According to the conventional wisdom, American schools are failing. Yes, they face many challenges—broken homes, drug-ridden communities, unruly or unmotivated pupils—that have intensified over the years. But the bottom line is that today's students don't learn as much as they once did, and they certainly don't learn enough. And two decades of "school reform," fueled by student assessments results and unflattering comparisons with Japan and Germany, have not yet resolved America's education "crisis," say those spreading the bad news.
Recently, however, these assumptions have been directly challenged by experts convinced that today's schools aren't a pale shadow of the schools of some past "Golden Era." On the most important indicators of school success—how many students graduate and what they know and can do when they get their diplomas—today's schools are as good as they've ever been, these experts assert.
"Someone ought to say: `Teachers, you've done some heroic things,'" says Archie Lapointe, executive director of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), the major longitudinal report card on student performance. Compared with years past, more students are getting diplomas, and educators have been asked to take on more social responsibilities that gobble up instructional time, says Lapointe. In addition, more minority and disadvantaged students—who have traditionally achieved at lower levels than their peers—are taking tests such as the NAEP exams. Still, he notes, in only one of the tests of primary subjects administered by NAEP—science—has there been an achievement decline in the past two decades (and that occurred only with 17-year-olds tested; scores for 9- and 13-year-olds held steady). "Staying the same represents quite an accomplishment" for American schools given other contextual factors, he asserts.
Lapointe is not alone in his beliefs. The Educational Research Service, which is sponsored by seven national education associations, recently published an issues brief examining and rejecting the idea of a decline in public education. And several articles published recently in major education journals have challenged earlier studies that concluded that American students are outclassed by their counterparts overseas.
Increased Access
Among the wealth of (often contradictory) data regarding students' educational accomplishments, experts point to several major highlights.
The first is that perhaps the most important success story in American public education over the past half-century is increased access to schooling. American students today persist in school longer, graduate, and go on to higher education in considerably greater numbers than in past decades. Moreover, the gap between minority and white students in graduation rate and access to higher education has narrowed. Sustained efforts to improve access have resulted in the United States having the most educated population of any of the large industrialized nations (as measured by the percentage of 25- to 64-year-olds in each nation who have completed secondary school and college).
Eighty-three percent of American students complete high school, a figure that has held steady since 1973. By contrast, only about 10 percent of Americans completed high school at the turn of the century, and it wasn't until 1940 that even half of U.S. students got their diplomas. Moreover, when students who graduate after age 20 or receive GED diplomas are counted, about 9 in 10 American students eventually get their diplomas. "This is a remarkable achievement" for schools, says David Berliner, a professor of education at Arizona State University who has analyzed graduation and test score data.
Although direct comparisons of high school completion data are difficult to make in an international context, a 21-nation study completed last year by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development found that the United States is among the top countries in percentage of students enrolled in the last year of secondary school. Moreover, the United States is ahead of many of its economic competitors in terms of access to college. About half of American students pursue higher education, compared to 25 percent in Japan and France, 20 percent in Germany, and 15 percent in the United Kingdom.
There continue to be worrisome indicators regarding access, however. A particular concern is the high school completion rate for Hispanic students, which has risen only slightly—from 55 to 60 percent—over the past two decades and remains well below average.
Achievement Stable
According to some critics, increased access to schooling has resulted in watered-down courses and declines in overall student performance. But—at least for the past two decades—such arguments appear to lack support.
Data from NAEP, which uses a scale of 0–500, show that the average overall performance of American students in math, reading, and science today is roughly the same as when the first NAEP exams were administered in 1969–70. Exceptions are reading scores for 17-year-olds and math scores for 9- and 13-year-olds, which have improved, and science scores for 17-year-olds, which have gone down. What such figures reveal often lies in the eye of the beholder: critics of school performance tend to describe NAEP trend data as "stagnant," while supporters like to describe student performance as being "as high as it's ever been."
