On global comparisons, Australia performed equal 10th in science (down from 8th in 2012), 20th in maths (down from 17th) and 12th in reading (down from 10th).
There is a steady decline in the results since 2000, both in terms of overly simple international comparisons and absolute mean scores.
No doubt, similar to the response to Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) results last week, the media, politicians and education commentators will go into a panic over Australia sliding down the international rankings,falling standards in classrooms, and poor quality teachers.
Beyond the panicked headlines, what can we actually learn from the results of an international test that compares 15 year olds’ science, maths and reading skills in 72 countries and economies?
We need to have a more considered discussion about these test results rather than leaping to quick conclusions about a failing education system.
Scientific literacy
The main domain of the 2015 test was scientific literacy – the application of scientific knowledge and skills to solve problems.
Australia’s average score was 510, significantly above the OECD average of 493.
However, there has been an overall decline of 17 points since 2006. With the exception of the Northern Territory and Tasmania, most states performed well above the OECD average.
Singapore achieved the highest score of 556, which equates to roughly one and a half years more schooling than Australia.
While 61% of Australian students achieved the National Proficient Standard, only 11% were high performers (OECD average was 8%) and 18% were low performers (OECD average was 21%). This suggests that the majority of students might be doing okay, but few are excelling.
Mathematical literacy
The OECD average for mathematical literacy was 490, with Australia achieving 494. This is significantly below 19 other countries, including Singapore at 564 points. This is the equivalent of two and a half years more schooling.
The number of students reaching the National Proficient Standard in mathematical literacy was 61% in the Australian Capital Territory, but only 44% in Tasmania.
Reading literacy
Singapore achieved the highest result of 535 in reading literacy, equating to about one year more of schooling than Australia’s score of 503. The OECD average was 493.
Once again, the Northern Territory and Tasmania performed significantly below the OECD average, while all other states gained much higher results. Also, the spread between the lowest and highest Australian performers was significantly wider than the OECD average.
What the results mean
It is unhelpful to use the single country ranking to determine how we are going as there are significant variances between states/territories and school sectors (government, independent, Catholic).
Instead, we need to carefully disaggregate the data and consider the social and economic factors that influence performance across states, between schools, as well as the correlations between gender, Indigeneity, class, race, geographical location, and so on.
Australia has one of the widest ranges of student achievement, with what can be described as a long tail of underachievement.
For example, the difference in performance of students from the Australian Capital Territory and those in Tasmania and the Northern Territory is worth considering.
Furthermore, there is a difference of nearly three years of schooling between students in the highest socioeconomic quartile and the lowest, with similar differences when comparing Indigenous with non-Indigenous students.
Interestingly, boys only marginally outperformed girls on scientific literacy, with girls significantly outperforming boys on reading literacy, with no real difference on mathematical literacy.
It is also interesting to note that since the PISA tests began in 2000, the major federal education policy levers have included:
Significantly increased federal funding to private schools under John Howard, followed by a commitment by Julia Gillard that no school would lose a dollar.
Failure to implement Gonski’s needs-based funding of all schools.
The introduction of NAPLAN, MySchool, the Australian Curriculum and the AITSL national teaching standards by the Rudd-Gillard governments.
Increased emphasis on market measures for school provision, such as Independent Public Schools and school autonomy.
Yet over this time, the narrative of steady decline on PISA and TIMSS results continues, while educational inequality is on the rise.
Australia has one of the most segregated schooling systems in the world, and the OECD data provide a strong correlation between high-performing systems such as Singapore and factors of social cohesion and equity.
Further evidenced in secondary analysis of all PISA data over time is the strength of the correlation between equitable funding of schools and systemic performance on PISA.
If we want to address these sliding results then we must address the issue of educational inequality in Australia.
Social efficiency and social equity
There are competing tensions in the agenda of social efficiency and social equity, which is evident in how PISA results inform global and local education policy-making. This includes the emphasis on competing within a global knowledge economy.
It is worth noting how the economic rationalisation for greater educational equity plays out in the global policy field, particularly through testing regimes such as NAPLAN and PISA.
The challenge for policymakers, schools and teachers is how to respond to increasing pressure to lift test results on PISA, TIMSS and NAPLAN, while also addressing systemic inequality in order to ensure that every Australian student is given access to a meaningful
education.
Equitable funding of schools, including redistribution to schools serving disadvantaged communities, remains a pressing policy issue in Australia.
However, it is unlikely that we will see much more than panic and moral crusading in the media commentary over the coming days.
Once the hyperventilating dies down, we need to take a long, careful look at these results and what they mean for a more equitable and high-performing Australian schooling system.
The national report on National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) outcomes has been released today, showing the test results of Australian students in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9.
The report outlines student achievement in reading, numeracy, spelling, and grammar and punctuation, and shows performance has stagnated.
Around 95% percent of students are included in NAPLAN results, meaning they provide a reasonable guide to how well Australian students are learning core skills.
Other than Year 9 writing, over the last few years, overall Australian achievement has flatlined – it hasn’t gone backwards but nor has it improved.
Here is a breakdown of the findings for each year group that’s assessed:
Year 3
Student performance in Year 3 reading and spelling, grammar and punctuation has improved since 2008.
Boys are on average doing better than girls in numeracy, but girls on average do better in reading, writing, grammar and punctuation, and spelling.
Since 2008, reading scores in Australian Capital Territory, New South Wales, Northern Territory, Victoria, Queensland, and West Australia have improved.
Year 5
Student performance in reading and numeracy is significantly better in 2016 than it was in 2008. Average reading scores rose from 484.4 in 2008 to 501.5 in 2016. Numeracy scores rose from 475.9 in 2008 to 493.1 in 2016.
Reading scores in Tasmania, Victoria, West Australia and Queensland improved between 2008 and 2016. Girls on average scored higher than boys in writing, spelling, and grammar and punctuation, but not in reading.
Year 7
Overall, there has been little change in any area for Year 7 students since 2008. Girls on average scored higher than boys in some of the literacy domains.
Year 9
Numeracy and reading achievement has remained the same for Year 9 students since 2008.
Writing achievement has decreased since 2011, however, there have been changes in the genre examined over this time – from narrative writing to persuasive writing – so this may be influencing the results. From 2016 the genre returned to narrative writing.
Students from non-English speaking backgrounds:
In a number of cases the achievement of students from non-English speaking backgrounds tends to have a bigger spread than that of students whose parents’ first language is English. Our strongest students from non-English speaking backgrounds are doing very well, but there is a long achievement tail.
Indigenous students
Indigenous students are still achieving well below non-Indigenous students.
Over the past 9 years, there has been some improvement for Indigenous students in Years 3 and 5 in reading, and in Year 5 numeracy. But as with the national data, the improvements appeared in the first few years of NAPLAN and there has not been much progress recently.
Impact of parents’ education
Student achievement analysed by their parents’ education and employment makes familiar reading.
The report shows that the higher the parents’ levels of qualifications, and the higher their level of employment, the better their children do in school.
In most cases, the biggest gap is between the achievement of students whose parents completed Year 12, and those whose parents finished school in Year 11.
Does location make a difference?
On average, students based at schools in major cities perform the best. This is followed by those in inner regional locations, then outer regional locations. In remote and very remote areas, average achievement is lowest.
