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« Back to Can America’s Schools Be Saved? main page    Transcript for: Can America’s Schools Be Saved?Think Tank Transcripts:Can America's Schools Be Saved? MR. WATTENBERG: Hello. I'm Ben Wattenberg. This fall our kidsreturn to school. Do we need to set nationwide educational standardsto help them compete in the global economy? Joining us to sort through the conflict and the consensus are:Albert Shanker, the president of the American Federation of Teachersand a member of the National Board of Professional TeachingStandards; Denis Doyle, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute andco-author 'Winning the Brain Race: A Bold Plan to Make Our SchoolsCompetitive'; Professor Kriner Cash, associate dean of the School ofEducation at Howard University; and Myron Lieberman, senior researchscholar, Center for Social Philosophy and Policy, Bowling Green StateUniversity, and author of 'Public Education -- An Autopsy.' The topic before this house: Can America's schools be saved? Thisweek on 'Think Tank.' American schoolchildren aren't learning what they should. At leastthat is the consensus reached by President Bush, President Clinton,most governors, many educators and parents. And the numbers back themup. Since the 1960s, the average Scholastic Aptitude Test scores, theso-called SAT test taken by most college-bound students, fell untilthe 1980s, and since then have stagnated. Meanwhile, as SAT scoresdeclined, public school outlays soared. Average spending per pupil inreal dollars more than tripled, rising from $1500 per year in the1950s to more than $5500 per student today. So even though we're spending more, American students still do notapparently learn what they need to know. One prescribed remedy isGoals 2000, the Educate America Act, signed into law by PresidentClinton in March of 1994. PRESIDENT CLINTON: (From videotape.) What this Goals 2000 billdoes, believe it or not for the first time in the entire history ofthe United States of America, is to set world-class educationstandards for what every child in every American school should knowin order to win when he or she becomes an adult. We have never doneit before; we are going to do it now because of this bill. MR. WATTENBERG: Now, Goals 2000 aims to create nationwideeducation standards in English, in history, in geography, in math, inscience, and in foreign languages. Now, national standards are verycontroversial. Many experts argue that there must be testing toensure that the goals are met. If students fail the tests, then theywill suffer the consequences: they may not graduate or be promoted.But others say that it's unfair to hold students to nationwidestandards if they haven't an equal opportunity to learn. They worrythat enforcing standards will penalize minorities, who historicallyhave scored lower on standardized tests, such as the SAT. This theyargue would worsen the already difficult road that minority studentsface. Mr. Shanker, first question, sir. Do we need national standards inAmerica? MR. SHANKER: Well, I think we need national standards. We won'tget them out of Goals 2000. We'll get state standards, and let's hopethat some of the states will not want to duplicate each other andwill work in consortia, so you may get a number of groups of states.But essentially this legislation encourages states to developstatewide standards, but world class, that is, looking at what othercountries do. And I think that we do need them because in the absence of thesestandards, the kids basically negotiate with their teachers. When theteacher gives work, the kids say, this is too hard, it's toodifficult, I don't want to spend all that time at home. And beforeyou know it, the teacher sort of negotiates and says, well, if youcan't do all of it, do three-quarters of it, do half of it, do apiece of it. And before you know it, what our kids learn compared to youngstersin other countries is very, very small, whereas in other countriesthey say, look, Johnny, don't tell me it's too hard, every other kidin the 4th grade is doing it, that's what they require in thiscountry, they did it last year and the year before. So standards really are a way of raising achievement foreverybody. MR. WATTENBERG: Kriner Cash, is what Al Shanker said right? MR. CASH: Well, I think we have to be very careful about nationalstandards. There is tremendous diversity and variability across thiscountry in schools, school districts, curricula, and a number ofother variables that talk about educational equity and excellence. SoI have four cynicisms, basically, healthy ones about the debate andthe issue. One is, what will the standards be? I'm concerned about who willdecide, that a relative few, those who already can pass suchstandards will be the ones making the decisions about them. I'mconcerned about the way in which we will measure whether the standardhas been met. We've seen since 1969 sort of a degeneration in how wemeasure difficult objectives in learning. The NAEP used to beperformance-based. MR. WATTENBERG: What is the NAEP? MR. CASH: I'm sorry -- the National Assessment of EducationalProgress, which is an effort similar to this, but now is mainly amultiple-choice