Everyone knows that the U.S. spends more per student on public education than nearly any other country on the planet (see page 205 of this OECD analysis, for example) but that the measured learning outcomes are mediocre. But how exactly is this mediocrity produced? I went to a “forum with the principal” event in a rich white suburban school district to find out (as noted in The Smartest Kids in the World, while Americans love to blame non-white and/or low-income for our poor performance, even rich white public schools and private schools in the U.S. underperform public schools in the successful countries, such as Finland). This was in Massachusetts, which, as noted recently in the New York Times, has some of the nation’s more effective schools (along with New Jersey, Texas, and Florida). This town’s school system is ranked as one of the better ones in Massachusetts so its performance is “elite” by American standards if not by international ones.
Based on what people said at the forum, the core driver of mediocrity seems to be the dual function of the American school. A home-schooled child studies for three hours per day. A Russian child studies for about four hours, from just after breakfast until just before lunch (with 10-minute breaks, but no recess). Children are parked at an American school for 6-7 hours per day and thus necessarily much of the time is spent on stuff other than learning. This leads to the school becoming a place for “social/emotional development” during 2-3 hours per day. The “social/emotional” aspects were the foremost concerns of the parents at the forum. One mother described how the first 20 minutes out of a 25-minute parent/teacher conference were spent discussing a child’s social life during recess. This was not a complaint, just a response to the question of how such conferences were going. When asked what was on their mind, nearly every other parent led with “social/emotional.” It makes sense if you step back from the situation and ask “What is urgent for a parent?” Of course we would all like our children to be well-educated at age 25 (or 30?) when they are done with the master’s degree that is now our entry-level credential. But the immediate (and therefore urgent) goal is to see one’s child smiling. If a child comes home in tears because of something that happened at recess it would be a rare parent who would say “let’s talk about how what you learned writing this history essay is going to affect your performance in college.”
As this was a new principal and the forum was a place for open discussion, I asked if anyone had read The Smartest Kids in the World, which was a New York Times bestseller and recommended heavily by Amazon, The Economist, and various newspapers. Everyone in the room was either employed by a school or interested enough to take time to show up at this forum, but nobody had read the book. So I mentioned that the Russian system (not much better results than ours, but absurdly cheap to run by comparison) and the Finnish system had schools and teachers concentrate on the single mission of academics. Day care, sports, and social/emotional were handled by people other than teachers in venues other than school. Then I asked if there were state regulations that would prevent the town from setting up a Russian-style system in which teachers taught until lunch and then a separate set of employees took over for the lunch+afternoon social/emotional/daycare shift. That way parents could concentrate on academics when talking with teachers. The principal responded that “children aren’t built that way” (i.e., the American way of alternating academic and daycare activities for 6-7 hours is the only possible way to run a school).
Despite the epic length of the school day, the elementary school kids are assigned homework and one parent asked what was the point of additional drill pages that were similar to ones previously done in class. The principal responded only that there were various theories as to the value of homework, the implication being that nobody knew whether or not assigning homework improved academic outcomes.
The previous forum had concerned math instruction within this school system. There is a single set of standards for all students in any given grade (i.e., everyone in 4th grade gets more or less the same assignments). A person with a basic knowledge of probability or statistics would assume a Gaussian distribution of mathematics knowledge among children within a grade. If the assignments are aimed at the average student, the mathematically competent person would therefore expect three groups of parents showing up: parents of children at the lower end of the math competence distribution complaining “too hard”; parents of children in the middle saying “just right”; parents of children at the high end objecting “too easy”.
This was apparently not what happened, however. The principal said that there were essentially two groups of parents: (a) those who felt that the math assignments were appropriate for their children, (b) those who felt the math assignments were too easy. From the absence of the “too hard” group, the person with an intro probability background would infer either that (1) a non-representative sample of parents had turned out, or (2) math in this school system is targeted at roughly the 30th percentile child. The principal, however, threw up her hands, implying that there is no way to please everyone and that any differences in opinion regarding the math challenge were likely due to personality differences among the parents.
I asked “Suppose that a child comes to the first day of 4th grade and knows everything that would be expected of a graduate of 4th grade. Will that child be given 5th grade problems to work on?” The answer was “no” and a denial of the possibility that a child at the beginning of 4th grade could have a true understanding of all of 4th grade math, even if tests showed an ability to do all of the required calculations. “We try to keep all of the children at the same level,” was the principal’s summary.
The principal described having recently completed an every-five-years certification process for kindergarten. She profusely thanked her bureaucratic predecessor for having teed up the paperwork in binders and said it was stressful for the teachers to be observed by the accreditation folks (unclear why this should be; after three years in this district it is effectively impossible for a teacher to be fired for poor performance (previous posting)). The principal said that it was possible to get certified in older grades but the only reason to do that would be to use the accreditation organization’s report identifying deficiencies to seek more taxpayer funding for a school (i.e., the purpose of certification was not primarily to increase performance).