These results tell us that as a country we are not doing particularly well at neutralising the effects of disadvantage, whether this is through location or as reflected in levels of parental education and occupation.
The recent PISA results already showed us that Australian education does not do well on equity compared to similar countries like Canada.
Our school systems are not good at reducing the influence of students’ home backgrounds on their achievement. We need to try harder here.
This is likely to require a range of government actions that include a more equitable school funding regime, quality targeted teacher professional learning, and actions to reduce the class divisions that riddle our education systems.
What doesn’t it tell us?
While the report tells us a lot about the impact of broad factors such as student background, it can’t provide information on what is happening at a school level, or the reasons behind the general lack of improvement over the last few years.
Establishing why student achievement has flatlined is a complex business and is not covered by the data collected or the analyses.
Where to?
There are two important responses to the report that governments can take.
First, we could apply what we know is likely to improve student achievement across the board: supporting quality teacher professional learning based on our knowledge about improving student learning from the work of people like education expert John Hattie.
Second, we can and must do more to reduce the impact students’ home backgrounds has on their achievement.
Research shows that individual student background has an impact on achievement, but so does the mix of students in a school. Australia’s education system has become increasingly stratified.
So policies promoting a mix of student backgrounds in our schools, for example, by requiring that all schools enroll a percentage of students from more disadvantaged backgrounds to receive funding, would be another place to start.
Singapore has topped the global Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) rankings in maths, science and reading, while countries including Australia, France and the UK sit in the bottom batch of OECD countries for achievement in these areas.
So what is Singapore doing right, and do other countries want to emulate it?
Clearly there are things to learn. Singapore has invested heavily in its education system. Its teachers are the best and brightest, and it has developed highly successful pedagogic approaches to science, maths, engineering and technology (STEM) teaching, such as the “Maths Mastery” approach.
Culturally, Singaporeans have a strong commitment to educational achievement and there is a national focus on educational excellence.
Success in PISA rankings and other global league tables are an important part of the Singapore “brand”. Singaporean academic Christopher Gee calls this the “educational arms race”. Highly competitive schooling is the norm.
Role of private tuition
Public discussion in Australia around why we are not doing as well as the Singaporeans is largely focused on what goes on in that country’s schools.
Yet there is one thing missing from the reporting on Singapore’s success: the role of private tuition (private tutors and coaching colleges) and the part it plays in the overall success of students in the tiny city-state. Here are some startling figures:
60% of high school, and 80% of primary school age students receive private tuition.
40% of pre-schoolers receive private tuition.
Pre-schoolers, on average, attend two hours private tuition per week, while
primary school aged children are attending, on average, at least three hours per week.
That’s right. Eight out of ten primary school aged students in Singapore receive private tuition, either by way of private tuition or coaching colleges.
In 1992, that figure was around 30% for high school and 40% for primary school. The hours spent in tuition increase in late primary school, and middle-class children attend more hours than less well-off families.
The number of private coaching colleges has also grown exponentially in the last decade, with 850 registered centres in 2015, up from 700 in 2012.
Impact on family income
According to Singapore’s Household Expenditure Survey, private tuition in Singapore is a SGD$1.1 billion dollar industry (for a nation with a population of about 5.6 million) almost double the amount households spent in 2005 ($650 million). How does that look at the household level?
34% of those with children currently in tuition spend between $500 (AU$471) and $1,000 (AU$943) per month per child, while 16% spend up to $2,000.
Considering the bottom 5th quintile of households earn about $2,000 (AU$1,886) per month – the next quintile around $5,000 (AU$4,716) – this is a very large chunk of the family budget.
Imagine a family with two or three children and we get a sense of the potential socioeconomic inequalities at work when educational success depends on private tuition.
Surveys show that only 20% of those in the lowest two income brackets (a monthly income of less than $4,000) have a child in tuition.
One of the major tuition centre chains with outlets in shopping malls across Singapore. Author provided
Tuition centres
Tuition centres and coaching colleges range from more affordable neighbourhood and community based centres to large national “branded” coaching colleges with outlets in major shopping malls across the island.
The quality of tuition received is very much linked to how much one can afford to pay. It is big business.
The marketing strategies of the coaching colleges are very good at inducing anxiety in parents about fear of failure unless they are willing to pay to help their children get ahead.
Many parents complain that the schools “teach beyond the text”. That is, there is a perception that some teachers assume all the kids in the class are receiving tuition and thus teach above the curriculum level. Imagine the impact on those few children who are not receiving extra help.
Why does this start in pre-school and primary?
Singapore’s Primary School Leaving Exam (PSLE) is a seriously high-stakes exam that determines not just what high school a child will enter, but whether a child is streamed into a school that will fast track them to university.
Singaporeans do not have an automatic right to enrol their children into the “local” high school.
All high schools are selective and the best schools have the pick of the PSLE crop.
Primary students are streamed into four types of high school : the top ones feed students direct to university via the A-Level exams, while the bottom “technical” and “normal stream” schools feed into the institutes of technical education and polytechnics, with a much more complex pathway towards university.
Advertising poster for one of Singapore’s leading chain of coaching colleges ‘Mindchamps’. Author provided
The PSLE exam induces in 11 and 12 year olds the same level of anxiety seen in teenagers sitting the Higher School Certificate (HSC) or Victorian Certificate of Education (VCE) in Australia.
Many middle-class parents believe the “race” starts early.
Parents are increasingly expected to have their pre-school aged child reading and writing, and with basic maths skills before they even enter school – and this is frequently achieved through private pre-schools and “enrichment” tuition.
While there is much to genuinely admire about Singapore’s educational success story, there is a question about the role of private enterprise (private coaching colleges) in shaping childhoods and stoking parental anxieties.
A potential concern when private tuition reaches saturation point is that schools come to assume the level of the “coached child” as the baseline for classroom teaching.
Many Singaporean parents I have spoken to bemoan the hyper-competitive environment that forces their children into hours of extra tuition, impacting on family time and relationships and reducing opportunities for childhood free play, developing friendships and simply getting some decent rest. Many feel they have no choice.
Singaporeans have a term for this pathology: “Kiasu”, which means “fear of falling behind or losing out”. Policymakers, and indeed reporting, needs to be cognisant of exactly what produces these outlying educational success stories.
This is not to argue Singapore’s success is entirely due to out of school coaching. Singaporean schooling excels on many fronts. However given the levels of private tuition, it needs to be seen as a key part of the mix.
As a school student, I awaited the arrival of the end-of-year report with a bracing mix of hope and fear.
Now, as Australia’s Chief Scientist, I’m worried once again about school reports.
Our proudly first-class country, with a prosperous economy and an egalitarian spirit, must not be fair-to-middling when it comes to science and maths in schools. On theevidence before me, we are.
Do I believe that international testing can capture everything of importance in Australian education? No.
But do I take these findings seriously? Yes, I do.
Our performance in absolute terms is stalling, or in decline, and our position in global rankings continues to fall.
International comparisons
Canada now scores significantly higher across all PISA and Year 8 TIMSS domains. England has improved its TIMSS performance, while also decreasing the proportion of low-performing students.
