Education Progress

Last week, I had the pleasure to have dinner with four retired teachers. Each teacher was intelligent, articulate, and had taught in the public school system in either grade school or high school for at least 25 years. I asked these teachers a simple question. I said, “Have there been any changes in the educational system in the last 25 years?” They all jumped all over the question. “Sure. There have been many changes. Everything is different today.” They went on to explain in great detail all the different teaching methods, different teaching tools, software, computer systems, behavioral studies, new measurement systems that measure a student’s progress, and other advances in the educational system. I listened quietly for about 25 minutes.

Then I couldn’t resist. I said, “Well, with all these changes, doesn’t it still take eight years to get through grade school and four years to get through high school?” If there have been all these magnificent, awesome changes in the educational system, why doesn’t grade school take four years now and high school perhaps two years? “After all,” I continued to forcefully assert, “In the computer business, we’ve had advances in storage technology that allows us now to buy an 80 gigabyte hard drive for about $150 when ten years ago, an 80 gigabyte hard drive cost $1,500 or even $2,000. In other words, progress in most situations is measured by getting more for your money with advances in the industry. Why is that not the case in education?”

I offered many other examples of other industries where there had been advances in the industry, and those advances had been passed on for either quicker, more efficient, or more effective products or services to the consumer or to the person receiving the service. Yet in the educational system and considering literally the billions of dollars that have been spent on developing educational system advances, particularly in our grade school and high school systems, we virtually still require students to spend 12 years in grade school and high school before graduation. In other words, with all the advances, it still takes the same length of time to graduate as it did 100 years ago. “Where are the advances”? I argued rhetorically?

The teachers were dismayed at my indisputable logic, but still defended the undefendable. Of course the teachers countered with the material is more advanced, the students are learning more college level material, and arguments that essentially supported that the advances hadn’t been in reducing the number of years it takes to go through the grade school or high school system, but that the content or the material that was now being delivered was sufficiently advanced that it justified the teacher’s belief that the educational system had indeed had spectacular advances in the last 25 years.

On the contrary, I offered. If in fact high school systems were teaching more college material, then college should coincidentally or on a corollary basis be reduced to less than four years. Yet it still takes four years to go through college. So with all the advances, it still takes eight years for grade school, four years for high school, and essentially four years for a college degree. So the argument that the educational system has had incredible advances simply can’t be confirmed by any standard measurement.

One of the teachers, the biology teacher, who had taught biology in high school for approximately 25 years, countered with the statement that it simply took that long for the students to mature. At that point, I said, “With all these advances in the educational system, in other words we’re just waiting the same length of time for maturity to occur in our kids?” I continued, “It was never my understanding that as a taxpayer we are paying school teachers to simply observe our children while they matured.”

It seemed the biology teacher’s explanation was that we could teach them faster, but maturity still took time. On the other hand, it still doesn’t support the contention that there have been any advances in the educational system. Now clearly and unarguably there have been changes. But to the largest extent, these changes haven’t produced any reduction in the cost of education. Education costs more today than it did 10 years ago. Further, these changes haven’t produced any efficiency in education because grade school still takes eight years, and high school still takes four years. So there have not been any improvements in efficiency. And further, there haven’t been any changes in effectiveness. Students still come out of high school and essentially score about the same numbers on the SAT scores as they did 15 years ago.

Now there are some arguments that there have been slight improvements in SAT scores. But these are minor, and they’re not really supportable by high school educational improvements as much as by changes in the SAT scoring system itself. So try as we might, the more we affirm that there has been a dramatic change in the educational system, we simply can’t provide any measurement that shows there has been any progress.

Progress in the educational system is hampered by superstitions without foundation. For example, we continue to segregate classes: fourth grade from fifth grade, fifth grade from sixth grade, and sixth grade from seventh grade. On the contrary, there have been more astronauts produced from small schools where the age groups are mixed than astronauts produced in educational systems where the grades are segregated. Despite knowledge to the contrary, for example, we know kids learn better from peers. They learn better from kids who are a few years older than they are. In other words, in principle, we know from observation that sixth graders teach fourth graders and fourth graders teach second graders at a faster rate than they learn similar material from an adult.

Why not go back and mix first and second graders and second and third graders and sixth and eighth graders? You might discover that a lot of sixth graders could do eighth grade work. If they can do eighth grade work, then we should be graduating them after six years from grade school, not waiting for them to mature into the eighth grade. If they can do the work, they should be able to proceed. Yet we don’t have a system that allows that to happen.

Another superstition is that by-passing grades are bad for the social behavior of the student. It seems teachers believe it is better to bore a student with second grade material when the student is equally capable of performing at a higher grade, than it is to promote the student to the next grade. Sure, there are exceptions where people are allowed to bypass a grade. But those are rare. In general, no matter how well you do in the sixth grade, you have to go to the seventh grade. One of my grandchildren already reads at the fourth grade level. She’s in the first grade. Yet she’s going to be presented with material – not only at a reading level – but at other levels – with other first graders. Yet she has proven beyond a doubt she can do fourth grade work.

So why shouldn’t she be in the fourth grade? Now comes the behaviorists with their basket of unsupported superstitions. There are many behavioral reasons that are offered by opponents of moving children up at a faster rate. These have to do with the size of the children, their ability to socialize and mix with other students, and the reasons go on and on. More behavior oriented, more superstition based, but clearly not based on any logic or foundation. More often than not, it’s based on anecdotal examples from individuals. There are perhaps as many anecdotal exceptions as there are anecdotal issues with jumping grades. Schools started with mixed grades. Children advanced when they were ready.

If students were allowed to jump grades, it would save the parent money. If I help my child at home and allow him to advance to the eighth grade in six years rather than eight years, perhaps I should get a rebate for being a better parent and more interested in my student’s welfare. There needs to be back-to-the-basics thinking that would create real and measured advances in our educational system. Going back to my conversation with the teachers, the more I pressed them on measurements that confirm there have been major improvements in efficiency and effectiveness of our educational system, the more they were unable to come up with any measurement or any research study or any real examples demonstrating real educational progress.

No doubt, 100 years from now it will still take 8 years for grade school and 4 years for high school in the USA. But we better be emphasizing foreign languages by then because other countries are not so married to the standard educational process. This year several grade school students scored a perfect 1600 on the college SAT scores. Guess what? Next year they may still be in grade school. Education progress, I am told it is there. I just can not find it.