Assignment 16- Ian Schaeffer

Education: Smart Solutions

Crowds of idiots running around, no leadership, no innovation, and no initiative. A world with no education. Thankfully, this is not the world we live in, but still, our system requires reform. Disputing the absolute necessity of a successful and efficient education system is near impossible, as you cannot argue against the importance of teaching future leaders. The problem is that our education system is flawed and failing. How many great minds have been wasted due to inefficiencies and poor policies? I am here to present you with the problem and a few viable solutions.

First the problem- "On America’s latest exams (the National Assessment of Educational Progress), one-third or fewer of eighth-grade students were proficient in math, science, or reading." Joel Klein's 2011 article presents this stunning statistic. The term American exceptionalism seems to be vanishing, as our test scores continue to fall behind those of Asian and European countries. Some may dismiss this as students being young, but things don’t improve over the next few years. Barely 70% of high schoolers across the nation graduate, and maybe more startling is the statistic that 76% are unprepared for their first year of college, which highlights the lack of preparation that even these graduates may receive. All of this occurred despite fiscal inefficiencies in education. In the current public education system, spending has increased by a staggering 350% and yet student's performance statistics remained stagnant (Rhee and Combs). Heritage.org further reports that over a span of 10 years in the early 2000s, spending went up 23.5% per pupil, and results did not improve. Why continue to flood money into schools that don't turn it into results?

Now, for one of the more controversial solutions- charter schools. These are basically publicly funded schools that hold a high degree of autonomy in their operations. One of the largest problem people have with charter schools is costs, specifically taking money away from high schools so that they cannot spend as much per pupil. However, the numbers say otherwise. Even Paul Reville, a former state Secretary of Education and Harvard professor, acknowledges that "you can't make the case that on a per-pupil basis they're spending less than charter schools". This statement is supported by the Massachusett's Taxpayer Foundation, which found total equality between percentages of students in charter schools and allocation of education dollars to those same schools for spending. Now for some pros- the documentary "Waiting for Superman" by Davis Guggenheim follows multiple families quest to get into charter schools across the country, one of these schools being Harlem Success. Charter schools like Harlem Success currently offer some of the strongest alternatives to traditional schools, and the results have been both exciting and stunning. Harlem has an 88% reading proficiency and a 95% math proficiency, and on a 4^th grade test, 90% of its students tested at the most advanced level of learning. Furthermore, charter schools use lotteries to admit students, so Harlem Success children did not start wealthy and blessed with best schooling: they rose their scores with the help of charter teaching and resources. Despite this, public school advocates argue that there is no difference in charter and traditional school performance, citing somewhat similar test scores in one 2009 study, but a forbes.com review of the study found that charters "did far better for students in poverty, improving their reading and math skills to a point past their traditional school counterparts". Furthermore, in post-Katrina New Orleans, where after the hurricane traditional schools were wiped out, reforms passed and now 90% of schools are charters. The results? A doubling of pass rates on New Orleans standardized tests, and a jump of the graduation rate all the way to 73%. The visual behind me reflects this, along with the current traditional system failure. This New Orleans experiment shows not only the true success of charter schools, but also the effect of a mass transition to these schools in improving the education system of an entire city (Thomas Toch, Georgetown U researcher, us news). The increased autonomy these schools have allows them to put in place the best possible staff, and their competition with other charter schools for students greatly improves their incentive for great instruction. Once again, despite all of this, for many people charter schools are simply to free of government control, but this argument still ignores the fact that "charter school boards are held accountable by the authorizer, the state, the federal government, and the public" (publiccharters.org) to basically operate in satisfactory and moral ways, so they are not totally autonomous at all.

However, if this solution remains too extreme, there are other more nonpartisan solutions to consider for education. You may have noticed the use of the word "accountable"- Accountability in education was an idea first used by Albert Shanker in a speech in 1993 but has been widely ignored but remains valid. To understand this term, we can look to markets- if a market does not sell high quality goods and incentivize people to continue shopping there by providing the newest and best goods, it loses its business. So why isn't this the case for all schools? Fixing accountability of schools fixes education outcomes even in the face of poverty. Children of very similar demographic backgrounds in Texas and California see very different test results- despite claims that finances determine education. The gap in scores constitutes at least a year in learning, a period that suggests hugely different qualities of teaching. And not surprisingly, Texas is one of the few states that has begun to take on more probing accountability systems, which measure spending and performance statistics- called the Financial Allocation Study for Texas. Misplaced education dollars are a problem, with too much going towards administration and adults rather than kids, an idea supported by the fact that only 51% of education dollars go towards classrooms nationwide, so it's necessary to monitor this spending, and these accountability projects saw immediate success. These systems are promoted by President Obama but have only found hold in a few states, and I believe they should be everywhere.

For such a huge problem, it may be impossible to apply just one solution, and it could require compromise. And if the benefits of charter schools and the pros I discussed don't resonate, then I can make you take one thing away from this speech- the importance of integrating increasingly stringent accountability systems across the country. Above all, partisan differences aside, adults together must fix this pressing issue together, once and for all solving the education crisis our country faces, for the children and youth of our nation.