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Student A
The Homogenization of the American Pupil
by Sean Flury
How Student A Compares
Student A,
one of 76.6 million in the United States, doesn’t know very
much. Student A is mostly ignored and Student A does not
benefit from oversight. In the past few years, education has
taken a backseat in Washington. With state budgets in the
deep red and an ever expanding federal deficit, talk has
turned from educational initiatives to funding cuts. In
2002, President Bush and Congress passed the “No Child Left
Behind Act”(NCLB), using standardized testing in an attempt
to bridge the gap between the top and bottom half of
secondary school performers. Amidst an economic downturn
and the effects NCLB, where does the American student
stand? In 2009, a Gallup poll showed that more than three
quarters of parents with children in grades K-12 are
satisfied with the education that their children are
receiving in American schools, but America’s statistics are
eye-opening. The Organization for Economic Co-Operation and
Development (OECD), a Paris-based economic development
organization for countries with a high Human Development
Index (HDI), rates the U.S. 16th in secondary
school graduation rates, 24th in math
proficiency, 24th in problem solving skills, but
a shocking 2nd in educational expenditure per
student. In light of this data, should the conversation on
American education be so focused on increased funding for
schools as it has been for decades, or are we missing the
point?
Studying
our system and education systems from countries in Western
Europe and Asia, many of which consistently rank higher than
the U.S., we can begin to see the flaws in our system and
what changes need to be made not only to benefit future
generations of American pupils, but to keep America
competitive in an increasingly global job market.
Championing Student A
Politics, on
both federal and state levels, play an increasingly large
role in what our children learn. Rather than offering
curricula based on a student’s natural abilities or
presenting the option to focus on specific disciplines, new
education mandates push for a more homogenized student body
and drive teachers and schools to teach only the material
required to do well on the standardized tests which
determine further governmental funding.
Top- down
dictation of education standards at the secondary level may
look good on paper or on standardized tests, but the massive
loss of opportunity cost seems to be overlooked when
legislating new curriculum standards. The inflexibility of
government-regulated curricula forces students with no
affinity for math and science to take four years of both
disciplines in high school in order to pass mandatory tests,
rather than focusing on the strengths and interests of a
student and helping them exceed at what they’re good at.
Simply put, the American system of education does not leave
any room to consider student individuality.
The No Child
Left Behind Act serves as a prime example of top-down
governmental dictation. NCLB proposes that schools bridge
the gap between the top and bottom students in each class by
spending time and effort with students who need the most
help in each curriculum. It utilizes standardized tests such
as the SOL and Regents Exams to determine which districts
are doing better than others. If a district or school is
falling behind, it is given five years to make progress or
face dramatic changes in the way it’s run. Although it
helped divert some funding to poor districts, we’ve seen
that it isn’t the lack of funding that dictates student
performance but the administration of said funding.
Overall, NCLB has created more problems than it has fixed.
Teachers must focus on the standards set forth by regulated
tests, or “teach to the test”, rather than give students a
broad understanding of a given subject. Along with narrowing
fields of study, NCLB has also caused some districts to push
students with sub-par test results toward G.E.D. programs.
Because many states take G.E.D. students off of school rolls
but don’t consider them dropouts, schools with
unsatisfactory testing results are able to artificially
“bridge the gap” between the top and bottom of the class. In
New York City alone, G.E.D. enrollment went up from 25,500
in 2002 when the bill was passed to more than 37,000 two
years later.
Politics have
even invaded our textbooks in recent months. The Texas State
Board of Education recently passed a conservative-backed
measure to include right-leaning alterations to text books.
These proposed revisions include increasing sections devoted
to the conservative movement in the ‘80s and ‘90s, reducing
sections on Latino history and culture (an increasingly
large part of Texas’ population), touting a more positive
look at McCarthyism and the Red Scare, downplaying Thomas
Jefferson’s role as a founding father (while emphasizing St.
Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin and William Blackstone as
intellectual founders), and suggesting the inclusion of a
statement from Confederate President Jefferson Davis to
contrast a speech by Lincoln. These measures come a year
after the Texas Board mandated that creationism and the
theory of evolution be given equal consideration in
classrooms.
The Texas
Board of Education may only control the curriculum of
schools in their state, but the effects are far-reaching.
Because Texas dominates the U.S. textbook market, the size
of its print run encompasses most of the textbook market in
the U.S., meaning that the Texas Board really dictates the
contents of about 80% of the pre-collegiate textbooks in the
nation.
That
sound you hear is Howard Zinn rolling in his grave.
Saving
Student A
Proponents of education
reform often cite Western European systems as a model for
change. Belgium’s students have consistently been ranked in
top 10 in OECD’s math and problem solving categories (6th
in math and 7th in problem solving in 2003) yet
they spend almost $5,500 less per student per year than the
U.S. does. The differences in the education systems of the
U.S. and Belgium start at a very fundamental level. In the
U.S., everyone pays a school tax to the district that they
live in no matter if their children go to public schools or
private. This creates a few basic problems. Parents who
don’t find their district’s education standards acceptable
have few choices. Considering the high cost of private
schools or the cost moving to another school district with
better schools (normally in more expensive neighborhoods) on
top of compulsory education taxes, children in poor
neighborhoods have especially few options. Not only does
this impede social mobility in our country in the long run,
it also creates an accountability problem for schools who
receive basically the same amount of funding even if a large
percentage of their students decide to go elsewhere. This
creates what amounts to a government-run monopoly on
pre-collegiate education.
Belgium has a
significantly different system of education than that of the
United States. Belgium’s legislature has only a few national
competency requirements in place but leaves most curriculum
choices up to the school district and the individual
students. Belgium has three different types of schools that
parents can choose to send their children to: schools owned
by communities, subsidized public schools owned by provinces
or municipalities, and subsidized free schools run by a
branch of the Catholic Church. Belgium uses a type of
voucher system that diverts tax dollars based on attendance
at each school, creating competition between schools to
provide better education and attract more students and
therefore more funding. The implementation of secondary
education is also much different than here in the United
States. Belgian secondary school consists of three cycles,
each cycle increasing the options students are presented
with to focus their curriculum. While first cycle students
only get to choose a few hours of their day with mandated
courses occupying the rest. Second and third cycle students
are given the option of curriculum specializations such as
Math-Science or Sociology-Language. Mandating core
curriculum but allowing increased options for specialization
help to push the best students in each field to excel with
like-minded peers while providing options for students
lacking direction.
What’s Next For Student A?
Student A has a long road
ahead of him. Building from NCLB, a new initiative named
“Race to the Top” uses federal discretionary grants to
reward districts who improve test scores and relies heavily
on school test data to determine success or failure. Race
to the Top hopes to create a national standardized testing
system and reward teachers based on student performance
data. Rather than relying on human judgment and
developmental progress updates, the initiative only serves
to further force a wide range of individuals to conform to
rigorous academic regulations. Race to the Top also proposes
budget cuts to schools who do not meet the standards it sets
out. One glimmer of hope in the initiative is seen in its
attempt to establish, across the country, more charter
schools which create competition within districts and
generally help to improve education quality.
We have a lot of work to
do. Student A needs help. Rather than building off an
obviously flawed model, our lawmakers need to study working
models that promote competition in the field of education.
We need models that demand the betterment of Student A,
rather than ones that simply expect it. This isn’t a
choice.
America needs to fix its
education system or face the long-term consequences.
Dropping out of high school, getting a factory job, and
buying a trailer isn’t the American Dream. Student A
deserves better.
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