After 20 Years of Reform, Are America’s Schools Better Off?
Twenty years ago this spring, George W. Bush announced that he was forming an exploratory committee as a precursor to his first run for the presidency. In the announcement, he pledged to improve America’s schools, “set high standards, and insist on results” so as to “make sure that not one single child gets left behind.” An era of ambitious education reform had begun.
Two decades later, after sweeping efforts that included No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top, and the Common Core, are our schools better off? The answer is less reassuring than one would hope. On the whole, it’s certainly possible to find some evidence of improvement — but progress is easiest to find in the metrics most amenable to manipulation.
State tests in reading and math do appear to demonstrate that schools have significantly improved over the last 20 years. Between 2005 and 2009, as No Child Left Behind took full effect, the share of students who proved to be proficient in state tests rose by 1 to 2 percent per year. Over the next six years, state assessments were too varied to allow for meaningful comparison. But the same trend — with the share of proficient students increasing by 1 to 2 percent each year — did reemerge after 2015, when standardized Common Core tests became widely used. And high-school-graduation rates also skyrocketed, from 71 percent in 1997 to 85 percent in 2017.
Good news, right? Not exactly. The politicos and state education officials claiming credit for these gains are the same ones who choose state tests, define what qualifies as “proficient,” and monitor graduation rates to guard against funny business. The results are tied into state accountability systems, where lousy results can produce practical and political headaches. Thus, policymakers have both the means and the incentive to inflate the numbers any way they can.
Fortunately, the U.S. also regularly administers the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) to a random, nationally representative set of schools. Because the NAEP isn’t linked to state accountability systems, it’s a good way to check the seemingly positive results of state tests. From 2000 to 2017 (the most recent year for which data is available), NAEP scores showed that fourth-grade math results increased 14 points, which reflects a bit more than one year of extra learning. Eighth-grade math results also demonstrated significant improvement, increasing ten points in the same period. Fourth- and eighth-grade reading scores, meanwhile, barely budged. And almost all of the math gains were made in the decade from 2000 to 2010; performance has pretty much flatlined since then. CONTINUE READING: 20 Years’ Education Reform: School Performance Improvements Fall Short | National Review