To Bush and Kirk, Ignorance is Bliss, but the Deterioration of America's Schools Is Bad News for Your Kids

I finally figured out No Child Left Behind. If we teach none of them, no one of them is left behind the others. They are all equally eating the dust of students from Europe and Asia. Since Bush and Kirk got into power in 2001, it's been a struggle for any bill that actually helps students. republicans consider the education of your children unnecessary luxury while cheerfully funding failed war in Iraq and more nuclear weapons. The proof is out with Thursday's release of the The Final Report of the National Mathematics Advisory Panel. The panel, made up of 24 mathematicians, educators and psychologists, concluded that "without substantial and sustained changes to its educational system, the United States will relinquish its leadership in the 21st century." One of the main problems they found is that American schools teach too many subjects broadly rather than digging deeply into the core topics:

There seem to be two major differences between the curricula in top performing countries and those in the U.S.—in the number of mathematical concepts or topics presented at each grade level and in the expectations for learning. U.S. curricula typically include many topics at each grade level, with each receiving relatively limited development, while top-performing countries present fewer topics at each grade level but in greater depth.

The panel then goes on to describe my dad's old complaint about school when he was a boy:

In addition, U.S. curricula generally review and extend at successive grade levels many (if not most) topics already presented at earlier grade levels, while the top-performing countries are more likely to expect closure after exposure, development, and refinement of a particular topic. These critical differences distinguish a spiral curriculum (common in many subjects in U.S. curricula) from one built on developing proficiency—a curriculum that expects proficiency in the topics that are presented before more complex or difficult topics are introduced.

Dad, you are right, our schools keep going back to the same topics year after year, so the students never move forward. I learned most of my math by continuing on with in in college and I got to college with strong writing skills and knowledge in the social sciences, not strong math or science skills. In later years, after law school, I got my BS in Information Systems at DePaul in a class where most of the students were from Eastern Europe, Asia and the Middle East. One of my classmates was brought to the US from Poland by Motorola on the promise of employment. She said that her American higher education would not be good enough if she went back home. At one point, Motorola threatened to send her home through a layoff and she was panicked until they decided to keep her.

The NMAP report went on to discuss the role of teachers in math education:

There are large, measurable differences in the effectiveness of mathematics teachers in generating achievement gains:
• Differences in teachers account for 12% to 14% of total variabilityin students’ mathematics achievement gains during an elementary school year.
• When teachers are ranked according to their ability to produce student achievement gains, there is a 10 percentile point difference across the course of a school year between achievement gains of students of top quartile teachers versus bottom-quartile teachers.
• The effects of teachers on student achievement compound dramatically if students receive a series of effective or ineffective teachers.

Mark Kirk voted for the failed No Child Left Behind and for every Bush budget that shorted education in favor of war. More recently, Kirk was a no-show for last year's vote on funding education for math and science teachers. Kirk is focused on more local control of the schools, a plan the NMAP report rejects because the local authorities have "no research base to guide them." Kirk favors vouchers, willing to destroy the public schools for the sake of more tax cuts for the wealthy, and for the mostpart, sees public education as a law enforcement issue, willing to invest funds to take the Internet out of schools and for some vague plans that are supposed to take gangs out of the schools, but the actual provision of public education for the vast majority of students not in gangs or in online trouble is not on his agenda. For his efforts in education, Kirk has received a score of 27% by the NEA.

Kirk love war and tax cuts for the wealthy. He is bad for education and it's hurting our country's future. For our parts, it's time to stop overvaluing some fake promise of security, the quick buck and entertainment, and start putting our dollars where they will be most effective to insure a better future.