This tweet about Hoboken high school came across my radar:
I knew Hoboken schools were bad, but not that bad. The link leads to a Blogspot from 2019, but a quick Google search confirms that its bad:
Less than 1 in 10 students in Hoboken High school are proficient in math. Less that half are proficient in reading. But the most bizarre statistic is the 97% graduation rate.
Why are American schools graduating students that are not proficient in math or reading? And why is graduation rate something that’s included in a “scorecard”? It just encourages schools to push these kids through, which is exactly what’s happening.
The percentage of 17-year old’s that were high school graduates in 1980 was 71%. The number in 2017 is 85%. Most people applaud the increasing high school graduation rate, but when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. By graduating students that have not been properly educated, you’re putting more emphasis on more expensive and time consuming methods of signaling basic proficiency. That means more people have to go to college to prove that they can read, write, perform reasoning and behave. This is why you see menial jobs require college degrees. Even there you’re seeing grade inflation and a push to graduate schools.
The schools are failing the children. And it’s not just Hoboken. The state average for math and reading proficiency is 30% and 60%, respectively.
I’ll never understand how there aren’t daily riots on the streets in response to US schools failing our children.
Its not about money
Hoboken is a wealthy neighborhood. The budget for 2019-2020 was $76.75 million and 2020-2021 was $84.36 million. With ~3,000 students, that comes out to $25,000 and $28,000 per student. Even if you take revenue for items that don’t directly benefit the school like payments to charter schools, this is still a lot.
To put that in perspective, that’s more than 2.5 times the 2017 OECD average of $10,300 per full time equivalent student, and around double the US average of $14,100 (US is 4th on education spending behind only Luxemborg, Austria and Norway).
I would support a larger budget if it was actually used for something productive. Below is my preferred use of additional funds. Ironically the actual use of funds is exactly opposite from my preference:
Allow parents more options as to where to send their children? Yes
Expand school days and the school year? Yes
Expand after school programs unrelated to academics? Maybe
Pay the teachers more? Eh… paying someone more for the same work isn’t going to magically improve performance. You could still want to do this, but thinking its a magic bullet for failing schools is wrong. More money could be used to source more talent, but I’m skeptical that’s effective. I would prefer to make it cheaper to become a teacher and drop useless credentials like a masters degree. From what I’ve heard from teachers, these degrees don’t help with teaching.
Create a new administration layer? No
But parents are moving out of the poorly performing school districts
Why wouldn’t they? The purpose of schools is to serve children, not the other way around. Imagine telling a parent their child’s education will have to be sacrificed for the sake of metrics. If a school is failing and no parent wants to send their child there, the school should be shutdown and new schools with different models and administrators should be created to take their place.
Standardized tests
Maybe the most depressing thing is that the US isn’t even that bad. If you look at Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) scores, the US ranks relatively high with a score of 505, compared to an OECD average of 487. Of course China, Singapore, Macau and Hong Kong score considerably higher with scores from 524 - 555, but US does better than many Western European countries like Denmark, Norway and Germany.
One response to poor standardized test scores is to stop giving standardized tests. Although they’re not perfect, standardized tests are at least a useful measure. You can use them to track performance over time and they do have a signal.
Based on the PISA scores above, are US students actually better in math and reading than Japanese students because they scored a 505 compared to 504? No. But are they better than students in Albania, because they scored 505 compared to 405? Probably.
Other measures like graduation rates are even more flawed as they encourage students to be pushed through the system. And using relative measures like “top of the class” ignore the discrepancy among schools. Someone at the top of the class in Hoboken may be average if placed in a better school district.
I don’t have the answers
I don’t know how to make the schools better. I have some ideas outlined above, but that’s not my job. But we need to agree upon some basic principles which we should use to guide education policy:
A school’s purpose is to socialize students and train them to be proficient in math, reading and reasoning
Measures should be used to track how schools are performing
Failing schools should change or be shut down
It is not okay that schools are failing students
With these basic principles we can at least try to address America’s failing schools.
America's failing schools
https://jameslate.medium.com/america-leads-the-world-in-educational-opportunity-378385dece58