What's wrong with our schools? Our education system is the best in the world ... or not ... depending on where you sit in the classroom. This is the first in a six-month examination of American education and the policy efforts to improve it.

Colvin, Richard Lee

It was 20 years ago last spring that the American people were told, in eve-of-destruction fashion, that the nation's schools were so lax and unfocused that they posed an imminent risk to the nation's economic security. In a now-famous phrase, the Reagan administration report known as "A Nation at Risk" said that had a foreign power done to our schools what we ourselves had allowed to happen it would have been considered an "act of war."

That rhetoric seems overblown given our recent experience with terrorism and actual combat. Also, after the domestic economic expansion of the

1990s and the emergence of financial troubles in two of our most formidable educational rivals, Japan and Germany, the causal link between underperforming schools and an underperforming economy no longer seems plausible.

Back then, however, the unlikely report resonated as a stern, even shrill, warning that the nation's students were failing to buckle down and make something of themselves. What resulted was what is doubtless the longest, sustained period of education "reform" in the nation's history.

And though all this activity has produced little measurable overall progress, politicians remain undaunted. So they continue to search for just the right mix of incentives and directives that will "fix" what ails public schools, as if all that's needed is the tightening of a screw here and the mining of a wrench there.

Many educators, on the other hand, were dubious back then of the report's assumptions and conclusions and remain so today. They consider the report and others of its ilk to be overstated and unfair attacks designed to undermine the public's confidence in its schools.

THE NEGATIVE VIEW

Both sides in this debate over the quality of public education cite evidence selectively. Those who take the negative view say that the high school completion rate, which for nearly 40 years after World War II was growing, is now in decline. Only 81.3 percent of Americans between the age of 15 and 19 are enrolled in school, according to the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development. That percentage ranks the United States 15th, behind countries that include Greece, Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic.

More students are continuing with their educations after high school, but that's because there are more students overall. The percentage of Americans age 20 to 24 enrolled in college or technical classes has been falling steadily. The United States is 15th by that measure also.

One reason may be that many students who do go on are not prepared, and so they spend part of their college years repeating high school classes. Today 40 percent of college students are forced to fill in the blanks left by a weak and undemanding high school education. That takes a toll and forecloses future possibilities. Two-thirds of the students who have to take remedial classes in reading drop out before earning a college diploma.

The only test that tracks student performance nationally, the National Assessment of Educational Progress, also presents a gloomy picture, at least in reading. Despite some progress, 9-year-olds' overall reading performance is little changed over the past two decades. Data from the latest round of testing, released in June, show about 36 percent of fourth graders and 25 percent of eighth graders read at a level the test givers consider to be "below basic," meaning that they have trouble understanding their assignments.

The news is better in math. In 1990, 50 percent of American fourth graders had a "below basic" mastery of math. Ten years later, only 31 percent of them were that far behind. Eighth graders also made large gains.

Still, international comparisons point to educational mediocrity, in both math and science, American students fall further behind compared with their peers the longer they're in school, according to the most recent assessments. And the reading skills of American 15-year-olds in 2000 were about average for the 27 industrialized nations in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

One explanation for this unimpressive showing is that the percentage of U.S. students whose native language is not English has more than doubled over the past two decades, from 8 percent to 17 percent of the population up to age 24. Moreover, one-fifth of U.S. students live in poverty, a higher percentage than in any of the nation's counterparts in the Group of Seven economies. In the United States, as in every country, socioeconomic status correlates with academic achievement, although not always to the same degree.

THE POSITIVE VIEW

There also is strong evidence that many U.S. public school students are working harder than ever. The percentage of students who took the ACT admissions test and who had also taken a college prep curriculum rose by more than 60 percent between 1987 and 2002. The number of students nationwide enrolled in demanding advanced placement classes went up nearly sevenfold in the past two decades. The number of schools offering such classes more than doubled. The number of high schools offering the even more rigorous international baccalaureate program is soaring as well, with dozens of schools participating in California, Colorado, Florida, Virginia, Texas and New York.

The point is that the best of the nation's high school graduates are arguably better educated than those of any previous generation and rival the very best in the world.

Yet the pressure on them to excel continues to grow because competition for slots in selective colleges is increasing. That is a significant change that can be tracked over the past two decades and has pushed many schools to offer more classes in advanced math and science, more foreign languages, computer classes and a variety of other offerings.

In addition, every state has now elaborated "standards" for what students should know. Graduation requirements, which 20 years ago were minimal, now require a full menu of math, English, science and social studies. And 27 states either have high school graduation tests in place or are phasing them in.

Such tests are meant, in part, to signal to schools and students what's expected. But the failure of many students to pass such tests--even though they're generally pegged at an eighth or ninth grade level--shows that the message is not yet getting through. In response, states are beginning to back off by lowering the score needed to pass, delaying the effective date of such tests (as occurred recently in California) or allowing school districts to override the test and hand out diplomas anyway.

