push problems onto someone else's plate (be that teachers, local cops, parents, anyone but them.)
3. Hide in their offices
4. Cave to ridiculous demands from parents (and the more ridiculous the demand, the faster the cave)
5. Follow every rule exactly, exercise absolutely no judgment (judgment is hard after all).

There seems to be an unwritten career guide in education: "If you stink as a teacher, become a principal. If you stink as a principal, become a superintendant. If you stink as a superintendant, work for the US Department of Education."

If a school gives a top notch education, a lot of parents will pay to send their kids there (made easier by eliminating all the taxes we pay for public school now. I know we pay $4000 a year just in property taxes for ours).

Yes, some parents will choose to send their kids to schools that don't teach science. SO what? Plenty of homeschoolers teach whatever they feel like now. Science probably won't be needed for them to get a job as an adult, either. No one in retail needs to know the theory of evolution, for example.

And yes, some parents will just send their kids the cheapest place and not care. No different form now, except kids with parents that do care get a chance. Dumbing all the kids down doesn't make education fair, and that's what we're doing right now.

There are a lot of charter schools here in central texas. There is one that teaches only reading, writing, and math, for 4 hours a day. It's for kids who are very dedicated to an extracurricular that takes hours of practice a day. There is one just for girls (and soon to be one just for boys), there are ones where the children don't have to sit at desks, ones that concentrate on science, or math, or poly sci. That is free market (sort of, yes I know charters get gov't funds, but they also can provide specific experiences that don't taylor to everyone) and this is how all school should be-except paid for mostly or fully by the attendees, not the gov't.

momof4 says:

“If a school gives a top notch education, a lot of parents will pay to send their kids there”

By what criteria do the parents judge whether or not a school provides a “top notch education”?

An uneducated or miseducated parent for example is not in a position to judge the quality of education given anywhere precisely because those parents won’t comprehend the subject material.

“Yes, some parents will choose to send their kids to schools that don't teach science. SO what?”

I’m not even sure where to begin. Let’s start with the fact that we live in a democratic republic and one day those children who learn nothing about the physical world around them will be expected to vote on policies that influence everyone else. Furthermore, those same uneducated children might one day run for public office and end up having even greater influence on public policy. Their ignorance of basic scientific facts is a liability that can and will have a negative impact upon the whole of society.

It is critically important in the modern age for every child to learn at least the fundamentals of science. Evolution happens to be one of those fundamentals, it is so very basic that it is on par with the expectation that children learn that the president is the head of the executive branch of government.

Why is it that I’ve yet to ever see anyone promote the idea that children should be ignorant of basic civics?

When you say that no one in retail needs to understand the theory of evolution you ignore two important things. First, what is to guarantee that this uneducated individual is filtered into a very specific occupation that you suggest has no need for this knowledge? We have elected members of congress in office right now who lack a basic understanding of things like evolution, how exactly did they manage to slip under the radar when according to you they should have ended up working in a department store? So my first objection is that every child needs to learn these things precisely because we do not know where they will end up in life, many will end up in retail, but some will end up in powerful government positions where ignorance of basic science is unacceptable.

Secondly, a lack of understanding about evolution influences peoples decisions when it comes to things like vaccinating their children. Now I’m not interested in a debate on whether or not parents should be able to choose to vaccinate their kids or not, but I do believe that when making important medical decisions for your children it is somewhat important to comprehend the most fundamental components of biology such that one can make an informed decision.

People cannot make informed medical decisions if they are ignorant of the fundamentals of biology.

“And yes, some parents will just send their kids the cheapest place and not care.”

And some will just send their kids to extremely expensive schools that basically guarantee amazing transcripts and admission to a prestigious university while not actually educating their children at all.

Remember, in the free market businesses provide what the consumers will pay for. In a free market school system the incentive isn’t to educate, it is to provide credentials that may or may not have any bearing on if the child understands anything.

We should be interested in educating children, not just handing them fancy diplomas that don’t necessarily correlate with ability or accomplishment. The reason people come down on the college system now is precisely because people can basically buy themselves a diploma. At the very least in a public education system there is no incentive to sell a high school diploma to anyone. If you make it through a public school system the odds are you earned whatever your transcript says.

Parents don’t want to pay big money to a school and have their children bring home bad grades. And in the “free market” the parents can always shop around for the school that will offer good grades regardless of their child’s performance or attendance.

Needless to say, the free market works great for many things. Mass public education isn't one of them.

Amen Orion.

“If a school gives a top notch education, a lot of parents will pay to send their kids there”

Great, I have no problem with parents choosing to send their kids to certain schools but the problem here is parents that don’t care or don’t have the means to send their kids to other schools.
(My parents would have sent me to a shit school or whatever school was nearest)

“Yes, some parents will choose to send their kids to schools that don't teach science. SO what?
That’s the fucking problem we are discussing. We don’t need more retail workers. We need more scientists, you know most science department are 50% foreign born students that no longer wish to stay in this country but want to go back? So basically we are educating them with government grants and shipping them back to their countries. (Not to mention my friend who is a phd in bio engineering told me of the rampant anti-Americanism these students have. The professors prefer students of their own country and fuck over anyone else). Also MOST of the PhD’s Americans are getting are in English or Philosopy. TWO things we don’t need.

“Plenty of homeschoolers teach whatever they feel like now. Science probably won't be needed for them to get a job as an adult, either. No one in retail needs to know the theory of evolution, for example.”

Yeah great….I’m publicly funding your education and people in this country can’t even grasp the theory of evolution and we wonder why we are just so uneducated as Americans. It really sickens me that basic facts like science, geography, math and English are things people (with publicly funded education) cant grasp. You NEED to know these things to make informed decisions on public policy and to stop from religious fanatics taking over the government.

And one more point, you know part of the reason the Muslim word is such a fuck up?

Because poor people can't afford to send their kids to good schools and the madressas take over in the education department and do nothing but teach them the Koran all day long.

So your solution us to keep all kids from becoming educated? Because that is where we are at right now. I also take issue with you assuming other adults aren't capable of picking a good school, but somehow the government who has fucked education so badly can chose better.
Any private school not teaching reading, writing, and math gets shut down. Anything else they want to teach is gravy. A pathetic number of high school graduates can not read or write a basic sentence, and you are worried about teaching environmental science?

Not everyone can be a scientist. Why try to shoehorn all kids into one school type nationwide? Past some very basic minimums, let parents decide what school.

"So your solution us to keep all kids from becoming educated?"

Yes that is exactly my solution. I want all kids to stop being educated.

“I also take issue with you assuming other adults aren't capable of picking a good school”

A lot of parents are not capable because they don’t care or they don’t have the financial means.

“But somehow the government who has fucked education so badly can chose better. “

For the parents above the government can choose and do better. I work with very poor people who do not understand how basic things work (like fax machines, they think the physical paper actually is magically transmitted to the receiver). I had parents who did not give one shit or another how I did in school or what I was taught. A public school with public guidelines helped me tremendously.

Again a public school with public guidelines helped me tremendously.

"Any private school not teaching reading, writing, and math gets shut down. "
Orion will have an amazing reply to this one.

"Anything else they want to teach is gravy."
No, no, no! You need more than the above. Like science, geography, history.

"A pathetic number of high school graduates can not read or write a basic sentence, and you are worried about teaching environmental science?"
Environmental science? Who mentioned that? Basic science is as important as math. And evolutionary science is a basic FACT.