The room was full of smart well-meaning people with, by global standards, near-infinite cash to be spent. Everyone was working effectively toward achieving the same kinds of results that better American schools were able to achieve in the 1950s or 1970s. Nobody seemed concerned about the possibility that other countries have gone above and beyond that standard.
Related:
- my review of The Smartest Kids in the World
- Nutella incident (same school system)
- recent Facebook status from a parent of a 4th grader in the same school system:
[looking at a book jacket] Is this guy on the left Bill Gates?
Yes.
A [9-year-old] girl in school said today “When I grow up, I will marry Bill Gates, then quickly divorce him, and take half of his money! Mua-ha-ha-ha-ha!”
I love used bookstores … I came across a book called “Our Heritage”, a book published by the Amish for use in their one-room schools. It is a “reader” , a compendium of poems and prose.
What I didn’t notice when I picked it up for a few dollars was that it said “Grade 8” on the spine, meaning this book is used for the last year of formal study that Amish kids go through.
After most passages is “word study” listing new or unusual words. Sample (for 8th grade, remember): dawdling, shackles, rite, furtive, exhilarating, characteristic, endorse .
An excellent question would be whether today’s well-funded school, turn out students capable of giving the definition of each of those words, at their 8th grade graduation.
You say that they had not read of the book. I thought that you were going to say that they had not heard of the book. Maybe they heard of the book, and read a 2-paragraph review of it somewhere. If so, then that is better than I expected.
George: I asked “Have your read?” and people responded with “no.” They gave no sign that they’d heard of it.
Parents (esp those in high-achieving Boston suburbs) know that good social skills and a good lacrosse game will benefit their child much more than any STEM subject knowledge. Hence the small concern over academic rigor.
No Tiger Moms among the assembled?
Sounds like the principal in this rich suburban public school is not too bright.
How much does the principal make? One of the hardest parts of that job is dealing with the parents – these wealthy people used to getting their way show up and make the principal crazy for the reasons cited above. Princpal turnover is often high, and compensation also high because it’s a hard job. I definitely wouldn’t want it. Here in California, it’s worse because the schools are so under-funded that parents have to pay a significant part of the operating budget – at my kids’ school it’s 20%. Occasionally they group together and “defect” and refuse to pay unless they get their way. Good times.
Public schools are stuck teaching within some framework they can’t get out of, unlike Montessori where you can have kids in the same classroom at all different levels working nicely together.
My thesis is that this generation is the last to be brought up under this lecture method of teaching.
This story (and far more depressing renditions of it) is repeated all over the country. It was true when I was a kid in the 70s and it’s true today.
I know some people have visceral reactions against homeschooling, generally verbalized in the “socialization” angles. But this is why we homeschool.
Regarding socialization: integrating children with the world is not the exclusive province of the artificially age- and socioeconomically-homogeneous public school system.
Stage two protests are usually in the “but what about college?” vein, which can be quickly quashed by a chat with any competitive school’s admissions office.
Stage three is generally “who can afford that/who has time for that? (subtext: I have more exciting things to do/I think I’d go nuts spending all day with my kids)”, which is harder to dismiss.
I asked “Suppose that a child comes to the first day of 4th grade and knows everything that would be expected of a graduate of 4th grade. Will that child be given 5th grade problems to work on?”
In the school system that my children attended, the answer was yes and this was dealt with using a simple expedient – when it was time to do math, my daughter left her class and did math with a class that was at (or at least closer to) her ability level. This only became complicated when her math level reached middle school level when she was still in elementary school level, but they bussed her over to the middle school so she could continue. It must have worked because she got a 730 on her math SAT (which is the 95th percentile for high school seniors) ….. when she was 12.
Generally speaking, the school system preferred to do “horizontal enrichment” (which means you sit in the back and do workbooks while the rest of the class is taught at grade level) but at some point we (using the IEP mechanism) forced them into doing more.
You can see why more people are choosing home schooling or online schooling where you are not constrained by your nominal grade level, but (given the mixed social-educational goals of the American school system) I couldn’t see how you could do that without leaving your kid socially isolated. Being a socially isolated genius may be a recipe for high achievement but it’s probably not one for happiness. My daughter could probably have done the MIT curriculum starting at age 15 or 16 but I think she was a lot happier starting at (almost) 18.