Australia, by contrast, is one of only three countries with significantly decreased maths and science scores in this round of PISA. And the difference between children in Australia’s highest and lowest socioeconomic quartiles recorded by PISA is the equivalent of three full years of school.
While we demand to be top ten in sport, we are barely scraping top 20 in schools.
In PISA maths, we have fallen as low as 25. How much lower are we prepared to go?
My concern is not the temporary wound to national pride. It is the enduring harm we do when students leave school with malnourished potential – or worse, no interest at all – in disciplines that they require to navigate their world. We need to improve.
Let’s start by defining the aim: the best possible education in maths and science (and literacy) for every child, irrespective of gender, region, income or incoming ability.
In the 21st century, we can no more write off a child because “he’s not into numbers” any more than we would accept that “she’s not keen on the alphabet”.
Maths is not just the language of science and technology, but the foundation of commerce, the core of engineering, and the bread and butter of every trade from cooking to construction.
How can we hold governments to account if journalists can’t interpret data and citizens can’t make sense of charts?
How can we resist the prophets of the post-truth world? When everything we value is at stake, surely nothing less than our utmost will do.
So with that aim in mind, let’s agree to share the task: yes, we do bear individual responsibility; but, no, we cannot lay the blame solely on individuals, be they principals, teachers, parents or students.
There is no point in exhorting individuals to aim high unless we help them to make the leap. If we want excellence, we have to provide a system with the incentives, enablers and rewards for improvement built in.
Policy responses
For me, that comes down to a new three Rs for education.
Restore maths prerequisites for courses
Restore meaningful maths prerequisites for all university courses that, no-one could argue, need numbers.
This would reverse the exodus from advanced maths courses and set students up for success – in commerce and accounting, as well as science and engineering. Just as importantly, it would give principals a reason to make the quality of their maths programs a priority all the way from kindergarten to Year 12.
Respect teaching
The single most important factor in the classroom is the human up the front. The education system must be engineered around that fundamental premise, so that high-achieving students become highly qualified teachers with well-targeted professional development.
Crucially, teacher training and development need a strong discipline-specific focus. It should be expected that our science and maths teachers are experts in their fields, with both the technical and pedagogical knowledge to teach them well.
The Commonwealth Science Council strongly endorsed this principle at its last meeting in September, and requested the Department of Education to investigate options to bring it about.
Recognise the influence of school leaders
Principals set the tone in their schools and, with the right strategic focus, they can drive a culture of constant improvement. Without that senior leadership, it is simply too hard for individual teachers to keep the bar consistently high – another reality the Commonwealth Science Council has acknowledged.
Of course, ambitious aims have investment pathways attached. But money spent is not a proxy for effort invested, and it is certainly not a reliable predictor of success.
As a businessman, I learned that no project delivers what you want unless the how comes before the how much.
Face the hard truths, aim high, be strategic – and we might just receive a school report we can be proud to display.
The Grattan Institute has proposed that a 15% surcharge should be added to the Higher Education Loan Program (HELP) debt of undergraduate and college students.
The surcharge is not an up front fee. It is a fee that is added to the existing debt and paid later, depending on a graduate’s future income. Repayments are only made if a graduate’s income exceeds about A$56,000 per annum.
This flat rate means that, while a graduate’s loan would initially increase by 15%, that figure would not get bigger over time.
Currently full-fee undergraduates pay a 25% fee on their loans, vocational education students a 20% fee, while postgraduate and government-supported students pay no loan fee. There is no obvious reason for these disparities and they seem to have evolved through a lack of policy attention by many governments.
So for administrative simplicity and coherence it would seem a good idea that all HELP loans are treated in the same way.
Not a radical idea
The 15% surcharge might seem like a radical reform idea, but the notion of a surcharge actually fits comfortably with the underlying economics of the HELP system, and was part of the original HECS design of 1989.
Benefits to low income earners
While an increase in the size of the loan may raise the ire of prospective students, it is important to remember that this does not leave those who go on to earn a lower income any worse off relative to their wealthier counterparts.
In fact they would be better off under this reform, because there would be no financial advantage to paying off the loan quickly. This is not currently the case.
The lower income earners who take longer to pay off their loans as the system is now are also penalised with having to pay back more interest over time.
In this sense, the change will act as a kind of subsidy on the loans of lower income earners, negating some of the cost and keeping loans from spiralling out of control.
Benefits to the government
A starting point is that the government already passes a considerable discount to students by indexing the loans by the CPI instead of the government’s own cost of borrowing.
While in the past the suggestion of imposing a real, and much higher rate of interest on the loans has been floated, it has been demonstrated that this is not the most equitable solution.
While a 15% spike in underlying cost may understandably attract headlines, this isn’t out of the blue. Having a surcharge on HELP debts for normal undergraduates was part of the original HECS design, but it took the form of a 20% discount for those who chose to pay up front.
This is just the other side of the coin of a surcharge, and was part of the original policy to cover the interest rate issue explained above.
Also, there are already surcharges on other HELP debts, and these are currently (and strangely) different depending on the nature of the tertiary education that people are undertaking.
Why 15% fee?
However, these points in favour of a surcharge should not be conflated with a judgement concerning what is the “correct” level of HELP charges in total.
This means that simply adding a 15% surcharge is an implicit recognition that the debts for graduates are too low at the moment, and should be increased.
The case for a surcharge should be made independently from the issue of what the correct overall level of a charge should be.
The economic case of the Grattan argument for a surcharge stands without reference to any budgetary concerns related to the level of HECS debts, which is a considerably more complicated (and ultimately political) judgement.
Australia is struggling to improve its performance in maths due to a lack of continuity in policymaking.
While Australia tends to plan in three-year cycles, the countries that are performing the best – or making significant improvements – in international rankings for maths, such as Singapore, Finland and Japan – tend to revise their maths curriculum every five to six years.
This allows teachers to become fully acquainted with new initiatives and provides time for the bedding down of any changes to previous practice. It also allows curriculum developers and system administrators to evaluate the effectiveness of innovations.
So what impact has a lack of continuity had on maths education in Australia?
Slipping standards in maths
The last two international tests revealed that Australia is failing to improve in maths education.
The results of these assessments indicate that the performance of Australian students is declining in both an absolute sense and in comparison to students from an increasing number of other nations.
The government and opposition have blamed each other for the situation, claiming the failure of respective policy direction and its implementation.
Impact of continuity in policy
It is hard to ignore the fact that there are nations that have made changes to their approach to maths education and made significant comparative progress.
In the case of Singapore, revision of the curriculum does not mean throwing out all aspects of previous practice and beginning again. Rather, it means a meticulous process of reviewing what has been effective and what needs to be improved or added to prepare students for the world they will move into – not just the world as it exists.
Curriculum is based on knowledge and practices that have served students well in the past, but is also future orientated.
This period of time also provides an opportunity for curriculum developers and system administrators to evaluate the effectiveness of innovations.
The approach to curriculum development is national, focused, carefully coordinated and then thoroughly evaluated.
In Australia, however, education is the responsibility of the respective states and territories. This poses a serious challenge for a coherent coordination of our curriculum development efforts.
Development of an Australian curriculum
The Australian Curriculum was heralded as a landmark in national cooperation in education.
Through the process of negotiation for its development and implementation, however, has emerged a determination by states and territories to preserve their differences and distinctiveness.