“Not everyone can be a scientist.”
Let me explain something to you. Other countries churn out viable PhD’s, they come to this country and learn (on our government grants) and we either are shipping them back out home or they choose to go home. We need our kids, our American stock to start doing something about that. We need to start shoehorning.

My solution is actually to recognize the source of the problem, and quite frankly it isn’t public school systems. The reason why some children tend to do very well in the educational system and others do not has much more to do with the priorities of the parents.

Parents who instill a love of learning and the importance of becoming a well educated member of society within their children early on tend to end up with children who are clever and knowledgeable. Children with parents like that tend to succeed even within educational environments where most other children are failing… those failing children also tend to have parents who don’t see any particular value in education. Children pick up on these things and then act accordingly.

Fix the parents perspective on education and the children will follow suit. That is my solution.

As for me assuming other adults are incapable of selecting a good school, I didn’t actually assume anything. You contended that there were parents who would desire to place their children into an educational environment where science wasn’t even included in the curriculum. Any parent who would decide such a thing really has no leg to stand on. In the modern age it is no longer acceptable to remain ignorant of basic scientific facts about the world around us. Any adult who would choose to send their child into an educational environment like that is literally crippling their ability to participate in the modern economy which is highly technologically based. If that child can’t be sure whether magical fairies make the lights turn on when they flip the switch, or if they have completed an electrical circuit that causes electrons to flow and power the bulb they are in really poor shape. A parent like that is incapable of selecting a good school for their child because they are choosing to give them an 18th century education as opposed to a 21st century one. That they can’t see a difference between the two is a major problem and should not be perpetuated through the generations, that cycle needs to be broken for us to move forward as a society.

Simply learning to read, write, and add is not sufficient to make it in the economy today. A child who only picks up those skills is essentially screwed. You should learn all of those things by the time you are done with elementary school. Science, economics, history, global affairs, and civics are not simply “gravy”.

Someone who doesn’t understand these subjects at a basic level is ill prepared to participate in the modern era. Keep in mind when I say basic I really mean basic… I don’t expect high school grads to understand quantum mechanics or to be able to solve partial differential equations. They shouldn’t be completely dumbfounded when you ask them what causes disease though. If part of their answer doesn’t include things like bacteria, viruses or parasites they don’t deserve the title of “educated adult”.

This debate has gotten fairly interesting, if a bit more heated than I tend to like. I'm going to add a bit more...

It seems to me that we have two topics going on. Elementary-high school education, and college level education (we could argue over high school, but that's a side trip we don't really need to take).

If you take the approach that grade school should be giving kids a basic understanding of most areas of life (that's a more "liberal arts" view), then we need music, art, math, language arts, PE, all the basic sciences, civics, history, etc.

I think that's great - but should be more of the primary education.

That said, there's also the "specialist" view - that people should learn what is most applicable to them. So, if your kid is absolutely awful at English, they still need to learn enough to read a basic contract & understand it, but maybe they don't need to wax poetic about Shakespeare or write sonnets. If your kid has a fancy for robots, maybe they take more science and math & go into engineering.

Both have merit in my opinion, and I think you'd find schools that would do both in a free-market system.... probably with more distinction at the high-school & college ends. Like Thomas Jefferson High School (in VA) - which is a STEM high school and MIT isn't known for its English majors.

On an entirely different note...

I am having a harder and harder time finding doctors who are native English speakers, so there's SOME problem that needs to be fixed (I have nothing against non-native speakers, but if I'm not sure you understand the problem, I'm not going to be confident in the solution).

Businesses have been reporting having trouble finding good applicants in certain fields for years now. Colleges (even more elite ones) have remedial classes. So, I think the problem is coming to a head. If businesses know they're just going to have to train you anyway, they might start preferring high-school grads to college ones.

Just one direct impact that I've heard of - some engineering groups (in companies, etc) are starting to ask questions like, "Tell us how you played as a kid?" because they're finding that even the best candidates with great technical skills are having some issues with problem-solving and creativity.

So, right now we're churning out kids who are somewhat rubber-stamped and kids who are technically competent but not that creative.

I can't tell you the number of times I've thought that big businesses (esp. technical ones) should get together and start a school for training people in technology and problem solving. It'd be cheaper for everyone and provide a better education.

Shannon,

I've been convinced for a while now that part of the problem with higher education is that it isn't actually responsive to the larger economy.

The university gets paid whether or not their graduates secure employment since students loans are not eliminated by things like bankruptcy. As a result they have zero incentive to dissuade students from entering fields that are essentially saturated.

Furthermore, many companies do not seem to see a direct translation of skills learned in certain programs and the skills they would like to see new hires possess. These deficiencies in student training are seen a liabilities because that new hire will require a longer time period to become a fully productive member of the company.

This is why as you’ve said, the interview process has ballooned into something it never was before, with questions designed not to necessarily test your knowledge or qualifications, but to test the way you think.

Companies seem to have come to expect that new graduates aren’t going to have the skills they require right out of the gate, so it is better for them to find people they deem to be “trainable” since they are going to have to learn so much on the job anyway.

Very rarely are new hires a perfect fit for the position they are being brought in for.

It would be kind of interesting if companies started to offer opportunities to high school students for them to apply to be trained for four years to fill a specific role as opposed to applying to university and being trained to fit nothing specific at all.

"The reason why some children tend to do very well in the educational system and others do not has much more to do with the priorities of the parents."

Exactly. Talking to my successful Hispanic friends we all had a similar story. Our parents didn't give two shits about our education. They were never involved in anything regarding our learning. Nothing-zero. Did not talk to teachers, didn't know what classes we were taking or whether we showed up to school at all. I mean that. It's very common in the Hispanic community.

But a public education gave us an opportunity to succeed despite our parents apathy.

You are in a global economy being an American is no longer "good enough". You have things you need to learn and sometimes parents are not capable of making that choice for you for various reasons.

"The university gets paid whether or not their graduates secure employment since students loans are not eliminated by things like bankruptcy"

I've talked to recruiters who want me to sell sell sell an education, doesn't matter to who or whether it's worth anything. They just want me to make them money. And like Orion said they have zero incentive to sell employable careers.

(P.S. Orion kicks ass).

I agree, said everything in response I would have and more

My son will still kick their asses at World of Warfare.

Ahem, correction; it's Call of Duty. *grumble* how am I supposed to keep all these simulated warfare games straight? *grumble*

As it stands now you are entrusting your children to the same system that came up with the USPS, IRS, FDA, EPA and the nutritional Food Pyramid.

These are the same people are about to implement the Affordable Healthcare Act (Obamacare) on top of Medicare.

Meanwhile the free market system has come up with Wal-Mart, Dell, Dollar General, Macy's, J.C. Penney, Microsoft, Oracle, Cisco, and McDonald's.

Which is more efficient?

Jim P.,

I find your objections to be somewhat odd. For example, you talk about “entrusting children” to the same system that came up with things like the USPS as if this is a legitimate argument.

Who exactly do you believe set up the postal service? Was it established recently by a bunch of government bureaucrats for whom you have no regard? Or was is established by a collection of people who have earned some degree of credibility amongst the American public?

Just to be clear, the USPS was established by the exact same group of people who established the the United States in the first place. In fact it was Benjamin Franklin who took the position as the first post master general.

As a result, your objection to the “system” that came up with the USPS is essentially an objection to the very same “system” that came up with the United States.