question testing format, and so we don't get at verymany important things. And then -- MR. WATTENBERG: Let's come back tothat. Denis Doyle, could you give us a brief summation of your viewof this idea of national standards. MR. DOYLE: We need the actual standards which are distinct fromfederal government standards, but we do in fact need nationalstandards. We need to pull together as a nation in the samedirection, hold all kids to high and rigorous standards. The biggestdisservice we can perform for the least amongst us, the disadvantagedminority youngsters in particular, is to have a separate set ofstandards for them and to expect less of them. They alone need highstandards, need them more than almost anybody else because they haveno old-boy networks to tie into and no other access to prestige, tostatus, to jobs. MR. WATTENBERG: Myron Lieberman. MR. LIEBERMAN: On the question of standards, I have a somewhatdifferent question, which is, well, what purpose would they serve? Alreferred to an incentive, but unless you set the standard at the verytop, they're going to be lower than what a lot of kids could achieve.In other words, they're going to be too high for some and too low forothers, so they're going to wind up being disincentives for somebecause they'll make it easily, and they'll be impossible -- MR. WATTENBERG: So we're going to set up standards and they'regoing to be, as Pat Moynihan says, 'defining it down'? MR. LIEBERMAN: Well, politically that's inevitable. And I wouldemphasize, why should there be state standards? There are going to bevariations within the states. If you come from, say, a communitywhere you have every reason to expect kids to do better than theaverage in the state, why should they be held to a state standard? MR. WATTENBERG: Myron Lieberman, I gather, is not a fan of thisGoals 2000 legislation. Al, you were instrumental in it. What -- MR. SHANKER: Well, how it plays out is still a -- there is a lotof looseness in this thing. It could play out the way Myron Liebermansays, but it doesn't have to and I don't think it should. I would agree with him that if you have a single standard, it'sgoing to end up being a low standard. It'll be a minimum standard,and it will actually not serve any purpose. But other countries that have standards don't have singlestandards. They say, look, this is the standard you must meet if youwant to enter a college or university. The following standard isthere if you want to go to a two-year institution or get into sometechnical training program. But the purpose of these standards isessentially to motivate all of your youngsters to work harder toreach whatever is the next higher goals, which we don't have now. MR. LIEBERMAN: Al, we have 10 states which by law admit every highschool graduate to a public institution of higher education. So wherethen is the -- the fact that some agency, national or whatever, hassaid these are what you must reach is going to be meaningless inthose states. Those kids can get into a state institution regardless. MR. SHANKER: You're assuming that nothing else is going to change.I would agree with you, if nothing else changes, then it's pointlessto have standards, because standards that have no consequences aren'tstandards. They are just some sort of public relations slogans. You have to attach these things. You basically have to say tomothers and fathers and students and teachers, look, school counts,and if you meet this standard, you can get into college; if youdon't, no scholarships, no federal assistance, no this, no that. Thesame thing with -- MR. WATTENBERG: Is that fair to minorities, Kriner? MR. CASH: Standards alone will not make us a more competitivenation and will not make our children learn. MR. WATTENBERG: But he's talking about standards withconsequences. Typically, what, at age -- at 4th grade, 8th grade andto graduate, if you don't hit these certain standards, you don'tproceed. MR. CASH: Well, sure. Why would we have consequences for students,though, alone? There are many dimensions to the educationalenterprise, and if we want to talk about standards, let's havestandards for all of the dimensions of schooling. Let's havestandards for school organization and grouping practices. Let's havestandards for staff development and teacher preparation. Let's havestandards for the way we grade and evaluate and measure students.Let's have standards for the way we train educational administrators.Let's have standards for school financing systems, which are vastlyinequitable. MR. WATTENBERG: So that the students can competeequally. MR. SHANKER: That comes later; that follows. A lot of states inthis country -- as a matter of fact, if you look at the NAEP results,one of the most interesting changes in recent years -- MR. WATTENBERG: Again, that is the National -- MR. SHANKER: The National Assessment of Educational -- it'sbasically a sampling of -- they take a large group of youngstersacross the country at different grades and different subjects to seehow they're doing this year compared to three years ago and six yearsago, and they do it in reading, writing, mathematics, other fields.And the interesting thing is that in the 1970s and '80s, the group ofyoungsters who