Lies and Damned Lies: U.S. Test Scores Actually Near the Top

For years, free market education reformers have claimed that the U.S. public education system is broken—some have even called it a threat to our national security (Reagan’s Nation at Risk report, 1983). They have used this “crisis” to justify everything from No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top to attacks on teachers’ seniority, tenure and due process rights. It has led to a decade of accountability and testing mania that has eaten up instructional time and replaced activities that foster creativity and critical thinking with rote memorization. It has taken away billions of dollars that could have been used for teacher training, recruitment and remuneration, and transferred it into the pockets of test and textbook publishers, private charter school operators, and online curriculum producers.

The claims that America’s schools are failing are grossly exaggerated, if not utterly false. For example, the number of students attempting and passing SAT and AP exams has been growing every year and in every ethnic and social group (see here and here). Furthermore, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, for the first time in history, more than 30% of Americans aged 25 or older—56 million people—have bachelor's degrees, while only 5% did 70 years ago—something that would be impossible if K-12 education was not successfully preparing its graduates for college. According to Good Education, more than one-third of these degrees are now in STEM fields. The data also indicates that gender and ethnic disparities are closing, with 30% of women now holding degrees (compared to 31% of men), while the percentage of Hispanic degree holders increased 80% over the past decade, with over 14% now holding degrees.

Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics

Free market reformers love testing because it seems objective and scientific (plus they can massage the statistics to suit their needs). Most people lack the time and expertise to disaggregate the numbers, examine the methodology, and identify biases and experimental errors that can skew the data and influence the validity of their conclusions. Consequently, the media typically report test results without such analyses, proliferating misconceptions and inaccuracies like the notion that U.S. students’ test scores are substantially lower than those in other wealthy nations (as measured by the PISA test).

However, as the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) correctly points out in a new report (that you can read here), lower income students in every country perform more poorly on the tests than affluent students. However, because economic inequality is greater in the U.S. than in virtually every other country with which we are compared, our national average appears comparatively low. To make matters worse, there was a sampling error in the most recent PISA test, resulting in an over-representation of students from the most disadvantaged U.S. schools, thus further depressing the average U.S. scores.

When EPI re-estimated PISA scores, adjusting for the disproportionate number of economically disadvantaged students in the U.S., it found that average U.S. scores in reading and math were substantially higher than the official numbers. Using EPI’s corrected numbers, the U.S. moves to sixth in reading (up from the officially reported 14^th) and 13^th in math (up from the officially reported 25^th) compared with other OECD countries.

Although U.S. students still performed worse than those in the top three countries (Canada, Finland and Korea), the difference was markedly narrowed when adjusted for socioeconomic differences. Perhaps more significantly, economically disadvantaged students in the U.S. performed better than their social class peers in most other countries, including in these three top scoring countries.

Thus, while U.S. educational outcomes appear worse than those of its trading partners (due mostly to its greater levels of social inequity), it is actually doing a better job than its trading partners at boosting the test scores of its poorest students. Furthermore, the performance of the poorest U.S. students has been improving over time, while the performance of poor students in other similar countries has been on the decline, suggesting that U.S. schools are doing a better job addressing the needs of their economically disadvantaged students.

The Right to an Education or The Obligation to Be Sorted for Capital

The Left is fond of extolling the virtues of a free public education system, particularly the delusion that it increases social mobility and promotes liberty. Aside from the fact that few people move up in social class, regardless of their success in school, the system is not truly free. It is a taxpayer subsidy to business that ensures there are sufficiently educated workers to do the jobs employers want done and to consume the products and services they are selling.

In “Science and Education in Capitalism,” Ruthless Criticism points out that education serves as a sorting mechanism for capital, funneling future workers into the hierarchy of jobs. School does not simply deliver knowledge, training and skills to students, but does so per unit time. During exams, students demonstrate how many questions they can correctly answer within a given amount of time. Consequently, it is not their knowledge we are assessing, but their efficiency compared with their peers, exactly what employers are looking for.

