Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America's Public Schools

by Diane Ravitch

  On the surface, this appears to be a terrible indictment of American education.

  However, there is one curious fact about the OECD rankings: while the United States is in the middle of the pack, only a few points above the average for the OECD nations as a whole, Germany is near the bottom. This is odd; it doesn’t fit the conventional wisdom of our time. Germany has a degree completion rate of 26 percent among the younger cohort, yet Germany is the dominant economic engine of Europe. The degree completion rate of its older population is the same as that of the youngest cohort, just like in the United States, but at a much lower level. Germany is renowned for its high technology, its sophisticated industries, and its productivity. Yet only 26 percent of its population aged twenty-five to thirty-four received a degree from a postsecondary institution. Germany has succeeded economically by having a strong educational system and a strong apprenticeship system. It has also taken care not to outsource its major industries to low-wage nations.

  The bearers of doom and gloom try to convince the public that there has been stagnation in the college-degree completion rate of Americans, but this is not true. Consider the changes over time in the proportion of those in the age group from twenty-five to twenty-nine who have earned a bachelor’s degree. Among those in this age group, 22 percent had earned a BA in 1980; by 2011, it was up to 32 percent. Among whites, the proportion grew from 25 percent to 39 percent. Among blacks, it nearly doubled, from 11 percent to 20 percent. Among Hispanics, it grew from 8 percent to 13 percent. Among Asian Americans, it increased from 42 percent (in 1990) to 56 percent.4

  Be that as it may, our leaders agree that we must aim for a higher degree completion rate. The College Board gathered a commission of education leaders, who declared this goal: “Increase the proportion of 25- to 34-year-olds who hold an associate degree or higher to 55 percent by the year 2025 in order to make America the leader in educational attainment in the world.”5

  So now there are two goals: President Obama says we must be first in the world by 2020, and the College Board commission says we must raise the completion rate to 55 percent by 2025 to become “the leader in educational attainment in the world.” The unasked question is this: Will the degrees obtained under pressure to reach a target represent real learning, or will they be reached by credential inflation, credit recovery, and other schemes that devalue the meaning of the diploma?

  The commission made some impressive recommendations about improving preschool education, reducing dropouts, and making college more affordable. Taking these steps will surely raise the proportion of students who are ready and able to complete a college degree.

  But America won’t be the world leader by raising degree completion to 55 percent. South Korea was the world leader in 2009 with a rate of 63 percent and is not standing still. The question is whether we can increase degree completion from 41 percent to more than 65 percent by 2025, and even that may not be enough to pass South Korea.

  Is it possible? Could we become the world leader? The College Board’s commission thought so, but getting there would require significant new investments in precollegiate education, and that is not happening. Instead, we are seeing budget cuts in many states, increased class sizes, and reductions in funding for everything the College Board commission recommended. Without additional investments in preschool education, dropout prevention, counseling, and other strategies to keep students on track to high school graduation, it is unlikely that more students will stay in school and enroll in postsecondary education. Unless the federal government or states help students pay for college, we are not likely to see big increases in the number of those enrolling in postsecondary institutions.

  As we saw in an earlier chapter, high school graduation rates are now about 90 percent—not in four years, but in five or six years after students start high school. And more high school graduates enroll in college right after graduation. In 1975, about half of all high school graduates enrolled in college right after graduation. By 2009, the rate had increased to 70 percent. For students from high-income families, 84 percent entered college right after high school; from middle-income families, it was 67 percent; from low-income families, it was 55 percent. Two-thirds of males and three-quarters of females enroll in college after finishing high school. In terms of access, we have made impressive progress since 1975. But to push it even higher would mean concentrating new resources on low-income students and students of color. Those investments are not being made.6

  Perhaps we should feel ashamed that the youngest group in the United States is earning about the same number of bachelor’s degrees as the oldest group and that we are not producing more and more bachelor’s degrees. We like to think that we are number one in everything, so why are we not producing more and more bachelor’s degrees?

  Here are the likely reasons: People won’t spend the time and money to get a college degree—either two-year or four-year—unless they think it will help them get a better job or career; and people won’t pursue more education unless they can afford it. As I noted earlier, college graduates earn more on average than those with only a high school diploma, and those with a high school diploma earn more than those who never finished high school. But the job prospects for everyone are uncertain in a rapidly changing economy, and everyone has heard stories of college graduates working as retail clerks or in other jobs that pay low wages.