The narrowing of the performance gap between white and minority students is a major piece of good news. In the 1971 NAEP reading assessment, for example, average reading proficiency among 17-year-old blacks was 22 scale points lower than the average for 13-year-old white students and 53 points behind white 17-year-olds. The reading gap among 17-year-olds has now closed to 22 points. Between 1970–1990, the average proficiency of black 17-year-olds rose 28 points in reading and 19 points in math, although scores in science fell. During this period, the gap between white and black 17-year-olds shrank by 48 percent in math (40 to 21 points) and 26 percent in reading (53 points to 29 points). Hispanic students made similar progress toward narrowing the gap in math and reading proficiency.
At least one expert argues that American student performance slumped considerably before NAEP was established and may not have rebounded fully. Dan Koretz, an analyst with the RAND Corporation, says that average student achievement on a variety of state and national assessment measures fell substantially during the 1960s and early 1970s. Performance since then "clearly has improved," he says in a recent paper, "but there is room to argue about how much."
How Good is Good Enough?
Even if student performance is as good as ever, there is growing concern that it is not good enough. "Being as smart as we were 20 years ago is not good enough," notes Lapointe.
One of the most consistent findings from NAEP over the past two decades is that nearly all 17-year-olds are able to demonstrate very basic levels of skill and knowledge in various subjects, but only a fraction can demonstrate higher levels of proficiency.
Until 1990, the NAEP results left unanswered the question of "How good is good enough?" That has changed with the establishment of new achievement levels by the National Assessment Governing Board (which oversees NAEP). On the 1990 and 1992 mathematics assessments, panels of teachers, subject matter specialists, public officials, and others examined test items and student responses in order to set three achievement levels—basic, proficient, and advanced. Although questions have been raised regarding the fairness and accuracy of this judgment process, the results give little cheer. The 1992 math test found that only 18 percent of those in grade 4, 25 percent in grade 8, and 16 percent in grade 12 reached the "proficient" level (what raters considered to be grade-level work) or better. More than three in four students performed at the basic (partial mastery) level or lower.
International comparisons provide further evidence of what some see as the inadequacy of current levels of American student performance. Early international studies in mathematics and science—which found the United States among the lowest scoring nations—were sharply criticized for comparing the more inclusive American student population with restricted pools of more talented students from other countries. Recent studies have been more careful to compare similar populations of students, but the performance of American pupils remains less than stellar. Recent mathematics and science tests conducted by the International Assessment of Educational Progress, for example, once again found American 13-year-olds ranking near the bottom. Nine-year-old American pupils finished near the top in science but close to the bottom in math.
False Assumptions
Do the overall findings on American student performance suggest that more than a decade of school-bashing and cries for school reform were based on a weak foundation of evidence? Those defending the schools say that schools do need to improve, but that "reforms" shouldn't be driven by false assumptions about what the problems are. "You can say we need a model of continuous improvement," says Gerald Bracey, a consultant who has written in defense of American school achievement. "But you don't have to bash contemporary schools to do that."
In fact, both defenders and critics of public education have, at times, been misleadingly partisan about the evidence regarding student performance and what must be done to improve it. Apologists for the schools have sometimes shrugged off low test scores as being the product of a more diverse student population or too much television, rather than issues that educators control, such as the academic vigor of the curriculum or homework policies. And critics have oftentimes used student performance data to "conclude" that the "monopolistic" system of public education is incapable of reform and must be challenged by a private system propped up by government vouchers. What the evidence actually shows is cause neither for single-minded "solutions" to public education's problems nor complacency about the need to improve steadily to meet growing demands, experts say.
Examples from NAEP
Examples from NAEP
The National Assessment of Educational Progress regularly tests the knowledge and skills of students in grades 4, 8, and 12. Following are two sample items from recent mathematics and science assessments with the percentage of 12th graders responding to the item correctly:
The perimeter of a square is 24 centimeters. What is the area of that square?
36 square cm
48 square cm
96 square cm
576 square cm
I don't know
Forty-five percent of 12th graders answered correctly.
A scientist develops a theory to explain some phenomena that previous theories could not. However, this theory leads to predictions that are contrary to other scientists' expectations. What should be done in response to these results?
Ignore the expectations and accept the theory.
Reject the theory since it is contrary to the expectations.
Revise the theory so that it agrees with the expectations.
Design experiments to test for the predictions made by the theory.
Develop another theory that predicts what the scientists expected.
Sixty-two percent of 12th graders answered correctly.
Answers: (1) a (2) d
