Education is on Robert Samuelson’s mind, too. In his Washington Post column he points out the awful truth. Our educational policy isn’t working:
Already, at least two Democratic presidential candidates are pitching major educational proposals. Sen. Kamala D. Harris (Calif.) would give most teachers a huge pay raise, reportedly averaging about $13,500. Teachers, it’s argued, are underpaid. This makes good ones hard to recruit and retain. Meanwhile, ex-San Antonio mayor Julián Castro advocates universal pre-K classes to prepare children for school.
Both ideas sound sensible. But aside from the sizable costs, history suggests that creating gains in achievement and academic skills for the poor is extraordinarily difficult.
That’s the finding of a major new study. It reviewed test scores for Americans born between 1954 and 2001 to see how much the achievement gap had closed between students with low and high socioeconomic status.
The startling result: hardly at all.
“The achievement gap fails to close,†headlined an article in Education Next. “Half century of testing shows [a] persistent divide between haves and have-nots.â€
The explanation is not that public policy wasn’t trying. The discouraging conclusion occurred despite the federal government’s decision to provide extra funding for poor schools under Title I of the Education and Secondary Education Act of 1965. Previously, public schools were funded mainly by localities and states. Corrected for inflation, overall spending per student nearly quadrupled from 1960 to 2015.
The problem really begins in high school and it cannot be explained by changes in demographics—the country’s racial and ethnic makeup. Gains that had been made K-12 evaporate in high school. Mr. Samuelson proposes getting the federal government out of education and allowing the states to rely on their own devices. That won’t work, either.
It not in our nature to spend our first quarter century of life preparing. By age 18 most people are ready to start building families of their own. Their energies aren’t devoted to their studies because they’re focused appropriately on the task of forming a relationship to promote that end. Nature didn’t intend for them to be in school in their mid-20s but to be rearing their children.
We need an educational, economic, and social system that’s conducive to human happiness. Forcing people educational, economic, and social systems that some people would like is a formula for unhappiness which is what we’re seeing. We’re spending four times as much to produce depression and suicide.
I don’t buy that we can’t adapt to modern life as opposed to 1850s life.
Anyway. It’s parents and family. Like I used to do long ago, our daughter tutored in a poor neighborhood. Rarely two parents. And the parent at home (or not) didn’t really give damn. Her students either didn’t give a damn, either, or were thrilled because she was the only person who did give a damn. Policy, mostly, created this. This family malignancy didn’t exist nearly to the same extent in the 50s.
Saying “it’s parents and family” is the same as saying we can’t adapt to a life without parents or family.
And some people are cut out to be highly-educated modern day professionals and some aren’t. One size does not fit all. If we are to be one society rather than many we need to have a plan for how to deal with people who work with their hands as well as people who are financiers.
“Saying “it’s parents and family†is the same as saying we can’t adapt to a life without parents or family.â€
That’s pretty much the point. Family is where values, nurturing begin……or don’t. It used to be the case that when parents wouldn’t or couldn’t, an aunt or the church etc filled the role. Even studies of orphanages demonstrated nurturing was key. Then we decided it would be government. Epic fail. That really shouldn’t be surprising.