made the greatest progress were black and Hispanicyoungsters. And if you look behind it, why was there all this progress? Theysaid, in the 1970s a bunch of states, starting with Florida, said,from now on, no high school diploma unless you can function at acertain level. It wasn't a very high level, but the first time theygave the test, the majority of these youngsters failed. The nextyear, fewer failed. The next year, fewer. By the way, there were new teacher training programs, there werenew tech -- all these other things followed, and right now withinthose states on these standards, which are admittedly very low, thereis practically no difference between minority youngsters and otheryoungsters. So you put something in place, attach some consequences to it, andthen these other things fall into place, whereas if you wait foreverything else to happen before you put the standards in place, it'snot going to happen. MR. WATTENBERG: Kriner, if we don't have consequences attached tothe standards, aren't we short-changing those minority students? Imean they will graduate, but they will graduate with a funny-moneydiploma. MR. CASH: We're talking really about at-risk children who also arepoor. Poverty is the number one variable that hinders educationalattainment in this country, and that goes beyond just people ofcolor. It's children of all colors. If they're poor, they have not asmuch opportunity. MR. LIEBERMAN: Well, let me make just a couple of points here.George Stigler [phonetic], a Nobel-prize-winning economist, estimatedthat 90 percent of what people know and use on the job does not comefrom formal education. And somehow -- and we know that a high schooldiploma in this country is basically meaningless. And the Goals 2000Act, for example, has a goal, 90 percent of the kids must have a highschool diploma. It means they must have a meaningless piece of paper.So I think -- I just wanted to make -- the other point I wanted tomake is this, that when we look at consequences, we have to look atall the consequences. The minute you begin to -- and let's take inthose 10 states that now admit everybody. If you now have standards,presumably a lot of those kids won't get into college. A lot ofprofessor will be out of jobs. They will go to their union and theunion will put pressure on the legislature. They will argue thatyou're depriving minorities of jobs, you're short-changing -- MR. WATTENBERG: We happen to have a union president here with us. MR. LIEBERMAN: And I'd like to find out just in how many statesare the teacher organizations putting a bigger priority on standardsthan they are on the loss of jobs which would be inevitable if wereally had high standards. MR. SHANKER: First of all, if it did result in loss of jobs,that's too bad. I mean if -- but it doesn't -- I don't think it wouldresult in loss of jobs. The fact is that you have very high standards for entering intouniversities in, let's say, France and Germany. They take a smallerpercentage of students in, but they have a higher percentage whoactually graduate, because we allow lots of youngsters in who can'tread, they can't write, they can't count, they spend a lot of moneytaking junior high school and elementary school remedial courses in auniversity, and then they drop out. And society has paid for what?Has paid for practically nothing. Now, there is no reason why those youngsters who can't read, writeor count can't have some form of ongoing adult education which willhelp them pick up what they should have gotten, but not in auniversity. MR. WATTENBERG: Kriner. MR. CASH: It's very important: Students want to be successful; allchildren want to be successful. If in their learning they aresuccessful, then they'll continue to want to learn. I have no doubtthat each and every child in this country can reach and attain andexceed any standard that we would set. The issue of setting the standard and having the children --that's really not a difficult challenge. We've seen that before. Theissue is, are we going to address and adapt all of those othervariables of schooling so that all the children can learn to theirpotential? Our children are learning things every day. Look at the tremendouscreativity and vitality that they demonstrate in out-of-school hoursand in other non-school activities. They can learn, but we don't haveassessments for that kind of thing. So I'm concerned about what thestandards will be, how we will measure it and how we'll use theresults. MR. DOYLE: Let me suggest this. The only good news on the Americaneducation scene now is that there is so much slack in the system thatwe have nowhere to go but up. The biggest slack, of course, is amongst youngsters of whom toolittle is expected and as a consequence don't deliver very much. Kidsare not workers in most schools. They don't work very hard ascompared to the international competition, they don't study very longhours, they don't do much homework. In a perverse kind of way, that's an opportunity because they cando a lot more; a lot more can and should be expected of them. Similarly, school districts should expect more of themselves. Weare dominated by a culture of school boards which micromanage, forexample. MR. WATTENBERG: There are