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ISSUE GUIDES: Education

CONSIDER THE CHOICES

 

PERSPECTIVES IN BRIEF

Raising Educational Standards
Creating Student-Centered Schools
Offering Educational Choices
Providing Adequate Funding

America's public schools are neglecting the basics. Consequently, many young people are handicapped by serious academic deficiencies.Higher academic standards and well-defined goals are essential. There must be an agreed-upon core of knowledge that students are expected to master. We need traditional, no-nonsense schools where students acquire a solid foundation of basic knowledge; and regular exams and report cards provide a clear indication of whether kids are making progress.In addition, the schools need to teach the values most Americans share, including honesty, fairness, punctuality, respect, and personal responsibility.
The underlying problem in the schools is that many students are disengaged from learning, in large part,because of what they're taught and how they are taught. The essential ingredient in good schools is teachers who are sensitive to students' needs and differences,and able to inspire intellectual curiosity. For that has guided successful teachers and schools is teach the child, not the subject. Instead of trying to agree on a one-size-fits-all curriculum, schools should teach what students will not soon forget: problem-solving skills and critical thinking -- in otherwords, how to think.
The fundamental problem is that most parents don't have a choice about where their kids go to school. Except for a small minority who choose to pay for private or parochial schools,parents don't have any alternatives. In effect,public schools have a monopoly on affordable primary and secondary education. They haven't improved because they don't have to. If most parents ands tudents had a choice, public schools would compete for students,just as stores compete for buyers. The resulting competition would create a situation that rewards schools that are doing a good job,while forcing the rest to change -- or go out of business.
You get what you pay for, and too many schools are starved for funds. Public schools are expected to turn out high-achieving students, but many school systems are forced to operate on a shoestring. As a result, classes are too large, school buildings are falling apart, and teacher salaries are too low to attract good teachers. In particular, a glaring difference exists between per pupil spending in wealthy and poor communities in many states. That means kids from lower-middle income and poor families tend to go to second-rate schools. Rather thanserving as a great equalizer, public education is a wedge that is driving us further apart.

PERSPECTIVES IN DETAIL

Raising Educational Standards
Creating Student-Centered Schools
Offering Educational Choices
Providing Adequate Funding


What should be done?

  • Specific academic expectations should be defined for each grade level. If students do not meet those standards, they should not be allowed to move up.
  • A national or statewide curriculum should be defined along the lines of President Bush's Goals 2000 initiative, or President Clinton's America 2000 specifying lesson content in basic subjects, with each year building on the last.
  • Teacher training would be refocused on teaching the standards. After being certified in teaching the standardized curriculum, teachers would be held accountable for students' progress.
  • Schools would expand courses in core academic subjects and make corresponding reductions in electives and non-academic programs.
  • Students should take regular exams that measure progress with letter grades.
  • Schools should have tough, clearly defined standards for proper school behavior, including a zero-tolerance policy for violent students or those who come to school with drugs or weapons.
  • Teachers should use innovative methods to teach analytic skills and encourage creativity. History, for example, is best taught by examining the different ways in which events can be viewed and interpreted. English is best taught by stressing creative writing and personal expression first, and then later teaching kids correct spelling and grammar.
  • Students working at different levels should be grouped together to teach social skills and an appreciation for personal differences.
  • Student progress should be assessed through teacher observations and portfolios of student work rather than simply by traditional tests, letter grades and report cards.
  • Students are more likely to learn when lessons are taught thematically, rather than approaching learning through traditional subject areas.
  • Teaching should be based primarily on discussion, not lectures, and on learning by discovery rather than rote memorization and repetition.
  • Low- and middle-income parents should receive a publicly funded voucher which they could use to send their kids to any accredited school,public, private, or religious.
  • Make the voucher's value comparable to the cost of a public school education, and insist that participating schools accept it as full payment for tuition.
  • Create more charter schools within the public school system that are licensed and financed with taxpayer dollars but operated independently from ordinary public schools. Because they would have more room to experiment, charter schools would help break the public school monopoly and provide effective alternatives.
  • Promote competition by eliminating red tape, including barriers to the opening of for-profit schools and rules that prevent public schools from hiring companies or colleges to provide instructional services.
  • Permit parents the widest possible choice among public schools.
  • Substantiallly increase state and federal funding to ensure that all public schools, especially those in poor communities, are funded at a level that permits them to deliver a quality education.
  • Stop forcing school districts to depend so much on local property taxes, as this practice ensures that poor districts lack the resources to provide quality education.
  • Equalize educational opportunities for children from families at all income levels by eliminating spending disparities between school districts.
  • Promote programs widely believed to improve student achievement, including hiring more teachers and giving them more training and support.
  • To attract the best teachers, raise salaries and improve working conditions.
  • Stop deferring maintenance and modernization of school buildings. Provide school districts with adequate funds to make repairs, update laboratories, install computers, and connect schools to the Internet.