Shall we privatize the whole of the United States then and simply dissolve the government entirely? Would it actually yield a better society to do away with the entire democratic republic and replace it with “charter governments” run by corporations?

It is these kinds of questions that I think we all need to really consider as opposed to taking the easy way out. The easy way out is to simply declare that government can fix everything, similarly it is the easy way out to simply declare that privatization can fix everything. The more complex, but more realistic approach is to understand that in some cases government is the answer and in other cases privatization is the answer.

The trick is knowing under what conditions private industry thrives and under what conditions it fails.

If there is one thing we should learn from the expansive private university system, is that while they are very efficient, they aren’t efficient at the right things. They are incredibly efficient at churning out graduates with credentials that don’t necessarily train them to do anything worthwhile in society. They aren’t however efficient at churning out well trained and educated individuals who are ready to jump into the economy with the skills they picked up while attending.

This isn’t an acceptable system to mimic at the high school, middle school, and elementary school level. The incentive for a private educational system is to sell a product that parents and students want. That product isn’t necessarily a challenging, robust, and intellectually rewarding experience. The product that sells is a transcript and certificate at the end that says you completed their system. It is the transcript and diploma that is for sale, not a quality education. This system creates incentives to fire educators who are tough on their students and give bad grades to those who perform poorly. Furthermore, it creates incentives for grade inflation and for educators to be complicit in “cooking the grade books” because doing so will satisfy their customers (i.e. the students and parents). Providing bad grades even in light of poor student performance would be bad for business.

Out of curiosity, why is it when people bring up things like government “inefficiency” they always bring up things like the USPS, the FDA and the EPA, but never mention things like the various divisions of the military, the SEC, or the NPS?

Lastly, you bring up McDonalds as one of your examples of what we can expect the free market to bring to the table for the education system. I find that ironic because that is precisely what frightens me about the privatization of education. McDonalds doesn’t make a profit by raising the bar on nutrition and providing people with meals that are densely packed with nutrients, they don’t provide what I would call a “high quality” product (although their products do taste good and are delivered quickly). They make a profit by offering “pink slime” when they can get away with it and by offering things like the “Cheddar Bacon Onion Angus Third Pounder” which provides about half of the calories one needs in their daily diet while offering only 6% of their daily requirement of vitamin A and only 2% of their daily requirement of vitamin C. I don’t want our children being given a cheddar bacon education, sure it might taste delicious, sure they might love eating it, but it is still just empty calories.

Orion,

Yes, the USPS was created by the founding fathers[1] but there has always been debate about it's efficiency.

Shall we privatize the whole of the United States then and simply dissolve the government entirely?

Yes and no. What I'd like to see is that government did it's job as codified in the U.S. Constitution. Education is nowhere in there without the good & plenty or the commerce clause. Education is in the tenth amendment though.

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

The individual states should be determining how the schools are setup and paid for. As it stands now, with All Children Left Behind, and all the rest of the mandates coming from Mordor on the Potomac, essentially there no chance or choice for an individual state to experiment.

Out of curiosity, why is it when people bring up things like government “inefficiency” they always bring up things like the USPS, the FDA and the EPA, but never mention things like the various divisions of the military, the SEC, or the NPS?

The military is a clearly enumerated power in the Constitution. The founders didn't want a large standing military. They were supposed to be a core unit that established standards for the state's militias. The states were supposed to have their own militias. I'd like to see the military downsized as well, but it would be by putting the onus back on the states to have their own choice of how to form and fund the militia. As for the Navy, their is a reason why Tripoli is mentioned in the Marine Corps hymn.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC?) is technically Constitutional depending your view of Wickard v. Filburn. Their inefficiencies aren't as obvious (even though they are direct) to the general public no matter how much damage they have done and can do.

The NPS is the National Park Service? Where are the national parks a role of the government? So why does the government even own the land let alone manage it.

[1] www.savethepostoffice.com/week-history-post-office-and-constitution

My parents are both decently educated - good schools, moderate grades, and from an era where grades weren't so easy to get.

I can't say they ever knew much about what was going on with me school-wise, but that might be because they deemed it unimportant to follow since I generally did exceptionally well. Don't really know (& not gonna ask!).

So, with that in mind, I share a short story.

In middle school, I went through a period where I had severe insomnia (probably due to eczema). About once every two weeks I'd wake at 1 AM and simply could NOT get back to sleep. My mom would get up at 5 to get ready for work and find me on the couch watching infomercials - which weren't even boring enough to lull me to sleep. So, she'd call me out sick since I really wasn't functional.

When I hit the predetermined number of absences, the school sent home a (form) letter saying that attendance was important, my grades would suffer, I might fail something (doom, gloom, etc.). My mom had to have a meeting with the principal. He went on his standard doom/gloom tirade. She says she looked at him, asked him what my grades were, and when he looked them up (all A's), she asked him why he was wasting both their time because clearly I was managing - or was he preferring she send me to school sick to infect everyone else?

So, the comments above about administration being part of the problem are spot-on. Not always (they were generally ok, and my son's direct admin is good), but the rules-without-brains policies aren't helping anyone out.

Jim P.,

I think I have a better grasp on your position now. While you used the term “efficiency” earlier, which is in some sense ambiguous because something can simply be very efficient at bringing about undesirable results, what seems to really be at the core of your position now is the roles of the federal government in education versus state and local governments.

On this point I can agree with you that the federal government is overreaching in a way that has not been particularly helpful. Interestingly, all of the teachers and educators I have spoken with find programs like “no child left behind” to be unnecessarily invasive and unhelpful. Any program that seeks to infringe upon their ability to customize the educational experience to meet the needs of their children is something they do not appreciate. This is simply anecdotal evidence which should be taken for whatever you deem it to be worth, but the distinct feeling I get when interacting with educators is that they see these things as shackles on their ability to teach. However, whenever teachers object to these programs they are informed that they are simply seeking to avoid accountability. To that end, people on the other side of the fence can't have it both ways. They can't object to federal programs as being "inefficient" and simultaneously castigate teachers who object to the very same programs as trying to avoid accountability. Teachers would simply prefer to have a larger degree of professional independence.

As for the other governmental programs that I mentioned, in light of your explanation that they fall within the purview of the federal government I now understand your selection criteria and see why they didn’t make it onto your list. That being said, if your issue was primarily the powers enumerated by the constitution, you should not have included things like the USPS as discussed earlier or the IRS because it’s establishment is clearly provided for in the 16th amendment where it states the following:

“The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.”

Now you may not particularly like the IRS, but it is clearly justified by a very specific amendment which was put in place for this express purpose.

If your objection to the federal governments involvement in education is that it isn’t provided for in the constitution, it doesn’t do well to compare it to programs that are specifically provided for in the constitution.

Such an argument suggests that even if a new amendment were to be proposed and ratified to give the federal government preview over student education, you would continue to hold the position that such an amendment didn’t exist.

All of this being said, your current argument seems more in line with the position that education should be run by the states and local governments. This is a reasonable position that I don't have any compelling objections to.

Orion - about McDonald's: if you look back in this blog, you'll see even MORE appalling dietary "choices" mandated by school systems for kids on meal programs. There have even been instances of schools confiscating the lunches brought by students.

But I have a better example of free-market excellence than McDonald's. Look in any Publix, Kroger or Safeway, and you will see products from all over the planet, delivered with respect to perish dating, and always in stock.

The major point really is that when you cannot fire a person for incompetence, AND their pay remains the same regardless of their performance, you get substandard work.