some very good public and privateschools in America, aren't there? MR. DOYLE: Oh, there are some stunning ones. Al is a graduate ofPeter Stuyvesant, maybe the best public school in America. MR.WATTENBERG: And I am a graduate of the school that used to beatStuyvesant in football every year, [name inaudible], and I will singthe fight song, if you'd like. MR. SHANKER: Well, I mean I think the interesting thing aboutAmerican education is not so much that youngsters who aredisadvantaged aren't making it. That's true and it's deplorable andwe ought to do something about it, but I think what's -- and that'salso, by the way, true in other countries where you take variousminorities -- they generally don't do as well. But I think what's interesting about American education is thatyoungsters who have no excuse, youngsters who come from upper andmiddle class families, who go to Europe or Asia in the summer, who goto summer camps, who've got books at home, whose parents went tocollege, that they aren't learning how to read well and that theycan't write. If you look at this -- again, this National Assessment ofEducational Progress and ask what percentage of the youngsters whograduate American high schools are able to write a decent essay after12 years of education, the answer is about 3 percent. Now, there is no country in the world -- in Germany, you have tosit for five days for an Abitur [phonetic] to get into a university.Thirty percent of the kids in Germany are able to write essays forfive days, or in France, the Bacque [phonetic] or the A-levels inGreat Britain. MR. WATTENBERG: Denis Doyle, aren't you going to get a situationskewed against minorities when you have these kinds of standards? MR. DOYLE: No, I think we have just the opposite. I think thesituation now is very definitely skewed against minorities. Theydon't know what's expected of them, they have no measures that theycan hold up to be proud of personally or to demonstrate to employersor to the military or to higher education that they can make it.Indeed, the system now is really stacked against them very badly. And to make matters worse, there is no uniformity amongst schools.So a youngster from a poor, inner-city school who gets straight A'smay think he's done very well, but compared to a youngster who'sgotten straight A's from a prep school or a suburban school, he's notdone well at all. So the youngsters are being deluded by the adults around them wholead them to believe that they're doing more than they are. It's acruel hoax on these kids. MR. LIEBERMAN: We are skirting around a very basic problem here,this use of the word `minority.' There are some minorities that aredoing very well in formal education afterwards -- the Japanese, theChinese, the Jews, the Armenians, and so on. The minority problem isbasically the black -- insofar as there is a problem of a minoritythat is not doing well -- is primarily a problem with the blacks andHispanics. MR. CASH: Again, that's a gross overstatement andoversimplification. There is a tremendous variability amongAfrican-Americans in this country, among other minority groups inthis country, and they range in their aptitudes and achievements justlike any other group. You have to be clear and specific about what group is notperforming well. And these are typically groups of children who arepoor, who are in schooling conditions that are separate and unequal,who have poor quality instruction, who are not helped in after-schoolhours, and a whole range of other kinds of things that we knowcontribute to high achievement. If students in other countries -- or even in this country -- spend15 to 20 hours a week on homework, and that might be your child, itmight be mine, and another child spends less than one hour a week onhomework and working after school hours, then there is going to be adisparity in achievement. MR. WATTENBERG: Does spending more money on education help? MR. CASH: No, it's not spending more. It's how you use the moneythat we have. We already have a tremendous amount of money ineducation. It's tremendously wasted. So the issue is, how can wereallocate and re-emphasize and position resources to make themaximum difference on the group of learners that we think we need tobring up? MR. DOYLE: Let me second the motion. Chapter I, Title I of thefederal program for disadvantaged youngsters created by PresidentJohnson, five or six billion dollars a year now, a very large programby federal standards for education and a very well-intentionedprogram, most of it's run by taking kids out of the regular classroominto a broom closet or an empty room someplace with a teacher for alittle tutorial or small-group work for an hour a day. In some districts, they are finally beginning to experiment with amuch more interesting and exciting idea, to offer Chapter I as anafter-school program or as a weekend program or as a summer programso the youngsters are not denied their normal classroom contact. Themoney is already in the system, the books and teachers are alreadythere. It's a beautiful example of how you can redeploy existingresources to greater effect. MR. SHANKER: In order to use the opportunity, the learningstandards really need two different things. One of