We Do Not Know How to Improve Student Education Levels And High School Graduation Rates

A comment I posted to the Wall Street Journal opinion piece, "A Teacher Quality Manifesto" by Deborah Kenny:

In k-12 education, just about every variable, class size, teacher subject matter education level, dollars spent per pupil, availability of classroom technology, years of teacher experience, etc., unbiased controlled studies find either no effect or a minimal effect on student educational performance in the major subject matters tested, reading and arithmetic and dropout rates.

Even things like parent participation in the schools do not matter. For example, Asians on average outperform in school yet have low levels of parent school participation.

Everybody has a fix for the high US high school dropout rate and the low student performance on standardized math and reading tests. One year it is a nutritional breakfast, another year, it is increased parent involvement in schools. There is always some idea that seems to generate a lot of buzz as the solution to our education problems. Currently, it is charter schools.

Just about everything has been tried and while there are always isolated examples of where 'something' seems to work, that 'something' does not work when applied broadly to a large number of schools with a diverse student population.

There are many things that different parent groups do not like about the education system, such as unions, tenure, teacher pay (too high, too low), too bureaucratic, teacher skill level, length of school day, etc., but in many ways these things are like a surgeon's bedside manner. We may or may not like things about our teachers and our school systems, but like a great surgeon's bad bedside manner, it does not mean anything about results.

The fact of the matter is that despite years of throwing billions of dollars at schools, teachers and studies of student performance, we are clueless as to what will significantly increase the learning and graduation rates of our students. Most studies or education experiments produce small, if any, improvements. The magic cure to fix our educational system is undiscovered.

There are obviously broad differences in test results, high graduation rates and college attendance rates among different school systems in the US. We know from experience that whatever we do at the teacher, school and school system levels will not make poorly performing schools perform substantially better, as measured by graduation rates, or standardized test results.

If any method used in the US were a clear-cut success, a large number of our nation's schools would adopt it with very visible positive student results. It does not exist. Given how much money we spent on schools and education research, the magic fix probably does not exist.

Yes, it would be nice to increase the high school graduation rates and increase the levels of student performance on standardized tests. The problem we face is that we truly do not know how.

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• Deborah Kenny: A Teacher Quality Manifesto (online.wsj.com)
• Study: Teacher Bonuses Don't Affect Scores (time.com)
• Study: Paying Teachers for Student Performance Doesn't Raise Test Scores (politicsdaily.com)
• $30K per student; 40% graduation rate; 2% of teachers denied tenure...can we talk? (schansblog.blogspot.com)
• Rep. Mike Honda: "Superman" Needed to Save Education System (huffingtonpost.com)
• Economic and racial disparities continue to plague our education system (Rep. Michael Honda) (thehill.com)
• Teacher Bonuses Don't Affect Student Tests: Vanderbilt Study (huffingtonpost.com)

Do Teachers Have The Voting Power To Give Themselves Raises?

Teachers are the largest professional group in the US workforce today. There are more elementary and secondary teachers than doctors, lawyers, and engineers, etc.

"During the 1999–2000 school year, a total of about 3,450,000 teachers worked in public and private elementary and secondary schools across the country—representing about 2.7 percent of the overall U.S. workforce that year. Elementary and secondary school teachers constituted a greater percentage of the workforce than physicians (0.5 percent), legal professionals (0.8 percent), postsecondary faculty (0.9 percent), engineers (1.0 percent), firemen and law enforcement workers (1.0 percent), registered nurses (1.5 percent), or any other professional group that year. Elementary and secondary school teachers constituted about the same percentage of the workforce as all secretaries and administrative assistants (2.7 percent) and slightly less than retail workers (2.8 percent) (U.S. Department of Labor 2002)." From National Center For Education Statistics, Special Analysis 2005.

Many teachers also live in communities where there is school budget voting. I suspect teachers are more likely to go to the polls to vote to approve larger school budgets and teacher salary increases..

When you add together the budget votes of spouses and close relatives of teachers, it is not surprising that salaries of teachers are rising.

They have the voting power to give themselves and other teachers raises, under the guise of improving children education.

The above was also posted on The Beacon, "Why More Spending Doesn’t Produce Better Schools."