Telling Lies About US Education
Someone sent me a link to an organization I had not previously heard of. It’s called the State Government Leadership Foundation, and it sounds a lot like ALEC. It takes positions and offers policy advice on many different issues, all from a conservative point of view. After much scouring of the site, I discovered that SGLI is a 501(c)(4) organization associated with the Republican State Leadership Committee.
When I went to the section of the website on education reform, I was not surprised to encounter the usual corporate reform ideas, like school choice, ending tenure, and evaluating teachers by student test scores.
What astonished me was the education reform sector opens with a little graph titled “America the Illiterate?” The graph is accompanied by this language: “Several decades ago, American students were at the top in every subject. In that time, public school union membership has increased 600%, and now we trail China in every category.” The graphic has three arrows purporting to show that American students dropped from #1 to #25 in math literacy, from #1 to #17 in scientific literacy, and from #1 to #14 in reading literacy.
None of this is true. The first international assessments were administered in the 1960s; twelve nations participated. We scored twelfth out of twelve. In the intervening half-century, our students typically ranked in the
When I went to the section of the website on education reform, I was not surprised to encounter the usual corporate reform ideas, like school choice, ending tenure, and evaluating teachers by student test scores.
What astonished me was the education reform sector opens with a little graph titled “America the Illiterate?” The graph is accompanied by this language: “Several decades ago, American students were at the top in every subject. In that time, public school union membership has increased 600%, and now we trail China in every category.” The graphic has three arrows purporting to show that American students dropped from #1 to #25 in math literacy, from #1 to #17 in scientific literacy, and from #1 to #14 in reading literacy.
None of this is true. The first international assessments were administered in the 1960s; twelve nations participated. We scored twelfth out of twelve. In the intervening half-century, our students typically ranked in the
