Rotten to the Core

We have a high school dropout rate that averages approximately 25%+ across the land, 50%+ in too many large metropolitan areas and as high as 42% in entire states (Nevada). In 2009, the Program for International Student Assessment analyzed average test results for students in 34 developed countries. The United States placed a dismal 24^th in math literacy and 11^th in reading literacy. As budgets cuts continue to devastate basics like classroom size and facilities, those statistics are in danger of falling further.

With powerful unions, particularly in larger cities, protecting their incompetents with aging seniority systems mislabeled as “tenure,” we clearly have a long way to go in making sure that we have the best. With religious groups in many other states, particularly those that are heavily rural, preferring to spend money to litigate their right to teach creationism (directly or indirectly as “intelligent design”) rather than use that money to improve academic standards, public schools face additional threats. As per student public school average expenditures vary widely, from just above $6 thousand in Utah to just under $20 thousand in New York City, it is equally clear that there is anything but a level playing field in public education.

Perhaps because of the way the United States was created laced with a rather large population, we have always had strong local control of schools. With over 13,000 school districts across the land, textbook manufacturers tend to cater to the lowest common denominator is subject matter so as to create efficiencies in dealing with massive school districts in places like Texas and California, where there are cities with massive student enrollments. Local control is considered sacrosanct to small rural communities, particularly where there is a heavy emphasis on local moral values over hard core academic subjects. The federal government, on the other hand, is more concerned with global competitiveness, imposing compliance and testing standards on communities accessing federal educational aid.

The above list of facts identifies the cross-currents, the push-pull of local versus national priorities, teachers and unions struggling to maintain power in a world of budget cuts, but most important, the setting of standards that focus on college preparedness over traditional blue collar workers. With a recent de-emphasis on manufacturing, a momentary downturn in the building trades and an upgrade in required technical skills in many blue collar jobs, preparing kids for immediate entry into the job market directly from high school seems to be off the agenda for most school districts these days. But what about those students who really aren’t suited to take algebra or read books with powerful philosophical underpinnings, those who are good with their hands, capable of turning raw lumber into gorgeous cabinetry? If they cannot prepare for college, are we forcing them to drop out?

It’s a tough question that really does come down to who exactly our educational constituency really is. The children? Parents trying to prepare their children? Society? The system itself? Religious groups? The corporate employer world? All of the above? And if it is all of the above, how can learning evolve with so many masters, and how can children find their relevant paths among the push-pull of conflicting adult values?

A new battery of uniform standards, established through federal programs and donations from entities like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, is aimed at pushing American students to higher goals and abilities. The progress is measure by the new the Common Core State Standards tests, which, to put it mildly, are the toughest examinations ever imposed on American students. Tea Party religious conservatives and New York liberals are equally aghast at the requirements, which seem to focus solely on getting kids ready for college and little else. The underlying thought is that if we raise the goal enough, American kids are capable of reaching for it.

The June 8^th New York Times examined the new test (and ultimately challenged whether they were too skewed against blue collar aspirants): “In April, some 1.2 million New York students took their first Common Core State Standards tests, which are supposed to assess their knowledge and thinking on topics such as ‘The Adventures of Tom Sawyer’ and a single matrix equation in a vector variable.

“Students were charged with analyzing both fiction and nonfiction, not only through multiple-choice answers but also short essays. The mathematics portion of the test included complex equations and word problems not always included in students’ classroom curriculums. Indeed, the first wave of exams was so overwhelming for these young New Yorkers that some parents refused to let their children take the test.

“These students, in grades 3 through 8, are taking part in what may be the most far-reaching experiment in American educational history. By the 2014-15 academic year, public schools in 45 states and the District of Columbia will administer Common Core tests to students of all ages. (Alaska, Nebraska, Texas and Virginia have so far held out; Minnesota will use only the Common Core English test.) Many Catholic schools have also decided to implement the Common Core standards; most private, nonreligious schools have concluded that the program isn’t for them...

“The anxiety that drives this criticism comes from the fact that a radical curriculum — one that has the potential to affect more than 50 million children and their parents — was introduced with hardly any public discussion. Americans know more about the events in Benghazi than they do about the Common Core…

“Here’s one high school math standard: Represent addition, subtraction, multiplication, and conjugation of complex numbers geometrically on the complex plane; use properties of this representation for computation. Included on New York state’s suggested reading list for ninth graders are Doris Lessing, Albert Camus and Rainer Maria Rilke. (In many parts of the country, Kurt Vonnegut and Harper Lee remain the usual fare.)… More affluent students, as always, will have parental support. Private tutoring, already a growth industry, will become more important if passing scores on the Common Core are required for graduation. Despite worthy aims, the new standards may well deepen the nation’s social divide.

“The Common Core is not oblique in its aim: to instill ‘college and career readiness’ in every American teenager — in theory, a highly democratic ideal. In the past, students were unabashedly tracked, which usually placed middle-class students in academic courses and their working-class peers in vocational programs.” Those vocational programs have been dying for years; subjects like cooking and woodshop have fallen by the wayside, but then, our dropout rates have continued to climb just as global competitiveness has demanded higher quality students.

In the end the constituents have to be the children, and we need to subordinate every other loud voice to those younger ambitions. We do need to make their studies relevant, and college is not the uniform goal. But having alternatives is also about keeping kids interested in an education that is relevant to them and their desires for life. Balance has left the building.

I’m Peter Dekom, and working in a world of too many school districts and too many agendas is both expensive and unproductive for the children that are sent into those systems.