UNEQUAL NOT MEDIOCRE

So, it's clear that while some American students are working harder and learning more than ever, many others--more likely than not to be poor, not to speak English fluently or to be members of racial minorities--are not doing well at all. Indeed, it can be argued that inequity, rather than mediocrity, is the single most distinctive characteristic of education in America. In some communities virtually every student graduates ready for college. In others, a third of the ninth graders wind up graduating and few, if any, of those are qualified to attend even lower ranking colleges, let alone the very best universities.

One major factor that contributes to these disparities is that, perversely, the most advantaged students--those who come to school fit, fed and with the largest vocabularies and most world experience--are more likely to be taught by the most experienced, best trained and best paid teachers.

The "Condition of Education, 2003" report from the National Center for Education Statistics shows that students in high-minority schools are nearly 50 percent more likely to have young, inexperienced teachers. High school classes in high-poverty schools are 77 percent more likely to he taught by a teacher who has no formal background in the subject he or she is teaching, according to the Education Trust, a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group.

One oft-cited explanation for this is that affluent school districts have more money to spend. Data from the Conditions report shows that schools with large numbers of disadvantaged children spend about $500 less per pupil than the most affluent school districts. But close is not the same as equal--given that disadvantaged children need even more higher quality instruction and time in school if they are to catch up to their more fortunate peers.

Such district-level comparisons also mask inequities within districts. Even within a single urban school district, the best-paid, most senior teachers gravitate toward the schools where the students are easiest to teach. That creates constant turnover as teachers who gain experience exercise their rights under their union contracts to transfer to more desirable schools.

A recent Chicago Sun-Times analysis of staffing patterns in the Chicago public schools found, for example, that classes in schools with the most minority students were five times as likely to be taught by teachers who had failed the basic skills test that they are supposed to pass to become licensed.

Poverty unquestionably affects learning, independent of the influence of schools themselves. But a growing body of data shows that the best teachers can do much to counter those effects. And conversely, weak teachers tend to cause the "achievement gap" to widen, because impoverished students are not able to seek outside, private tutoring or turn to well-educated parents for help.

THE POVERTY LINK

The link between socioeconomic status and academic achievement in the United States is among the strongest in the world. The NCES reported last year that socioeconomic status is more highly correlated with academic outcomes in the United States, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, German and the Czech Republic than it is in most other industrialized countries. In Japan, Korea and a few other countries, academic attainment seems almost unaffected by one's economic circumstances.

Cultural factors favoring high expectations and educational success undoubtedly contribute to this admirable achievement. But so does the degree of national consistency in how schools operate and are funded. Educators in most countries in the world would find the huge educational disparities that exist in the United States to be antidemocratic and highly disturbing.

The results of the Third International Math and Science Study showed how these disparities play out. A few affluent school districts north of Chicago performed on that test on par with the highest performing countries in the world, gut students in Miami-Dade County and in Rochester, N.Y., who are mostly poor, scored about the same as the most backward nations. White eighth graders scored about the same on those tests as students in such countries as Germany, Sweden and Canada. But African-American students scored about the same as the students in Iran and were below Latvia, Romania and Lithuania.

William Schmidt, a Michigan State University professor who headed up United States participation in the Third International Math and Science Study, says one reason for these disparities can be found in what and how students are taught. Those having had a challenging, well-taught algebra class--as opposed to a low-level math class--for example, did relatively well, regardless of their family's economic status.

Another statistical study done in Texas found that if poor students were lucky enough to have five teachers in a row who were above average in terms of effectiveness, the otherwise tight link between socio-economics and academics could be broken.

"We must ensure that all students--especially minority and low-income students--have access to highly qualified teachers and a challenging curriculum," says Kati Haycock, director of the Education Trust. "This is something that we can and must do now."

FINDING THE BALANCE

This, then, should be the test against which to measure education reforms; To what extent do they ameliorate the profound inequities that now characterize public education?

To the Bush administration and its allies on education, the testing and accountability scheme known as No Child Left Behind (NCLB) passes that test because it requires schools to improve the performance of all students, regardless of background. Those who support the law acknowledge that it may make educators uncomfortable. But they say that's exactly what the law is supposed to do. If educators don't like being identified in the newspaper or by the state as "needing to improve," they should analyze the test score data to find the source of their weakness. Then they should figure out how to remedy it.

What might they do?

They could find a new, more demanding curriculum more aligned with their state standards, as schools in Los Angeles, Sacramento and elsewhere have done to good effect. They could use their federal funds to hire highly skilled coaches to help teachers learn to use that curriculum, as is being done in New York City. In the past, that money mostly paid for instructional aides, themselves poorly educated, to act as tutors. Districts could organize the school day so that groups of teachers could meet to craft ways to meet the needs of individual students.

School districts could invest in training or offer incentives for the most experienced teachers to work in the most challenging schools. States could do the same. They could pay for such efforts by ending the dozens of "categorical" programs that have accumulated to fix one problem after another instead of addressing the core problem, delivering the highest quality instruction to those most in need of it.

Lawmakers also could fund high quality preschools to serve students who live in neighborhoods served by low-performing schools, as is being considered hi California. Another idea that's being tried in Cincinnati and a few other places is what's known as student-based budgeting. Under this design, each student generates a basic amount of revenue for the school he or she attends. But that basic amount is supplemented if a child is poor or is not fluent in English or is learning disabled, conditions that make them more difficult--and expensive--to educate.

