Education in America - or the Tale of Two Pies

This blog entry is a reflection of some thinking that I have done over the years about Americans and their attitudes towards public education. I'm not a teacher; could never be one. Ask anyone who knows me, and they'll all tell you: I don't have the patience to deal with 35 of someone else's kids. But I'm also grateful that some people do take on this thankless job and go on to perform miracles on a daily basis.

Anyhow, international comparisons of student performance show an interesting trend. For the sake of simplicity, such comparisons usually focus on performance in two subject, math and science. That seems appropriate; in today's increasingly technological world, growth areas such as computers, medicine, genetic engineering, networking, and the business administration are all rooted in science, mathematics, or both. I'm not trying to downplay the role that liberal arts plays in education; I earned both of my bachelor degrees in liberal arts fields. But it's just that science and math allow most of us to make a living, while liberal arts makes our lives worth living.

On to the study:

• The fourth grade comparison looked at performance among 26 countries. In the fourth grade, American students scored 3rd place in science and 12th place in math - roughly the top and the middle of the spread for the respective subjects.

• The eighth grade comparison looked at performance among 41 countries. In the eighth grade, US students have started falling behind. They only score 17th place in science and 28th place in math - approximately the middle, and the lower half, respectively.

• The twelfth grade comparison looked at peformance among 21 countries. Here US students continue to fall behind. US students scored 16th place in science, and 19th place in math - the lower half in both subjects.

Not good. In trying to ascertain the causes for America's embarrassing scorecard -- compared to say, the Czech Republic -- the same study ruled out the usual suspects: differences in classroom time, amount of homework, television, and after-school jobs. In the first three categories, American students were not atypical. In the final category, the behavioral differences were deemed not great enough to account for the academic differences. So what is left?

It seems to me that what we need here is a hypothesis that explains two things:

1. The relative parity in performance that American students enjoy early in their public school careers; and
2. The gradual losing ground they experience as they continue through to the last year of school
   

I haven't done any in-depth research, but one substantial possible cause come to mind: organization of the school calendar year. Public schools in most other countries are on a year-round system. Students get a short break in between each quarter, but essentially are full time students. The United States, on the other hand, still clings to an extended summer vacation; a holdover from times past when a more rural America needed extra hands in summer to work the farm. This puts American children at a disadvantage, vis-a-vis their international counterparts. As a recent article from the Chicago Sun-Times notes:

School is in session 180 days in Chicago. That compares to 250 days in parts of China, 225 days in India, 210 days in Australia over 42 weeks and about 200 days in parts of Europe.

Illinois requires a minimum of 176 days, just below the 180-day average for most states. No U.S. school districts have significantly extended their school year, say officials with Education Commission of the States and the National Association for Year-Round Education.

These graphs from the National Association for Year Round Education show the difference in how academic years are organized:





It's not merely a question of total number of days spent on education, although that clearly is a factor. It's also how those days are spent. In the American system, sometime around the month of May the students begin anticipating the long summer break and often lose interest in their classes. Then in the autumn, classroom time has to be spent on remedial learning, refreshing students on everything they forgot over to the summer. I remember my own teachers complaining that September and half of October were essentially wasted time. So anywhere from 2 to 4 weeks in May are potentially lost, with another 4-6 weeks in the following autumn. So between 1 to 2 months out of the 9 month classroom year are essentially lost time to students - or at least, the value of that time is diminished.

So how does this explain the fact that, at least in the early years, American students are performing academically well, but then start sliding as the years go by? Let's do a thought experiment with two students, one American and the other international. Let's also say that they are equally matched in intelligence and aptitude. They start out at the same time, at the same level, in the first grade. Under the American system, our US student finishes the year and gets ready for the next one - but what do we find? At the start of second grade, he's already 1-2 months behind his international counterpart. At the start of third grade, he's an additional 1-2 months behind. The difference isn't noticeable at first, because the difference is small and expectations of students are not as great in the early years. With a little endurance, our American student can persevere. But by the eighth grade, the situation starts to grow serious: the American student will have accumulated 8-16 months of educational lag time. By the senior year, total lag time grows to 12-24 months.

It's often commented anecdotally that Japanese 9th grade science students are performing at a level equal to American high school seniors. This is taken as proof that Japanese schools are harder and turn out more diligent students. There may be some truth to that. But overall, I believe that would be looking at the issue through the wrong end of the telescope. In fact, American high school seniors are so far behind that they can only perform at a Japanese 9th grade level. So this anecdotal observation is not a compliment to Japanese schools; it is a measurement of how much lag time that American students have accumulated by the time they are seniors.

I believe that slowly accumulated lag time from our academic year explains why American students start out well, but then slowly lose ground over the years. Although I have no concrete data, I think it's a strong possibility. Suppose I am right - then what? Resistance to making the obvious change to a full-time public school year is amazingly strong; the summer vacation has almost become a entitlement program among American students and their families. Yet these same students (and parents) expect American public schools to keep pace in an increasingly competitive international environment. I'm not an educational warrior, and you won't see me at any rallies or committee meetings. But it never fails to amaze me how Americans claim to value their children's education - providing that it doesn't cost them anything in terms of time, money, or convenience.