That's the entire story of any agency's failures.

The US doesn't value smart people. Smart people get picked on in High School, and in life. Hey, even in the Presidential elections people tend to downplay that they went to an Ivy League school. America hates nerds. It got better in the 90s, but not better enough.

Posted by: NicoleK at November 15, 2012 6:14 AM
_____________________________________

I know, of course, that sports are overrated pretty much everywhere in the U.S., but if people here in Boston are so sports-obsessed, maybe it's because they're secretly ashamed of living next door to Harvard and M.I.T. If so, that's just pathetic.

Even so, in high school at least, one thing that would help smart kids is to learn to be modest and gracious without hiding their intelligence. Hint 1: Once everyone knows you're smart, give other students at least three seconds to raise their hands before you raise yours. Everyone already knows you know the answer. Hint 2: Remember that there's a difference between being assertive and being bossy - namely, assertive people have true respect for and interest in their peers and let them know it. E.g., learn to talk about what other people are interested in, not what you're interested in. At least half the time, anyway.

After all, Einstein, in his devotion to science, was not the best husband or father (I even heard he ruined several marriages of OTHER couples) but he still managed to be modest and charming enough to be a truly popular man of the people - if only because he didn't enjoy being famous, much.

BTW, I also suspect that one reason that people complain about the American dating scene is that Americans want the right to be shallow consumers of pop culture and little else, but they despise the same trait in other Americans.

When you say that no one in retail needs to understand the theory of evolution you ignore two important things. First, what is to guarantee that this uneducated individual is filtered into a very specific occupation that you suggest has no need for this knowledge? We have elected members of congress in office right now who lack a basic understanding of things like evolution, how exactly did they manage to slip under the radar when according to you they should have ended up working in a department store? So my first objection is that every child needs to learn these things precisely because we do not know where they will end up in life, many will end up in retail, but some will end up in powerful government positions where ignorance of basic science is unacceptable.

Secondly, a lack of understanding about evolution influences peoples decisions when it comes to things like vaccinating their children. Now I’m not interested in a debate on whether or not parents should be able to choose to vaccinate their kids or not, but I do believe that when making important medical decisions for your children it is somewhat important to comprehend the most fundamental components of biology such that one can make an informed decision.

By Orion
_____________________________

Regarding that, I heard of this book recently:

"Physics for Future Presidents: The Science Behind the Headlines" by Richard A. Muller, 2009. (He also wrote "Energy for Future Presidents" recently.)

Besides that, see Sam Harris' introduction to "Letter to a Christian Nation":

"...But the current controversy over 'intelligent design' should not blind us to the true scope of our religious bewilderment at the dawn of the twenty first century. The same Gallup poll revealed that 53 percent of Americans are actually creationists. This means that despite a full century of scientific insights attesting to the antiquity of life and the greater antiquity of the earth, more than half of our neighbors believe that the entire cosmos was created six thousand years ago. This is, incidentally, about a thousand years after the Sumerians invented glue. Those with the power to elect our presidents and congressmen - and many who themselves get elected believe that dinosaurs lived two by two upon Noah's ark, that light from distant galaxies was created en route to the earth, and that the first members of our species were fashioned out of dirt and divine breath, in a garden with a talking snake, by the hand of an invisible God.

"Among developed nations, America stands alone in these convictions. Our country now appears, as at no other time in her history, like a lumbering, bellicose, dimwitted giant. Anyone who cares about the fate of civilization would do well to recognize that the combination of great power and great stupidity is simply terrifying, even to one's friends.

"The truth, however, is that many of us may not care about the fate of civilization. Forty-four percent of the American population is convinced that Jesus will return to judge the living and the dead sometime in the next fifty years. According to the most common interpretation of biblical prophecy, Jesus will return only after things have gone horribly awry here on earth. It is, therefore, not an exaggeration to say that if the city of New York were suddenly replaced by a ball of fire, some significant percentage of the American population would see a silver lining in the subsequent mushroom cloud, as it would suggest to them that the best this that is ever going to happen was about to happen: the return of Christ. It should be blindingly obvious that beliefs of this sort will do little to help us create a durable future for ourselves -- socially, economically, environmentally, or geopolitically. Imagine the consequences if any significant component of the U.S. government actually believed that the world was about to end and that its ending would be glorious. The fact that nearly half or the American population apparently believes this, purely on the basis of religious dogma, should be considered a moral and intellectual emergency."

They can't object to federal programs as being "inefficient" and simultaneously castigate teachers who object to the very same programs as trying to avoid accountability. Teachers would simply prefer to have a larger degree of professional independence.

I object to inefficient federal programs. I also am willing to castigate poor teachers, but with an evidence based method.

It's been several years since I heard this and finding references is very hard. There was a statistician that started out a an agricultural teacher. He was able to correlate poor students and poor teachers by looking at the standardized testing over a period of years.

Basically -- if a student did poor on the math portion every year, then it was not really the fault of the teacher. But if they upticked on the math what was the factor -- probably the teacher.

But if a group of students that are average in math all tick down with one teacher and that pattern follows year after year, it usually follows that the teacher is questionable.

But the choice should still be made at the state or local levels for what is required of the teachers, not the federal level.

If your objection to the federal governments involvement in education is that it isn’t provided for in the constitution, it doesn’t do well to compare it to programs that are specifically provided for in the constitution.

An error on my part. I just named off the popular alphabet soup, instead of being picky. I do admit that the 16th exists, but needs to be repealed but that is a whole discussion in itself.

All of this being said, your current argument seems more in line with the position that education should be run by the states and local governments. This is a reasonable position that I don't have any compelling objections to. -- Orion at November 17, 2012 9:25 PM

That is pretty much my position.

Radwaste,

Just to be clear, I am not offering an opinion on dietary choices offered in school cafeterias. That being said, when I was sent to school, my parents provided me with a packed lunch from home. So again, who is primarily at fault here? The school for providing what you consider to be a “substandard” meal, or the parents for not providing any food at all?

I often find schools and teachers to be very convenient scapegoats for what really amounts to substandard parenting.

I feel like we've gotten a bit off track with respect to my original analogy though. I’d be all for reforms to the dietary choices made available to children whose parents either choose not to, or who simply cannot afford to provide a lunch from home. I don’t think for one second however that if we were to turn over school lunches to a fast food restaurant that suddenly all the children would be consuming a healthy diet.

I’m all for “free-market excellence” as you put it and definitely recognize it where it exists. The free-market is an absolutely wonderful system when and if the incentives are designed appropriately. The educational system as it has been conceived in the united states simply doesn’t fit the free market model though. The incentives simply aren’t appropriate for free market forces to push things in the direction we as a society want them to go.

Now for your major point:

“The major point really is that when you cannot fire a person for incompetence, AND their pay remains the same regardless of their performance, you get substandard work.”

First of all, there seems to be a very pervasive misconception that it is effectively impossible for a teacher to be fired if they are incompetent. This is simply not the case.

Tenure at the elementary and high school levels does not and never has guaranteed employment despite utter incompetence. If it did, why wouldn’t we see more evidence of teachers like south parks “Mr. Garrison” who spends his day teaching about pop culture instead of covering actual educational topics?

The reality is a bit more complex than the notion that teachers are immune to being fired. What tenure does it that it means that a teacher cannot be fired without due process (similar in some sense to how we can't be locked away without due process... but it doesn't mean we can't be locked away). There is a procedure which must be gone through which is detailed within their contract, a contract which is agreed upon by both the local board of education and the local teachers union.