Grades do not tell us how much a student knows or how well they can solve problems. They simply tell us how a student has performed in relationship to his or her peers and give an indication of how that student will be sorted in the future. The better the grades, the more advanced classes that student can take, the better college he or she can attend, the more impressive his or her resume, and the better the chances of a higher paying job.

Most jobs do not require brilliant workers. Thus, the state does not need to invest much into public education—just enough to ensure there are sufficient workers with the minimum skills necessary for the job (a few highly trained people to be managers, supervisors and bosses, and lots of average people with minimal training to do the rest of the work). Of course there is also a need for scientists, but from the perspective of the employing class this is solely to create new and better products that can be sold and patented, innovations that give them an edge over competitors. Scientists working to improve public health, in contrast, are a burden as they contribute to regulation and legislation that impairs profit-making.

The rationality of keeping education costs low has been amply demonstrated over the last four years, as states have slashed education budgets without harming the profitability of business. In fact, corporate America has made record profits in that same time period despite the divestment from public education, while a surplus of highly trained workers and scientists remain jobless or accept low paying jobs that have nothing to do with their training.

The needs of capital also determine what content is taught. An understanding of American history sufficient to celebrate the 4^th of July with pride serves the interests of capital by ensuring there will be a supply of cannon fodder for its wars, whereas knowledge of Haymarket, Homestead, the IWW and Ludlow might lead one to rebel against capital. Hence, the former takes up a great deal of the history curriculum, while the latter, if it is taught at all, takes up no more than a few lines in the text book.

School also prepares students for the world of work by simulating (and legitimizing) the competition that occurs in the real world, only in school the competition is for grades rather than money. However, the competition in school is no more “fair” than that of the world of employment. One’s relationship to the labor market not only determines his wealth and social status, it also determines his children’s status in school. Affluence is a great predictor of graduation rates, test scores and overall school success.

The public education system of the 20^th century—the remnants of which limp along today—is inefficient in its service to capital. Since knowledge for knowledge’s sake does not increase profits, universities can do away with many of the luxuries that have allowed professors to do basic research in the past. Increasing the competition for grants (while increasing corporate sponsorship of research) increases the likelihood that research will have a potential for profitability. Distance learning, blended learning and outsourcing of teaching at the K-12 and college levels allows schools to teach the basic skills students need to compete in the job market at a much lower cost (and greater profit to the businesses that supplies these services). Doing away with tenure and seniority increases administrators’ control over staffing decisions and reduces payroll expenses by making it easier to lay off higher paid veterans. Internships and service learning may provide youth with marketable job skills, but they also provide employers with cheap or free labor that is easier to exploit than older workers.

The Deplorable State of Adjunct Faculty Compensation

It is not just K-12 public school teachers who are getting squeezed by budget cuts, stagnant pay, declining working conditions and attacks on tenure. Today, nearly 70% of all college and university faculty are non-tenured, part-time adjunct faculty (according to a recent piece in Truth Out), with no job security and generally lower pay and fewer benefits than their tenured colleagues.

Many of these professors find themselves having to accept teaching positions at multiple universities and colleges just to make enough to support themselves, sometimes having to commute to two or three different campuses in one day. It is not uncommon in the community colleges for adjuncts to earn as little as $2,500 per class. For adjuncts teaching 3-4 classes per semester, this translates to $15,000-20,000 per year, often without any benefits.

Some adjuncts make good money. At UCSF, for example, adjunct professors can earn six-figure salaries. However, their job security is based entirely on their ability to compete for scarce research grants, as the university provides them with little or no additional funding and makes no commitment to support them if their grants run dry.  These adjuncts, who must constantly contend with the threat of losing their labs and their income, often put in 60-80 hour weeks just to keep their grants flowing and, consequently, suffer an incredible amount of pressure and stress.

