[pf] public schools

by Sharon Flesher

12 December 2000 22:23 UTC

In light of our recent discussion, some of you may be interested in the
following:

Class Struggle: U.S. Schools Not as Bad as Portrayed
By Jay Mathews
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, December 12, 2000; 1:00 PM

The television spots drip with sadness for an American public education
system that has stagnated or declined for most of the last century. One
shows a stalled school bus full of bewildered children passed by a newer bus
with better educated foreign kids. Another spot shows a poor child watching
a congressman's son ride off to his private school in a limousine.

The dramatic TV spots, newspaper ads and Web site created by the New
York-based Campaign for America's Children (www.putparentsincharge.org) say
the problem is the government's near-monopoly on education. They beg for
more choices for parents. "Despite a 14-fold increase in inflation adjusted
spending since 1920. . . " the Web site said when the campaign began
October, "test scores have stagnated or declined, and our international
rankings in math and science are at the bottom among industrialized
nations."

Sound familiar? The notion that American schools are perennial losers, the
academic equivalent of the Washington Wizards, is a favorite theme of
political candidates, business executives and talk show hosts. The only flaw
in this widely held belief is that it has almost no basis in fact, and seems
to be part of a disingenuous - if well-meaning - attempt to help the 25
percent of schools that are in trouble by pretending that the whole system
is a mess.

Consider that quote from the Campaign for America's Children Web site. I
asked Theodore J. Forstmann, chairman and chief executive of the nonprofit
organization, for evidence that test scores had stagnated or declined since
1920. Forstmann is a great man, a successful financier who has arranged for
more than 40,000 low-income children to receive scholarships to private
schools. He is also very honest. He told me he did not have the facts
himself but would have his staff send them.

The result was a two-page fax from his office. The only support it could
provide for the dubious suggestion that test scores have not gone up in the
last 80 years was two references to the dumbing down of textbooks in
education expert Diane Ravitch's splendid new book, "Left Behind: A Century
of Failed School Reforms." Ravitch confirmed that she makes no claim of test
score stagnation since 1920 - a period in which literacy rates, high school
graduation rates and college attendance rates soared in the United States.
Indeed, when I checked Forstmann's Web site last week, the score decline
allegation had been removed.

There was another flurry of stories last week about American eighth-graders
not measuring up to international comparisons. Educators are rightly
concerned about middle school, but a close look at the numbers shows that
U.S. eighth-graders are not "at the bottom of industrialized nations," as
Forstmann's Web site still claims. They are, instead, in the middle of a
tightly packed group of developed countries.

The image of Washington area schools suffers from similar distortions.
Recent publicity about the Maryland School Performance Assessment Program
(MSPAP) has been focused on cheating scandals and low scores in Prince
George's County, yet the rate of satisfactory scores statewide has climbed
from 31.7 percent to 45.3 percent in the last seven years. Washington Post
stories, including some written by me, invariably mention that most schools
in Virginia have failed to reach state targets on the Standards of Learning
tests. Yet most Virginia children have passed the tests, and their success
rate has jumped from 56.4 percent to 68.4 percent in just three years.
Scores on the Stanford 9 test in the District are also up.

American schools can be much better than they are. Parents should have more
choices. But looking for the negative in every report and mentioning the
positive only under duress is not the best way to bring needed improvements.
My favorite exponents of this balanced view are Fairfax-based educational
psychologist Gerald W. Bracey (www.america-tomorrow.com/bracey), an often
lonely critic of flawed data, and authors David C. Berliner and Bruce J.
Biddle, whose 1995 book "The Manufactured Crisis" exposed the phony
demonization of public schooling on a national scale.

Good people sometimes say bad things about public schools for what they
consider good reasons. Educators who have struggled to get more help for the
urban and rural schools whose test scores have stagnated find they only make
headway when they suggest that suburban schools are also in trouble. Bad
news, true or not, gets the attention of governors and legislators. But
officials acting on bad information are less likely to make the right
choices.

The next time you read or hear something sad about schools, ask questions.
What is the long-term trend? Are the comparisons fair? Do the numbers make
sense? Whatever their problems, American public schools are educating a
bigger slice of society at a higher level than has ever been achieved in
human history. That should be worth a favorable word or two.

© 2000 The Washington Post Company