Dr. Greenspun, thanks for your post. I’m assuming that you attended the parents-teacher conference since one of your kids attends this public school. If you don’t mind me asking, aren’t there other, more rigorous, alternatives available in the MetroWest area of Massachusetts. I read your reviews of The Smartest Kids in the World but I’m just wondering if there are any exceptions to the rule. If not, would you consider homeschooling? Given that you are sending your kids to the local (albeit elite) public school, aren’t you concerned about your kids not being able to compete with superior Korean, Finnish, Singaporean and Chinese students who are smarter, more motivated and willing to work for less?
” One of the hardest parts of that job is dealing with the parents – these wealthy people used to getting their way show up and make the principal crazy for the reasons cited above…”
We once met with our elementary school principal of our prosperous suburb and he showed us that he had a drawerful of letters that had been written to him on big law firm letterheads in an effort to bully him over matters large and small (mostly small). I guess this might have worked at one time but when you get these letters every day after a while they must lose their in terrorem effect.
Let’s talk more about Izzie’s kids. The people need to know.
Anon: I try to keep my personal troubles, unless they are with a dishwasher or aircraft, out of this weblog (among other reasons, I assume that readers will be more interested in ideas). But to answer your question… I think that people generally consider Lexington, Newton, and Brookline to have the best public schools among the close-in suburbs and Weston, Lincoln, and Dover among the suburbs that are faux-rural. Lexington and Brookline seem to benefit from having a lot of hard-working immigrant children, which sets the bar higher for everyone.
I’m not excepting myself from contributing to American mediocrity. We live in a society with a huge amount of natural wealth and accumulated wealth. So I am more worried about my own children being happy day-to-day than I am about whether or not they will be able to obtain the basics of life 20 years from now.
I don’t think that we would do home-schooling. We are sometimes tempted to set up a school with a few friends, though. Or at a minimum do “homeschooling” in a group setting (some of my friends have super bright/curious children AND McMansions big enough for 20 kids to be learning simultaneously). The bureaucracy frightens me, however. I already deal with stacks of FAA regulations. How many more rules can I keep in my head?
Somehow here in CT, we have regular classes and ALP math, english and science classes for brighter kids, who can jump a grade or two. That’s for elementary school. In the middle school there are 3 levels of math, 3 levels of foreign language (spanish or french, from “basic” to “native”) and ALP level english and science. Sometimes even advanced (2 grades above) math is too easy, but there’s a mathcounts club after school. Works pretty well…
Philg-
Sorry for the lazy question, but does the Smartest Kids in the World compare the happiness of the kids growing into adults in the various education contexts? Is our main goal to have smart vs(?) happy people?
I was offered a bump up a grade and/or change from a crappy public school to a private school in the third grade by my parents. I’m not sure why they gave my a choice in the matter, but my response was, “Why? My friends are here.”
Of course, if I was placed in a more advanced system to begin with, I probably would have made friends there and been just as, if not more, happy.
Sam
Wow. You sound like me 20 years ago. Two kids, good schools, motivated parents, etc. Three things I wish I knew then:
1. Most of the time, they don’t want to meet with you. They are meeting with you either for PR reasons (open school week, etc.) or due to law or regulatory requirements (“discussing” problems your children are having), etc.
2. Teachers Lie. Administrators lie more. Always check what they tell you if it is important to your child’s future.
3. Textbooks are awful. Make sure you have books that cover the same material as the textbooks for your child to use.
They set a pretty low bar. Make sure your kids have teachers who will leave them alone and let them read on their own. Take them to the library at least every two weeks.
Sam: Does the Smartest Kids in the World cover the entire human condition, including education and longitudinal happiness, across 10 different countries? Not for $9.21 in paperback it does not!
Happiness is tough to measure (see http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/01/the-danish-dont-have-the-secret-to-happiness/384930/ for example) so I think it would make sense for a country with an academically mediocre school system to say “Our schools result in vastly happier adults 30 years from now.” There is no way to falsify that assertion. If you’re not winning the game, change the rules!
We have had ‘luck of the draw’ with teachers in the Newton public schools. Some stars, some complete duds. Given the huge variance we’ve seen, I don’t think anything short of going ‘full Finland’ on the system will make any difference.
AFAIK the Russian system also has no alternatives for the 4th grader who know all the math for that grade. There are extracurricular activities for little math wizards but regular class work is still mandatory and expected.
Tekumse: As noted in the original posting, I was not citing Russia as an example of producing Finnish-style excellence. It is an example of producing American-style mediocrity at a small cost in dollars and in terms of a child’s time. See https://rossieronline.usc.edu/u-s-education-versus-the-world-infographic/ for example (Russia spent $1,850 per school-age child compared to $7,743 for the U.S. and ended up with almost identical math and science scores).
[I don’t think that the U.S. spending numbers are accurate, by the way, because they typically don’t include pension and capital costs.]
Don’t overlook the key piece of information here – the school was a public school.
http://teaching-abc.blogspot.cl/2012/08/public-or-not.html#more