Educators, Heal Thyself

You’ve probably seen the latest indictment of America’s public schools.  Or is it an indictment of American culture?  Or maybe a sign of America’s decline?

It is alarming, whatever it is.

I’m referring to the fact that test scores for high school seniors in reading and math have fallen to their lowest level on record. Only 35 percent are proficient in reading, and 22 percent in math.

Meanwhile, at the other extreme, students in China take an entrance exam to determine if they qualify for an elite high school.  Throughout high school, their focus is intense studying, often with the help of tutors retained at great sacrifice by their parents, so they can be prepared to take in their senior year the two-day college-entrance exam known as the gaokao.

Their score on the exam is the only factor that matters in university admissions—not ethnicity, social class, extracurricular accomplishments, or parental connections.  The Chinese see it as a meritorious and fair system.  Neighborhoods respect the system so much that they keep noise down during the tests so that students can concentrate.

In many American schools by contrast, absenteeism is sky-high, and classroom disorder is such a serious problem that teachers worry about being assaulted.  And in some inner-city neighborhoods, gunshots often ring out during the night and stray bullets hit children in their homes.

The Wall Street Journal recently ran a story on America’s abysmal test scores.  In the comments section following the story, a reader named Brad asked some thought-provoking questions.  I’ve edited his comments below for brevity and clarity and highlighted the most insightful question.

We spend almost a trillion dollars annually on public K-12 education. That is over $18,000 per student. How can public education in the aggregate graduate two-thirds of its students without basic proficiency and still continue to exist? How are the results this atrocious? If students can’t pass a proficiency exam, they should not be allowed to graduate.

How are these kids getting into college? Over 60% of recent high school graduates were enrolled in college. If only 35% are proficient in reading and 22% are proficient in math, how can over 60% be attending college?

These kids and their parents are taking out student loans to attend a collegiate education program that they are completely unprepared for, somehow graduating from university, and then expecting the rest of us to pay for it?

I’ll add a couple of statistics.  For public universities, only 34 percent of students, on average, earn a degree in four years, and only 50 percent in six years.  For a list of graduation rates by state, go to this link.

Graduation rates would be even lower if it were not for the grade inflation that has taken hold in colleges.  Colleges have an incentive to give higher grades than deserved and not flunk students, because they lose revenue when students drop out.  Professors also have an incentive to give higher grades, because at most schools, they are evaluated by students. They know that the lower the grades they give, the lower the evaluations they receive.

There are other perverse incentives.  By admitting students who are unprepared for college and in need of remedial courses, colleges get more revenue from the extra courses and from the extra time that it takes for students to graduate.

Then there are the intangible incentives.  University presidents, staff and faculty are lauded by the media and other quarters for supposedly furthering social justice by admitting the so-called disadvantaged who wouldn’t otherwise go to college.

But here’s the rub:  They hurt students in the process.

First, students who fail to graduate are stuck with student loans while colleges get to keep the revenue, without the schools having any apparent ethical qualms about participating in the student loan scam.

Second, students who graduate with inflated grades for non-rigorous disciplines tend to end up in jobs where a high school degree would suffice—or at least used to suffice before a high school degree was devalued.

Third, and alternatively, they can end up in jobs for which they appear qualified on paper but are not actually qualified, thus increasing the odds that they will later be denied promotions or fired.  Some of them will then sue their employer for discrimination.  This is an example of the truism that the end user usually ends up bearing the cost of problems left unaddressed upstream.  In this case, employers and society bear the cost of high schools and colleges sending unprepared students downstream.

Fourth, if the students had learned a trade instead of going to college, they’d probably be better off financially, especially if they were paid as an apprentice while learning the trade.

What should be done?

Whenever a system, institution or culture reaches this level of dysfunction after decades of incremental degradation, a shock is needed to break the status quo.  Tinkering around the edges won’t do, nor will a new pedagogical fad, nor will throwing more money at the problem, nor will endless debates about charter schools.

Someone in authority needs to take a stand and say that the situation is unacceptable and will no longer be tolerated—someone with a thick skin, courage, and selfless principles; someone who is not afraid of being vilified by the media, by teacher unions, by school boards, by players of the race card, and by parents.

University presidents are ideal candidates, especially those who head up large public universities that have a school of education.  One or more of them could say that by a certain year, their university will:

– stop admitting students who are unprepared for college,

– stop trying to remedy what primary and secondary schools (and parents) have failed to do for 12 years,

– stop inflating grades,

– start lowering the cost of college and corresponding tuition debt by cutting overhead and frills that have nothing to do with the core mission of the university, and

– start paying half of the outstanding balance of student loans that go into default.

The above would force the K-12 system to change, because there would be consequences for not changing.  The system would no longer be able to send its problems—its unprepared graduates—downstream to colleges.  Also, parents who want their kids to be eligible for college and to succeed in college would no longer tolerate a subpar K-12 education.

Of course, if college presidents were to take this principled and necessary stand, they’d be fired.  But they would be vindicated when the US becomes a de facto colony of China as a result of the nation not fixing its broken K-12 system.

Mr. Cantoni can be reached at [email protected].