Ignorance for Dummies

Bob Herbert's New York Times column addresses the perennial problem of American education failures. It is actually possible to get a pretty good elementary and high school education in America, but not nearly enough of the students are getting it. Herbert cites the usual suspects:

An American kid drops out of high school every 26 seconds . . .

“We have one of the highest dropout rates in the industrialized world,” said Allan Golston, the president of U.S. programs for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. In a discussion over lunch recently he described the situation as “actually pretty scary, alarming.”

. . .

Mr. Golston noted that the performance of American students, when compared with their peers in other countries, tends to grow increasingly dismal as they move through the higher grades:

“In math and science, for example, our fourth graders are among the top students globally. By roughly eighth grade, they’re in the middle of the pack. And by the 12th grade, U.S. students are scoring generally near the bottom of all industrialized countries.”

Herbert doesn't offer any solutions.

I have my own ideas, some of which are given below:

• Testing needs to be national, and mandatory for public, private, and home schooled children. Well defined national standards need to be published and publicized. The current system, with each State defining its own standards, is a joke. Some States have defined competence so minimally that there students pass without any mastery of material.
• Control of curriculum must be siezed from the publishing companies. They have a huge stake in making education a fashion industry, and almost none in real student achievement.
• Rigorously test teaching methods and publicize the good and bad ones. Once again, publishers cannot be allowed to control this process.
• Emphasize excellence over accomodation. Current standards for accomodating the severely damaged and dangerously mentally ill are too costly, and too disruptive to the educational mission. We should take care of our damaged children as well as we can, but that is not primarily an educational mission.
• Pay teachers well, continuously train and evaluate them, and eliminate the incompetent.
• Look at factors in our society that contribute to poor school achievement and attack them at a societal level.
• Experiment but validate.
• Deemphasize everything but the academic mission.
• Rid the curriculum of non-academic elements. In my city, for example, it is possible a (sufficiently athletically talented) student to take up to one fourth of his high school credits in football. A similar situation exists with respect to band and basketball. Extra curricular activities belong outside the curriculum. (Our schools win lots of football championships, however)
• Explore incentives for keeping kids in school.
• Reward academic excellence. Students in the top 25% nationally should get good college scholarships.
• Set national priorities for learning. Test all schools on the standard materials (including colleges and universities) and publicize the results.
• Allow for differences in school populations, but document progress or lack thereof.