Some states have been accused of making superficial efforts to align with a national approach.
State efforts at curriculum development have a tendency to respond to whatever political pressure point is being stimulated at any time. For example, the most recent performance on NAPLAN results are prone to quick fix solutions.
Such flightiness brings into question how any long-term effective change brought about and rigorously evaluated.
Consequently, when looking at our national effort, it appears to be disjointed, unfocused, somewhat ad hoc in its development and close to impossible to evaluate in terms of student outcomes.
Introduction of teaching standards
Australia has created a number of measures to help improve its performance in maths. These include:
The introduction of the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL) national teaching standards, which include a requirement that all graduating teachers have the ability to promote students’ numeracy capabilities across the curriculum.
A numeracy (and literacy) tests for initial teacher education students to ensure graduating teachers have the necessary level of personal numeracy to be effective in classrooms.
Restoring the Focus on STEM in School Initiative, which aims to support the teaching of science, technology, engineering and mathematics subjects in primary and secondary schools.
These initiatives demonstrate the commitment of considerable federal resources for the purpose of enhancing the nation’s mathematical (and scientific) capabilities.
Taken as a suite, this list seems to represent a comprehensive approach to improving students’ mathematics outcomes – all aspects of curriculum, teacher pre-service education and teacher in-service education receive attention.
So why has this (what appears to be) well thought-out plan proved to be seemly ineffective?
Continuity of funding
Having been part of a number of federally-funded programs aimed at strengthening the teaching capabilities, I think it is fair to say that most have been successful in what they set out to achieve.
Programs such as the Enhancing Training of Mathematics and Science Teachers, for example, were carefully scoped out and then thoroughly monitored throughout their implementation. They are now undergoing stringent evaluation.
But no matter how successful, no program has any chance of securing additional funding. We appear to set agendas, allocate funds, complete projects and then move on to something new – unlike many successful countries that value continuity in their approach to teacher professional learning.
While project leaders will always have in place plans for the sustainability of the work begun through a program, the hard reality is that without further funding those involved will be expected to find new projects and income streams and move on.
In her first statement as prime minister in July 2016, Theresa May said that “if you’re at a state school, you’re less likely to reach the top professions than if you’re educated privately”. Such claims have often prompted calls for access to independent schools to be made easier for low-income students. However, questions remain about whether programmes to widen access reach the students targeted or produce the desired outcomes for them.
On December 9, in response to recent government demands that independent schools strengthen their connections with state schools to maintain their charitable status, the Independent Schools Council (ISC) announced a proposal to create up to 10,000 free places in independent schools every year for low-income families. These places would be jointly funded by independent schools and government.
Rather than adopting the prime minister’s requirement that independent schools create or sponsor new state schools, the ISC is effectively reviving and expanding the Assisted Places scheme. This offered around 75,000 free places at independent schools to students between 1981 to 1997 before the incoming New Labour government abolished it and used the funding to reduce class sizes in state primary schools.
Assisted places
A 1998 study looking at the impact of the Assisted Places scheme suggested that it did not increase diversity in the system or enhance opportunities for the target group of working-class and inner-city children. Instead, it may have simply reinforced elitist tendencies within the English education system. A survey of former assisted place-holders in adulthood also found that while they regarded themselves as “successful” in terms of their education and careers, they attributed this to ability and hard work, rather than the schools themselves. Around half of them had sent their own children to private schools, perpetuating the elitism noted in the earlier study.
But beyond whether assisted places in independent schools actually help targeted students, are independent schools actually better than state schools? While many studies have attempted to explore whether independent schools are superior in terms of student attainment at school and beyond, they tend to have been small in scale or focused on a particular part of the school system. Research undertaken for the ICS in 2016 took a broader view, looking at students from the age of four and found a difference in GCSE grades between independent and state schools, which they associated with the equivalent of two additional years schooling by the age of 16 for independent school students.
However, the study was also clear that unidentified external factors could have affected their findings. It seems likely that the development of “soft” skills, such as influencing and networking, often associated with independent school students and likely to derive from experiences and connections outside of school, may also give them an edge.
And despite their profile and subsequent success, only 7% of the total student population attend independent schools, which makes it difficult to compare their outcomes with the much larger group of state-school students. Research published in 2015 by the Higher Education Funding Council for England initially found that more state-school students achieved a first or upper second class degree than independent school students, until it was revealed that they had got their figures the wrong way round. It was not revealed where the perpetrators of the error in HEFCE had gone to school.
One of the main problems is that the independent vs state school issue casts such a long shadow that proponents of either side of the divide tend to seize on whatever evidence they can as a vindication of their view.
The more important point is that, regardless of how far you accept the available evidence of independent schools’ superiority in terms of student achievement or career success, ICS’s new proposal would only involve a relatively small number of young people. At the same time, it runs the risk of entrenching existing divides and, alongside the revival of grammar schools, increasing selection. Evidence from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development suggests thatincreasing selection does not improve the performance of school systems overall. This means that the ICS proposal may benefit the few that are able to access it, but is likely to have a much greater negative effect on the many that do not.
Over recent years, other countries’ positions have gone up and down in the tables but East Asian education – which includes China, Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea and Japan – continues to dominate. And the gap between these countries and the rest of the world is getting wider.
The reasons why East Asian countries are way ahead of the pack as far as education is concerned has long been debated – but it essentially seems to come down to the following four factors.
1. Culture and mindset
There is a high value placed on education and a belief that effort rather than innate ability is the key to success. East Asian researchers usually point to this as the most important factor for this regions high test results.
The positive aspect of this approach to education is that there is an expectation that the vast majority of pupils will succeed. Learners are not labelled and put into “ability” groups – as they are in England, where this is the norm even in many primary schools. So, in East Asian countries, everyone has the same access to the curriculum – which means many more pupils are able to get those high grades.
Formal schooling is also supplemented by intensive after-school tuition – at the extreme this can see children studying well into the night – and sometimes for up to three hours of extra school in the evening on top of two hours of homework a day.
But while this intensive after school study can get results, it’s important to recognise that in many East Asian countries, educators worry about the quality and influence these “crammers” have on the mental health and well-being of children. And many studies looking at pupils’ experiences in these schools have reported high levels of adolescent stress and a sense of pressure to achieve – for both the students and their parents.
The crème de la cram.
2. The quality of teachers
Teaching is a respected profession in East Asia, where there is stiff competition for jobs, good conditions of service, longer training periods and support for continuing and extensive professional development.
In Shanghai, teachers have much lower teaching workloads than in England – despite the bigger classes. And they use specialist primary mathematics teachers, who teach two 35-40 minute lessons a day. This gives the teachers time for planning – or the chance to give extra support to pupils that need it – along with time for professional development in teacher research groups.
In Japan, “lesson study” is embedded in primary schools. This involves teachers planning carefully designed lessons, observing each other’s teaching, and then drawing out the learning points from these observations. And lesson study also gives teachers time to research and professionally develop together.
3. Using the evidence
Ironic though it may be, much of the theoretical basis for East Asian education has been heavily influenced by research and developments in the West. For example, Jerome Bruner’s theory of stages of representation which says that learners need hands-on experiences of a concept – then visual representations – as a basis for learning symbolic or linguistic formulations.