  How do people know what they need in the future? One clue is to see what is happening right now. The advance of technology and globalization has led to the outsourcing of many kinds of jobs, not only factory jobs, but white-collar jobs. As the economist Paul Krugman points out, “Since 1990 or so the U.S. job market has been characterized not by a general rise in the demand for skill, but by ‘hollowing out’: both high-wage and low-wage employment has grown rapidly, but medium-wage jobs—the kinds of jobs we count on to support a strong middle class—have lagged behind. And the hole in the middle has been getting wider: many of the high-wage occupations that grew rapidly in the 1990s have seen much slower growth recently, even as growth in low-wage employment has accelerated.” The jobs that are growing are those that can’t be outsourced, such as truck drivers and janitors. High-wage jobs performed by highly educated workers are even easier to outsource to other nations, he wrote, than low-wage jobs. Yes, Krugman argues, we should remove the inequalities in American education, but we should stop pretending that “putting more kids through college can restore the middle-class society we used to have.” Having a college degree is no longer a guarantee of getting a good job, and it will be even less true in the future. Many of the jobs that cannot be outsourced do not require so much as a high school diploma, other than as an entry-level credential providing evidence of persistence.7

  Krugman concludes: “So if we want a society of broadly shared prosperity, education isn’t the answer—we’ll have to go about building that society directly. We need to restore the bargaining power that labor has lost over the last 30 years, so that ordinary workers as well as superstars have the power to bargain for good wages. We need to guarantee the essentials, above all health care, to every citizen.” College degrees won’t take us where we want to go; they may be “no more than tickets to jobs that don’t exist or don’t pay middle-class wages.” The political prospects for Krugman’s vision—which requires shared sacrifice and higher tax rates—seem to be as remote as the likelihood of boosting the college graduation rate to first in the world by 2020.

  Krugman’s analysis was supported by a report that large numbers of recent college graduates were unemployed or underemployed. A 2012 study of census data by researchers at Northeastern University, Drexel University, and the Economic Policy Institute found that about 1.5 million, or 53.6 percent, of people under the age of twenty-five with a bachelor’s degree were jobless or underemployed. “Broken down by occupation, young college graduates were heavily represented in jobs that require a high school diploma or less. In the last year, they were more likely to be employed as
waiters, waitresses, bartenders and food-service helpers than as engineers, physicists, chemists and mathematicians combined (100,000 versus 90,000).” Some economists suggested that most of the jobs lost in the recession of 2008 were middle-class jobs, like bank tellers, that were automated and would never return. More college graduates were working in “office-related jobs such as receptionist or payroll clerk than in all computer professional jobs (163,000 versus 100,000). More also were employed as cashiers, retail clerks and customer representatives than engineers (125,000 versus 80,000).” Further, only three of the thirty occupations (teachers, college professors, and accountants) with the largest projected number of job openings by 2020 would require a bachelor’s degree or higher. “Most job openings are in professions such as retail sales, fast food and truck driving, jobs which aren’t easily replaced by computers.”8

  The Bureau of Labor Statistics forecast that two-thirds of the jobs available between 2008 and 2018 would not need any postsecondary education. Most would require on-the-job training. Jobs will open for 175,000 computer engineers and 600,000 nurses, which require postsecondary degrees. But the economy is likely to offer jobs for 460,000 home health aides, 400,000 customer service agents, 400,000 fast-food workers, 375,000 retail salesclerks, 255,000 construction workers, and other occupations that require on-the-job training, not degrees. Unless there are unexpected changes in the economic outlook, many of the young people who graduate from two- and four-year colleges will not find jobs that require the education they have purchased at a high price. But the demand for college degrees will continue because many employers will hire only college graduates, even for jobs that don’t require a college education.9

  What is painfully obvious is that the policy makers’ discussion of college completion rates hinges completely on the economic gains of getting a college degree. The purpose of going to college, they constantly reiterate, is to get a better job and to make more money. Many who accept this as their goal will be disappointed. They will not get the job or the income that they hoped for. They will get a degree and be burdened by debt without getting a job commensurate with their time or investment or aspirations. We would do well to think of college not as an economic activity (which it may or may not be, depending on the individual and the economy) but as an opportunity to develop one’s knowledge, to encounter new ideas, to deepen one’s appreciation of the arts, and to emerge with a wider understanding of the world. Perhaps our policy makers have oversold the economic returns of higher education and lost sight of the value of education for personal, civic, aesthetic, and social purposes.

  If we expect to increase the rate of degree completion, we must invest in early childhood education and enhance the quality of precollegiate education, especially for students who are African American, Hispanic, and low income. These are the groups with the lowest degree completion rates. We should do this on grounds of equity, not international competition. If we are serious about increasing the number of students who complete postsecondary education, then states and the federal government must reduce the cost of public higher education so that it is affordable to more students. Students should not leave college burdened by tens of thousands of dollars of debt.10

  If college completion is important as an investment in the knowledge and skills of our population (and not just as a credential), then we must encourage and enable students to persist. If we treated education as both an economic good for the ongoing development of our nation and a basic human right, then public higher education would be subsidized by the state and freely available to all who choose to pursue a degree. That’s about as likely to happen as becoming first in the world in degree completion by 2020, but it would move us closer to the latter goal.

