What's Wrong With U.S. Secondary Education? Just About Everything!

Aug. 1978, giving an astronomy workshop to teachers in St. Lucia.  Such workshops were given in all subject areas at regular intervals and followed by teacher tests.

The appearance of educator Deborah Kenny on 'Morning Joe' was sobering as she described an educational system in crisis. Not only is the U.S. now ranked 17th in science vis-a-vis other nations, but 25th in math. And we won't even go into the latest economics test issued to U.S. students in which they performed deplorably - most not even aware of basic financial indicators or issues.

Kenny, when pressed by Scarborough, went on to list ways the whole system can be improved, first and foremost adopting the "team" concept in which each school sees itself as a team dedicated to solid advancement. She also appealed to "innovation" - allowing teachers to be creative in their classrooms in terms of inquiry, and cautioned that the system needed to drop the gov't gimmicks for easy handouts (based on testing alone) and having administrators in every classroom checking off teacher violations.

All of these are fine, but she barely scratched the surface. (Understandable given she was allotted maybe only one third the time to do justice to the issue).  But how and why is the U.S. secondary education system so terrible? What factors contribute to undermining it, especially in areas of math and science where our nation continually flounders? Below I explore some of the reasons that occur to me, since I myself taught more than 20 years overseas (in Barbados at secondary and tertiary level) before teaching in the U.S. at tertiary level (Univ. of Alaska-Fairbanks, in space physics, physics and at a Maryland community college in calculus physics).

1.  Too much interference by School Boards- low level politicos:

This was the first factor that struck me on return to the U.S.: the degree of interference in all manner of school policies, even choice of textbooks and curricula. School boards, often highly politicized, sought to imprint their schools with their own biased marks, agendas and beliefs. Obviously, such micro-managed oversight will kill innovation and creativity in its tracks. Both of those are predicated on a spirit of free inquiry which absolutely cannot be pursued if hack politicians are looking over teachers' shoulders at every turn.

Thus, a teacher of biology who seeks to examine hominid evolution may be called on the carpet, just as one (say in Texas) who teaches American history and wishes to investigate more at a deep politics level the basis of the JFK assassination. Perhaps he even wishes to use a book ('The Untold History of the United States') that will be more amenable to inquiry as opposed to vanilla regurgitation of oversold myths and bogus factoids. In either case, most politicized school boards will cut the teachers off at the knees.

Innovation? Dead and buried!

2. Being Hostage to Government 'Carrot & Stick' Gimmicks:

Another vast killer of inquiry and creativity are the two government educational gimmick programs: 'No Child Left Behind' and "Race to the Top". In either of these, students and teachers become hostage to test taking for the sake of "making the cut" and not losing out on government largesse, benefits - which will be withheld if schools fail in standarized tests.

Time spent to actually teach is thereby usurped in the interest of making students excellent test takers, as opposed to educated Americans. Not even mentioned by those who push this fetish, is that many students are allowed to opt out especially in "elite" districts. So exactly how is that fair? The test hostages are then being screwed over twice! They're losing time for actual education while also not getting anywhere near the funding those students in the elite districts benefit from. (The ones afforded the privilege of opting out of standardized tests - thereby gaining an even greater time advantage for real teaching).

More pernicious is that the test taking obsession drives educators to step over the line to meet the test standards, even if it means cheating.  Look no further than the Atlanta cheating scandal. True, the cheaters are still accountable, but when the two main gov't gimmick programs put so much at stake in terms of benefits, one can understand how such desperation manifests, even if it can't be accepted.

3. The problem with math teaching in the U.S.

I actually went over this in two prior blogs and readers can reference that content here:

http://www.brane-space.blogspot.com/2011/03/mis-education-of-mathematics-teachers.html

and

http://www.brane-space.blogspot.com/2013/01/college-math-prof-and-why-us-education.html

Additionally, I presented a Caribbean Math test geared to secondary (CXC, or Caribbean Examination Council) students, and noted that it would probably give most U.S. students grief - probably even college students. That link is:

http://www.brane-space.blogspot.com/2011/04/could-us-high-schoolers-pass-basic.html

Perhaps the best insight into U.S. math travails is in Darryl Yong's blog which I cited in the second link above.