A number of factors have been contributing to the problem, including the nation’s economic crisis, which has exacerbated many states’ existing budget difficulties. In order to close their deficits, universities have not only been cutting classes and raising tuition for their students; they have also been squeezing their employees by cutting wages, benefits and teaching assignments. At the same time, the number of college graduates competing for these jobs has been rising. This may be part of the reason why the number of people possessing PhDs who receive public assistance has tripled over the last three years. Between 2007 and 2010 the number grew from 9,776 to 33,655.

However, the decline in tenured faculty positions started well before the current economic crisis. The New York Times reported in November, 2007, that tenured faculty had already become the minority on campuses across the country. 30 years ago, adjuncts made up only 43% of faculty nation-wide, whereas by 2007 they comprised 70% of faculty. The Times attributed the trend to administrators’ desire to save money and have greater “flexibility.” What this really means is greater ease in manipulating, coercing and firing, since part-timers and adjuncts, in general, have little or no job security and must toe the line and keep their mouths shut if they want to keep their jobs.

It also means more money is available for executive compensation, which has been on the rise even as tuition has climbed and employee compensation has declined. The San Francisco Chronicle reported this week that executive pay at the nation’s private colleges climbed 2.8% between 2009 and 2010 (the last year in which records are available). The median compensation for the nearly 500 presidents of private universities with budgets of at least $50 million was nearly $400,000, with 36 executives earning more than $1 million annually. However, executive compensation at public universities has also been rising rapidly. California Senator Leland Yee recently introduced legislation that would bar the state’s UC and CSU systems from giving any raises or bonuses until two years after the latest fee hikes.

As with many aspects of the education system, the interests of teachers are linked to the wellbeing of students. Several studies have found that freshmen taught by part-timers are more likely to drop out. This is probably due to the fact that part-timers and adjuncts, in general, have more work to do and less time to do it, forcing many to reduce or abandon office hours. They are more likely to accept excessive or unreasonable course loads in order to increase their salaries or to be eligible for benefits. They also are less likely to advocate for better conditions for themselves and their students out of fear of getting fewer (or no) classes in the coming semesters.

Data Driven Nonsense from Harvard and the Gates Foundation

A new Gates-funded Harvard study has found that Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) teachers vary substantially in quality (more than in other districts) and that it disproportionately places inexperienced teachers in lower performing classrooms (as in other districts). The study, Human Capital Diagnostic, was done by the Strategic Data Project (SDP), which is connected with Harvard University’s Center for Education Policy Research.

The biggest problem with this study is that it is a bunch of nonsense.

Let’s start with the authors’ most profound claim: The best teachers in LAUSD provide the equivalent of eight additional months of instruction during the school year compared with the district’s worst teachers. Since their research was based entirely on student scores on the California Standards Tests (CSTs), a high-stakes exam used to rank schools, and the top teachers in the study were the ones with the largest student gains on these tests, what they are really saying is that the best teachers provided the equivalent of eight additional months of test prep.

Big wow!

The authors state that there is “no specific cut-off for determining whether an effect size is large or small,” but they assert that a standard deviation of 0.2 is considered large in education research. The study found that the difference between a 25^th and a 75^th percentile teacher is one-quarter of a standard deviation (0.25). This would be significant if it was based on a meaningful measurement of teacher effectiveness. Unfortunately, all it really says it that some teachers are better than others at squeezing out student gains on an otherwise lousy exam. It does not tell us whether their students are becoming self-motivated, independent learners or competent critical thinkers and problem-solvers. Furthermore, the study provided no explanation for how it determined that 0.25 standard deviations was equivalent to eight months of instruction.

The authors also claim that Teach for America (TFA) and Career Ladder teachers have higher effects on their students than other novice teachers by 0.05 and 0.03 standard deviations and they even attributed a gain of one to two months in additional learning to these relatively small standard deviations. They make similar claims for National Board Certified teachers, whose students test gains were 0.03-0.07 standard deviations higher than those of other teachers. Yet, if a standard deviation of 0.2 is considered large in education, then a standard deviation of 0.03-0.07 ought to be considered small or even insignificant.