them is that thekid actually get -- there was an effort to teach him that. I mean ifthis is what you're going to test at the end of the program, wasthere an effort to actually teach what is going to be tested? Can theyoungster say, hey, look at these 15 questions here; none of theseever came up in the last three years, so I'm being asked to answerquestions which I've never dealt with before. That's one set ofissues. The other set of issues has to do with the fact that we are theonly democratic industrial country in the world that has a locallybased system of education. MR. WATTENBERG: I was going to get to that. MR. SHANKER: It doesn't make any sense for one kid to have $15,000a year in public money spent on him and in another place $4,000 ayear because the local real estate taxes are different. MR. WATTENBERG: But it's coming from local school taxes. I meanmost of the education money in America comes from local sources, hasnothing to do with federal sources. MR. SHANKER: Yeah, but how can you justify having a country or astate -- how can you justify the notion of equality of educationalopportunity if you have a country where youngsters with the greatestneeds in terms of poverty, in terms of discrimination, in terms offamily breakup, in terms of health conditions, they're the ones whohave the smallest amount of money -- or smaller amounts than those inneighboring areas where they have all the advantages. How can onespeak in general about equality of opportunity if you actually aregiving them less? There are certain points below which -- if you don't havetextbooks, if computers are going to be used by everybody tomorrowand you have a school that absolutely doesn't have any -- there arecertain points below which you can really say you're not giving thesekids an education. So it's not a question of being absolute about it and saying everykid in the country has to have $5,300 spent, but there are pointsbelow, and there are districts within this country that are belowthose points, where it's the equivalent of living in really dangeroussubstandard housing or living on a starvation level or not having anyaccess to health care. And that at least we -- I mean those are veryshameful situations -- and that at least we ought to -- we're notgoing to get total equality, but at least we ought to eliminate theseshamefully low situations. MR. WATTENBERG: Let me ask a final question, if I may. Looking atthis argument that Goals 2000 has engendered, this idea of standards,tests and consequences, what would you say the panel agrees upon andwhat do you all disagree about? MR. LIEBERMAN: My main point of agreement would be with the lastpoint that Al has just made. I think the problem is adequacy, notequality. We don't worry about equality of gastronomic opportunity orshelter or anything else, but we do say we won't let people go belowa certain level. So if that's Al's point, I would agree with it, and I think it's avery important point to be made. My disagreement I think with all the others is that I think theway we've achieved improvements in general is through amarket-oriented system, and all three of the other people on thepanel are opposed to that. And I support it. MR. DOYLE: I'm surely in favor of a market system. I don't haveany illusions, though, that a market system is going to occurovernight. It'll take a decade or so, and I see some hopeful signs onthe horizon that market mechanisms are slowly coming into play. Ithink even the AFT and the NEA will buy a public market so schoolscompete among themselves for -- MR. WATTENBERG: You are talking about school choice, which we aregoing to do a separate show on. MR. DOYLE: Okay, but I think markets are very important, verybeneficial, not because of cut-throat competition, but because weneed different kinds of suppliers, different niches, differentopportunities for teachers and for students both. And Al's point on adequacy is clearly on target. MR. WATTENBERG: Kriner. MR. CASH: I think we agree that standards can be helpful and servea useful function. They can nudge all educators and students andfamilies to reach higher standards and higher expectations forthemselves. We've seen that in the past. But we disagree on the importance that setting national standardswill have on actually making us more competitive. It's a small pieceof a much larger puzzle, and I want all the pieces to be improved. MR. WATTENBERG: Al, one last brief shot. MR. SHANKER: Well, there are a lot of good systems around theworld and none of them are market, choice systems. They're all run bygovernments, as a matter of fact, some of them by governments thatare national and much more bureaucratic than ours. And I think thismovement of Goals 2000 is an effort to develop an American version ofthe structure that these other democratic industrial countries, andif done right and given enough time, it's going to work. MR. WATTENBERG: Okay. Thank you, Albert Shanker, Myron Lieberman,Kriner Cash, and Denis Doyle. And thank you. As you know, we have enjoyed hearing from ourviewers. Please continue to send your comments and questions to theaddress on the screen. For 'Think Tank,' I'm Ben Wattenberg. 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