Fw: goofiness and groundhog day

["GERALD BRACEY" <gbracey1@verizon.net>]

This is my response to Bob Herbert's column today.  Because ARN and LFA strips attachments, I have included the draft of my mentioned ed week piece as plain text at the end of the post to Herbert.


----- Original Message ----- 
From: GERALD BRACEY 
To: boherb@nytimes.com 
Cc: eddra@yahoogroups.com 
Sent: Tuesday, April 22, 2008 11:50 AM
Subject: goofiness and groundhog day


Bob Herbert,
New York Times

Dear Mr. Herbert,

I am still amazed after all these years that people who can be rational and insightful about virtually every topic under the sun go all goofy when it comes to education. Goofy is you in today's column.

Consider "A large majority of the students showed that they had virtually no knowledge of elementary aspects of American history.  They could not identify such names as Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson or Theodore Roosevelt."  This appeared on the pages of your newspaper.  Page 1.  Right next to the major headline of the day:  "Patton Attacks East of El Guettar."  April 4, 1943.

The Committee of Ten reported that history "has never taken serious hold" on students graduating from secondary school.  1892.  "History is bunk," said Henry Ford, something only an American could get away with.

A 1957 survey of American college graduates by Harrison Salisbury found that only 71% could name the capital of Russia, only 21% could name a single Russian author and only 24% could name a single Russian composer. 

And ever since "A Nation At Risk" in 1983 (happy 25th anniversary in 6 days) people have pegged our economic future to the ability of 9- and 13-year-olds to bubble in answer sheets.  Lousy schools are producing a lousy workforce, was the word of the day after ANAR.  It was a very popular position as the country slid into the recession that cost 41 his second term.  But by early 1994, your paper was running headlines like "America's Economy: Back on Top."  Education critics didn't pay any attention.  Almost precisely three months after the previous headline, IBM CEO, Lou Gerstner, took to your op-ed page with "Our Schools Are Failing."  

This position achieved its height of ridiculousness on July 7, 1992 when Lamar Alexander said on the McNeil-Lehrer News Hour "For the country to change the schools have to change.  Really.  He actually said that and no one even snickered, at least not on camera.

It is horseshit.

It's always the same, something that led me a couple of years ago to write "Education's Groundhog Day" for Education Week.  A draft is attached.  You will recall, I'm certain, that in Groundhog Day, the movie, the same day keeps happening over and over and only Bill Murray notices.  It's like that with education reformers and, alas, the education media.  As you say, some of us are pretty dopey, "but those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" (Santayana, and those who misquote Santayana are condemned to paraphrase him).  The only thing that has changed since I wrote it, aside from a plethora of more absurd examples, is that I discovered that on September 20, 1956, over a year before Sputnik, the U. S. had a four-stage, satellite-capable rocket in the air travelling 13,000 miles an hour 862 miles about the earth after its first three stages fired.  The fourth stage, which could have easily bumped something into orbit was filled with sand--Eisenhower didn't want to offend the Russians.

First it was Russia.  Then Germany and Japan.  Now China and India.  In the meantime, the World Economic Forum continues to rank the U. S. as the most competitive economy in the world.  A skeptical person could be forgiven for questioning the link between test scores and the economic health of a nation--and average test scores at that.  After all, Japan went into recession and stagnation for 15 years and all the while Japanese kids continued to ace tests in international comparisons (if American and Japanese kids were the only two groups to take a test and the Americans scored higher, the headlines would read "Japanese Students Second; American Students Next to Last").

I am appalled at how the media simplfy all this and ignore relevant data such as the following: a piece on NPR recently stated that China's place in the economic sun was doomed to be short term because of the consequences of its one-child policy (recently renewed for another decade).  If you think America is aging, look East, young man.  An ever-increasing mass of elderly in China (Shanghai is already 20% over 65) will depend on an ever shrinking pool of workers.

Bill Gates' critique of the schools is just one more example of which there are far too many, of how when experts in one field make pronouncements in another, they often say very, very stupid things.  Craig Barrett of Intel is perhaps the worst exemplar after Gates of this species.

Everyone emphasizes the need for skilled workers and many imply or state explicitly that we don't have enough.  A recent study showed that we have three new scientists and engineers for every new science and engineering job and it has been noted that our science and engineering schools are full of foreigners for the same reasons our lettuce and grape fields are filled with foreigners: long hours, low wages, and little opportunity for advancement. Only a foreigner could see these conditions as a step up.  Two thirds of new grads in science and engineering leave in 2 years (and you fret over 50% of teachers disappearing in 5).  In fact, one science writer, Dan Greenberg, invented a new life-time position for scientists and engineers, Post-Doc Emeritus.  