  It would be a good idea if elected officials stopped selling the goal of college completion as a form of international competition. Because postsecondary education is not compulsory, the decision to pursue it is up to the individual. Individuals must determine for themselves that a commitment of two or four or more years of their lives and a great deal of money is a worthy investment in their future.

  Even if a college degree does not necessarily lead to a high-paying job or career or profession, it is still worth pursuing. A better-educated populace is a wise investment in the future of our society. We should cultivate an educated citizenry who are informed and knowledgeable about mathematics, science, history, technology, and world cultures. We should recognize the importance of preparing more people with the skills and knowledge to be leaders in science, technology, and the arts. We should willingly invest in the growth of the historical, civic, political, and economic knowledge of our people, as well as their readiness to earn a living.

  Learning is never finished and complete. It does not end with the attainment of a degree, not at age eighteen or age twenty-one or any other age. The opportunity to enlarge one’s education should be available at reasonable cost for people of all ages, whether on campus, online, or elsewhere. Knowledge continues to grow, and our ability to understand it and use it well should grow too.

  CHAPTER 10

  How Poverty Affects Academic Achievement

  CLAIM Poverty is an excuse for ineffective teaching and failing schools.

  REALITY Poverty is highly correlated with low academic achievement.

  Reformers often say that poverty is an excuse for “bad teachers.” If all teachers were great, then all children would score well on tests, and there would be no achievement gaps between children of different groups. If test scores went up every year for all children, eventually all children would graduate from high school and go to college. If all students went to college, then eventually there would be less poverty because college graduates make more money than high school graduates or high school dropouts.

  Those who speak on behalf of the current reform movement—like Michelle Rhee, the former chancellor of the District of Columbia public schools; Joel Klein, the former chancellor of the New York City public schools; Bill Gates, the head of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; Wendy Kopp, the chief executive officer of Teach for America; and Arne Duncan, the Obama administration’s secretary of education—all agree that poverty can be overcome by effective teachers. In articles, interviews, and speeches, they assert that all poor children would reach the same high level of achievement as affluent children if they had effective teachers. Thus, if impoverished children are not achieving at high levels, it is because their teachers have low expectations and are not effective teachers. Some charter schools use the slogan “no excuses” to assert that every child, no matter how poor she is, no matter what her home circumstances, can succeed.

  In 2009, Joel Klein, then the chancellor of the New York City public schools, stated the reformers’ views with precision:

  No single impediment to closing the nation’s shameful achievement gap looms larger than the culture of excuse that now permeates our schools. Too many educators today excuse teachers, principals, and school superintendents who fail to substantially raise the performance of low-income minority students by claiming that schools cannot really be held accountable for student achievement because disadvantaged students bear multiple burdens of poverty. The favored solution du jour to minority underachievement is to reduce the handicap of being poor by establishing full-service health clinics at schools, dispensing more housing vouchers, expanding preschool programs, and offering after-school services like mental health counseling for students and parents. America will never fix education until it first fixes poverty—or so the argument goes.

  In fact, the skeptics of urban schools have got the diagnosis exactly backward. The truth is that America will never fix poverty until it fixes its urban schools.1

  In a similar vein, but somewhat more diplomatically, Bill Gates spoke to the National Urban League in the summer of 2011 and said, “We know you can have a good school in a poor neighborhood, so let’s end the myth that we have to solve poverty before we improve education. I say it’s more the other way ar
ound: Improving education is the best way to solve poverty.”2

  In her book A Chance to Make History, Wendy Kopp maintained that “we don’t need to wait to fix poverty in order to ensure that all children receive an excellent education.”3

  Some prominent reformers don’t agree. Geoffrey Canada’s organization, Harlem Children’s Zone, provides a full range of social services, health care, tutoring, preschool education, family support, and whatever else seems necessary to help improve the lives of children and their families.

  Still, the question remains: Should we “fix” poverty first or “fix” schools first? It is a false choice. I have never heard anyone say that our society should “fix” poverty before fixing the schools. Most thoughtful people who want to help children and families speak of doing both at the same time, or at least trying. Yet here are all these powerful people saying we should “fix” the schools first, then, someday, turn our attention to poverty. Or maybe they mean that fixing schools will take care of poverty.

  The reformers’ case is superficially appealing. It ought to be easier to “fix” schools than to “fix” poverty, because poverty seems so intractable. Our society has grown to accept poverty as an inevitable fact of life, and there seems to be little or no political will to do anything about it. It should also be cheaper to fix schools instead of poverty, because no matter how much it costs to fix schools, it will surely be less than the cost of significantly reducing poverty in a society with great economic inequality like our own. The problem is that if you don’t really know how to fix schools, if none of your solutions actually improve education, then society ends up neither fixing schools nor doing anything about poverty.