9486 in the collection  

Our Greatest National Shame

When Nicholas Kristof writes
about public education his lack of
understanding is just about as pathetic as
Brent Staples' editorials in the New York
Times. Maybe it's something in the
water.

Stephen Krashen
Comment: Does improving education reduce
poverty or does reducing poverty
improve education?

Nicholas Kristoff thinks that education is the
key to reducing
poverty and that our schools are "Our greatest
national shame" (Feb
15). There is, however, strong evidence that
poverty is the major
cause of low academic achievement.

US schools with fewer than 25% of children in
poverty outscore all
countries in the world in Math and Science
(Gerald Bracey, Huffington
Post, July 22, 2007). US children only fall
below the international
average when 75% of more of the students in a
school are children of
poverty. Studies also show that poor diet and
lack of reading material
seriously affect academic performance.

There is room for improvement in education, but
when all our children
have the advantages that children from high-
income families have, our
schools will be considered the best in the
world.

Susan Ohanian puts it this way: Instead of No
Child Left Behind, how
about No Child Left Unfed?

by Nicholas D. Kristof

So maybe I was wrong. I used to consider health
care our greatest
national shame, considering that we spend twice
as much on medical
care as many European nations, yet American
children are twice as
likely to die before the age of 5 as Czech
children — and American
women are 11 times as likely to die in
childbirth as Irish women.

Yet I’m coming to think that our No. 1 priority
actually must be
education. That makes the new fiscal stimulus
package a landmark, for
it takes a few wobbly steps toward reform and
allocates more than $100
billion toward education.

That’s a hefty sum — by comparison, the
Education Department’s
entire discretionary budget for the year was
$59 billion — and it
will save America’s schools from the
catastrophe that they were
facing. A University of Washington study had
calculated that the
recession would lead to cuts of 574,000 school
jobs without a
stimulus.

“We dodged a bullet the size of a freight
train,” notes Amy
Wilkins of the Education Trust, an advocacy
group in Washington.

So for those who oppose education spending in
the stimulus, a
question: Do you really believe that slashing
half a million teaching
jobs would be fine for the economy, for our
children and for our
future?

Education Secretary Arne Duncan describes the
stimulus as a
“staggering opportunity,” the kind that comes
once in a lifetime.
He argues: “We have to educate our way to a
better economy, that’s
the only way long term to get there.”

That’s exactly right, and it’s partly why I
shifted my views of
the relative importance of education and
health. One of last year’s
smartest books was “The Race Between Education
and Technology,” by
Claudia Goldin and Lawrence F. Katz, both
Harvard professors. They
offer a wealth of evidence to argue that
America became the world’s
leading nation largely because of its emphasis
on mass education at a
time when other countries educated only elites
(often, only male
elites).

They show that America’s educational edge
created prosperity and
equality alike — but that this edge was
eclipsed in about the 1970s,
and since then one country after another has
surpassed us in
education.

Perhaps we should have fought the “war on
poverty” with schools
— or, as we’ll see in a moment, with teachers.

Some education programs have done remarkably
well in overcoming the
pathologies of poverty. Children who went
through the Perry Preschool
program in Michigan, for example, were 25
percent less likely to drop
out of high school years later than their peers
in a control group,
and committed half as many violent felonies.
They were one-third less
likely to become teenage parents or addicts,
and half as likely to get
abortions.

Likewise, the KIPP program, the subject of a
fine book by Jay
Mathews, has attracted rave reviews for schools
that turn low-income
students’ lives around.

There are legitimate questions about whether
such programs are
scalable and would succeed if introduced more
broadly. But we do know
that the existing national school system is
broken, and that we’re
not trying hard enough to fix it.

“We have a good sense from the data where there
are big
opportunities,” notes Douglas Staiger, an
economist at Dartmouth
College who studies education.

The hardest nut to crack is high schools — we
don’t have a strong
sense yet how to rescue them. But there’s a
real excitement at what
we are learning about K-8 education.

First, good teachers matter more than anything;
they are
astonishingly important. It turns out that
having a great teacher is
far more important than being in a small class,
or going to a good
school with a mediocre teacher. A Los Angeles
study suggested that
four consecutive years of having a teacher from
the top 25 percent of
the pool would erase the black-white testing
gap.

Second, our methods to screen potential
teachers, or determine which
ones are good, don’t work. The latest
Department of Education study,
published this month, showed again that there
is no correlation
between teacher certification and teacher
effectiveness. Particularly
in lower grades, it also doesn’t seem to matter
if a teacher has a
graduate degree or went to a better college or
had higher SATs.

The implication is that throwing money at a
broken system won’t fix
it, but that resources are necessary as part of
a package that
involves scrapping certification, measuring
better through testing
which teachers are effective, and then paying
them significantly more
— with special bonuses to those who teach in
“bad” schools.

One of the greatest injustices is that
America’s best teachers
overwhelmingly teach America’s most privileged
students. In
contrast, the most disadvantaged students
invariably get the least
effective teachers, year after year — until
they drop out.

This stimulus package offers a new hope that we
may begin to reform
our greatest national shame, education.

— Nicholas D. Kristof, with Stephen Krashen comment
New York Times
2009-02-15


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