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.

Story Time’s Over Kindergartners—Time To Write Expository Essays!

Huck/Konopacki Labor Cartoons

The testing mania that has dominated education reform for the past decade has only indirectly affected kindergartners (the federal and state tests do not start until second grade). However, because the stakes for schools are so high (low test scores can mean reconstitution, mass firings of teachers, forced take over by a charter school), curriculum development and implementation at all grade levels are now influenced by the tests. At some schools, this means a reduction or elimination of arts, music, physical education and even science to make room for math and English support or for test preparation. It may also include practice bubble-in tests at the kindergarten and first grade levels.

At virtually all levels of K-12 education it has reduced the potential for learning activities that are spontaneous, fun, creative and rooted in students’ interests and experiences. While this may prepare children for a future life at a desk in a cubicle (perhaps one reason why the Gates Foundation has spent millions of dollars to promote the Common Core Standards (CCS), it also contributes to their alienation from and disdain for school and learning, as well as the increased stress and anxiety many teachers are noticing in their students.

Presently, despite the testing mania, kindergarten still retains some of the games, song, dance and other playful, lighthearted activities we remember from our own kindergarten experiences. This may soon change with the adoption of Common Core (CCS), which will supposedly put all children on the same learning track as others at their grade level, including the lower elementary grades.

On the surface this might seem like a common sense way to raise the bar and improve learning outcomes (based on the bogus assumption that teachers across the country do whatever they damned well please in the classroom and that there is little or no standardization across grade level). However, as Susan Ohanian shows in her recent critique of the video “From the Page to the Classroom: Implementing the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) in English Language Arts and Literacy,” the CCS are incredibly rigid and stultifying and could have a detrimental effect on teaching and children’s attitudes toward school and learning. For example, even at the K-5 grades, the CCS require a 50-50 mix of fiction and nonfiction reading, with writing grounded in the texts, with no narrative writing or personal opinions permitted.

Here are just a few of Ohanian’s comments (you can read her full article at the Daily Censored):

The New York Post ran a piece  Playtime’s Over, Kindergartners: Standards stressing kids out, explaining that the city Department of Education wants 4- and 5-year-olds to forget the building blocks and crayons and get busy writing “informative/explanatory reports.”  This includes writing a topic sentence.

When my favorite group of second graders were studying a caterpillar’s transformation, some of the kids wrote me exuberant notes along with drawings about what they were learning. I didn’t check these notes for text complexity or topic sentences. Yes, some kindergartners are ready to read. But  many children are harmed when, in the name of rigor and complexity, what was once second grade is now kindergarten.  We don’t expect all babies to walk or talk at the same age. Why do we think five- and six-year-olds should be standardized in their learning—and shoved as a pack into more rigor? (Look up the definition and ask yourself if that’s what you want for a child you love.)

Professor of Curriculum and Teaching at Hunter College and author of numerous books on children’s literacy development, Sandra Wilde worries about the pressures on kindergartners. She suggests, “Read the book, watch the butterflies develop, act it out, but skip the close reading of long sentences. Fingerpaint butterfly pictures instead. What’s the hurry?”

Brown’s Millionaire’s Tax, A Gift to Private Charter Schools

89% of Gov. Jerry Brown’s “Millionaire’s” tax is slated to go to K-12 education, should the bill be approved by California voters in November. However, according to journalist Danny Weil, the legislation allows this money to go to private charter schools or to the private contractors hired by nonprofit charters. (You can see Weil discussing this on YouTube by clicking here.)

More Cuts for Cali, Even With Tax Increase

Gov. Brown Squeezing Blood From a Turnip

In January, Gov. Jerry Brown told Californians that if they didn’t pass his tax increase initiative in November, he would have no choice but to slash over $5 billion from public education. Since then, tax revenue has been much lower ($3.5 billion) than anticipated, prompting Brown to threaten much deeper cuts, even if his tax initiative passes.

The tax initiative would impose a regressive sales tax on all Californians, including the poor, in addition to a short-term tax increase on incomes of $250,000 or more. It is projected to generate $9 billion, which would have barely maintained the status quo before the latest projections, and hardly made a dent in the $20 billion cut from public education over the past 3 years.


The new round of cuts will likely target health and welfare programs. However, Brown is also expected to squeeze unions. According to the Los Angeles Times, he has already been meeting with Yvonne Walker, president of SEIU local 1000, and he has been actively lobbying for cuts to public sector pensions. But the details of his proposed cuts have not been released, nor has the true size of the deficit, which some believe may be as high as $15 billion. However, one can predict some of his likely demands on the public sector unions: more furloughs, cuts to health care and pensions, layoffs and decreases in certain public services.