One of the primary reasons tenure even exists is to protect educators from the prospect of being terminated because they fail poorly performing students of parents who would rather have the teacher be fired than recognize that their son or daughter isn’t performing and that their child needs to work harder.

I’d be all for evaluating teachers based upon their performance. The problem is that I’ve yet to see a good metric for objectively evaluating teacher performance. Basing teacher performance upon student performance doesn’t really make much sense unless teachers can similarly eject poorly performing students from their classrooms.

That would be like judging the performance of a business manager upon the performance of their subordinates when the manager has no ability to dismiss them and replace them with more qualified and harder working employees.

When and if teachers are offered the power to dismiss disruptive students from their registers, then and only then will it be reasonable to judge their performance based upon the performance of the remaining students. So long as we as a society hold true to the precept that all children, regardless of behavioral problems, mental deficiencies, drug addictions, abusive home environments, poor work ethic, etc… are to be served by the public education system we can’t hold teachers solely accountable for student performance.

Needless to say, the problem with education in the united states goes much deeper than things like teachers unions and tenure... yet very few people actually want to talk about the elephant in the room because it requires many people to look in the mirror instead of pointing fingers elsewhere.

All of that being said, teachers are an important component of student success and should be held to a standard. I simply object to them being held to exclusive account while eliminating the responsibilities of the students and their guardians who also have critically important roles to play.

Lenona,

That article is pretty awesome. I've been a fan of Sam Harris for some time because of his brilliant debate skills, but I haven't actually read any of his books in detail. Maybe it is time for me to pick one up.

There is a very easy test for determining how a teacher is performing in a given area.

The first week of school, test all the children on a skill (e.g. adding two-digit numbers, long division, typing). Test the same material the last week of school. The best teachers will have a high (positive) change over all their students.

Yes, some students will get more help at home, some will have no help. Some have XYZ problem. BUT, since you are comparing each student to themselves, you actually account for that. You can also do this periodically throughout the year as new subjects are introduced. The tests don't have to be long, and don't have to take much time (some could be 5 minutes long).

This is, basically, a paired T-test type of experimental design for those with some statistical knowledge. You can test things like teacherA is better than teacherB, etc. using this method. You can also set a minimum bar for teacher performance that is not depended on the students' basic abilities, because it's the improvement across students that you are looking at.

I'd bet some teachers do really well with more "gifted" children, some with low-performers, and some better all-around. You could easily see how each teacher did with kids who started out in low/high performing groups, etc. Then, you could give teachers students who they teach best, AND find your worst teachers. Heck, maybe one teacher sucks at teaching math, but rocks reading. Adjust accordingly.

Shannonn,

The method you suggest is overly simplistic and won’t actually capture the information you suggest that it will. The method is flawed for an entire host of reasons (even though at first glance it might seem appropriate).

When you say this:

“The first week of school, test all the children on a skill (e.g. adding two-digit numbers, long division, typing). Test the same material the last week of school.”

It suggests that you will be testing a skill that the children should be learning that year. So for example, third grade is when students typically are introduced to multiplication.

Exactly how do you expect any third grade students on the first day to answer any questions related to multiplication when in principal they haven’t been exposed to it before? This of course assumes that none of the students taught themselves multiplication on their own, or that their parents or outside tutors didn’t teach it to them independently. If that assumption is correct they should all basically receive a score of zero and only get correct answers on lucky guesses.

The test at the end of the year would simply prove that the teacher covered the subject material if the scores went up at all. If the scores remained at zero it could imply that nothing was taught, but that is really all that can be determined by the test you suggest.

It will provide zero comparative information about the quality of the educational experience within the classroom.

Your suggestion is not structurally different than just testing them at the end and assuming that they would have received a grade of zero at the outset. However, we already know that end of term grades are a very poor way to compare educators precisely because of confounding factors like student ability, student assignment compliance, parental involvement, etc…

What you propose to be “easy” actually isn’t simple at all because you have no way to disentangle your variables. You claim it would be "basically, a paired T-test type of experimental design"... but T-tests can only look for correlations when comparing two populations, it tells you nothing about causation. As a result, how exactly do you point to the "cause" as being the teachers when it could just as easily be the students or the parents? Furthermore, sample size is critically important for statistical tests like a T-test. With a class size of ~30 students, the sample is simply too small to draw robust conclusions... but at the same time, class size is also a confounding factor when it comes to student performance so we wouldn't exactly want to have class sizes of 1000 to get "nice statistics". Lastly, in order for a T-test to even be valid, the subjects have to be randomly drawn from the population, but school classes are not randomly drawn. Like I said, your suggestion is overly simplistic, this is not an easy problem to resolve.

Just as some further food for thought, why don’t I ever hear suggestions that we assess other professionals who deal with children by a similar set of standards?

For example, let’s take pediatricians. They are the professionals responsible for the health of children in the same way that teachers are the professionals responsible for the education of children.

Why don’t we assess the quality of pediatricians by forcing them to take every child who walks into their practice (regardless of whether or not they feel they have a full load of patients already). Then on the first visit we can run a series of medical tests to assess the general health of the child. On the next annual visit the child will be checked again according to the same tests and as you said:

“The best teachers [pediatricians] will have a high (positive) change over all their students [patients].”

Does this seem like a reasonable and accurate way to test the performance of a pediatrician in comparison to other pediatricians? Furthermore, if they perform poorly according to this test shall we revoke their medical license? What is the parents responsibility here? Does it end at simply taking their child for their annual medical check up?

Most people would recognize that the responsibility of the pediatrician is to do things like provide vaccinations, look for signs of medical problems, offer advice to parents on how to maintain their child’s health, order tests when necessary and refer parents to specialists when the need arises. Furthermore, when a parent calls them with a problem, the pediatrician is responsible for trying to resolve that issue with further advice and to provide additional visits to remedy the medical issue.

No one looks at a morbidly obese child and says “must be a crappy pediatrician”. That is because the job of the pediatrician isn’t to monitor the daily activities of what the child eats or how much activity they get, that is the parent’s job, and when the child gets older it is the child’s responsibility as well. Never do we hold the pediatrician responsible when every time the child comes for a visit he/she notes that a problem exists and tells the parent and the child what to do to fix it. At that stage the responsibility resides with the parent and child to comply with the medical prescription. If the child continues to sit on the couch all day as mom and dad feed them cupcakes it isn't the pediatricians fault that the child has medical issues.

Similarly, a teacher is responsible for being ready to teach each day, having lessons prepared that are relevant and designed to get the curriculum across. They are responsible for identifying educational problems and relating those problems to the parents. They are responsible to be available to parents to design a plan to improve student performance. They are responsible for giving assignments for the student to do at home. If and only if they fail to do these things have they not done a proper job.

However, if a teacher does all those things and a student is still doing poorly, it ceases to be the result of their inadequate performance.

Just like a child can stuff their face with candy all day long, so too can a child spend all day sitting in front of a television and refuse to study or do any of their homework assignments.

Teachers simply are not responsible for the poor performance of children and parents who don’t comply with the educational prescription. Just like a doctor isn't responsible if they prescribe you medication to deal with an issue they have identified and you simply refuse to take it.

When a child has an attendance problem, when they don't hand in homework, when they don't complete projects, when they don't study at home... those problems have a cause and its not the teacher.

