Back to School – What Lies Ahead?
Education’s numbers are impressive. More than 50 million children are safely enrolled in public schools as you read this. Another 5.2 million are attending private schools, and an estimated 1.5 million are being homeschooled.
We will spend close to $600 billion on public education this year, roughly $11,800 per child. What are we getting for the money? In her new book, Reign of Error, Diane Ravitch argues that most of our public schools are better than they have ever been. As you may also have heard, however, Amanda Ripley inThe Smartest Kids in the World argues that our schools are not measuring up, not when compared to schools in other countries.[1]
Dueling arguments aside, I think this school year is going to bring into bold relief some disconnects between and among various interest groups in education, starting with the Common Core. Insideschools, everyone is talking about the Common Core National Standards, the math and English standards developed outside of Washington, DC and adopted by 45 states and the District of Columbia. However, outside of schools, most American voters–62%–say that they have never even heard of it! That’s one of the findings of the annual Gallup/PDK poll on education released two weeks ago. In fact, 55% of parentsof school-age children say they haven’t heard of it! And most of those who recognize the term say they don’t really understand it, meaning that this highly-touted reform embraced by policy makers has a tough hill to climb.
In fact, if the Gallup/PDK poll is to be believed, the American public is not particularly happy with the nation’s education policy makers’ support for more standardized testing and for using student test
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