The headline in the San Jose Mercury News said it all, “State Student Scores Dismal.” The story goes on – “Test results show California continues to be among the worst in the nation in reading and math,” just one point ahead of New Mexico, Alabama and Washington, D.C. Adjusting for English learners and poor children, “the state would still end up in the academic cellar.”
The results were obtained and published by NAEP, The National Assessment of Educational Progress. It is the largest nationally-representative and continuing assessment of what America’s students know and can do in various subject areas. The Commissioner of Education Statistics, who heads the National Center for Education Statistics in the U.S. Department of Education, is responsible by law for carrying out the NAEP project.
The major problem is that we have forgotten the lesson learned long ago; in large organizations, only personal responsibility has any chance of attaining success. In California’s public education system, it is rare for any professional, administrator or teacher, to be held responsible for poor performance.
We have accepted an excuse-ridden system based on passing the buck. Stories consistently refer to the fact a large number of the students “aren’t ready” to do whatever level of work is required. The elementary schools say that the parents didn’t get the children ready; the middle schools say the same of the elementary schools; the high schools of the middle schools; and the colleges of the high schools. This litany is followed by the inevitable, “Our kids are doing poorly because we had to spend the first year getting them caught up.” Translation: It’s not my fault.
Mind you, proficiency performance is being measured against a system whose expectations have already been dampened down nationwide. Massachusetts, the state with the highest reading proficiency level for fourth-grade public school students, achieved only 50 percent proficiency. California, third from last, came in at 28 percent proficient. Scores in mathematics were only a few percentage points higher in both cases.
Money? Yes we have all heard the money story; New York State spends more per pupil on education than any other state, more than twice the spending in California. It bought them almost nothing, a fourth-grade mathematics proficiency level of 35 percent compared to California’s 29 percent. Texas, spending less per pupil than California, had a proficiency level of 44 percent.
By eighth-grade, Texas, New York, and California had leveled out in mathematics – all for the worse; 32 percent, 31 percent and 27 percent proficient respectively. In eighth-grade reading Texas and California were equal at 28 percent and New York at 33 percent. Four more years in the system for most pupils, but negative progress towards grade-level proficiency.
Reducing the baseline from “proficient” to “basic” raises the percentages significantly for all, but who among us believes that mere basic skills are good enough in the modern, highly competitive world? Besides, only 70 percent of California eighth-graders are reading at the basic level or higher; for me it means that 3 out of 10 are functionally illiterate at their grade level; now that’s a disgrace.
In 2013, salaries and benefits accounted for 82 percent of all the operational spending in public elementary-secondary school systems in California. The California education system employs a lot of people at significant cost, but far too few are worried about their jobs. We need a system that rewards measured superior performance under adverse conditions – call it Mission Success Combat Pay. But the same system has to have a serious quality component that identifies and sheds itself of the poor performers in short order.
Some people in every large system are internally driven to do better, some need guidance and a little incentive and some need to leave. Understanding that poor performance can cost you your job is just the incentive that’s needed in the state’s school system. The politicians who protect the poor performers in exchange for votes and donations and further their careers at the expense of your children’s future need to go right along with them.