In a December 1 opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal, Michael Bloomberg writes that American public education is broken.
Mr. Bloomberg, former mayor of New York City and former candidate for U.S. president, notes that before the pandemic, about two-thirds of U.S. students were not reading at grade level and that the trend is getting worse. He also cites the recently published results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) that in 2019, U.S. eighth-grade math scores had already fallen significantly (I recently wrote about this topic – The Math Wars: Improving Numeracy among American Students).
Mr. Bloomberg writes “teachers understand the severity of the problem, and many are doing heroic work, yet some of their union representatives are denying reality.” An incredible quote that he includes to back up his claim that union reps are denying reality comes from the head of the Los Angeles teachers’ union who said, “there is no such thing as learning loss. Our kids didn’t lose anything. It’s OK that our babies may not have learned all their times tables. They learned resilience.”
Calling the union rep’s quote “nonsense,” Mr. Bloomberg writes that the public schools are more concerned about tracking attendance than academic achievement. The students who are harmed the most are low-income students because when and if they graduate, they’ll need to find a job in an economy that values knowledge and skills above all else.
Other nations are rising to the challenge of preparing their youth for the future while the U.S. is going backward, observes Mr. Bloomberg. This trend will create an economic and national security crisis. Even worse, our most vulnerable will be doomed to a life of poverty and possibly, incarceration.
Mr. Bloomberg states that we know what works because we have examples today. He cites Success Academy’s network of 47 public charter schools serving New York children whose families are mostly poor. Their students outperform public school students in wealthy Scarsdale, NY by significant margins. Sadly, a cap on charter schools is blocking Success Academy from expanding.
While traditional public schools nationwide are seeing declines in enrollments, charter schools had their largest enrollment increase ever last year.
Charter schools have more flexibility to manage staffing, curriculum, testing, and compensation. They have a culture of accountability for student progress that many public schools do not have.
As public schools continue to fail in providing our children with a quality education, our children are paying the price. Mr. Bloomberg writes that “a union’s job is to represent its members, not to set education policy. Schools should focus on the needs of students first, not the employees.”
Mr. Bloomberg writes that there are long waiting lists for charter schools, but mayors and governors are not getting the support that they need from Congress and the White House to open new charter schools. To assist with meeting the demand for charters, his Bloomberg Philanthropies is launching a five-year $750 million effort to create seats for 150,000 more students in 20 metro areas around the U.S.
In a special edition called The World Ahead, The Economist published an article titled “Bottom of the Class” at nearly the same time that Mr. Bloomberg’s Op-ed was published in the WSJ. Reporter Tamara Gilkes Borr writes that Covid-19 caused the largest decline in public-school enrollment in the U.S. since World War II. Where those students went and whether they will return is unclear.
Much of the public school decline revolved around the youngest students. Not surprisingly, online learning was hardest for children in this age bracket. Many families opted to keep their children home.
Ms. Borr writes that private and charter school enrollments remain steady. Unfortunately, some would-be kindergartners skipped that year and went directly to first grade in 2021. This will probably have a long-term impact since high-quality early learning is associated with increases in high school performance, college attendance, and adult wages.
Funding in many public school districts in the U.S. is based on attendance. Each missing child means less money for each school. Ms. Borr writes that we can expect more student voucher proposals to surface in 2022. Vouchers allow public school students to apply their state-allocated funding to any school, private or public.
Funding shortages will lead to teacher-hiring freezes and a reduction in other resources such as educational materials, extracurricular activities, and social programs. While the pandemic relief funds may temporarily stem funding reductions, they will not stem those reductions over the long term. After the budget crisis of 2007-2008, budget cuts reduced test scores and graduation rates. Ms. Borr writes that the impact of Covid-19 will reach far beyond the end of the pandemic.
The Economist article clarifies Mr. Bloomberg’s statement that teachers’ union members care more about attendance than academics. If funding in many states is based on a formula that counts student enrollments, it is natural that the teachers’ unions would want as many students as possible to attend.
At the same time, we cannot afford to continue to have generations of our poorest citizens receive subpar educations. The results are clear. U.S. test scores continue to decline when compared to our peer countries. As Mr. Bloomberg argues, those continuing declines will have economic and national security implications. They’ll also likely keep our poorest students in poverty.
While Mr. Bloomberg’s commitment is substantial for an individual, it is minuscule compared to what we pay for public school education in the U.S. It’s time that we look at charter schools and other options that can improve student outcomes while teaching the same demographic level of students in the area public schools.
The Bloomberg Philanthropies gifts will be designated for 20 different cities. Let’s hope that the outcomes are great, the results are published, and that the mayors of those cities can expand and implement similar initiatives. We can’t afford to fail another generation of students.