While the standard deviation may be insignificant, the fact that this was being researched in the first place is not. TFA provided 13% of new hires to the district over the past six years (according to the study’s authors) and it would be of great interest to the district’s administrators to show that the investment was worthwhile. So let’s assume for the sake of argument that the difference between TFA recruits and other novice teachers was significant. What would this mean? TFA teachers may in fact be more willing than other novice teachers to work long, unpaid overtime hours and substitute quality student-centered instruction for “drill and kill” style teaching, both of which could produce higher test scores without improving the quality of student learning.

Perhaps a bigger problem with this study (like all studies and reforms based on student test data) is that numbers are not the only relevant type of data in education and sometimes not even the best. Ester Quintaro, writing for the Shanker Blog, talks about the “streetlight effect,” from the parable of the drunk who searches for his lost wallet under the streetlight, not because he lost it there, but because the light is better there and it would be easier to find it if it happened to be there. Student test data is easy to access now that it is required of every district in the U.S. under No Child Left Behind (NCLB)—it is under the streetlight.  Yet, at best it is only a proxy or very rough estimate of teacher quality since it only considers a small part of what teachers are expected to do.

Quintara also correctly points out that NCLB has helped to institutionalize what counts as data. “Scientifically-based research” is now limited to standardized test scores, which, as it turns out, are not particularly scientific. Case studies, ethnographies, teacher observations and portfolios, and other qualitative data are considered unacceptable.

One promising finding from the study was that teacher performance after two years was found to be a good predictor of future effectiveness. In other words, the current system of giving tenure to teachers after two years of good evaluations makes sense. Teachers are not getting worse after two years. Novice teachers are not better than veterans and should not have the right to bump them during layoffs and LAUSD is not top heavy with a bunch of cranky veterans who can no longer teach.

Wayne State to End Tenure, Other Universities to Follow?

Wayne State University in Detroit has proposed a new contract that would make it the first research university in the U.S. to abolish tenure, according to a recent article in Labor Notes. Other public universities are likely to follow suit (or attempt to) in order to cut labor costs as they grapple with years of declining revenue.

The proposed contract would effectively remove peer review and give administrators more power to get rid of faculty, including for financial reasons. (Veteran professors cost universities more, since they have more years of service credit). The administration also wants the right to fire faculty for participating in or supporting political actions that “interrupt the normal daily teaching.”  

Terrible for Students and the Public

The purpose of tenure is to provide protection for academic freedom. Professors and teachers who lack tenure can be dismissed at will, for any number of reasons that have little or nothing to do with the quality of their teaching. Without tenure, professors could be compelled to focus their research on topics generated by the administration or by private interests that stand to gain from the research, thus infusing the research with a bias that could undermine its validity.

This could have grave repercussions for the public in the case of medical and scientific research, especially considering that some corporate funded research contracts give the corporation the right to determine which data will (or won’t) be published. For example, a contract could forbid the publication of data revealing that a new medicine is no more effective than existing or cheaper alternatives. Without tenure rights, a professor would have fewer protections if she or he refused to accept such funding, particularly if it was being pushed by administrators.

Loss of tenure would also be bad for students. Teachers often advocate for the wellbeing of their students or the integrity of their academic programs. Tenure protects this kind of free speech. Without tenure, professors could more easily be fired for advocating positions opposed by administrators. Furthermore, without tenure, professors would have a more difficult time resisting administrators who pressure them to change their grading policies or curriculum in order to improve the university’s profile and fundraising abilities, even if such changes eviscerate the integrity of the course or undercut the objectives of the department.

The university has roughly 3,000 faculty members, approximately one-third of whom are tenured or tenure-track. They are represented by AAUP Teachers Local 6075, an AFT affiliate.

New Orlean Teachers Union Rising From the Dead?

