In the long list of problems that plague American education, one is primary: what should students learn? For decades, however, this question has baffled people. In an education system run by the 50 states, success is in the eye of the beholder. Mississippi has different expectations of pupils than does Massachusetts. Consequently, America as a whole has fallen behind. In a ranking of 15-year-olds in 30 industrialised countries in 2006, American teenagers came a dismal 21st in science and 25th in maths.
Now there is a new drive to set national standards. Arne Duncan, the education secretary, is offering more than $4 billion (Rs.18,680 crore) in total to states that pursue certain reforms — in particular, adopting standards and assessments that prepare students to compete in a global economy. This gives urgency to an effort already under way: the National Governors Association (NGA) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) are in the midst of drafting common standards.
President Eisenhower spoke of the need for “national goals” for education as long ago as 1959. But past efforts to set such standards have been quickly quashed. In the early 1990s George Bush senior supported national standards. The guidelines for teaching history were derided by conservatives as political correctness, and the Senate threw them out with a 99-1 vote. In 1997 America scored pathetic marks in an international maths and science test. Germany did too, and was so shocked that it brought in national standards and exams.
But America floundered. Bill Clinton, when president, proposed a voluntary national test; Congress scrapped the idea. An encouraging step came in 2001, when No Child Left Behind (NCLB) determined that schools should be held accountable for how they performed. But NCLB still lets states set their own bars for success.
Now, after years of failure, the push for common standards has new life. NCLB’s reforms were plainly insufficient. A chorus of wonks and professors say that bad schools will undermine America’s competitiveness in future. Most important, the states, in the shape of the governors and chief schools officers, are leading the effort. Last year the NGA and the CCSSO published a report calling for reform. In June, 46 states agreed to support their plan to create voluntary common standards. Now only Texas and Alaska have not signed on.
There are many difficulties ahead. The standards may turn out to be too lax. Some states may reject them. States that do adopt the standards will need to revise curricula, textbooks and the way they train teachers, explains Chester Finn of the Fordham Institute, a conservative think-tank. New standards demand new tests. The stimulus provides $350 million (Rs.1,634 crore) to develop common assessments, but these may not be ready for years. In the end, however, American students will at least know where they stand, and where they should be going.
Rising enrolments paradox
A business that jacks up its prices during a recession is usually asking to lose customers. Not so America’s colleges, which are simultaneously raising tuition fees and experiencing record levels of enrolment. The Technical College System of Georgia, for instance, whose 28 campuses teach everything from power-line maintenance to dental hygiene, has sharply raised its fees, yet the number of students is up 24 percent from a year earlier. Campus parking lots are so full that “we got them parking in cow pastures,” says a spokesman.
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Across the country, college enrolment rates are at an all-time high. In October 41 percent of 18-24-year-olds were enroled in either two-year colleges (which specialise in vocational training) or four-year colleges (which grant undergraduate degrees) or higher, up from 39 percent a year earlier. Yet tuition fees have risen by an average of 4-7 percent.
The economy is the most immediate culprit. The unemployment rate hit 10.2 percent in October, up sharply from 9.8 percent in September, the first time it has reached double digits since 1983. Among 16-24-year-olds, it was a dismal 19.1 percent. Faced with the worst job prospects in a generation, many young people are deciding to go to college instead.
Another reason is that the pool of potential college-goers has grown. The Pew report notes that the proportion of 18-24-year-olds who have dropped out of high school fell steadily to 9.3 percent in 2008 from 15.7 percent in 1973. With more students finishing high school, more are eligible to go to college.
The problem for colleges is that enrolment is surging just as funding is shrinking. Private colleges have seen their endowments and investment income shrivel because of the financial crisis, while public colleges have had funding cut by cash-strapped state governments. The Technical College System of Georgia gets 60 percent of its budget from the state, and that has been frozen as the state attempts to sort out its finances. It has eliminated Friday classes to save money; some classes on other days go on past 10 p.m. Tuition charges have risen by $600 a quarter, to between $2,100 and $2,400 (Rs.1.12 lakh). But that has failed to serve as a big deterrent, thanks in part to more generous state and federal ‘Pell grants’, which Barack Obama increased this year.
(Excerpted and adapted from The Economist)