The last significant educational milestone is the effort to institute across the country a more rigorous—and more nationally uniform—public school curriculum. Launched by two nonfederal organizations—the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers—and based on studies going back to 1996, the Common Core State Standards Initiative encourages every state to adopt its highly subject- and grade-specific recommended curriculum. As of 2012, all but five states are on board.16 While very promising conceptually, it remains to be seen whether the common standards are academically sound and whether they will actually be implemented as envisioned and prove to be educational game changers.
All of the milestones noted so far have been national. One important addition to the list, however, is state initiated. The Massachusetts Education Reform Act of 1993 imposed a rigorous, statewide K–12 core curriculum and a somewhat longer school day and school year; in 2005, the state began piloting an even longer school day in certain districts. Perhaps because of these measures, Massachusetts now leads the nation in K–12 education gains. A recent Harvard study, examining results from international math and reading tests, found that Massachusetts eighth graders not only scored highest among American states on the tests but also outscored test takers in all but a few countries (see table 2.9).17 Other encouraging statistics: 61 percent of Massachusetts high school freshmen proceed to college, and 53 percent of its young adults have college degrees; both are the highest proportions of any American state.
MINDING THE (ACHIEVEMENT) GAPS—AND CLOSING THEM
For America to regain its status as the world’s smartest society, it must have the world’s best educational system. Yet, as noted earlier, looking at metrics of educational achievement internationally, we see that the United States is rapidly falling behind, being overtaken by an increasing number of other countries with each passing decade. Most of this can be ascribed to the rapid educational progress being made by other places. The advanced rich countries of Europe have largely abandoned their educational elitism and are making good on their own version of “not leaving any children behind.” Other countries with the will to become smart societies needed only the means. The former Soviet satellites of Eastern Europe no longer have their educational potential held back by the yoke of Soviet communism, and the “Asian tigers” no longer suffer from the scarce resources of early-stage economic development. Although we are losing the educational race mainly because others have learned to run faster, that is no excuse; we must learn to run even faster ourselves.
The inferior standing of the United States is evident in all three of the international tests, in all three subjects (reading, math, and science), and at all ages (fourth grade, eighth grade, and age fifteen) as shown in tables 2.2 and 2.3.
A detailed analysis of the data behind these dismal statistics reveals that the deficiencies in American school achievement are present not just in the bottom cohort of schoolchildren (the “left behind”), but also in those at higher levels of ability. As shown in table 2.4, even America’s brighter youngsters, those in the 75th and 95th percentile of test takers, do poorly relative to their peers in other advanced countries. This suggests that the fastest way for American political and educational leaders to restore the country’s historic international educational supremacy is to direct much more attention to increasing the academic performance of mainstream schoolchildren, a subject elaborated on later and addressed in chapter 4.
Table 2.2
PIRLS Test Scores for Reading (fourth grade)
Source: OECD, Programme for International Student Assessment, 2009.
Table 2.3
TIMSS Test Scores for Mathematics (fourth and eighth grades)
Source: National Center for Education Statistics, Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study.
Table 2.4
PIRLS Percentiles for Reading (fourth grade), 2006
Source: OECD, Programme for International Student Assessment, 2009.
The country’s greatest contemporary educational failure is the shockingly uneven level of academic achievement among Americans in different circumstances and in different places. The most familiar comparison is that white children are doing much better than blacks and Hispanics, and Asians are doing a little better than whites. Less frequently noted, white children whose parents have a college education are doing much better than those who don’t. Overall, suburban children are doing better than those who live in cities, and much of this disparity remains even when we hold race and parent education levels constant (table 2.5)! Among city children with the same profile, those going to school in smaller cities (or poor suburbs) do better than those in the biggest. But the most startling finding, and actually the most hopeful in terms of effective educational policy reform, is the enormous difference in academic performance from state to state—even after one adjusts for each of the socioeconomic and locational distinctions mentioned above. In fact, as table 2.6 shows, achievement-lagging demographic cohorts in some states do better than leading ones in others. This is hopeful because, if such academic achievement disparities cannot be attributed to socioeconomic disadvantage, and the statistical distribution of cognitive ability should be the same everywhere, then the only explanation for such differences lies in the schools themselves.
Table 2.5
NAEP Eighth-Grade Reading Scores for Whites by Location and Parent Education, 2011
Source: U.S. Department of Education, National Assessment of Educational Progress.
Table 2.6
NAEP Eighth-Grade Reading Scores by Race and State (top and bottom five), 2011