This has been translated in Singapore as a focus on concrete, pictorial and abstract models in mathematical learning. For example, this might mean arranging counters in rows of five to learn the five times table, then using pictures of hands that each have five digits, before writing multiplication facts in words, and then adding in numerals and the multiplication and equals signs.
Teaching is a highly respected job in East Asia.
4. A collective push
In the 1970s, Singapore’s educational outcomes lagged behind the rest of the world – the transformation of Singaporean education was achieved through systemic change at national level that encompassed curriculum development, national textbooks and pre-service and in-service teacher education.
Similarly in Shanghai and South Korea educational change and improvement is planned and directed at a national level. This means that all schools use government approved curriculum materials, there is more consistency about entry qualifications to become a teacher and there is much less diversity of types of schools than in the UK.
The success of East Asian education has turned these countries into “reference societies” – ones by which policymakers in the UK and elsewhere measure their own education systems and seek to emulate. Interest in East Asian education in the UK has informed the current “mastery approach” which is used in primary mathematics. Teaching for mastery uses methods found in Shanghai and Singapore and has been the basis of many recent research projects – some sponsored by government funding and others promoted by educational charities or commercial organisations.
But of course, only time will tell if some of the success of these two education systems can be reproduced in the UK, while avoiding some of the negative experiences – such as stress and burnout – associated with the East Asian approach to education.
The signature issue for Betsy DeVos, nominated to be the next U.S. Secretary of Education, is giving parents freedom of choice, either to choose charter schools or to use vouchers to buy an education at any school they like, public or private. The logical extension of such policies – permitting students to take individual courses wherever they wish, by using online options – has already begun to take root in about a dozen states.
It’s called “Course Access” or “Course Choice.” Under such plans, the funding for a course taken by an individual student goes to the school or online company offering the course, often away from the student’s local district. In Nevada, in fact, parents can spend state education dollars any way they please — on private, public, online, part-time and full-time schools, on tutoring and extra books — through education savings accounts, which an advocate for them calls “the purest form of educational freedom.”
As they have emerged in some states, these programs have been assisted by conservative groups such as Jeb Bush’s Chiefs for Change and the Koch Industries-backed American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). It remains to be seen whether a Trump Administration will boost them further, using federal policy.
The growth of “Course Choice” initiatives in various states was chronicled in depth by The Hechinger Report last year, in this story from our archives.
— The editors
Thanks to a relatively new state policy, all spring Clarke went to the school library during second period for an online sociology class.
“It was very cool,” said Clarke, noting it lived up to his psychology teacher’s description: “It was a very interesting topic with some things that will tie back to psychology.”
This initiative, often called “Course Choice” or “Course Access,” is, as one proponent described it, like “school choice on steroids.”
Proponents count at least 10 states that have adopted a collection of policies they began promoting as Course Access — policies that allow students to take classes part-time online (and sometimes in other off-campus classrooms) by choosing from a variety of providers, including charter schools and other districts, instead of being limited to their local course offerings or to one state virtual school. And the Course Access movement is gaining momentum as it expands across the country, with eight states adopting or considering such laws in just the last four years, according to a comprehensive report on Course Access sponsored by the conservative group the Foundation for Excellence in Education and the lobbying firm EducationCounsel.
For Clarke and other students, online schools mean options, but for school district officials, they can mean less revenue, as education dollars flow toward charter schools or other districts that offer the online courses.
And, not unlike what often happens with charter schools and vouchers, the Course Access policies can set up a competition for limited education dollars.
States generally allocate money per student to districts, but in states with Course Access, districts have to share that funding based on the number of courses a student takes elsewhere. Much of the money can end up in the hands of for-profit companies that supply the curriculum, directly provide the classes or run the online schools in which students enroll part time.
“What is possible is the exploding wiring — if you will — of money across district lines or even state lines,” said Patricia Burch, associate professor of education and policy at the University of Southern California. “That can have a very immediate funding implication for a district.”
“It is a significant cost,” said Randy Paulson, Chatfield High’s principal. His school, with 400 students, can manage it partly because no more than 40 students a year are taking an online class. In Chatfield’s case, nearly all the classes are provided by the Minnesota Virtual Academy, run by the Houston Public School District about 40 miles away, with help from the for-profit company K12 Inc.
“What we want to do is serve our own students the best we can,” said Paulson, noting that adding an online class or two sometimes helps keep students in school. “We don’t want to lose students. If we lose students, we’re not able to provide students those opportunities.”
Similar to efforts to open charter schools or offer vouchers for private schools, Course Access aims to allow students (usually in high school) and their families to make choices — in this case, about where to go for individual classes. Advocates believe that the programs have the potential to appeal to all students, even those who would never consider leaving their local schools or don’t have the option of a charter school.
“We think the market is infinite,” said Mary Gifford, senior vice president of education policy and academic affairs at K12 Inc., the nation’s largest virtual school operator, which provides the curriculum and some management for the school where Clarke and his classmates enrolled. She said that although no more than 1 or 2 percent of U.S. students will ever enroll in virtual schools full-time, the company is now working closely with districts to help them start online programs as part of Course Access policies.
So far, only a tiny fraction of eligible students have enrolled for online classes. For example, in Minnesota, which began allowing part-time online enrollment in 2006, roughly 1 percent (5,520) of the state’s secondary school students enrolled during the 2013-14 school year, according to the Minnesota Department of Education.
But the policy has powerful backers, including at least three Republican presidential candidates — former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal and Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker — along with conservative groups such as the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC, the Koch Industries-backed association of state legislators and businesses), not to mention allies in the for-profit education business.
“If you rewind and go back to the last election cycle, you had at least two governors campaigning on Course Access,” said John Bailey, vice president of policy at the Jeb Bush-founded Foundation for Excellence in Education, referring to governors Bruce Rauner of Illinois and Greg Abbott of Texas.
And the reform-minded group Chiefs for Change, also founded by Jeb Bush, is pushing to include a provision in the update to the federal No Child Left Behind Act to set aside 5 percent of Title I dollars to be used, among other things, for Course Access. (The House version of the bill already sets aside 3 percent, or roughly $410 million, mostly for outside tutoring services; changes could be made when the House and Senate versions are reconciled in conference committee.)
Many of these backers prefer the term Course Access to Course Choice, to distinguish it from school choice and the controversies surrounding it, and also as a way of indicating its focus on addressing many schools’ lack of course offerings.
As states around the country try to prepare more students for college and careers, they are working to provide more students with access to advanced classes, particularly in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). The widespread lack of access to some key courses — only half of all high schools nationwide offer calculus and just 63 percent have physics — has become a rallying cry for Course Access supporters.
“Having a high-quality education must no longer depend on location,” wrote Jeb Bush in the introduction to last year’s Course Access policy brief. “For the next generation of students, the international stakes are too high to restrict access to great courses based on ZIP code.”
Yet at least so far, the program may not be living up to its promise of creating greater access for the very kids who might need it most. The students using the program in Texas are wealthier and whiter overall than the public school population as a whole, suggesting that gaps in access persist online. Data on the Florida Virtual School show a similar trend; in Utah, a stunningly low 6.15 percent of students participating in the state’s Course Access program are officially listed as poor enough to qualify for a fee waiver, though officials said course providers might not be filling out the information correctly.
