Jay sets ‘em straight
Most ed reformers are drawn to their calling by one, or sometimes both, of two considerations: civil rights and economics. The first concern addresses the achievement gap between mostly white, upper-class students and their mostly minority, low-income peers. That this gap exists—and that it’s shameful and unacceptable—is undeniable.
The claims of the economics crowd, however, are less unassailable. Landmark report after landmark report warns us that, unless we adopt the following thirty-six-point plan to fix our schools, we face a future of indentured servitude to the emerging behemoths of the East. But, in fact, there’s little evidence to support such claims, just as there wasn’t in the eighties and nineties when Japan was on its supposedly inexorable march toward world domination.
Thankfully, Washington Post reporter Jay Mathews has written an accessible and persuasive response to the economic armageddon crowd in the latest Wilson Quarterly. Choice lines:
Our best public schools are first-rate, producing more intense, involved, and creative A-plus students than our most prestigious colleges have room for. That is why less-known institutions such as Claremont McKenna, Rhodes, and Hampshire are drawing many freshmen just as smart as the ones at Princeton. The top 70 percent of U.S. public high schools are pretty good, certainly better than they have ever been, thanks to a growing movement to offer Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate courses.
Our real problem is the bottom 30 percent of U.S. schools, those in urban and rural communities full of low-income children. We have seen enough successful schools in such areas to know that many of those children are just as capable of being great scientists, doctors, and executives as suburban children are. But most low-income schools in the United States are simply bad. Not only are we denying the children who attend them the equal education that is their right, but we are squandering almost a third of our intellectual capital. We are beating the world economically, but with one hand tied behind our back.
...the notion that the United States is losing the international economic race is implausible. China and India may be growing quickly, but they remain far behind and are weighed down by huge, impoverished rural populations. Both countries are going to continue to send many of their brightest young people to study at U.S. universities. Stupidly conceived and administered immigration laws give many of these foreign students little choice but to leave once they receive their degrees. Given the chance, many more are likely to stay in the United States, where the jobs pay better; creativity in all fields, including politics, is encouraged; and—another blow to education critics—the colleges their children would attend are far better and more accessible.
Thank you, Jay, for injecting some badly needed sanity into this discussion. This is one of those articles you want to bookmark or print out so it’s easily accessible when education or globalization comes up at your dinner party.
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May 10th, 2008 at 7:54 am
This is the kind of thing that Gerald Bracey has been saying for years.
May 10th, 2008 at 8:49 pm
Wow, I agree. And this is on Flypaper. Weird.
May 16th, 2008 at 2:23 am
I suggest that it is wishful thinking on Jay Mathews’ part to assume that all public school students can meet high standards of academic prowess. The evidence as to how badly children are treated in many low-income homes is enough it itself to overrule that notion. I realize that it is culturally incorrect to point out the manner in which such children are abused by their parents. Nonetheless, it is unrealistic not to do so.
Patrick Groff, Professor of Education Emeritus, San Diego State University
May 16th, 2008 at 9:39 pm
My children attend school in a district whose high school Mathews ranks among the top 200 in the country. Rotherham puts it in the top 100. Mine is a wealthy, high-performing district.
Last year every black and Hispanic student in the middle school failed the 8th grade Math and ELA tests.
This is happening across the country. White students attending expensive suburban schools do “well”; black and Hispanic students fail.
When this happens, white parents and school boards react by saying, “Our school is excellent except for the black students.”
The only way to judge a wealthy white school is to look at how students whose parents can’t reteach content or hire tutors are doing. If lower middle class students are failing, the school can’t be “first-rate.”
The parents and the tutors may be first-rate, or at least extremely hard-working.
Not the school.
May 16th, 2008 at 10:18 pm
I’d like to add that I don’t mean to imply that white suburban parents are racist while Mathews and Bracey are enlightened champions of the disadvantaged.
White parents have been told over and over and over again, by Mathews and virtually every other educational columnist on the planet with the exception of Andrew Wolf in the NY Sun, that white schools are good and black schools are bad. This is why we have NCLB, because it’s not fair that affluent white kids attend “excellent schools” in “leafy suburbia” etc.
That is the message of Mr. Mathews’ article.
It’s a short step from white schools good/black schools bad to white part of my school good/black part of my school bad.
May 17th, 2008 at 7:18 am
I support NCLB, by the way.
However, the law encourages parents, tax payers, and education writers to equate money and whiteness with quality.
June 1st, 2008 at 2:03 pm
It is only fair to point out that Mr. Mathews has never visited India and therefore never set foot in an Indian K-12 school. Therefore I do not know the source of his strong opinions.
And while he has been to China, his last visit to a Chinese school was in 1989 - nearly two decades ago. Useful, but perhaps mildly dated.
I an a true admirer of Mr. Mathews and his knowledge of American education, but his adamant opinions about Indian and Chinese education should be taken in their proper context - outdated, non-existent or plain wrong.
I would welcome an open, public debate with Mr. Mathews on Indian and Chinese curriculum and student performance in comparison with US standards and performance at any time and any location. (except not in August - I’ll be in China and not in December - I’ll be in India)
Bob Compton
Executive Producer
Two Million Minutes