The K-12 Education Implosion Question
Glenn Reynolds has a new Broadside, this one about the collapse of K-12 education. But here is the question. Conservatives often point out, correctly, that while the amount of money spent on education, even controlling for inflation, has skyrocketed over the years (for example, just on the federal level education spending is up 140% over the last decade), the results aren't there to justify that money. But, conservatives also lament the breakdown of the family. One of the results that follows from family breakdown is a decrease in educational performance. So isn't the fact that our educational performance is flat (as measured by SAT and NAEP scores, for example) over the last few decades actually a perverse triumph? Given the explosion of illegitimacy, just holding serve should be a great victory, correct?
Can someone give some analysis? Can anyone at Ricochet even attempt to address the seeming contradiction in these conservative talking points? I am trying to improve my own thinking on this subject.
- Comment (40)
- · Quote
- · UnfollowFollow (24)
- Pages:
- 1
- 2
Comments:
May '10
Re: The K-12 Education Implosion Question
I guess there's gotta be a pony in there somewhere.
Jan '11
Re: The K-12 Education Implosion Question
Victory hell! It is worse than defeat. This line of reasoning could be used to suggest that K-12 can somehow substitute for an intact family.
Feb '11
Re: The K-12 Education Implosion Question
Or does it reflect the dumbing-down of those tests?
May '10
Re: The K-12 Education Implosion Question
I thinc the edjewkation sistem is fine the way it is. It learned me the scils I needed to git a good job as a teacher! My unyon rep says I have a job for lyfe now and it maks me happi.
Aug '12
Re: The K-12 Education Implosion Question
The tests have very strong reasons to maintain consistency, so I cannot believe they've been dumbed down.
Aug '12
Re: The K-12 Education Implosion Question
I am asking an empirical not normative question. Let's try to answer it. If family breakdown leads to a decline in educational attainment but our best measures suggest a kind of flattness in educational attainment, what accounts for this? I am presenting a hypothesis, one with which I may not agree, btw. The hypothesis is this: the vast sums of money spent on education have had the effect of maintaining stasis in educational attainment. Can anyone give me an intelligent critique of that?
Oct '10
Re: The K-12 Education Implosion Question
You presuppose that the decline of the family is independent of the education system. The government school system has traded education in subjects developed over centuries to prepare children for adult life in the world around them for subjects that normalize a life outside of their own families, communalism, and indoctrinate them in the social activism of government.
A significant part of the teaching day is dedicated to the dilution of the family as the life influence of a child. He learns sex not as a matter of purity and commitment, but as the mechanics of pleasure. He learns that his family are members of the pathological America with a history to be embarrassed of. He learns that his dad, if he is a part of the family, engages in a world of commerce that preys upon and exploits the weak.
The education system is not the basis for a successful adult, the family is. But the success of the education system in undermining that family is the problem.
Tests are a meaningless measure of educational success.
Lives well lived is.
And by that measure, American education is a success, measured by the damage it has done.
Oct '10
Re: The K-12 Education Implosion Question
Standardized tests like SAT are not the best indicator of overall K-12 system performance.
These tests measure only the performance of students who have to some degree have already succeeded in the K-12 system (as "college material"). First, you have to do some analysis to see what proportion of SAT takers come from failed or never-formed families
To see the effects of public education on these children, I'd be interested would be in standardized math and literacy scores taken throughout the K-12 process, and also in the graduation rates. From what I recall of my daughters tests, they have been dumbed down.
I say this with great respect for teachers who deal with this daily. Teachers and schools cannot be a substitute family.
Also, there is systemic cheating by educators in standardized testing, so are the reported outcomes meaningful?
See here (Atlanta)
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Education/2011/0705/America-s-biggest-teacher-and-principal-cheating-scandal-unfolds-in-Atlanta
and here (Indiana)
http://www.wthr.com/story/18917947/teachers-disciplined-for-cheating-scandal-at-north-central-high-school
and especially here (nationwide)
http://www.propublica.org/article/americas-most-outrageous-teacher-cheating-scandals
Edited on January 21, 2013 at 8:03pmDec '12
Re: The K-12 Education Implosion Question
Cattle King
The tests have very strong reasons to maintain consistency, so I cannot believe they've been dumbed down. · 1 hour ago
I wouldn't be so sure. Even tests like the SAT have pressures to lower standards as the number of students "qualifying" for college through the SAT drops then more students will decide to try for one of the other "qualifying" exams like the ACT.