There are huge equity issues to be sure.  In the most recent international reading study, if white American 9-year-olds were stacked up against the 39 participating nations, they would be 3rd, 5 points behind world leader Russia (which I don't believe and will be happy to explain if you're interested).  Asian American students would actually finish ahead of Russia while blacks would rank 28th and Hispanics 25th.

But let's not confound the ethnic disparities with the performance overall.

In 1990, the education historian, Lawrence Cremin, succinctly took apart the schools and competitiveness assertion:

"American economic competitiveness with Japan and other nations is to a considerable degree a function of monetary, trade, and industrial policy, and of decisions made by the President and Congress, the Federal Reserve Board, and the Federal Departments of the Treasury, Commerce, and Labor.  Therefore, to conclude that problems of international competitiveness can be solve by educational reform, especially educational reform defined solely as school reform, is not merely utopian and millennialist, it is at best a foolish and at worst a cress effort to direct attention away from those truly responsible for doing something about competitiveness and to lay the burden instead on the schools.  It is a device that has been used repeatedly in the history of American education.

Sincerely,

Gerald W. Bracey
Alexandria, VA


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AMERICAN EDUCATION?S GROUNDHOG DAY

Gerald W. Bracey

Gerald W. Bracey is an associate professor at George Mason University, an Associate of the High/Scope Educational Research Foundation, Ypsilanti, Michigan, and a Fellow at the Education Policy Studies Laboratory, Arizona State University.  His most recent book is Setting the Record Straight: Responses to Misconceptions About Public Education in the U. S., Revised Edition.
 
Media stories about public schools show us and the reporters as non-Bill Murray characters in ?Groundhog Day.?   In the movie, the same Groundhog Day repeats itself over and over but only Murray sees the repetition.  About schools, the media report the present with no apparent awareness that it?s the same story repeating itself.  As a consequence, Americans keep waking up to headlines declaring that, apparently for the first time ever, the public school sky is falling. The public doesn?t seem to notice the recurrences, either.  

On December 7, Pearl Harbor Day, papers dropped bombs from the Program of International Student Assessment announcing, ?U. S. Lags Many Nations in Math? (Dallas Morning News); ?U. S. Teens Have Weak Practical Math Skills? (USA Today); and ?In a Global Test of Math Skills, U. S. Students Behind the Curve? (Washington Post). The Christian Science Monitor produced the scariest headline of the day: ?Math + Test = Trouble for the U. S. Economy.?  The Monitor quoted Susan Traiman of the Business Roundtable, ?It?s very disturbing for business if the capacity to take what you know?and apply it to something novel is difficult for U. S. teenagers.?  

On December 14, the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) hit the streets with better news and most media overlooked it.  There were still worries that other countries ?particularly in Asia, continue to outperform the United States, fields at the heart of research, innovation, and economic competitiveness.?
  
It?s a common myth: low test scores = economic perdition. In 1998, the headlines over stories about the Third International Mathematics and Science Study read: ?U. S. Seniors Near Bottom in World Test? (Education Week); ?U. S. High School Seniors Rank Near Bottom,? (Washington Post); ?Why America Has the World?s Dimmest Bright Students? (Wall Street Journal).  

Once again, our awful schools were leading us to economic ruin.  No one seemed to remember the headlines of early 1994:  ?America?s Economy, Back on Top? (New York Times); ?Rising Sun Meets Rising Sam? (Washington Post); ?America Cranks It Up? (U. S. New & World Report).  We did not know it at the time, but those headlines chronicled the early stages of the longest sustained economic expansion in the nation?s history.

Had the schools improved?  Did that improvement explain the turnaround?  Not according to the critics.  A mere three months after ?America?s Economy, Back on Top,? then-IBM CEO and perennial school scold, Lou Gerstner, took to the op-ed page of the Times with ?Our Schools Are Failing.?  They are failing, said Gerstner, because their ?products? can?t compete with the products manufactured in European and Asian factories, er, schools.  One wonders then why the World Economic Forum?s rankings of Global Competitiveness always find the United States in either first or second place.  When we fall out of first, the fault lies with factors outside the schools.  Most recently we dropped to second because the World Economic Forum didn?t like the Bush tax cuts, our ever-growing international trade deficits, and the seemingly endless parade of indicted CEO?s and Wall Street Brokers. 

