Oregon Education Today

High School Deficiencies Have Deep Roots

Phil Robbins

During the past year the emphasis in improving K-12 education has shifted from the elementary and middle school levels to high school.  In part this is due to standardized test results as well as criticism from the colleges and universities that high schools are not preparing students for college-level work.  And in general, these concerns focus on four areas: reading, writing, mathematics and science.

      Synergistic Relationship between High School and Lower Levels     One should not underestimate the effect of skills, study habits, curriculum and attitudes learned in elementary and middle school upon student performance in high school.  And the same is true of K-12 education and its effect upon the student's ability to do college work.  This is not a particularly difficult concept for most people to understand although we find many professional educators telling us how well students are doing in elementary school and how poorly they are doing in high school.  Their conclusion then is for us to overhaul the education program at the secondary level.

Let's take an example.  Schools test reading in the third grade, and we are told that the kids are doing great; 80% are meeting the benchmarks and standards that have been set for them.  Then their reading is tested in the tenth grade, and we learn that only 54% are meeting Oregon's criteria.  On the surface it appears that on standardized tests that the longer students go to school, the worse they do.  It doesn't make any sense.  There are a lot of possible reasons for this.  One can construct tests to get any kind of results he wants.  Maybe the tests are not measuring the same thing in the third and tenth grades.  Maybe the experts are measuring different cognitive levels as defined by Benjamin Bloom's Taxonomy of Educational Objectives.  What is going on?  It is hard to tell.  No one tells the public.

Looking at the results of college placement exams may be of more practical value.  As I mentioned in my May 22 post, large numbers of graduating high school seniors are failing college placement exams--even those with high grades.  Some colleges blame this on the alignment of K-12 curriculum with college requirements.  For instance, some college officials note that 90% of K-12 reading focuses on fiction--short stories, novels and the like whereas college curriculum focuses 90% on non-fiction.

                         What Parents Need to Know                                             In spite of the fact that education experts try to impress the public with the complexity of education, it can be reduced to a few simple facts.  In school the student needs to learn two things: (1) skills and (2) content.  The basic skills are reading and writing.  We are not addressing specialized skills such as those required in medical practice (surgery), law (cross-examination) or various trade occupations.  Math is a subject that requires both skill and content.  The content courses are those like economics, history, social studies, biology, chemistry, physics, literature and so forth.  Obviously, a student is not going to do well in content courses without a good foundation in a skill such as reading.  And as the student goes up the education ladder through high school into college, he is primarily concerned with content courses.

Parents should make certain that their children learn to read well in the first and second grades that have a strong, structured phonics program.  If children haven't gotten this foundation by the end of the third grade, there is a good chance that their reading and spelling will be weak as they continue their education.  Also, if they are going to do well in college, they must get into a good expository writing course in high school.  Such a course should include the writing process, style principles, idea development techniques, formatting reports and much more.  Just emphasizing grammar won't get the job done.  My next post will explore this in more detail.

Funding K-12 Education

Phil Robbins

Apparently, the Oregon State Legislature is set to pass a $6.245 billion K-12 budget to fund schools for the next two years.  When added to local tax revenues, the means that K-12 schools will be getting about $9 billion dollars representing a 14 percent increase to spend on school operations.  Unfortunately, there is no guarantee that class sizes will be reduced or even more important that academic performance will be enhanced.

                                            Where the Money Goes

First, some districts will get more money, some less.  Those that have increasing enrollments will get more because funding is based on the number of students.  Portland and Lake Oswego will get less because their enrollments are shrinking.  Second, the money will be spent to finance full-day kindergarten classes, an idea obviously popular with parents, especially those who are working and have child care needs.  In the same way, hiring more teachers reduces class size.  A large share of new money goes into increasing salaries and benefits of teachers and others as well as higher energy and insurance costs.  Hopefully, districts will spend more money on textbooks and learning materials, things that directly affect student achievement.

                                      Funding and Student Achievement

In my previous post I had high hopes that Senator Schrader and Rep. Mary Nolan of the Ways and Means Committee had found a way of guaranteeing student achievement by making funding contingent upon producing results.  My mistake!  Rep. Dave Hunt, House Majority Leader, explained at his town hall meeting, May 21, results are more likely to mean things like full-day kindergarten and lower class sizes, not higher levels of student achievement.  He said in effect that the legislature must walk a fine line between some degree of accountability and management of what goes on in the classroom.

Steven Carter of The Oregonian wrote in his article Legislators Agree on Schools Budget, May 25, 2007, "School leaders said it will take more than one budget cycle (2 years) for improvements to be measurable. Hunsaker, of the Oregon school administrators' group, said schools are committed to performance in exchange for the new money."  No one says how much improvement he hopes to make.  And it doesn't sound like anyone is in a hurry.  Meanwhile, kids weak in the basic skills continue to graduate, experience difficulty finding a decent job or going on to college and take expensive remedial courses because the schools didn't do an adequate job of educating them.

                      Why Throwing Money at the Problem Won't Work

Money going into salaries, benefits, insurance, heating fuels, and other overhead costs will not change student achievement one iota. School leaders say that Governor Kulongoski's 750 million dollars funding increase will have very little effect on education improvements (The Oregonian, 12-31-06, Bigger Budget Won't End Crowding).  In spite of the public's misconception that smaller class sizes automatically lead to better student learning, most research studies indicate that this is hardly the case.  This conclusion is based on over 1,100 studies as of 1999 dealing with class size and student performance.

In fact, Eric A. Hanushek, (Bio) a key researcher in this area, concludes: 

Existing evidence indicates that achievement for the typical student will be unaffected by instituting the types of class size reductions that have been recently proposed or undertaken.  The most noticeable feature of policies to reduce overall class sizes will be a dramatic increase in the cost of schooling, an increase unaccompanied by achievement gains.

Anyone interested in exploring this topic in depth need only type "class size and student achievement" in Yahoo or Google search engines.