America’s Schools Flunk Despite more spending, test scores fall and the achievement gap grows.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/americas-schools-flunk-11572475768
The highest-achieving students are doing better and the lowest are doing worse than a decade ago. That’s one depressing revelation from the latest Nation’s Report Card that details how America’s union-run public schools are flunking.
The results from the 2019 National Assessment of Educational Progress, which is administered to students around the country every two years, were published on Wednesday. There isn’t much to cheer. Only 35% of fourth graders rated proficient in reading, which is about the same as in 2009. Worse, students have backslid in reading over the last two years.
While median math and reading scores have stayed about the same over the last decade, achievement gaps are increasing. Since 2009 scores for the lowest 10% of students fell by about as much as they improved for the top 10%. The 90th percentile of eighth graders in math scored about four points higher while the bottom tenth scored five points lower.
It’s also distressing that the learning gap between black and white students hasn’t budged since 2009. Hispanics showed significant improvement in reading between 1992 and 2013 but their gains have since stalled. Average scores for English-language learners have ticked up slightly since 2009, though the disparity between low-income kids and everyone else has stayed flat.
The academic stagnation has been pervasive. Over the last two years, scores in fourth-grade reading declined in 17 states while improving in one—Mississippi. Eighth graders scored lower in reading in 31 states while increasing only in Washington, D.C. Eighth-grade math scores have improved in only Washington, D.C., Mississippi and Louisiana.
Washington, D.C., has been the biggest school reform success story over the last decade. Twice as many fourth and eighth graders score proficient in math than in 2009. Proficiency in reading has likewise increased by about 10 percentage points, and the learning gap between whites and blacks has significantly shrunk. What accounts for these improvements?
For one, charter-school enrollment in Washington has increased by nearly 60% since 2009. Studies have shown that charters have increased competition and thereby raised student performance at traditional public schools. Former schools chancellor Michelle Rhee’s teacher tenure and merit pay reforms are also paying learning dividends.
The teachers unions’ answer to every education deficit is more spending. But between 2012 and 2017—the last year of available Census Bureau data—average per-pupil education spending increased by 15%. Spending has been growing at an even faster clip over the last couple of years as government revenue has recovered from the recession.
States that are spending more haven’t shown improvement. In California annual K-12 spending has increased by more than half since 2013 to $102 billion. Yet student test scores have been flat since 2013. It’s a similar story in New York, Illinois and New Jersey where Democrats have raised taxes for schools.
Much of the money has gone to fund teacher pensions and administrative positions that pad union rolls. Maybe parents should go on strike to demand more accountability from the union-run public school monopoly.
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