Very rarely do students perform poorly when they do all of the things I listed above. You simply do not learn your multiplication facts entirely in the classroom, you memorize those at home by practicing and then come prepared to learn more in class. Similarly, you don't learn to read only in a classroom, you've got to practice on your own time at home. That is a critical part of the education process.

Does anyone here honestly believe that the problem with education in this country is that we have a bunch of really hard working children who just aren't being offered proper instruction? I call BS.

It is the same as arguing that the obesity problem is the fault of crappy pediatricians.

This problem won't be resolved until people start to understand that education doesn't stop when the school bell rings.

The test at the end of the year would simply prove that the teacher covered the subject material if the scores went up at all. If the scores remained at zero it could imply that nothing was taught, but that is really all that can be determined by the test you suggest.

It will provide zero comparative information about the quality of the educational experience within the classroom.

Now the problem with that argument is that a single year doesn't do much to prove, or disprove, anything.

Now if you take Kate, an A math student for the prior three years, and put her through Ms. Jones class and she still scores an A then you can attribute that to the student. But if you put five kids with math A's through Ms. Jones and they all get B's you start to look at Ms. Jones. But if prior C students are also getting B's on standardized tests you have to look at it half and half. If the spread of students is normal and you get nothing but low C's or D's on the test -- are you sure the teacher isn't the problem.

First of all, there seems to be a very pervasive misconception that it is effectively impossible for a teacher to be fired if they are incompetent. This is simply not the case.

As for firing teachers Please tell me where this is wrong? And that is just an extreme exaple.

Jim P.,

You are absolutely correct that assessing a single year doesn’t really tell you much at all because any single year could prove to be a statistical anomaly. In the interest of full disclosure, I was aware of this at the time I was writing that comment, but I felt like I was already being harsh enough with the rest of my criticisms of the proposed method so I offered an olive branch there that maybe something could be teased out (but as you point out, that method really doesn’t tell you anything).

The methodology you talk about here and in your previous post has much more merit. In fact, the only major problem with that proposed method is that the public will probably not perceive it as offering a valid or efficient assessment of teaching ability.

The reason for this is that it would take between 5 and 10 years of data to be able to draw any reliable conclusions which means that by default bad teachers would be retained in the classroom for the better part of a decade before we can confidently declare that they aren’t effective.

I’m okay with doing it the right way and collecting the data in that kind of a manner. However, I remain dubious that the general public will be able to be convinced that this is the right way to go because it is slow.

It is the same reason the general public gets frustrated with clinical medical trials. They simply don’t want to accept that these things take lots of time to get good data.

As for the link you offer, let’s really dissect what is going on:

Step One - Evaluate and Document

Does this step really strike anyone as being unreasonable? That the administration should have the responsibility of evaluating and documenting the performance and potential problems of a teacher prior to their dismissal?

That evaluation process involves the maintenance of a file on that employee, a file that the employee has access too such that they can grieve any discrepancies that exist there. Also not unreasonable.

Assuming that enough evidence is collected to fire the teacher they begin with the process of terminating their employment. Also not unreasonable.

The teacher gets representation during the termination process.

Needless to say, this chart fits exactly what I said, all tenure does for you is it guarantees a due process procedure for termination. We could put together a similar chart for due process when it comes to criminal prosecution (although in that case it would be much more involved).

Due process exists solely to ensure that we don’t get abuses from the top. Sure, the criminal justice system would be more “efficient” if police could just lock people away without a trial. However we all recognize the problems with a system like that, we know why it doesn’t work and how it gets abused.

These systems exist to protect the innocent. I know that it must feel burdensome for a school administrator to have to actually prove that a teacher is incompetent before firing them and revoking their teaching license. However it must also feel burdensome for a prosecutor to have to prove that an accused criminal is guilty before sending them to jail.

Orion,

I do understand where you are coming from. However, there are benefits to what I propose.

1.) If you test something before it's been officially covered by the school - you identify the kids who either figured it out or got help on their own (so end of year performance by those kids isn't necessarily reflecting superb teaching - which is what happens now).

2.) Say multiplication is taught in 3rd grade. You test at the beginning & end. If most of the kids in Ms. Jones' class have negligible improvement, but Ms. Smith's class shows most kids improving significantly, then something's going on.

I think the thing you miss about pairing is that it removes (part) of the need for complete randomization. Moreover, a school does not need to be interested in teaching kids it doesn't have. So, if it's an inner-city school, it doesn't really matter that there are no suburban kids. Whatever level of parental involvement or giftedness or whatnot is controlled by comparing each kid to themselves and looking at that delta. So, if Ms. Jones just happened to get all the kids who are vegetarian, but Ms. Smith got all the carnivores, then instead of finding some innate difference in vegetarians and carnivores by just looking at a point value for each kid (what happens now), you remove some of that by using each child as his/her own control. So, if eating no meat improves your ability to spell, you have to improve over THAT (to make an absurd example).

I am NOT suggesting that the correlation between a class and high improvement implies causation, but it does give you somewhere to go. Did they have very different classes? Did they use different techniques? Did Ms. Jones cover math in the morning, and Ms. Smith in the afternoon?

Yes, sample size is important (I have even pointed that out elsewhere on Amy's blog). That doesn't mean you can't find significant differences with n=30 if they really exist (it's just harder). I wouldn't suggest firing a teacher for one year's bad showing in one subject. BUT, maybe Ms. Jones is really awesome at teaching multiplication. All her 3rd graders come in knowing almost nothing about it, and most end up scoring 75-95%. Maybe she can tell other teachers what she does or how she handles kids having problems, etc.

I'm not saying the paired t-test is a panacea, but it DOES have some nice properties.

Also, the idea is that if kids come in knowing nothing about multiplication, and that's part of that year's curriculum, then a BAD teacher would show very little improvement across the class (low delta, low variance).

But, look at some of the other examples. Say, adding numbers. After kindergarten, most kids should have some level of adding skills. So, you really couldn't assume that they'd have zeros at the start (nor could you with multiplication, because not everyone will be a zero at the start - my 6 year old can multiply a bit).

The way this differs from the pediatrician is that disease & injury aren't something the pediatrician has control over. People get them all the time and in places far beyond their control - many don't see their patients but once a year. Teaching a skill is NOT at all the same. You don't go to the mall and "pick up multiplication" the way you pick up bacteria!

Again, I'm with you that it doesn't provide definitive proof (statistics don't ever do that), but is it better than just looking at end-of-year scores by themselves? Looking at students across different years for performance in different subjects (math in 2nd grade isn't the same topics as math in 3rd grade)?

The point of school is to come out with knowledge, skills, and (hopefully) critical thinking abilities. We can TEST if people have an increase in knowledge and skills and which teachers/methods give the best increase.

My goal is to improve things. This is one relatively simple tool to get basic information that we are lacking. It is fairly simple, easy, and cheap. I could design something much better, I'm sure, but this is basic - do they come out doing better than when they went in? It can also point to potential improvements (maybe kids learn math better in the afternoon).

Shannon,

You are right in some ways, that assessing against themselves may work.

While this is aimed at generally adult students, it doesn't always work out as expected.

Separating Programming Sheep from Non-Programming Goats

Shannon Says:

“I think the thing you miss about pairing is that it removes (part) of the need for complete randomization. Moreover, a school does not need to be interested in teaching kids it doesn't have. So, if it's an inner-city school, it doesn't really matter that there are no suburban kids.”