Utah — the model legislation and its aftermath
When Utah passed the law creating a Course Access program in 2011, school districts panicked over what it would do to their budgets.
“We were fearful because those who were pushing it were pretty intense,” said Ken Grover, now the principal of Innovations Early College High School in Salt Lake City, describing billboards that advertised free online courses.
The program — officially called the Statewide Online Education Program — has been phased in over time. High school students this fall will be able to take up to five classes online during the school year while remaining enrolled in their local high school. This past school year, when students could take four classes online, it cost districts up to $366 per student per semester, according to the Utah State Office of Education.
In the fall of 2016, students will be able to take up to six online classes (usually considered a full load of coursework) while remaining enrolled.
Utah’s Course Access legislation also allows kids in private schools and home-schooled kids to participate through a separate funding stream.
The Utah policy was the model for what conservative backers of the program had imagined. In fact, Utah’s legislation is one of two officially approved by the Koch-backed ALEC. (The other, which contains two possible funding options, is based on a law passed in Louisiana, though later overturned by its state court, and on the law passed in Texas.)
The disaster that public school districts in Utah anticipated never materialized — partly because, within a few months, many districts in the state had established online schools to compete for dollars with the online charter schools.
Canyons School District, for example, went from having no online students in 2011 to 1,900 this past year. They are all enrolled part time, and all but 400 come from within the district, said Darren Draper, who runs what he’s been told is the largest of the district’s part-time schools, the Canyons Virtual High School.
“That’s huge,” said Draper. “If we didn’t build CVHS, we would have many students going elsewhere, without question.”
In fact, just 1,367 students in the entire state took an online class outside their district in 2014-15, according to preliminary state figures, meaning district budgets were largely spared.
In the end, advocates of the change and public school officials who balked at the measure can both claim victory in Utah — at least so far.
Course Access backers, however, claim credit for creating the competition that spurred the public schools to change.
“We changed the landscape in the state entirely,” said Robyn Bagley, board chair for Parents for Choice in Education, a Utah group that advocated for the law locally. “The amount of options skyrocketed in some form or another.”
Bagley maintains that the program has already grown dramatically in its first four years and will expand further.
But Grover said he doesn’t expect to see a spike in numbers. “Most parents want their kids to go to school,” he said. “They want them at school learning. It’s their identity.”
(In perhaps a reflection of where online learning is headed, both Bagley and Grover now run blended-learning schools that they say offer the best of both worlds — the personalization of an online school with the in-person interactions of a traditional school.)
Although rural Texas districts depend on Course Access, statewide its enrollments have dropped
Rural school districts across the state of Texas are using its version of Course Access to offer courses to fulfill basic high school requirements and even to save money.
In the tiny Dell City Independent School District, with fewer than 100 children enrolled in kindergarten through 12th grade, every single middle and high school student was enrolled in an online social studies class after the district’s teacher left mid-year. Algebra II and Spanish classes were also offered virtually, said Veronica Gomez, a physical education teacher who doubles as the liaison to the Texas Virtual Academy Network, as the statewide program is officially called.
“We live in a rural area; it’s out in the middle of nowhere,” she said. “We don’t have the staff. Because we don’t have the staff, we have to go online.” The district hadn’t found a good candidate to teach Spanish, she said, but added that the online program has other advantages: “It’s cheaper for us. We don’t have to pay benefits or anything like that.”
Most Texas districts, however, appear to be taking a different route — they are opting to spend money on their own schools and teachers instead of paying for online classes.
When the state originally started up the Texas Virtual School Network Course Catalog, in 2009, students could take courses online without the districts having to cover the costs; the state had allocated a separate pool of money for the program.
But after the state stopped covering the cost, the number of spots filled in the semester-long online classes dropped precipitously, from 22,899 in 2010-11 to 5,757 in 2013-14. The wording of the state law may have been a major factor.
The law says that districts can turn down a student’s request for a state-vetted online class only if their school offers a “substantially similar” class. Backers of Course Access said they think many districts are using a generous interpretation of that concept (they tried unsuccessfully this spring to get the legislature to close that loophole).
Louisiana’s new source of funding for college and career classes
In a striking innovation, Louisiana adopted a program, officially called Course Choice, that includes not just online courses but off-campus classes as well. As the law was originally written in Louisiana, for-profit companies and other outside groups could compete to directly provide the online or in-person classes, with parents and students choosing among them and funding going to the winners.
The political opposition to the program was initially fierce, and the law was challenged successfully. The state Supreme Court ruled that the funding approach was unconstitutional because it didn’t provide local school boards a say. Lawmakers revamped the program, removing the competition for resources, allowing schools to control what classes their students enrolled in and adding additional money — in essence, guaranteeing extra funding for the extra classes.
The revised program has expanded rapidly, according to the Louisiana Department of Education, with 19,068 semester-long Course Choice enrollments in 2014-15, just its second year. While the state has been championed as the model for Course Access policies, state superintendent John White said the program hasn’t lived up to his original vision.
The program was originally conceived as a way to bring new and inspiring classes to high school students preparing for life after graduation, White said, with “things that would not have existed without Course Choice.”
Although a welding program, an elite private college’s associates degree program and an ACT-preparation program have successfully flourished as prime examples of innovation under the revised program, schools across the state are most commonly using the program to prepare high school students for life after graduation, specifically allowing students to earn college credit through the state’s four-year universities, technical and community colleges. More than two-thirds (13,000) of the course enrollments have been in these so-called dual-enrollment classes.
“That’s an important thing,” White said, but added, “much of that would exist — not all of it, but much of it would exist without Course Choice.” (Significant numbers of students already took dual-enrollment classes before Course Choice ever started.) He had also hoped, with the initial bill, to put decision-making control in the hands of parents instead of school boards, and argues that the program now has less innovation as a result.
White, who heads the Chiefs for Change group, said federal funding of Course Access, if changes are made to the No Child Left Behind Act, could drive further innovation, with outside groups essentially guaranteed a chance at significant funds. “You’re going to attract a lot of actors that you wouldn’t otherwise attract — creative actors,” he said.
Despite the wide consensus that the program is now working, critics still aren’t happy about how it was originally conceived in Louisiana. “I think it was an ALEC-driven, an American Legislative Exchange-driven, initiative that Superintendent White felt would work in Louisiana,” said the Louisiana School Boards Association executive director, Scott Richard, who helped launch a lawsuit against the state program as it was initially conceived.
“I think it’s all part of the national reform, so-called reform, from the national think tanks,” he added, arguing that the new form of Course Choice had provided districts with resources to make important changes.
White said his inspiration was the online experience in Louisiana and with charter schools and school choice generally, but acknowledged that, because schools are happier with the revised version of the program, principals and teachers are collaborating with the state on everything from scheduling problems to reaching students who hadn’t had access to courses in the past.
Some proponents of Course Access now say that a program that doesn’t start off as competitive for funding may be best.
“I don’t see one system as better than the other; they’re just very different,” White said.
Other options besides Course Access
Of course, for many advocates of Course Access, the program represents just one possibility for changing the public education system — their goal is to put more power in the hands of students and parents to decide where state education dollars are spent.
