AS 56 million American children return to the nation's 133,000 elementary and secondary schools, the promise of 'reform' is again in the air.
Education Secretary Arne Duncan has announced US$4 billion in 'race to the top' grants to states whose proposals demonstrate, according to him, 'a bold commitment to education reform' and 'creativity and innovation (that are) breathtaking'. What they really show is that few subjects inspire more intellectual dishonesty and political puffery than 'school reform'.
Since the 1960s, waves of 'reform' haven't produced meaningful achievement gains. The most reliable tests are given by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). The reading and math tests, graded on a 0-500 scale, measure 9-year-olds, 13-year-olds and 17-year-olds. In 1971, the initial year for the reading test, the average score for 17-year-olds was 285; in 2008, the average score was 286. The math test started in 1973, when 17-year-olds averaged 304; in 2008, the average was 306.
To be sure, some improvements have occurred in elementary schools. But what good are they if they're erased by high school? There has also been a modest narrowing in the high-school achievement gaps among whites, blacks and Hispanics; unfortunately, the narrowing generally stopped in the late 1980s. (Average scores have remained stable because, although blacks' and Hispanics' scores have risen slightly, the size of these minority groups also expanded. This means that their still-low scores exert a bigger drag on the average. The two effects offset each other.)
Standard theories don't explain this meagre progress. Too few teachers? Not really. From 1970 to 2008, the student population increased 8 per cent and the number of teachers 61 per cent. The student-teacher ratio has fallen sharply, from 27-to-1 in 1955 to 15-to-1 in 2007. Are teachers paid too little? Perhaps, but that's not obvious. In 2008, the average teacher earned US$53,230; two full-time teachers married to each other and making average pay would belong in the richest 20 per cent of households (2008 qualifying income: US$100,240).
Maybe more preschool would help. Yet, the share of 3- and 4-year-olds in preschool has rocketed from 11 per cent in 1965 to 53 per cent in 2008.
'Reforms' have disappointed for two reasons. First, no one has yet discovered transformative changes in curriculum or pedagogy, especially for inner-city schools, that are (in business lingo) 'scalable' - easily transferrable to other schools, where they would predictably produce achievement gains. Efforts in New York City and Washington, DC, to raise educational standards involve contentious and precarious school-by-school campaigns to purge 'ineffective' teachers and principals. Charter schools might break this pattern, though there are grounds for scepticism.
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