It does when one makes any sort of comparison between such disparate locations, which is often the case Unfortunately. Please also remember that large city public school districts serve not only inner city kids, but also the kids of children from more “suburban“ neighborhoods within the city limits. Furthermore, if what you are advocating is comparing one teacher in one school against another teacher within the same school, randomization is still a critical issue that can‘t be brushed aside so easily. That you don’t seem to see why having a random group of students even within one school is critically important should suggest to you that you are missing important facets of this problem.

Random determination of classes is important precisely because of what can happen if a particular teacher happens to become a thorn in the administrations side (for example if they make an issue out of the administration trying to violate the contract). In such a case the administration can simply pack their classroom the next year with the worst behaved children (i.e. the class is not randomly chosen) and then use the performance report as “evidence” that they are inept. The administration can already do this as a way of making things harder on teachers they are not particularly fond of, but at least it doesn’t result in termination based upon essentially trumped up charges.

The system you propose is ripe for abuse if the classes are not decided in a completely random fashion (and even then with only 60 students in this hypothetical scenario, statistical anomalies are likely enough to be a significant problem worthy of consideration). If you happen to randomly get all the poorly behaved children one year you might as well toss your teaching license in the trash.

When you say these data “give you somewhere to go” I completely disagree precisely because no conclusion can be robust enough in this scenario to warrant termination, the statistics are simply too weak.

It is really the equivalent of saying that a 30 person clinical trial for a new medication “gives you somewhere to go”… but where does it give you to go exactly? Such a small sample size doesn’t meet any reasonable standard to determine whether or not a drug is effective against a particular ailment, but suddenly such a small sample size does qualify as a reasonable standard for testing teacher effectiveness in education?

Would you allow your child to take a new medication because you were told that it was tested on 30 volunteers and the results look promising?

“After kindergarten, most kids should have some level of adding skills. So, you really couldn't assume that they'd have zeros at the start.”

Yes, but you can’t test the students on material that isn’t going to be covered that year and then judge the teacher based upon their performance at the end on that same material. By definition you wouldn’t be capturing any information on their teaching acumen.

Just to give an example of what I mean. Let’s say that students cover European history in their sophomore year in high school. So now at the beginning of their junior year we test them on their knowledge of European history. Then they spend the rest of the year covering American history and are tested again at the end of the year on European history, why should their poor performance there have any baring upon the quality of that years education?

Again, at a very superficial level the sort of tests you suggest appear to be valid, but they actually don’t tell you anything particularly useful.

“The way this differs from the pediatrician is that disease & injury aren't something the pediatrician has control over. People get them all the time and in places far beyond their control - many don't see their patients but once a year. Teaching a skill is NOT at all the same. You don't go to the mall and "pick up multiplication" the way you pick up bacteria!”

Alright, I now think that I have isolated the problem here because in a very real sense, teaching IS like pediatrics, that is why I made the analogy. It wasn’t an analogy made in haste, it was made because so very few people actually see the important parallels.

In the same way that a pediatrician has zero control over whether or not a child gets exposed to disease outside of their practice, a teacher has zero control over what happens away from the school environment. You have assumed good faith participation in the educational process by parents and students that simply does not exist across the board. Furthermore you have actually twisted my analogy in a very odd way. I never said anything about judging pediatricians based upon a child picking up bacteria. In precisely the same way that you don’t “pick up multiplication” at the mall, you also don’t “pick up physical fitness” at the mall. Why don’t we determine whether or not a pediatrician is worthy of retaining their medical license based upon how their patients compare to other pediatricians patients in things like body mass index and resting heart rate? After all, shouldn’t we expect the “best” pediatricians to have the most positive effect on the general health of their patients? The same logic you use for teachers would suggest that a pediatrician who has patients who become more obese and unfit than other pediatricians isn't doing their job.

Clearly we don’t do this, and for very good reasons. It's because once the child leaves the office it is the parents responsibility to make sure they eat properly, get enough sleep, and maintain a reasonable activity level. We don’t hold pediatricians accountable for this stuff because they have zero influence in that area. The same type of thinking holds for educators.

While you are probably a very good mother who has a distinct interest in your own child’s education, to extrapolate that to every other parent and child is simply wrong. Just to make things more clear, please consider the following:

What control does a teacher have over whether or not a child is within the foster care system and ends up being shuffled from one home environment to another without any stability in their life?

What control does a teacher have over whether or not a child’s parents are in jail and are being raised by their grand parents who really don‘t have the energy to keep up with a child anymore?

What control does a teacher have over whether a child has access to a computer at home, or parents willing to take them to the local library?

What control does a teacher have other whether a child actually shows up in class or does their homework when their parent doesn’t care, doesn’t show up to parent teacher conferences and doesn’t return phone calls?

What control does a teacher have over whether a child ends up pregnant before they have graduated from elementary school?

What control does a teacher have over whether or not a child studies anything once the bell rings?

In that sense it is analogous to being a pediatrician. The reason we don’t hold pediatricians ultimately responsible for everything that happens health wise to a child is that we universally recognize that the pediatrician doesn’t have any control over what happens to that child once they leave their office. We judge pediatricians based upon what they do when the child is there irrespective of patient compliance. We also recognize that what happens outside of their office has significant impacts upon their health.

Unfortunately many parents have decided to completely pass the buck when it comes to education. They see it as something that is supposed to happen within the school walls and when the bell rings education time is over. As a result they conclude that teachers are ultimately responsible for the education of their children as opposed to recognizing that teachers only act as a guide, students are primarily responsible for making the journey and parents are primarily responsible for supervising their progress and dedication outside of the school walls. It really all harkens back to that old folk wisdom:

“You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make them drink.”

A teachers job is to show the child where the water is and to demonstrate how one drinks the water. If the child then fails to drink due to other circumstances, it’s not due to poor teaching. Yet if they fail to drink for any reason their test scores are still going to be rather poor.

If I were to wager a guess it would be that you have never actually spoken in depth to a teacher who educates within an inner city school system. I’ll simply relate two stories amongst many that I’ve heard over the years.

Story 1 - A kindergarten class was getting ready to begin the new school year. Before the first day was over, one of the little boys decided it was time to go to the bathroom so they promptly pulled down their pants and defecated on the floor. When a teacher has to contend with children shitting on the floor I think it is reasonable to conclude that they didn’t cause that problem.

Story 2 - A child had a disciplinary problem where the principal had to get involved and called for a conference with the parent. Instead of meeting the principal in their office to discuss the disciplinary problems of their child, the parent located the principal in a stairwell, started an argument with the principal and pushed them down the stairs when they didn’t like that their child was going to be suspended. Again, how is the performance of that child representative of anything that happens within the school walls when their own parent doesn‘t know how to resolve a conflict without resorting to assault?

Look, I grew up in a nice suburban neighborhood, I went to a high school where the student parking lot was filled with nicer and newer cars than the teacher parking lot. In my school there were not any disciplinary problems even remotely equivalent to what is considered par for the course in many inner city schools. I also was friends with people ranging from the all advanced placement track all the way to people who had permanent seats in after school detention. We all had access to the same teachers and to the same educational resources. Some of my friends went to class every day and went home after school to study and work on their assignments. Others skipped class to smoke and others went to the mall to go shopping almost everyday once the school bell rang. Take a wild guess which group did well on standardized tests and ended up with weighted averages in excess of 100 points. Then take a wild guess which group ended up dropping out, getting left back, or finding it impossible to gain acceptance to a four year college.

