Obama’s Education Report Card

Test scores fall after testing comes under assault. Imagine that.
Re: The Wall Street Journal, Oct. 28, 2015 7:26 p.m. ET
Obama

Education Secretary Arne Duncan on Tuesday soft-pedaled the “not great news” that scores on the National Assessment of Education Progress (i.e., the “nation’s report card”) declined this year for the first time since 1990. We once hoped that education would be a bright spot of the Obama Presidency, but it appears that student learning has stalled.

The Administration says the discouraging results on the NAEP exam, which tests a representative sample of students every two years in all 50 states, may be a blip. Perhaps, but the retrogression is troubling. Math proficiency in the fourth and eighth grades slipped two percentage points nationwide to 40% and 33% of students, respectively. Average scores fell across the board save for fourth-grade reading where progress was flat. Since 2007 fourth- and eighth-grade math, and fourth-grade reading, scores have plateaued.

Mr. Duncan says one culprit might be that schools are adjusting to new Common Core standards. Yet in 2013 he attributed modest gains in Michigan and seven other states to early implementation of Common Core. The handfuls of states that haven’t adopted Common Core have also sunk or are treading water.

Teachers union chief Randi Weingarten used the results to lambaste “high-stakes testing” inaugurated under No Child Left Behind, which aimed for 100% proficiency by 2014. Yet that law long ago became toothless thanks to Mr. Duncan’s waivers.

The recent academic stagnation also stands in marked contrast to the significant progress during the Bush years. Between 2000 and 2007, fourth grade math scores increased by 15 points on a scale of 0 to 500. Fourth-grade reading and eighth-grade math scores rose by eight points.

Perhaps what’s most depressing about the latest results is that progress has ceased even in education reform leaders like Tennessee, Indiana and Florida that have loosened teacher tenure protections and expanded school choice. Yet this may be evidence that a falling tide can strand all boats.

One of the few exceptions this year was Chicago where eighth-grade proficiency in math increased to 25% from 20%. Over the last two years Chicago has closed its achievement gap with other large public city school districts. Mayor Rahm Emanuel deserves credit for expanding charter schools as well as imposing a longer school day and more rigorous teacher evaluations.

Cleveland’s school district has also made modest strides. In 2012 Ohio Gov. John Kasich signed a law allowing the district to base teacher layoffs on performance rather than seniority. The law also rewarded highly rated teachers with better pay.

Mr. Duncan, who is leaving in December, last week gave unions a parting gift by proposing to cap standardized testing at 2% of classroom time. Yet it’s possible that the anti-testing fever that has swept the nation in the last two years may have contributed to the lousy NAEP results.

GOP presidential candidates like Jeb Bush and Mr. Kasich have helped turn around their state school systems by promoting more accountability and choice. The goal of a Republican Administration should be to do the same nationally.

RE: WSJ-Opinion Journal Video (10/30/2015)
University of Notre Dame Alliance for Catholic Education Director John Schoenig discusses the nation's report card.
Opinion Journal: Test Score Trouble

 

I find myself in a weird place in the whole education debate. I'm not going to force my children to skip state mandated tests. But I'm also not really convinced that these tests actually tell us much of anything.

My focus will be that my kids develop proficiency to prepare them for college or a vocation of their choice. I'd be thrilled if they went on to Ivy League schools and became professors. I'll be equally thrilled if they open up a tattoo parlor in Daytona Beach.

Successful people have been churned out of both good and bad schools. I think the kids who do especially well are the ones whose parents are invested in their education. If we just kick back, send our kids to school and expect them to emerge brilliant I think we're trying to take the easy way out.

As Steve notes, I'm not terribly impressed with breaking this down by President considering there are so many other factors (not the least of which being that education per state is driven much more by the Governor than the U.S. President). But I'm also a bit concerned when an opinion piece like this is authored by someone with such an obvious bias (Director of the Alliance for Catholic Education).

 

I don't place much stock in all this stuff about our failing schools. If you were a school principal and told the district's parents that half of your school kids weere below average, they'd run you out on a rail. If you were Secretary of Education and you told the people that half of our schools are below average, they'd run you out on a rail. This is because most people are so mathematically illiterate that they don't understand that the word average means half are better than you and half are below you. The masses, if informed of these things, would ask why we can't have all the children/all the schools be above average. This ain't Lake Wobegon, people.

 

Part of the problem, I believe, is that we have odd notions of what math literacy should look like. If I ace Pre-calculus or even Calculus as a senior in high school, I may very well be prepared to undertake some serious study at the university level. I'm probably going to be well-positioned if I intend to study engineering, pre-med, mathematics, finance or any number of undergraduate disciplines/tracks that require me to tackle multiple levels of calculus in order to graduate.

But for the person who earns a degree in English and gets a job doing whatever higher level math just never comes into play. So these schools struggle to boost math scores while an increasing number of kids graduate lacking basic mathematical life skills (like how to make change).

There is math that you need just to function in the world. Making change, balancing a checkbook, fractions are all things that we use daily whether we are mathematicians or lumberjacks. Those are things we sorely neglect in school. Instead, we focus on teaching to the test for higher level mathematics. Kids get more stressed. No one is actually any better educated. And for the majority of people it's just a futile exercise because they are never going to actually use that higher level math. So, yeah, I can understand a parent getting upset when a school turns around and says little Johnny is "below average" because he doesn't know what the heck a cosine is.