In 1992, in reaction to another international study, the media declared the schools were doing dismally.  ?In World Study, U. S. Students Fare Poorly,? headlined the Washington Post.  Newsweek was more succinct:  ?An ?F? in World Competition.?

Gerstner?s and Newsweek?s argument repeated a theory that arrived fully formed in 1983?s mostly forgotten ?A Nation At Risk:? A nation with low test scores is doomed.  That report enjoyed phenomenal popularity.  The Washington Post carried no fewer than 27 articles about it in the month after publication.  ?There was a steady decline in science achievement scores,? the report argued. ?Average achievement of high school students is lower now than 26 years ago when Sputnik was launched.?  Headlines echoed these grim (and, in reality, spun and misleading) findings.  

As for those all-important evaluations against other countries, Risk contended, ?International comparisons reveal that on 19 academic tests American students were never first or second and, in comparison with other industrialized nations, were last seven times.?  No longer was the threat that the Soviets would vaporize us.  Given these poor rankings, we risked having our friends, especially Germany, Japan, and South Korea take away our profits. ?If only to keep and improve on the slim competitive edge we still retain in world markets, we must dedicate ourselves to the reform of our educational system?.?  

A few years after ?A Nation At Risk? appeared, Japan?s economy slumped.  It has yet to recover.  Japanese kids still ace tests (they finished 6th in math and 2nd in science in PISA and 2nd, 2nd, 3rd, and 5th in the four rankings in TIMSS), but they can?t jump-start Japan?s economy.  

If you think about this myth for a moment, the disconnect between test scores and a nation?s economic health is no surprise.  Only the very, very foolish would think that 13-year-olds? skills at bubbling in answer sheets would mean much for a nation?s economic well being.  As if to prove that contention, the other ?Asian Tiger? nations, also atop the world in test scores, tanked in the mid-1990?s and Singapore, which typically outscores everyone, declared itself in recession in 2001.

At least ?A Nation At Risk? noticed history, although the media coverage of it did not.  Its reference to Sputnik took the tale back to October, 1957 when the Russians launched the first man-made satellite. The schools took the hit for letting the Soviets get into space first. 

In red ink, the cover of the March 24, 1958 issue of Life screamed, ?Crisis in Education.?  Two high-school juniors stared out from the cover, a stern-faced Alexei Kutzkov in Moscow and an easy-smiling Stephen Lapekas in Chicago.  Inside, Alexei was seen conducting complicated science experiments, reading aloud from Sister Carrie in his English class, and using his free time to learn even more skills. By contrast, pictures showed Stephen walking his girlfriend home, rehearsing for the school musical, practicing his swimming stroke and otherwise having an easy time because ?the standards of education are shockingly low.?  In one picture Stephen retreats from a geometry problem on the blackboard.  Says the text, ?Stephen amused class with remarks about his ineptitude.?

(I tracked down Lapekas.  He became an Air Force fighter pilot, then a commercial pilot. Not bad for a slacker in a system with ?shockingly low? standards.  Receiving little cooperation from the Russian Embassy, I enlisted National Public Radio?s Anne Garrels, then NPR?s Moscow correspondent in the search for Kutzkov. Several months later she called to say that, in spite of my many specific facts about Kutzkov, his school and his teachers, she had been unable to find any evidence that he had ever existed.  She questioned the story?s veracity:  ?There is no way in hell that an American journalist and photographer could have gotten into a typical Moscow high school at the time?).

Of course, the myth is sustained in part from the media?s errors of omission:  Happy results do not see print. When the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study appeared in April, 2003, only four papers carried bylined articles.  Three of those were in the Boston area and those papers covered it, no doubt, because it was released through Boston College.  For some reason, the Washington Times picked it up, but it managed to cast the results in a negative light with quotes from Reid Lyon talking about our terrible reading skills.  

In fact, only three nations of the 35 in the study had significantly higher scores.  American students in schools with less than 10% poverty stomped Sweden, the highest nation overall.  American students in schools with 10% to 25% poverty also outscored Sweden.  American students in schools with 25% to 50% poverty attained a score that, had those students constituted a nation, would have ranked it 4th.  Those three categories of students contain 58% of all students.  Only students in schools with more than 75% of their students in poverty scored below the international average.  

For almost 50 years, the media have played the schools-are-failing tune repeatedly, but neither they nor the public seem aware that it?s an old refrain.  It?s Education?s Groundhog Day all over again.