Zombie Teachers Union? (Nanning Teachers College, Guangxi, image by Rex Pe, Flickr)

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans became the poster child for what Naomi Kline dubbed “Disaster Capitalism.” Businesses came ostensibly to “help” residents recover, but in actuality were there primarily to help themselves to billions of dollars in disaster relief funds.

While Katrina did not do significant damage to the school system, the general chaos and misery that followed provided excellent cover for public education profiteers, who convinced the city to turn over most of the school district to private charter school operators and fire all 7,500 of its teachers, driving a hefty spike into the heart of the union. Since Katrina, the feds have pumped $3 billion into New Orleans schools (Labor Notes reports), providing considerable opportunities for private business to turn a profit. The charter schools have received millions more from private donors like Bill Gates and Oprah Winfrey.

The union fought back in the courts and, after seven years, won a small victory this June when a judge ruled that the firings were illegal. This provided little relief for the teachers, however, as very few will get their old jobs back (though some will receive small settlement payments). It also leaves the city’s schools in the hands of private charter school operators

Nevertheless, United Teachers New Orleans (UTNO) has been trying to rebuild its membership and regain a foothold in the city. The union currently has around 1,000 members (about one quarter of the city’s teachers), though it has no contracts at any New Orleans schools (according to Labor Notes). Their efforts are further hampered by the fact that, under Louisiana state law, they are not guaranteed the right to collectively bargain.

UTNO organizers face other challenges as well, such as recent state legislation that weakened tenure protections, thus making it easier to get rid of experienced veteran teachers who are often the most vocal union advocates.

Ironically, (but not surprisingly), New Orleans schools are performing poorly, despite the large influx of funds. None of the Recovery District’s 15 “direct-run” schools, and only 21% of its charter schools, received passing grades in state evaluations. Governor Bobby Jindal essentially blamed the teachers for these terrible scores and used the scores to garner support for the legislation, which requires that 50% of teachers’ evaluations be based on student test scores. Thus, if scores remain low (which they likely will, since they are influenced primarily by students’ socioeconomic status), teachers will be unlikely to earn tenure and will face the constant threat of dismissal, especially if they are seen as union supporters or troublemakers.

To make matters worse, in order to earn tenure, teachers will have to receive five “highly effective” ratings within six years, and veteran teachers can lose tenure after a single “ineffective” rating. Keep in mind that few districts evaluate their teachers every year, or require “highly effective” ratings (“satisfactory” or “effective” are generally considered adequate). In addition to making tenure virtually impossible, the frequency of evaluations, itself, is an unreasonable burden on teachers and their students. Each evaluation cycle, teachers must attend meetings with evaluators, complete extra paper work and jump through other hoops that take away time from their students and their teaching responsibilities.

Within the six district-run schools, UTNO has close to 80% membership. Labor Notes writes that in these schools, much of the old contract is still enforced. It is a different story in the charter schools, where union membership is negligible. Under an agreement with the Recovery District, however, UTNO is permitted access to the schools and is entitled to dues check-off for any teachers who sign up.

The challenge is getting these teachers to sign up. Many are young Teach For America (TFA) graduates hired on short-term contracts who do not see union membership as being in their interests. Others have been told outright to avoid the union, as it is dominated by the same veteran teachers who caused the problems plaguing the school district (that TFA grads were supposedly there to fix).

There is a lot of fear and ignorance of unions that UTNO must counter. More importantly, they need to convince teachers, including TFA teachers and those at private charter schools, that union membership is in their interests and will benefit them, both in the short- and long-term. This means improving things like job security, pay and benefits, working conditions and class sizes.

UTNO has not been able to do this. It has launched an admirable community outreach campaign and engaged in numerous solidarity actions with other unions and community-based organizations. It has helped fight school closings and takeovers. Yet its members acknowledge that they’re not in a position to win much right now. Indeed, as long as its members can have tenure stripped away for low student test scores, they are at risk of losing the small foothold they still have within the district.