4. Science defects:

I highlighted these in a blog to do with why U.S. students have so much difficulty achieving good results in physics, see e.g.
http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2011/07/sad-state-of-us-high-school-physics.html

And what applies in this subject area also applies to a large degree in the other main science areas of chemistry and biology.  Chemistry, of course,should have a heavy emphasis on experimentation - and the biology to be worthwhile must address Darwinian evolution and not run from it. However, in too many districts school boards have interfered, as well as the state (e.g. Texas) to dumb down exposure.


5. History teaching defects.

This is very well known and author James Loewen has discussed U.S. history failings at length in his excellent book, Lies My Teacher Told Me.   The gist of it is that 95% of American students who take hsitory are sold a bill of folderol and gibberish that leaves out all the warts and blotches while it extols the 'good stuff'. Some history book are so pathetic they don't even acknowledge the role of other nations (e.g. Britain) in WWII but make it appear the U.S. won it single-handedly!  Other books totally avoid the false origin of the Vietnam War (in the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution) and avoid (like the plague) how early white settlers butchered Native Americans to grab their land.

With crap like this being taught, it's little wonder too many Americans don't know diddly or squat about even recent history.


6. Economics teaching deficits:

The recent revelations about secondary students' deplorable lack of financial acumen and economics exposure is also tragic. But again, with so much teaching to the test, what else would you expect? Certainly any student worth his salt ought to be able to identify the main reasons for the 2008 credit crisis and financial meltdown. He (or she) ought to be at least able to identify the derivatives known as 'credit default swaps' even if not the Gaussian Copula formula that was employed to integrate them into otherwise decent bond products.

Any H.S. student ought to also be able to answer questions such as:

a) Jeans are on sale at a big box store for 15% less than the original (marked) price of $24.99. If the sales tax is 5% what will you end up paying for the jeans?

b) You put $1,000 into a new bank account for which the interest is 0.2%. per annum.  If holding any account below $5,000 incurs a $10 per month fee, do you see any gain at the end of the first year? How much? If a loss, how much?

c) Joe and Mary are within 6 years of desired retirement. They estimate they need at least a $300,000 nest egg along with their Social Security. In order to ramp up their savings they put $100,000 of their $200,000 so far saved into equity and bond funds in their 401ks. After three years, their total loss is $30,000. Assuming average 5% gains per year afterward, how long will it take them to make back their original investment?

7. Anti-intellectual culture:

Briefly touched on with Deborah Kenny's appearance this morning, although critical, is that we seem to inhabit an anti-intellectual culture. This is also a big reason why secondary school teachers are accorded little respect. (One former teacher sitting at the table and part of the discussion, noted spitballs being hurled at him each time he entered a classroom)

Altered, higher pay scales will change some of this: making teachers the professionals they should be. But it can't solve an endemic problem in the culture itself. Indeed, Benjamin Barber in his book 'Consumed' points out how the intellectual basis of the nation has been eroded over time by a culture of infantile consumerism. Susan Jacoby ('The Age of American Unreason') meanwhile notes that crass, anti-intellectual religiosity, as embodied in fundamentalism, is also part of the problem.

Whatever, the solution is long term and requires intense education to show how we've all been victimized by the capitalist purveyors of shlock.

Lastly, fixing the educational system in the country is a monumental task. But at least addressing the problem areas I identified above will make it function more in concert with our higher expectations. As opposed to at the lowest level!

College Math Prof And Why U.S. Education May Be Failing

Darryl Yong's recent lengthy article on his "adventures in teaching high school math" ought to make any pedagogue sit up and take notice - and certainly U.S. high school administrators!

Yong in his article (Notices of the American Mathematical Society, Vol. 59, No. 10, p.1408) admits he did "something very unusual for a university mathematician" - he taught high school math during the 2009-2010 academic year. This article  "A Professor Goes to High school to Learn About Teaching Math"  is hilarious in many respects, but also poignant in revealing the deficiencies in our schools and why perhaps U.S. kids can't compete with students in Singapore, China, Sweden or Norway.

Yong originally presented his findings in a series of blogs but which the AMS Notices piece basically distills. First some preliminaries on his school before going to his findings. He was hired at a California High School under a CA state bill (859), whereby visiting faculty permits were issued. His school had 1,100 students of which 40% were "English language learners", while "80% qualified for free or reduced meals, and 85 percent were Hispanic".  He also notes that in 2009 only 3% were deemed proficient on the Algebra I California Standards test. The year Yong arrived, he taught Algebra I, Algebra II, Geometry and a "math intervention class", i.e. a special additional class to tutor struggling students.