The list goes on. The point is that schools can do much to make a difference. And, it is hoped, NCLB will motivate them to rethink everything they do.

One idea that clearly won't work is across-the-board funding increases. That was essentially what was being tried when California in 1996 reduced class size statewide to 20-1 in primary grades, a policy that has cost $10 billion. The policy exacerbated an existing teacher shortage that was especially acute in the urban and rural schools serving the most disadvantaged kids. Neither is it clear that simply giving low-performing schools extra money is a solution. Schools will tend to spend additional money in the same way they've spent existing dollars.

SPENDING MONEY DIFFERENTLY

Spending on education has gone up by more than 90 percent over the past 30 years, in current dollars, according to the U.S. Department of Education. But if anything is to change, schools have to spend money differently, not just spend more. That means there will be winners and losers, and that means also that there will be formidable resistance.

That's why many conservatives and a growing number of liberals believe that the only force strong enough to cause schools to actually make significant changes is competition. School choice--in the form of charter schools, vouchers, open enrollment and magnet schools--has grown dramatically in the past two decades. By 1999, according to the National Center on Education Statistics, 25 percent of K-12 students were not enrolled in neighborhood schools.

But the academic results of school choice are mixed, at best. Charter schools, the fastest growing form of choice, now enroll more than 700,000 students in 38 states. Those students are poorer than the nation as a whole, more likely to live in cities and more likely to be members of minorities. That is because charters have been sold by advocates as alternatives to failing traditional public schools. But four years of test scores in California, for example, show that economically disadvantaged students are making more rapid progress in traditional schools than they are in charter schools.

The reason may go back to the heart of the matter--the quality of teaching. An analysis last spring from a University of California, Berkeley policy research group found that charter schools nationally spend less money than do traditional public schools. They also have less-experienced, lower-paid, less well-trained teachers.

So, the search for a way to address the issue of inequity will go on.

Reforms wash over indifferent students

The day before the 1983 "A Nation at Risk" report was released in Washington by the National Commission on Excellence in Education, I fortuitously spent much of the day in a science classroom in a suburb of Oakland, Calif. My intent was to write an upbeat feature story about the class's young teacher, who had just won a statewide award.

As a local schools reporter, I was out of touch with the national scene and thus had no warning of the storm of criticism that was about to be unloosed against American public education. But the day I spent in the classroom provided me a firsthand glimpse of the problem the commission would soon bemoan. Essentially, the commission said that neither the schools nor the students were serious about teaching or learning or striving for excellence. The students I observed were seriously bored.

I don't remember what topic the young teacher planned to cover that day. Whatever it was, it hardly mattered to the students. Several were turned around in their chairs conversing with friends. Girls brushed their hair, instead of taking notes. One was redoing her make-up, making faces into a hand mirror. I was in the back of the room taking notes, but the students were undeterred either by my presence or by the gentle pleading of their teacher. They were in their seats. But they certainly weren't learning anything that had to do with science.

They were hardly unique. The report said that although school districts had begun raising graduation requirements in the 1960s and 1970s, over 40 percent of high school students still were taking a "general" course with little academic content. A quarter of the credits earned by those students were in health and physical education, work experience, remedial English and math, and courses aimed at helping students with their "life adjustment," such as balancing a checkbook and preparing for marriage. Less than a third of students were taking even two years of algebra. The number of remedial math courses in colleges had soared, and by 1980 made up one of every four offered.

In response to the commission report, local boards of education, state officials and legislators swung into action.

In a new essay this past spring pegged to the 20-year anniversary of the report, Robert B. Schwartz summed up the flurry of activity. Schwartz, who in 1983 became education adviser to Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis, said that after the report in the space of just over a year, states created more than 250 task forces to examine every aspect of education. Forty-four states raised graduation requirements; 45 raised the hurdles one had to surmount to become a teacher; and 27 states added instructional time to the school day. Arkansas alone passed 122 education bills in a 12-month period.

A Nation at Risk was followed by wave after wave of reform--a push to professionalize teaching, school-based management, "standards," "systemic reform" and accountability have all swept through schools.

During the 2001-2002 school year, I spent a great deal of time at a high school in Los Angeles that was on the verge of being taken over by the state for poor performance. What did I see? Bored students who in most classes were told to write down lecture "notes" off the chalkboard and then work on fill-in-the-blank homework questions. Students roaming the campus virtually unimpeded. "Literature" classes in which students were still learning basic phonics. Algebra classes where students were still learning basic fractions.

Dozens of "reforms" had come and gone at this school. But little of what was happening in classrooms reflected the ambitious academics-oriented program that had been laid out by the commission nearly 20 years earlier. The school's attendance rate was low, its dropout rate high and its college-going rate barely measurable. Whatever might have happened in the intervening years nationally, these students were still very much "at risk."

Richard Lee Colvin is director of the Hechinger Institute on Education and the Media at Teachers College, Columbia University. He is a former reporter for the Los Angeles Times.