The Worrisome Future of America’s Public Education

Timothy Black, Economics, ‘19

Having followed Beyond the Classroom and In the Classroom blog shares throughout the year, many of the posts point to similar issues occurring across the country. This post looks at the problems that are aggregating in the US education system.

Source: Creative Market

The United States public education system appears to be moving away from prioritizing the child’s education, heading down a potentially dangerous path. State governments are showing a desire to reach a set criteria, rather than focus on the individual development of students. Additionally, they are hoping to centralize the public education system, to give themselves more control. One of the most prominent ways that this is seen is through the wide spread growth of standardization. These types of assessments are being pushed further down the “pipeline”, affecting students who are in elementary school. For example, Ohio has implemented a Third Grade Reading Guarantee that is used to, “identify students from kindergarten through grade 3 that are behind in reading.” They argue that this allows schools to help and provide support. However, these types of examinations can have detrimental effects.

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Much of the standardized testing implemented by public education is Norm-Referenced examinations. This means that students are graded upon the curve in an attempt to create a normal distribution. Students are ranked against each other. This, as a result, can discriminate low achievers. In terms of the Third Grade Reading Guarantee, a student may be below the curve due to a variety of issues, but is still punished for not reaching the necessary criteria that is set by the state. For example, the child may be a late bloomer and not be mentally developed enough to pass the examination. Yet, they are still punished. These types of high-stakes testing have significant consequences for a student who falls below the mean. This can discourage students at a young age, causing them to think they are inadequate, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.  Additionally, schools begin pursuing ways to attain the necessary numbers, rather than focus on the individual development of the child. This carries on throughout high school, with the importance of high scores in the ACT and SAT for college. Recently, a string of viral videos have exposed a particular school in Louisiana for cutting corners to artificially increase the scores of students.  Once these students entered college, many felt overwhelmed and unprepared. While this particular school is not a public or accredited private school, I believe this issue is still relevant. It shows that many schools are placing an importance on achieving high scores on standardized tests, rather than focusing on a student's educational growth. The development of a student's critical thinking ability and the fostering of a student's desire to learn is neglected. So why is this happening?

This transition to standardization is pushed by State Departments as they issue new mandates on the goal of public education. For example, in Florida, Proposal 89 decrees that the goal of education is, "to develop the intellect of the state's citizens, to contribute to the economy, to create an effective workforce, and to prepare students for a job." This is a great goal, but this should not be the primary purpose of education. Rather, it should promote Life Long Learning in the students. So, how are State Departments able to push toward more standardization?

While standardization has received backlash from teachers, many of their actions have been negated by additional reforms. We will once again observe the actions of Florida. The Florida Constitution Revision System has taken action to try and centralize the education system, stripping power away from local schooling districts. This is done to remove the choices of the individual citizens on their publicly funded schools. Some of the Proposals offer to "remove a community's ability to elect their superintendent" and "create alternate charter authorizers which could eliminate local control from the charter authorization process."  

The formation of Charter Schools also allows for the State government to have greater control and push standardization. As reported by Integrity Florida, Charter Schools have a wide variety of issues. Charter Schools in Florida were originally pushed to bring about educational innovation as they proposed to give teachers greater control over the school. However, this is not the case. In reality, local school boards have lost control of Charter Schools in their districts as their constitutional authority has been restricted. The Charter School industry also has the ability to lobby, directly influencing educational reform. Within the past 10 years, roughly $8 million has been used to lobby in Florida alone. 

Source: NowThisWorld

Centralization appears to be a directive of States as they try and gather more control of the educational system. This in turn allows them to push for standardized testing as they try and reach the economic criteria that they have set for themselves. While well intentioned, the path that they are taking has stripped decision making from teachers, causing students to suffer. Additionally, the focus on standardized testing neglects those who have fallen behind on the normal distribution. Reaching a number should not be the focus for students. Rather, they should be exploring and learning in topics they are interested in.