Self-deception in American education

Pat Buchanan:

On the national test mandated by No Child Left Behind, only 22 percent of Tennessee's eighth-graders passed, and only 18 percent of fourth-graders in Mississippi could do fourth-grade arithmetic. By national standards, four of every five kids in the Tennessee and Mississippi public schools are failing.

Inescapable conclusion: State officials are dumbing-down tests so even the slowest kids can pass, to keep the federal dollars flowing in and federal sanctions from being imposed.

Put crudely, state officials are colluding in a fraud to deceive parents, kids and themselves about the progress, or lack of it, being made by the public schools. They are like baseball officials who, unhappy with the paltry production of home runs, lower the mound, narrow the strike zone, create a new rabbit ball, bring in the left- and right-field fences and look the other way at steroid use – then celebrate all the great hitters who beat Babe Ruth's record.

In four states – Missouri, Wyoming, Maine and South Carolina – state test scores closely tracked federal scores. In South Carolina, which sets world-class standards, 30 percent of the kids passed the feds' eighth-grade math test, but only 23 percent passed the state test. Apparently, educators in South Carolina don't believe in lying to themselves.

The ultimate test is how American kids stack up in a world where leadership in math and science eventually translates into military power and global dominance. In all recent world tests where they have competed, the Chinese on the mainland, Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan and Korea come in at or near the top, as Americans bring up the rear. We may lie to ourselves about how well we are doing, but the world will one day find us out.

The lying has been going on a long time now. Between the mid-1960s and mid-1990s, Americans wrung their hands at falling SAT scores of high-school seniors in math and English. Some educators wailed that the tests were cruel, unfair and culturally biased. So, testing criteria were made less rigorous and altered to make comparisons with earlier years more difficult. Now, the SAT scores are no longer cause for concern.

"Humankind cannot stand too much reality," said T.S. Eliot. The reality is that a vast acreage of U.S. public education is a wasteland.

"Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?" said George Bush pungently in Florence, S.C., in the 2000 election. As we now know – and, in truth, have known for decades – American children are not learning as once they did. And the ethnic gaps in achievement that existed 40 years ago persist up to today. Nothing has changed.

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