    • Arguments For This Approach

  • Students and teachers alike need to know what's expected of them. If you expect more, you get more.
  • Defining high and consistent education standards is the only assurance that disadvantaged children will acquire the knowledge they need to succeed.
  • Almost every other industrial nation has an agreed-upon core curriculum that specifies what students are expected to learn at each grade level. That system has produced higher and more equitable academic achievement than our own.
  • In today's economy, workers need hard skills in areas such as math and science that are higher than most high school graduates now attain.
  • Traditional grades based on regular tests are needed to give parents a clear indication of what their kids are learning.
  • The most important skill adults need is the ability to access information and examine it critically. Students may forget specific facts, but they will rely daily on well-developed problem-solving skills.
  • By giving students more latitude in what they learn and how they learn it, schools acknowledge differences in learning styles, as well as racial and ethnic differences.
  • American students may not do so well on standardized tests, but these tests don't measure many of the things Americans excel in: problem-solving, innovation, and creativity.
  • This would provide the radical change needed to reward good schools, and put pressure on bad ones to change. Increased competition among schools is the most promising way to improve them.
  • Because parents would choose the school that is best suited to their children's needs, this is the best way of ensuring a good fit between kids and the schools they attend.
  • A voucher system, or charter schools, would provide particular benefits to students in central city schools who currently have few options.
  • School choice plans would give average Americans an option that wealthy families have long enjoyed.
  • No school reform can succeed until schools have sufficient resources to provide an adequate educational environment.
  • Public schools need more money to do the job right. In many cases, classes are too large, school buildings are falling apart, and schools don't have the equipment they need including computers and well-equipped science labs to teach the skills students will need to succeed in the workplace.
  • The indispensable requirement for good schools is good teachers. To recruit and retain first-rate teachers, public schools must be able to offer salaries competitive with other professions.
  • We say we're committed as a nation to equal opportunity, yet schools in poor communities are often unable to provide students with the skills to succeed. In effect, education has become a wedge that is driving us further apart.