Holding the teachers accountable for the discrepancy in performance between these groups is the equivalent of sticking ones head in the sand. I implore you to really think back on your own education, to think about the people you knew and how they performed in school. Can you honestly tell me that their outcomes were more influenced by the teachers as opposed to their own dedication to becoming educated and doing the work?

Just as a final note, there are children who do very well in inner city schools. I could probably even predict with astonishing accuracy for you which children will do well and which ones will do poorly by evaluating their parents or guardians view of education on their kids first day of kindergarten.

The reason our educational system is doing poorly in comparison to other nations isn’t because countries like South Korea have better or more qualified teachers. It’s because their kids study and do their homework.

Orion,

Can't read all you wrote now - stomach bug in the house (ick)... but I got the feeling that you thought I was saying it's a panacea. I'm not. I know there are flaws, but it's better than what we've got.

Yes, randomization would be good.

30 is a small sample size, but it can be enough to detect large differences.

The main thing about education is the kids should end the year with more/higher skills/knowledge/competency than they started. THAT can be tested.

I posit that it would be better to test before/after than just test kids at the end of a grade (standardized testing), as it would give a better picture of the learning that happened during the year. As it stands, the only data for assessing teachers in most places is end of year (only) testing. So, there really IS a lot of "luck of the draw" in that. At least if you look at the delta, a teacher doesn't get penalized for having less advanced kids at the start (or helped by having a bunch of academic all-stars who just sit all day bored).

I don't suggest using this to fire people, or deal with admin situations. But if Ms. Jones' students always improve a lot in algebra, but not in reading... maybe Ms. Jones should get help teaching reading and help other teachers teach Algebra more effectively.

My goal would be to use data to improve education.

I'll come back and finish reading all of what you wrote later. I have to go mop up (ick).

Regardless of which method is used -- year by year deltas or long term data modeling -- the biggest requirement is that the standardized tests have to be non-standard. I.e. the teacher can and should not be able to know the test questions that will be asked in the standardized tests and in what order.

There should always be a bank of standardized questions. But the full bank should not be able to be seen by the teacher, and the order and inclusion of the questions should be random as well even in a single classroom.

There have been proven cases that the auditors look at the results of the same test and every single student in the test all had same five/seven/fifteen questions right/wrong from one teacher or school system. So the auditors pulled the "bubble" sheets and looked at them. They can see the erasure on a majority of the answer sheets and everyone was changed to the same answer (right or wrong).

There is a small chance that everyone will get

2+2 =

a.    4

b.   56

c.   22

d.   19

But a question like:

Who was the second president of the United states?

a.   James Madison

b.   John Adams

c.   Abraham Lincoln

d.   John F. Kennedy

This is like the zero Romney voters in some districts. When you have 100% of 15K not making a mistake, or voting for Johnson, or just not voting for a presidential candidate I question it.

A school is a smaller statistic, but I doubt 0% mistakes across a population of 120 students. (One teacher doing four periods of American History class.) I look at a chance of the Stand and Deliver style with AP type testing. But tell me that 100% knew John Adams. I even had to look it up.

I'm just looking at a standard to standardized. ;-)

Just coming out of the holiday/virus-bubble. Sent the issue off to a good (practicing) statistician (as opposed to little ol' me, who hasn't done much in a few years).

He emailed me this link to a SAS white paper on this very topic. Haven't gotten through THAT either...

http://www.sas.com/resources/asset/SAS-EVAAS-Statistical-Models.pdf

Jim, your post was short, so I go through it. I don't know what state that was, but the ones I took tests in the only ones the teachers knew were the example questions at the start of each section. Your point stands though - teachers have incentive to game the system in a variety of ways, so any test has to be done in such a way as to prevent fiddling (which raises time/costs/difficulty). This isn't helped by the recent story about would-be teachers paying people to take Praxis for them (the teaching exam!).

I’m not aware of any standardized test where the test questions were purposefully made available to anyone outside of the testing organization prior to the test being administered. Whenever I took a standardized test in school they were always wrapped in plastic and opened by the students at the time of the exam. Needless to say, any standardized test should be secure in order to help guarantee the integrity of the test results.

“But tell me that 100% knew John Adams. I even had to look it up.”

Why exactly did you have to look it up?

Did you have to look it up because you could not recall who the second president of the United States was?

I’m asking because I also didn’t exactly recall that John Adams was the second president, and yet I still managed to get that question correct without having to look anything up. This is the trick with multiple choice tests and actually brings up another important point here.

Are we as a society more interested in generating well educated adults, or are we more interested in generating good test takers?

A fundamental problem of judging educational quality based upon tests like this is that it becomes impossible to distinguish between students who have actually mastered a subject and students who know just enough material and just enough test taking skills to “fake it”.

So how did I know that the answer to that question was John Adams?… because I knew that Lincoln was the 16th president, that JFK was president circa the 1950’s, and that while James Madison was an early president, he wasn’t directly after George Washington.

That being said, I’d bet that Jim knew all of the same facts that I knew (maybe he knew more facts as history was never a strong interest of mine). There probably isn’t any historical knowledge on this subject that I possess that Jim doesn’t have. However, I have been taught extensively by teachers how to take a test and how to improve the odds of getting the correct answer when I don’t actually know the correct answer.

This is actually how SAT prep courses work. They don’t actually teach students math or verbal skills in order to improve their scores. They teach them tips and tricks for test taking which manage to improve their scores without bothering with having to learn and master the actual material.

The frustrating part about this is that this methodology doesn’t actually help anyone who already understands the majority of the material. Learning how to “fake it” doesn’t take you from a 760 to a 790 on the math portion of the SAT. However, learning how to “fake it” does manage to take someone from a 500 to a 600 without that individual having to actually learn any mathematics.

So what are we interested in here? A well educated society, or merely the appearance of a well educated society?

Because if appearances are all that matter, then who really cares if the teachers or the students cheat to enhance their scores?

The standardized tests don’t encourage teachers to cheat the tests so much as it encourages teachers to teach to the test and to teach how to take the test. This comes at the expense of teaching students to actually master the course material because you get more bang for your buck teaching children how to "fake it" than you do teaching them to master the subject.

It is also the easy way out for students. Most students would much rather learn a quick and easy trick to pass an algebra test than to actually learn algebra. Unfortunately, when it is all said and done they haven’t actually learned anything useful when they go that route. However, to the statisticians it sure looks like they’ve learned something. And that’s what really counts, right?

Look, it is extremely easy to scapegoat teachers as the source of poorly performing students. However, let’s put the cards on the table shall we?

What percentage of teachers are we actually talking about here? … 10%?… 20%?

I mean, surely we don’t have an educational system where more than 1 out of 4 teachers is failing to provide a satisfactory education (and yet they managed to make it through high school, through college and in many cases through a masters program). So let’s go with a reasonable estimate that 1 out of 10 teachers doesn’t pass muster.

I don’t know about anyone else, but I had approximately 40 different teachers over the course of my elementary, middle, and high school educational career.

The argument that 4 substandard teachers would fundamentally cripple my ability to become a well educated adult to the extent that the other 36 good teachers couldn’t do anything about it just doesn’t pass the sniff test.

That is a lot like saying that if you get one bad hair cut that you are doomed to have that style for the rest of your life.

The educational problems we see in our society stem from the same root cause as the childhood obesity problems. Some parents aren’t doing their job.

While it’s convenient to pass the buck to educators, what is important to note is that even 40 amazing teachers cannot generally undo the damage caused by one substandard parent.