We like to think we live in a democracy where there is equal opportunity for all. However, we fail at a very basic level, public school education. Although everyone is entitled to an education through high school, our public education system is failing many students. According to the Program for International Student Assessment, academic achievement is well below that of many developed and developing countries. Acknowledging a national crisis in education, President Bush established the “No Child Left Behind” program. President Obama followed with the “Race to the Top” program. Both place the onus for achievement on teachers and school systems and judge their performance by their students’ standardized test scores. A common result is “teaching to the test,” which further harms the quality of education. These programs only address a symptom of the problem; they ignore the influence of parents, communities, and society on academic achievement.
Education is not cherished here as in countries where it is not an entitlement. It is common for immigrants to the US to outperform native students. Children in charter and private schools often perform better than their public school counterparts. These students and their parents, like many immigrant families, are apt to view education as a privilege.
Private and charter schools have several advantages over public schools: they can select their students, control their budgets and programs, and are free to experiment with innovative teaching approaches. Public schools must accept all students and are subject to budget constraints and teaching mandates imposed by the communities they serve. Charter schools and vouchers for private schools, offering alternatives to some, allow us all–parents, communities, and society–to ignore fundamental causes of inequality. We bear responsibility for academic achievement because we determine educational standards, how they are supported, and how teachers and students respond to the standards.
We are unwilling to give teachers the respect and support they deserve as the professionals they are. To perform at their best, they need motivated students, sufficient academic resources, appropriate compensation, and parents, communities, and society to provide and support educational standards equivalent to those in the exclusive schools that only the select few can attend.
In low income areas school systems have limited resources and critical unmet needs, such as providing additional services for students living in conditions not conducive to learning. In affluent areas resources are not an issue, but competitive sports and social activities compete for time and attention and receive support and accolades exceeding those for academic achievement. Communities are more willing to finance elaborate sports facilities than teacher salaries and academic resources. In both cases academic achievement is compromised, and with it, equal opportunity.
Electronic devices also compromise student achievement. The technology can be a learning tool, but video games and social networking cause continuing distraction. In A Wake-Up Call, Lathrop and Foss point out uncontrolled use of devices facilitates plagiarism and cheating. Excessive connectivity has been associated with OCD, ADHD, and symptoms similar to those of drug and alcohol addiction. Thus, managing student use of electronic devices is essential for academic success. However, teachers can only succeed if parents and communities work with them to enforce standards for non-disruptive use.
How we view education determines what standards we have for academic achievement. Is it simply as training for specific occupations? Or do we value developing a society of informed, contributing members? In a capitalist society, where the primary objective is amassing wealth, only job training may seem important. But if we want to develop citizens capable of maintaining a democracy, students must learn to understand our social, political, and economic environments and the role of government. Government of, by, and for the people can thrive only in a society of knowledgeable participants.
Our present standards are inadequate for democracy to thrive. Opportunities not available to the majority of the population are creating an affluent, educated elite. Inadequate education for most is preventing the majority from prospering and contributing to society, and instead making them vulnerable to poverty and crime.
Disparity in education allows political and economic institutions to be defined by the elite, to favor the elite, exploiting the less knowledgeable. This is a path to extractive, repressive political and economic institutions, and ultimately to failed nations, as Acemoglu and Robinson show in Why Nations Fail. They point out that successful democracies have inclusive, progressive institutions where all of society participates. Without equal educational opportunity for all, there is no equal opportunity and democracy cannot thrive. Do we care?
Each child is born into circumstances different from those of every other child. The resources and attitudes of their parents, the dangers they face, and the protections of their society vary from family to family, and even from sister to brother. No society can promise equal opportunity for all children and bridge the resource gaps between those with the least and those with the most, but a fair and humane society could insist that all children get at least a threshold level of opportunity to improve on the circumstances they were born into.
As Delos explains, a successful system of public education would go far to ensure that all children have a chance to get the knowledge and skills necessary for them to experience the United States as a land of opportunity. Instead, the United States of today is “a collection of societies, some of which are ‘lands of opportunity’ with high rates of mobility across generations, and others in which few children escape poverty.” *
*Raj Chetty, Nathaniel Hendren, Patrick Kline, Emmanuel Saez, Where is the land of Opportunity? The Geography of Intergenerational Mobility in the United States, The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Volume 129, Issue 4, November 2014, Pages 1553–1623, https://doi.org/10.1093/qje/qju022.