    • Arguments Against This Approach

  • Learning is most likely to take place when students engage in meaningful problem-solving activities, where they're encouraged to think for themselves. Too often, a traditional approach leads to rote learning, and a curriculum crammed with meaningless facts that students will soon forget.
  • A standardized curriculum often becomes an excuse for cultural imperialism, imposing a Eurocentric curriculum on an increasingly diverse student population.
  • While it is important not to tolerate low academic expectations, excessively high expectations can also be a problem. Too much academic pressure turns kids off to learning.
  • Some kids can't succeed in traditional academic subjects. In response to their needs, schools should scale down their expectations and find other way to help them succeed.
  • National standards are likely to lead to even more standardized testing.
  • Teachers won't be effective if they're bound by the straitjacket of a prefab curriculum. Too many standards will encourage them to teach the test rather than responding to students' individual needs and learning styles.
  • Many students area pathetic and disengaged not because they're taught in an uninspired and traditional way, but because too little is demanded of them.They're not challenged to meet demanding standards.
  • An unstructured, progressive approach to education has led to students choosing from a smorgasboard of nonacademic activities and electives. American students end up with superficial knowledge because they study too many subjects. Because basic academic areas don't get the attention they deserve, students don't acquire the knowledge skills needed in today's workplace.
  • Over the past several decades, many public schools have adopted a progressive approach to teaching, but student achievement has not improved and in some respects has declined.
  • The student-centered approach to education has led, in many cases, to automatic promotion of children from one grade to the next, regardless of what they learn.
  • Schools that operate according to progressive theories of education do little to improve the economic chances of poor children, who need basic academic skills to get good jobs.
  • This approach would not ensure that kids master the basic academic skills, which are needed for all further learning.
  • Schools, whether public or private, are only as good as their teachers. Improving education, then, means hiring better teachers and more of them -- not shifting students from one school to another.
  • This approach offers no plan for improving schools, just a risky promise that schools will improve thanks to the magic of competition.
  • Private and religious schools would skim off the best students, leaving demoralized public schools to deal with the hard cases. In effect, providing vouchers would siphon funds away from the public schools, making them even less able to meet the needs of the students they serve.
  • Parents don't have the information they need to make a knowledgeable decision about what schools are best matched to the needs of their kids.
  • Permitting parents to used publicly funded vouchers to send their kids to parochial schools would violate the principle of separating church and state.
  • A major purpose of public education has always been to bring students from different backgrounds together, and provide them with a common education. Under a voucher system, kids from different religions, races, and nationalities are likely to go off to different schools and we would lose any sense of a common community.
  • School funding in the United States has long been primarily a local responsibility. If some communities choose to spend more on public education than others, that is legitimate.
  • Anyway, why should taxpayers in one community have to support other school districts that waste money?
  • Increasing school budgets hasn't led to better results in the past. Per pupil expenditures have risen substantially over the last 30 years and class size decreased -- but scores on standardized tests fell.
  • While educating our kids should be a top priority, the schools don't need more money. They need to use their budgets more efficiently. If budgets were increased, the additional funds would be eaten up by higher administrative costs, or classroom frills that don't really help students.
  • The source of the student achievement problem isn't what the schools are doing, or failing to do, but what families do. If parents don't teach their kids to take school seriously, and do well, even the best schools can't make much of a difference.


    • QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS: HOW THE PERSPECTIVES DIFFER

    Raising Educational Standards
    Creating Student-Centered Schools
    Offering Educational Choices
    Providing Adequate Funding

    Q: What is a likely cost or tradeoff?
    A:
    There would be less flexibility in teaching, slower innovation in curricula, and more importance on tests.
    A:
    Because schools do not necessarily teach the same material, there will be less uniformity in what students learn. Portfolio-based assessment makes it harder to compare what different students have learned.
    A:
    This choice would no longer pursue the goal of providing a common school experience for children of all backgrounds.
    A:
    In many communities, taxes would be raised to provide more funds for public schools, and in particular to provide greater funding for schools in poor communities.


    Q: If additional funding is provided for the schools, what should it be used
    A:
    Inadequate funding isn't the main problem. But if more funds are provided, it should be used to teach the basics, and provide remedial education so all students master the basics.
    A:
    Additional funding should be used to encourage more creative teaching, retraining teachers so they can teach what kids need to succeed.
    A:
    Additional funding should be used to provide vouchers for private or parochial schools, so parents have a choice about the schools their kids attend.
    A:
    Additional funding should be used to equalize spending among school districts, to ensure that all schools have adequate resources.


    Q: How would each approach affect minority students?
    A:
    By expecting more from students and requiring all students to master the basic skills needed in the workplace.
    A:
    By tailoring the curriculum and teaching to the individual needs of students and their unique cultural heritage, schools help motivate students, and help them succeed.
    A:
    By providing a good fit between students and the schools they attend, school choice helps minority kids succeed. Poor and minority students will no longer be trapped in substandard schools.
    A:
    Currently, many minority kids are poorly served by underfunded schools, where facilities are inadequate and classrooms are overcrowded. Funding all public schools at the same level would significantly improve the educational experience for racial minorities.


    Q: What would this approach require parents to do?
    A:
    Accept common educational standards, even when parents might prefer exceptions to be made for their kids.
    A:
    Parents need to understand that the schools won't necessarily teach what the parents learned when they were in school.
    A:
    Requires parents to take an active role in deciding which schools are best suited to the needs and learning styles of their kids.
    A:
    In most cases, pay higher taxes. Middle-class communities would likely experience no increase in funding, and may have to pay more to help poor schools elsewhere.