A number of his discoveries during his time of teaching high school:

1) He had to learn not to take personally things that students said or did to him. Assisting him in this was the knowledge that "my students' behaviors in class were often a result of grave personal issues."

2) Blame is pervasive.

Yong notes that university math teachers often blame high school teachers for poor math preparation. Meanwhile, high school math teachers blame elementary schools for the poor preparation and kids who end up in HS with few math skills. And everywhere the blame lands on "bad teachers" with the clarion call: "We need to get rid of bad teachers!". But Yong himself observes: "I have yet to meet a teacher who willingly wanted to be an ineffective instructor- every teacher I know had a desire to do a good job."

If any blame had to be cast it was usually on the school administrators and Yong notes his school "was poorly run." At the same time he qualifies this by adding that they "didn't always have the resources to do the job well."

3) Enormous confusion emerged arising from shrinking budgets.

Yong discloses that in the first few weeks massive dislocation and confusion was evident, after many teachers were laid off in the summer of 2009. Also because of this it was weeks before his employment papers were processed. He began teaching, supposedly on Sept. 10,  but didn't receive any class rosters until October. There were consequences and disruptions as a result of this delay.

His blog entry for Monday, Sept. 21, 2009, starts: "There are 29 students in my 3rd period class. Hooray! Unfortunately, 30 minutes earlier the assistant principal told me it was supposed to be an Algebra I class but all the kids were there for Geometry!"

He adds that by the time things finally got settled, only 3 minutes remained for his actual (correct) class!


4) Though a very able Teacher, Yong felt ineffective most of the year

He eventually traced much of his lack of success on poor student self-concept. He goes on to refer to the work of John Hattie who found that the "variable that correlates most strongly with student achievement is self- concept." Hattie's book synthesizes over 800 meta-analytic research papers on education covering over 15,000 journal articles to determine the variables that most strongly correlate to student achievement.

Yong (and Hattie) define self-concept as "a person's sense of 'self' in a particular domain"

He adds (p. 1411):

"The difference betwen self-esteem and self-concept is that the former is an overall view of oneself whereas self-concept is domain specific."

In other words, if you have a self-concept of yourself as a math guru or genius then that defines how you perceive your worth in that (math) domain.  Yong goes on to notes that "self concept is shaped by prior academic achievement and one's beliefs about who has mathematical skill and what it means to be 'good' at mathematics. He goes on to say that "95% of the cases when a student was disruptive was the result of the student not understanding what to do or how to do something."

After that, he began to see the importance of addressing students' self-concepts and prepared special exercises to help them.

5) Teaching is far less respected as a profession than it ought to be.

Here Yong relates how often each day teachers receive messages, overt and covert, on how much they are valued as professionals. This includes how teachers are addressed by parents, administrators, the process of signing in and out of work every day..."down to the inconvenience of not being given a key to the school office (where the photo-copier and paper supplies are stored).

But Yong asserts that the "most disturbing messages came from the weekly professional development meetings". (Which all teachers had to attend) Most such meetings entailed a handout with nonsensical questions (in the context of the time allotted) which the teachers were supposed to address, answer.  To quote Yong (p. 1412) for the first question on one handout: "WOW! Where to Begin? First of all #1 doesn't make any sense! Am I supposed to respond to one question or the other?"

The actual question was: What 'works'? vs "What is your personal philosophy of teaching?'

(Perhaps one of the most idiotic of questions ever to appear at a teacher's development meeting!)

6) There exists a divergence between the written curriculum and 'assessed curriculum'

In this area, Yong discovered though there can be wonderful aspects, say to an "intended' or "written" Algebra I curriculum, they often don't see the light of day in manifesting because the teacher has to deliver on the "assessed curriculum" - as determined by periodic state assessments.  To cite one example of Yong's (p. 1414):

"For example, there was a moment during the year when I had to decide whether to teach my students to blindly follow a recipe to use the quadratic formula (since they weren't ready to understand the derivation of that formula) or continue along the path set by our text book and let them get all of those questions on the periodic assessment wrong. I chose the former and to this day feel horrible about it!"

Make no mistake that Yong's article and blogs shed much needed light on aspect of the U.S. public school system that too many don't wish to see, or address. A lot of it comes down to money, but a lot of it also comes down to societal disrespect....both for the hard working teachers in our public schools, as well as for many of the students themselves.

Until we give more respect to teachers as professionals, and assist students in finding a more positive self-concept, any other corrections to the educational system (including the plan to add 80 hrs. of instruction a year in some 15 states) may all be for naught.