Tim Peterson, Columnist
Ideology: Socratic | Writing from: New York

Unlike Mark Twain, reports of the demise of the American education system have not been greatly exaggerated—not at all. But many do view these reports as greatly exaggerated, leaning on America’s superlative reputation and citing the recent rise of foreign enrollment in U.S. colleges and universities. However, while America’s postsecondary institutions certainly earn their renown, the country’s elementary and secondary public schools do not (Full disclosure: my girlfriend is a public school teacher). In a study published in 2009 by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the United States ranked thirty-sixth out of thirty-eight countries and below the study’s average in student performance in math and science. Improvement is deeply needed.

But in order for changes to be enacted, the sources of educational rot need to be identified.

Many education experts cite teachers as the most important factor in a child’s education, “more than any other variable in education—more than schools or curriculum,” as a recent Atlantic article put it. Therefore, teachers are most readily pointed to as negative factors by many individuals, including the United States Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan. Following this widely held conclusion, Duncan’s Race to the Top initiative, which intends to fix America’s schools, forces participating states’ Departments of Education to link teachers’ salaries to their students’ performances. In order to gauge students’ performance, administrators will rely on test scores, arguing that test scores provide empirical evidence. For further support, many education experts—such as the University of Chicago’s Tim Knowles and Melissa Roderick, according to an article on Duncan in The New Yorker, as well as the education secretary himself—cite Duncan’s successful tenure as head of the Chicago Public Schools, during which he significantly raised test scores and lowered graduation rates.

Unfortunately, as often happens when politicians narrow their focus on numerical proof, these results are deceiving and prone to corruption. For example, an article published in the New York Times last week discovered that the recent fall in crime rates in New York City can be partially attributed to NYPD officers skewing crime reports in order “to manipulate crime statistics” for their benefit, e.g. reducing felonies to misdemeanors in order to downgrade the measured index crime. Similar instances have occurred in the education system.

Last June in looking at Duncan’s eight-year record as head of the Chicago Public Schools, the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago determined “that gains on state test scores were inflated when Illinois relaxed passing standards” and that many graduates matriculated without being suitably prepared for collegiate-level work. For his part, Duncan said, “I was focused on outcomes — improving graduation rates, making sure that students who graduated had a chance to pursue higher ed. You can have the best test scores in the world, but if kids aren’t going that next step, you’re not changing their lives.” What Duncan fails to see is that if kids are not ready for that next step, they will become discouraged and likely drop out. That is, just as Duncan resolved high school dropout rates by reducing standards and graduating more students, he likely increased the college dropout rate. He did not solve the problem; he simply shifted it.

He also created a new problem. Like the NYPD officers who fudged crime measurements, teachers have been found to fabricate test scores in order to reflect favorably on their jobs. Earlier this month, evidence of foul play was found in 191 schools in Georgia. The state’s education officials spotted “an abnormal number of erasures on answer sheets where the answers were changed from wrong to right, suggesting deliberate interference by teachers, principals or other administrators.” Georgia is among the states seeking to acquire a share of Duncan’s Race to the Top funds. Therefore, it is not unlikely that the Georgia cases are not isolated incidents, rather that they flag an increasing problem in the nation’s public schools.

The use of fallible data as the most telling indicator of an educator’s proficiency is susceptible to further corruption, which will lead to more individuals who will temporarily assuage the pervasive problems and leave them for some one else to fix. As Amherst economist Steven Rivkin said, “Test scores are very noisy measures of knowledge,” acknowledging that “it’s hard to come up with a model that can define the impact of the teacher separate from the community and the family.” The source of the problem is not easy to identify nor will it be easy to resolve. Simply singling out the most easily identifiable influence may provide insight into the issue but cannot prove to untangle it. To reform part of the problem does not complete the job.

To quote Duncan, “Numbers don’t lie, but they don’t tell the whole truth.”