Is American Education Getting Worse?

No, says Kauffman senior fellow Ben Wildavsky in an outstanding essay on Foreign Policy. And forget that myth about the rest of the world leaving us in the dust:

If Americans' ahistorical sense of their global decline prompts educators to come up with innovative new ideas, that's all to the good. But don't expect any of them to bring the country back to its educational golden age -- there wasn't one.

...

In this coming era of globalized education, there is little place for the Sputnik alarms of the Cold War, the Shanghai panic of today, and the inevitable sequels lurking on the horizon. The international education race worth winning is the one to develop the intellectual capacity the United States and everyone else needs to meet the formidable challenges of the 21st century -- and who gets there first won't matter as much as we once feared.

No one would deny that education is America can be vastly improved, but part of Ben's point is that educational inequalities within the United States matter much more than the ostensible gaps between countries. It's hard to avoid the conclusion, noted by Brink a couple of weeks ago, that education is at the root of many of America's economic difficulties. But arguments premised on alarmism are not an answer.

Comments

[New Era Hats]

Thanks for sharing!

[Curly]

I think that education is worse now than it was 50 years ago. This is more true when you include technology improvements that have been included. You add the $sss that is also spent for each student you can really see that the money is not buying very much. Very little of the core courses (history, geography, math) are being used in school. But they do use electives ei under water basket weaving are taught. Another cause is because most teachers if they are not covered by union contract have to teach to the test. If their students don't pass the test they can loose their jobs. Now if the teacher is covered by a union contract they can't be fired anyway so they don't have to teach!

[Mike]

I have read the article mentioned here, but it sounds like it is spot on.

My family is moving. We have preschool-age children, and we want to make sure that they are in a good school system when they are of age.

The number one factor in where we move to will not be the size of the house we can buy, the distance from work, or any of our preferences. The most important thing is the quality of the schools available.

The (perceived or real) disparity between schools is so great that we feel we can not risk having our kids in lesser schools. But what of families who do not have our means?

Bill Gates Senior said of his son "I think Bill would have been successful no matter where he was born. But I don't think he would have been as successful if he were born to a poor family in Africa." The same is true to a lesser extent to so many children who must attend poor schools.