As a society, we purport to care about education. A recent Pew Research survey shows that improving education is a top ten issue for Americans¹. But while a majority of Americans believe that local school beards should have the greatest influence on what is taught in public schools, uncontested and empty school board seats are common.

In New Jersey, there was a total of 805 uncontested school board seats, and for 130 of them, no one was even on the ballot in 2015².

School boards are supposed to represent the interest of the public in education. Whether you are a parent or not, you have a stake and a voice in how schools are run. I’ve structured this post as a series of queries, which I hope prove useful.

What’s happening in schools

Lack of evidence in curriculum

Do our schools equip children with basic reading, writing, and arithmetic skills?

Are our curricula (both the content, and the methods of instruction) based in evidence, or are they fads?

I first became interested in education because of the reporting of Emily Hanford in the podcast series Sold a Story³. I’ll summarize it briefly here.

A researcher in New Zealand, named Marie Clay, researched reading in the 1960s by observing children in schools. Her observation was that poor readers sounded out words, and that good readers did not. She concluded that good readers did not ever sound out words, and instead relied on context clues, acting like “detectives.” She created a program called Reading Recovery, and her program brought her ideas to other countries. Unfortunately, her ideas were wrong, and despite scientific research debunking it (starting with research in the 1980s showing that good readers look at all of the letters in a word,) her ideas (known as Cueing Theory) became entrenched in many schools. To this day, many public and private schools teach readers to guess, rather than learn to read. Nowadays there is a movement to replace Cueing Theory, “Whole Word”, and “Balanced Literacy” approaches with curricula based on the science of reading. The science of reading is a combination of teaching phonics, so readers can sound out written words and expanding students’ oral vocabularies, so that they can comprehend more complicated texts.

This story is a perfect example of what happens when a fad becomes a fixture in schools.

Source: National Assessment of Education Progress

As bleak as this may sound and look, there is hope! Consider the story of Bethlehem PA’s schools, which switched from a balanced literacy approach to a science-based approach. They went from having under half of their 3rd grade students reading at grade level to 84%, with three schools having 100% of students reading at grade level.

We can’t simply trust education publishers to follow and adhere to science.

Unfortunately, publishers (like Heinemann, which published popular curricula based on Cueing Theory) cannot be trusted to act in the best interest of students. The profit motive is stronger than desire to right by students. If you can’t trust the publisher, that means the school board and educators need to thoroughly vet curricula.

Overuse of technology

Do our schools use technology appropriately in the classroom? How much time are students spending on tablets, phones, and laptops in schools? Are school administrators proactively evaluating when using tech is in the best interest of the students?

I have been looking for evidence regarding whether the increasing use of laptops and tablets in schools has any benefit to students. I have been disappointed to find little research on the topic. What I have found is an OECD report from 2015 studying the impacts of technology investments in schools in developed countries.

The results also show no appreciable improvements in student achievement in reading, mathematics or science in the countries that had invested heavily in ICT [Information and Communication Technology] for education. And perhaps the most disappointing finding of the report is that technology is of little help in bridging the skills divide between advantaged and disadvantaged students. Put simply, ensuring that every child attains a baseline level of proficiency in reading and mathematics seems to do more to create equal opportunities in a digital world than can be achieved by expanding or subsidising access to high-tech devices and services ⁴.

Furthermore, the section on student performance reports

• In countries where it is less common for students to use the Internet at school for schoolwork, students’ performance in reading improved more rapidly than in countries where such use is more common, on average.

• Overall, the relationship between computer use at school and performance is graphically illustrated by a hill shape, which suggests that limited use of computers at school may be better than no use at all, but levels of computer use above the current OECD average are associated with significantly poorer results.

While I recognize the pandemic forced many schools to expand the their use of technology in a rush, we may be best served in the long run by stepping back, and reducing the use of technology in the classroom until we have done more research.

Failure to retain teachers

Does our school district retain and advance teachers? Are they treated as professionals, and given ample opportunities to grow?

Here’s an amazing fact I learned from American Public Media’s series Who Wants to be a Teacher ⁵.

The modal, i.e. the most common teacher, in the late 1980s, was a 15-year veteran. Some teachers had less than 15 years experience and some teachers had more. Today, the modal teacher is someone in their first year.

The series goes on to explain that economists have measured, and found that compared to other college-educated peers, teachers take an approximately 20% pay cut. No wonder many of them leave the field! In addition, many teachers don’t have a good work-life balance during the school year, and don’t feel supported by administrators. So, we have a teacher shortage. Unfortunately, the solution many schools have landed on is lowing the requirements to become a teacher. Research has shown that teachers who do not get a college degree in teaching tend to leave the field quickly, and economists that measure teacher effectiveness have shown that teachers improve year over year during the first five years of their career. (Note, teachers without a four year degree also get better year over year.)

Solving this problem is critical for the public school system, but it’s not discussed often.

Fair Funding

Are our schools funded fairly? Do children have an equal opportunity to learn, regardless of where they live?

I may get more into this in a subsequent post, but my opinion is that every child should get a good education, regardless of where they live. The system of funding schools according to local property taxes means childrens in poorer districts are at a disadvantage through no fault of their own.

Civics

Do our schools teach children civic skills, like how to evaluate multiple viewpoints on issues, and respectfully form opinions of their own?

Our schools are where we raise the next generation of citizens. Therefore it’s critical that schools teach students how to evaluate different viewpoints in primary and secondary sources, form opinions on those viewpoints, and respectfully debate and disagree with one another. There’s an unfortunate tendency these days to try to politicize education. Sometimes it manifests as prohibiting views that one finds disagreeable, and sometimes it manifests as encouraging schools to be explicitly political. Either way, schools should expose students to multiple viewpoints and spend time building the values that will make the students good citizens, regardless of political persuasion.

In Summary

I’ve made a case that there are issues in schools, but I doubt many would disagree with me. The real case I am making here that many of us should play a role in improving public education.

If something isn’t working, you fix it. And right now, many public schools are not working. So ask yourself if your school board is fixing issues. If it isn’t, perhaps you should be working towards improving the school board.