Expert Testimony

 

Martin Harris

 

Martin Harris lives in Brandon, VT. He is an architect, and a property rights and education advocate.

 

As the three old-line radio/TV networks have learned, to their dismay, merely asserting opinions labeled as facts doesn’t work any more; thanks to the Internet, anyone with a dial-up connection can swiftly research a subject and learn what experts know about it. Then, if he/she is a blogger, the real facts can just as swiftly be published worldwide, and viewers can compare the evidence to decide whose version of reality is the more plausible. Back in the good old days before this democratization of information happened, Walter Cronkite of the CBS Evening News could opine on the Vietnam War and call it fact, without challenge; but recently when his protege Dan Rather tried the same sort of thing, platoons of unknown bloggers swiftly publicized their sets of facts. The public then advised CBS management of its evaluation of the competing arguments, and Dan chose early retirement.

Something quite similar has happened in public school management. Here are three “establishment” assertions of fact and three countervailing sets of research. Which side of each argument is the more credible? As Fox News says, “We report, you decide.”

Assertion 1 is something most readers of my education writings have been hearing at school board meetings and public hearings for the last 30 years, which is the same time-span over which student SAT scores have been declining. It goes like this: yes, test scores are down, but it’s not our fault. We’re testing more students than ever before, and now the averages are being dragged down by the relatively poorer performance of more non-college-prep students. In research circles, it’s called the “democratization” excuse. Actual research produces a different answer.

Consider, for example, this quote from The War Against Grammar, by University of Wisconsin (Milwaukee) Classics Professor David Mulroy. His book is a full-length complaint about the early 60s decision of the National Council of Teachers of English to quit teaching grammar, as a result of which, he argues, modern students don’t handle their native tongue well. Here’s a pair of quotes:

The clearest evidence of a problem in language arts instruction may lie in the well-known decline in the nation’s SAT scores . . .

He cites a sequence of stats to which sufficiently interested readers may refer for corroboration. He continues:

It is sometimes thought that declining SAT scores reflected the fact that the pool of test-takers had become less selective. . . . In fact it was during the 50s that that the pool of SAT test-takers became more democratic. . . . The decline in SAT scores occurred in the 60s and 70s, while the percentage of high school seniors taking the SATs was shrinking and probably became more selective . . .

Read it for yourself in Mulroy’s book and the back-up research studies he cites. Then decide.

Assertion 2 is likewise 30 years old, and goes like this: yes, test scores are down and costs are up, but it’s not our fault: it’s because parents aren’t doing their job to prepare their kids for school. I can remember educators of the ‘60s and ‘70s instructing us young parents not to prepare our kids for school, because we’d teach them the wrong things in the wrong way since we weren’t, like them, highly skilled professionals. Now the criticism of parents is reversed, but is it valid? For research on the subject, go to the Manhattan Institute’s web page and read a study published last September. Its title is, “Study Finds Students Today Are Easier to Teach,” and its sub-title is “Refutes Claims that Greater Student Disadvantages Cause Poor School Performance for Last Three Decades.” In the abstract there’s this quote:

. . . this evaluation, the first of its kind, combines measures of 16 social, economic, and demographic characteristics to produce a “Teachability Index” . . . student disadvantages have declined 8.7 percent since 1970.

Assertion 3 seeks to explain that American students do less well than foreigners around the world on math and science tests because those other countries encourage dropout prior to testing by all but the most talented. Here, for example, is the quote by a Vermont school district superintendent, Dr. William Mathis, on the subject:

The foreign countries that are supposedly doing better have higher dropout rates, so a smaller group of better students takes the tests. (Rutland Herald, 1 Feb., 2005)

He is referring to published results of the globally-used Trends in International Math and Science (TIMS) test, which showed U.S. students “among the worst at math.” according to a Wall Street Journal report dated 7 Dec, 2004. American students came in at 483, ahead of Italy at 466 but behind Finland at 544 and Korea at 542. The test is accompanied by PISA, for Program for International Student Assessment, and the Journal article reads as follows:

PISA also looked at reading and science scores, where U.S. students scored slightly higher than in math, and at general problem-solving skills, where they scored near the bottom.

To pursue the assertion that other countries scores are enhanced by encouraging drop-outs, I went to The Brookings Institution, a somewhat left-of-center think-tank in Washington, for the opinion of Tom Loveless, author of The Brookings Institution’s Brown Center study showing that “8th Grade Math Test Requires Only 3rd Grade Skills” (School Reform News, January 2005). Here’s his reply:

Not true. That’s yesterday’s news, actually, news from a few decades ago. Today, the high-scoring nations of Europe and Asia have drop-out rates that are no greater than, and in many cases less than the U.S. (personal e-mail, 2 Feb., 2005)

I also went to David Mulroy. Here’s his reply:

I am inclined to be skeptical, since problems in the U.S. do not arise from the masses of average and poorly prepared students now coming to college. The problems arise from a shrinkage in the numbers of high achievers. (personal e-mail, 3 Feb., 2005)

If you accept the Brookings Institution conclusion that U.S. math tests have been dumbed-down (in pursuit of better scores) it helps explain why U.S. students then do so poorly in competition with their international age-group: behind Poland and Slovakia, but ahead of Mexico.

Or, you can accept the assertion that, as with the SAT scores, it’s all because we’re now so fully democratized, now testing so many more poorly prepared kids.

If you accept those assertions, rejecting the published statistical research of Loveless and Mulroy, then you also have to reject the warning in the headline of another Wall Street Journal article on the subject: “Economic Time Bomb Ahead,” because now you’re committed to the hope that research and development in science and engineering won’t be off-shored to where the well-educated minds are waiting. Happy dreams.      *

“There is only one quality worse than hardness of the heart and that is softness of the head.” –Theodore Roosevelt