Nevada passed a law in June that allows parents to spend state education dollars any way they please — on private, public, online, part-time and full-time schools, on tutoring and extra books — through education savings accounts, or “vouchers on steroids,” as they were called in one news story about the legislation. (Four other states have similar laws, but they limit the savings accounts significantly — to students with special needs, in foster care and/or from high-poverty households.)
“I think Course Choice is sort of evolving, just as a policy area, into what you may know as an educational savings account,” said Lindsay Russell, the director of the ALEC Task Force on Education and Workforce Development. “We’re evolving as a country, and I think students continue to need to be competitive, not only within the United States, but globally as we continue to slip. I think educational savings accounts are the purest form of educational freedom.”
Course Access in its current form, while seemingly less radical than Nevada’s approach, appeals to some of its more conservative backers because it can be set up to pay schools and other course providers only when students complete a course (or potentially pass an outside exam).
Proponents call this a step toward accountability and paying for the right thing — results, instead of student attendance, especially given the dismal completion rates for online classes. (In Louisiana and Utah, providers of courses receive half on enrollment and half when the course is completed, for example.)
“Nevada is the poster child for seeing a different way to approach this,” said Michael Horn, co-founder and executive director of the Clayton Christensen Institute. “We need to step back and start learning what policy environments work in terms of incentivizing the right behavior. Course Access is this intriguing place to play with a lot of policies that move away from seat time toward competency-based learning and measuring individual student growth and things like that.”
This story was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Read more about blended learning.
St. Rita’s Catholic School in New Orleans, Monday, Aug. 24, 2015. Photo: Cheryl Gerber for The Hechinger Report
Equity in education is more important than ever.
Although the divide between the haves and the have-nots in this country has been widening for years, the 2016 presidential race and, in particular, the surprising victory by Donald Trump underscored the growing discontent caused by unequal access to the American Dream.
The outcry we heard on both sides of the political spectrum should make clear the extraordinary burden and risk created by income inequality, which is now at its highest level since the Great Depression. While the new economy has brought opportunity to many Americans, it’s undoubtedly left others behind.
Historically, education has been the primary vehicle that drives upward mobility. At a time when high-level skills are in demand, the stakes have never been greater for individual and societal success in a competitive global economy.
The lack of attention to education during the run-up to the presidential election left many to wonder just how much of a priority quality educational opportunity is for most Americans.
We didn’t hear much in the way of education policy from either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton along the campaign trail. At this point, it’s unclear what, if any, specific policy agenda a Trump administration may have for education.
Once the inauguration is over, it is foreseeable that education could become lost in the partisan politics of immigration, international trade and healthcare. And yet, education is the lynchpin to our shared American dream. And if we fail to act, if we lose focus on the inextricable link between education and access to a good life, our shared American Dream will indeed devolve into our shared — and it will be shared —American nightmare.
However, by taking it upon ourselves to create a more inclusive and equitable education experience for students regardless of where they start in life, we can help reduce poverty over the long term by helping poor children become more productive during adulthood and creating economic growth in the process.
If the goal of the Trump administration is to expand economic opportunity for everyone, it should start by encouraging a more equitable education system. What does educational equity look like? I believe there are six components.
First, educational equity is diverse. We can’t achieve equity in education without diversity — broadly defined in terms of socioeconomics and race, as well as by cultural and gender identity. We should see an inclusive snapshot of our changing America in every classroom. Anyone who studied the electoral maps on election night might think this is out of reach. But it is possible and it should be a priority.
Second, it’s governed by high expectations and high standards, grounded in the belief that all children can (and do) learn regardless of who they are or where they live. The focus should be on what they are learning and how well they learn it. Further, it requires high expectations and high standards from teachers, administrators, students, parents and anyone else who touches the learning community. All students, including those who are historically our least well-served, should acquire relevant and meaningful knowledge, skills and the ability to think and learn so that they can be successful in college and beyond.
Third, it aligns school achievement with student and teacher success. The Trump administration should take steps to prioritize real-time assessment of our learners, continuous on-the-job professional development for our teachers and post-graduation performance over teacher tenure and high-stakes testing.
Fifth, it provides adequate and sustained funding and financial support. To cultivate a high-performance learning community academically, nutritionally, emotionally and physically, the Trump administration should ensure that financial support is available where, when and how it is needed. Starving the public education system will only further exacerbate the opportunity gap that currently exists.
Finally, educational equity cultivates graduates who possess relevant skills. There are clearly large swaths of American workers who are struggling significantly to adjust to the new global economy. Our goal for education should be for individuals to have relevant and globally competitive capabilities that will help them not just to survive but to thrive in the global marketplace. We want graduates who can confidently secure gainful employment, create and lead new innovative organizations, and pursue post-graduate degrees.
If there’s one thing most people can agree on following this historic 2016 election, it’s that we are a nation that is increasingly divided. Inequality, and the anxiety and discontent that it engenders, can no longer be ignored. We all want the best for future generations. To achieve that, we must take steps now to ensure equal educational opportunity that can help all children rise to their full abilities, no matter where they come from, where they learn or where they live. Only with their success should we be able to sleep soundly, and keep the American Dream alive.
Jessie Woolley-Wilson is the president and CEO of DreamBox Learning, an online software provider that focuses on K-8 math education.
Generation Citizen students present their political work.
“I hate politics so much.”
That’s what a 10th grader in the Bronx had to say recently while struggling to comprehend the election of Donald Trump as president, articulating the thoughts of many students, especially young people of color, at schools across the country. “Why would you want a racist, sexist man as president?” the student asked, adding, “Minorities have been fighting for our rights for the past 200 years and now all of that is going to waste.”
It is vital that we seize on these moments to teach our young people valuable lessons about government and democracy. As a national nonprofit dedicated to teaching young people to be active citizens, we neither endorse this student’s comments nor suggest that all young people share the same views. Instead, we acknowledge that the presidential election’s aftermath has been emotional for all, creating despair in some parts, ecstasy in others.
While many Americans attempt to figure out the ramifications of a Trump presidency, no constituency matters more than young people. Teachers are struggling to talk about the election with their students. Some are avoiding the topic altogether, knowing that it will bring up charged emotions for both students and parents.
Although we are expanding to Oklahoma and Central Texas, we currently predominantly work in liberal corridors.
This reality, and the election’s result, has made us reflect on our own work, asking whether we should make a more intentional effort to ensure that civics education is a subject that is actively pursued beyond just the coastal areas.
Beyond our immediate work to address how teachers can address the election in their classes, our organization is using the election’s results to better determine how civics education may be a necessary antidote to the unprecedented vitriol that took place during the election.
There are no simple answers. But we will provide some suggestions that have come out of our recent work.
First, students need to be able to talk about the election in class.
It is challenging but necessary for educators to address these weighty topics. As one of our 8th grade students said, “You will feel better after hearing how others feel, realizing that you’re not alone, and that there are people supporting you.”
Classroom discussion about the election allow students to voice the enormity of emotions that they feel and provides an opportunity to air and rectify the inaccurate information surrounding the results. Most importantly, conversation can help to clarify that the political trajectory is a long one. Whether or not the students agree or disagree with Trump, they still need to engage — now, perhaps more than ever.