Due to the unlimited availability of Federal student loan money, colleges and universities want to admit as many marginal students as possible.
Nov '10
Re: The K-12 Education Implosion Question
ED Hirsch has recently completed a three-part series analyzing test results. It won't address the family part of your question, as he usually doesn't bring that up, but it may give a partial answer:
http://blog.coreknowledge.org/2013/01/09/if-hes-so-important-why-havent-we-heard-of-him/
http://blog.coreknowledge.org/2013/01/10/the-work-of-a-great-test-scientist-helps-explain-the-failure-of-no-child-left-behind/
http://blog.coreknowledge.org/2013/01/15/blame-the-tests/
It will also trigger new questions. :-)
Sep '10
Re: The K-12 Education Implosion Question
The SAT scores were renormalized 10 or 15 years ago. A 700 in math does not mean the same thing it did before. The same goes for the verbal test. The renormalization happened before the writing test was added. Since I interview candidates for admission to a well-known university I was given a conversion table by the admissions committee. I threw it out some years ago since we have a new normal. Use older SAT scores with caution.
Apr '12
Re: The K-12 Education Implosion Question
The SAT was "re-centered" some years ago, adding 100 points to the average score. This could help explain that what looks like stasis is actually decline.
May '10
Re: The K-12 Education Implosion Question
I wasn't just being facetious in my earlier post (#4). I used to sub in our local school system (aka, $65/day babysitting for teenagers) and I was once given a seating chart in the file for a teacher that had not one but two egregious spelling errors on it.
I made sure that none of my children were ever put under his supervision!
Mar '12
Re: The K-12 Education Implosion Question
What causes educational outcomes? Causation has not been determined because there are many factors that affect the result. Family structure and income, parent involvement, teacher training, educational spending all play a role.
In regard to funding, one problem is that much of the money is wasted on government mandated programs that are not directly educational. This requires hiring administrators to run the programs. So, while spending levels go up, little benefit goes to actual treaching.
Some correlation studies have been done.
Continued:
Nov '12
Re: The K-12 Education Implosion Question
Based on the SATs, the picture is uneven.
The reading score is not flat. The 2012 score was the lowest in four decades. So no triumph there.
http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2012-09-24/local/35495510_1_scores-board-president-gaston-caperton-test-takers
The math score fell to its lowest (492) around 1980, but in 2012 was at 514, about the same level as in 1970.
If you want to look for trends, here are SAT scores from 1967 to 2004 (didn't look too hard, so missing the latest figures ):
https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d04/tables/dt04_129.asp
Edited on January 21, 2013 at 8:56pmSep '10
Re: The K-12 Education Implosion Question
I don't think this should strike anyone as news. There's a Kickstarter program for people who want to do something about it. Traditional grammar, logic and rhetoric training has been destroyed by the Education establishment as revealed in the War On Grammar.
Next question.
Edited on January 21, 2013 at 9:05pmAug '12
Re: The K-12 Education Implosion Question
This WaPo article about blaming stressed-out parents for failing education makes a point about spending much energy figuring out who to blame. Just another version of the chicken-or-the-egg.
Instead, focus on solutions not on placing blame. I do believe that it's impossible to sort out what portion of blame belongs to societal/family breakdown, what part belongs to the educational bureaucracy, and what effect the one had on the other. Forget about funding studies to find out this information and just start from where you are --there are a thousand different starting points and indeed battles should be fought on every front, from individual families to local communities to top levels of Washington.
Those gifted in family counseling should do everything in their power to help families in crisis to function better; those with teaching gifts should teach, help others become better teachers, and even start better schools; those in positions of public power should use their influence to create more efficient models of education and throw out the vile. It will take every single moral, conservative, intelligent member of society to solve this problem using their varied gifts.
Sep '10
Re: The K-12 Education Implosion Question
Read E.D. Hirsch on the problem with content less curricula. Sol Stern has written about him extensively in City Journal.
Mar '12
Re: The K-12 Education Implosion Question
Cntd from #14
Also,
Nov '10
Re: The K-12 Education Implosion Question
I was trying to figure out how many kids take the SATs, per capita, on the working hypothesis that the failure of families causes a lot of kids to simply not try. I couldn't find any data on the subject, however.
I would guess that fewer and fewer students take the SAT, and the ones that do are headed for success as their families aren't suffering from the decline. Wish I had more data to verify.