In order to actually engage, students need a space to express themselves without being judged by educators or their peers. While this may be difficult for an educator, it is important to not “fact check” emotions.
Civic engagement requires personal investment, and all emotions — whether students feel like the country is ending or being saved — are valid.
After emotions are on the table, educators have an opportunity to answer student questions about the nuts and bolts of the election.
Students may not understand how Trump was actually elected; some do not understand how the Electoral College works, the demographic makeup of the country, or philosophical differences between rural and urban communities. Students have expressed the desire to better understand the motivations of Trump supporters.
Teachers should consider maintaining a safe space for students who differ in their opinion on the election. Students should be encouraged to ask questions, use “I” statements to express personal feelings and practice respectful dialogue. This is behavior adults could seek to emulate, regardless of political affiliation.
Many Generation Citizen students were shocked to learn that only 55 percent of all eligible Americans voted, the lowest rate in nearly 25 years.
As one of our students expressed, “This is a lesson learned. If more people voted, things could have been different.”
Finally, and perhaps most important, students should be encouraged to act, now and in the future. We have emphasized that a President Trump will not have complete control over their lives because of the explicit balance of power that our founders created. If students care about issues like teen jobs, public transit or violence in their communities, they have the opportunity to address these challenges through local government or state legislature.
Generation Citizen has created a two-lesson curriculum, Beyond the Ballot, which explicitly focuses on the importance of engaging local officials and helping students forge the tools to take action on issues they care about.
Teaching about this unprecedented election is challenging, and we are not claiming that a few conversations will make all student concerns disappear. The emotions are real and raw. But providing a space for reflection, explaining the facts of Trump’s election and focusing on the importance of local activism are vital. If nothing else, this election has demonstrated the importance of an engaged and educated citizenry. The only road to such an outcome is giving students the chance to become civically engaged early on.
Students will seize that opportunity. At the end of one of our discussions, two students planned their own presidential runs, figuring out what year they would be eligible. They agreed that whoever won would tap the other for the vice presidential spot.
The student quoted at the beginning of this piece closed class with the following reflection: “In the end we are on one team. We can’t give up and stop fighting for what is right. We have to keep pushing forward and stay encouraged. We have worked hard for what is right and can’t give up now.”
Nora Howe is a New York Program Associate with Generation Citizen.
Since the 1970s, a “doom loop” has pervaded higher education, writes Christopher Newfield in his new bookThe Great Mistake: How We Wrecked Public Universities and How We Can Fix Them. Newfield, a professor of American Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, calls this loop “privatization” – the hidden and overt ways that “business practices restructure teaching and research.”
It’s a cycle in which colleges spend more and more money chasing research projects, building luxury dorms and academic centers to attract wealthy students, and engaging in activities that compel them to compete against each other, rather than focus on their own students. Newfield says he saw this first-hand while serving on the University of California’s planning and budget committee.
One consequence, according to Newfield: After decades of public universities raising tuition, legislatures have learned to rely even more on tuition increases to enable them to cut funding for public higher education.
Families suffer, of course, but the long-term impact transcends that. “The converting of public funding into higher tuition focuses the student on assuring her future income to cover higher costs and debt,” he writes. At stake, he believes, is a citizenry that sees college not as a place for in-depth learning and inquiry, but as a means to economic security, forcing colleges to conduct themselves more like a business, and less like a public good that all students can afford.
The Hechinger Report spoke with Newfield to learn more.
Society – culturally, economically and socially – gets the majority of the benefits. Here I’m using the work of some economists, particularly Walter McMahon, who has actually tried to count up all of the non-market benefits that universities generate.
My parents are first-generation college people, and they probably wouldn’t have gone if it hadn’t been free for them. The benefit of that was that society got two more productive, also politically more thoughtful, more complex people that had better health, people that were able to make contributions to their community, because they had incomes that allowed them to work only one job.
What’s happened since is, it’s just kind of an arrangement of convenience for state governments, for taxpayers, for business taxpayers, who’ve gotten a cheaper deal. But, it’s economically and socially less efficient to save money this way [by reducing state funding and relying on tuition plus businesslike revenue from research]. It’s also philosophically and economically incorrect.
Q: What’s one example of the way colleges have been behaving like businesses at the expense of students?
A: They had to look for multiple revenue streams really starting in the 1980s, and some of those were very high-value and glamorous … like technology-transfer revenues through patenting, increasing contracts and grants revenues, and increasing fundraising.
The national statistic is that universities have to put in 19 cents of institutional funds to make up, to get to a full dollar of their research expenditures. [And] this number is higher at public universities than it is at private universities. The last numbers that I saw are about 25 cents on the dollar of overall research expenditures at publics, and something like half that at privates. So there’s a public subsidy that’s going on at these institutions, through ongoing general fund contributions, that means that they’re just paying more of their own money … and not paying for what the public thinks it’s paying for, which is instruction, and some other kinds of core things.
There’s actually one article that was published on this in the general press that said on $3.5 billion in gross contract and grant revenues [at the University of California], they lose $720 million [in one year].
Q: Why were states increasing tuition – your book notes public colleges raised tuition by about 50 percent in the 1980s and 38 percent in the 1990s – even though, as you point out, state funding was growing slightly?
Because they were adding prestigious activities. And after U.S. News came in with [college] rankings in the late 1980s, it just really took off. Because they were having to compete for revenue, for overall amount of R&D expenditures, for selectivity rates, which were tied to the prestige of the faculty. … Bayh-Dole [legislation], in 1980, which is the door opening [for universities] to keep patenting revenues, was a driver that we haven’t talked about enough.
But I think some of it is just that it was more important to have a kind of a national profile than it was to do really good regional service. Shifting from regional service to national profile created competitive costs; you just tend to duplicate a lot of things that other people have. Then later, in the 1990s and 2000s, when you’re starting to compete for blue chip out-of-state students, the arms race in facilities accelerates, and just re-accelerates after 2008.
Q: What’s the most glaring example of privatization at work that you saw on the UC planning and budget committee?
A .We just started prioritizing private revenue streams, and energy and brains and additional positions were created in order to go after that other stuff. The Regents were pitched fundraising statistics and contracts and grants, gross statistics – always with the gross numbers, never with net. Undergraduates and academic graduates students became more of an afterthought at the senior management level. They were kind of the revenue source, in terms of tuition and general funds per capita, but then, after that, they were not at the center of policy. We really lost our focus.
Q:Let’s say there’s a reformer who’s sympathetic to the arguments in this book. Does she sit down with President-elect Trump? Or with her state’s governor? And what will that elevator pitch sound like?
She would say to Trump, you ran on making America great again. And to make America great again, you have to make the economy great again. And to make the economy great again, you have to bring all the non-college workers of the country into it. And to do that, to include the non-college, you have to rebuild open-access, high-quality, public universities. There is no other way. It can’t be job training. It can’t be political rhetoric. It can’t be browbeating a few companies to not off-shore their workers.
This has to be liberal arts and sciences. Rebuild high-end cognitive skills, so that these folks don’t just go down the street to the machinist shop that’s still open if they lost their factory job. They can be eligible for a whole range of jobs, or build jobs and businesses on their own with these skills.
This interview was conducted by telephone and lightly edited for length and clarity.
This story was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Read more about higher education.
