
Why Is American Teaching So Bad? - moab
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2014/dec/04/why-american-teaching-so-bad/
======
jimktrains2
Teaching isn't bad, society is. I have a friend who teaches in an intercity
school:

* One or more of her students will be shot to death each year

* Many of her kids get pulled out of class and beaten by rival gangs each year

* Many of her kids will go to jail for a portion of the school year for drug charges each year

* Many of her girls will be out due to pregnancy each year

How is any of that the fault of the teachers? We need to fix our society
before kids will have any chance of learning.

~~~
ddebernardy
Wouldn't you agree that, in a society where kids are primarily parented by
third parties in practice, teachers and educators ought to get their fair
share of the blame for not being good role models and keeping kids protected
from that mess?

~~~
mkohlmyr
You're asking a whole lot of teachers.

And frankly, no. It is a classic case of treating the symptom rather than the
disease. When what you need is stronger parenting and better social structure
and safety nets, substituting that with additional responsibilities and
workloads for teachers who are arguably often already burdened outside of what
could reasonably be expected of them is not going to be a recipe for success.

~~~
ddebernardy
I'm asking teachers nothing, actually. Just wondering and asking the parent
post's author...

And frankly, I've no idea what ought to be done about it.

What I do know is this much: in broad strokes, the US went from a household
with a pop at work mum at home 50 years ago, to a pop and mum at work or
single parent at work nowadays. In other words, it turned into a society where
parents don't have the material time to parent their own children. Who should
do so in their place?

~~~
restalis
I heard about something called "parental rights" \- is it something that
depends on the individuals having "the material time to parent their own
children" or is it me understanding things wrongly?

------
Haul4ss
I can't help but think there's a Submarine[1] effect going on with reporting
on public schools in the U.S.

The U.S. is a huge country with a heterogeneous population spanning a wide
swath of the socioeconomic continuum. To say "teaching is bad" as a blanket
statement is intellectually dishonest, to the point where I think some
organization(s) intentionally push this meme in the media to further their own
purposes.

I agree with taking the profession of teaching more seriously (as if anybody
is opposed to such a thing). How best to do that is what we'll probably never
agree on.

[1]
[http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html](http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html)

~~~
Ntrails
As with many things I'm reminded of the west wing:

 _" Mallory, education is the silver bullet. Education is everything. We don't
need little changes, we need gigantic, monumental changes. Schools should be
palaces. The competition for the best teachers should be fierce. They should
be making six-figure salaries. Schools should be incredibly expensive for
government and absolutely free of charge to its citizens, just like national
defense. That's my position. I just haven't figured out how to do it yet."_

Rather than pretending it could ever be the case, I like to imagine that
there's an alternate universe where it happens :)

~~~
tartuffe78
"... free of charge to its citizens...", except for taxes of course

~~~
acdha
… which will be paid at a much higher level for decades by the adults who
received a solid education even if their parents couldn't have afforded it.
This is hardly a zero-sum game.

------
Shivetya
because politicians, nor school administrators, nor teachers, are required, to
send their own children through the system.

It certainly isn't a lack of money. Some city school systems spend more than
it cost to get an college education per student. We simply spend too much
money on everything but having more teachers. It is not about paying teachers
enough, its about hiring enough teachers. Instead it goes to administrators,
counselors, and etc, heavy in nepotism and cronyism.

Then add in...

The Federal Government setting standards on punishment, effectively now
requiring a quota system. So if one group is over represented in being
disciplined the system cannot take action without threat of losing federal
funds. The Federal government allowing select schools to ignore standards set
by NCLB and subsequent programs provided they are politically well connected.

TL;DR

Spending too much money on hiring someone other than teachers. Having the
Federal government dictate standards but excuse groups from them, dictating
who you can discipline and how often, and finally the corrupt nature of hiring
in many school systems.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Spending on schooling is not equitable across school districts. So poor
schools get less funding per student than rich schools, and predictably do
much worse. On average there doesn't look there is a problem with funding, but
that is deceptive.

~~~
TheBeardKing
This is exactly right. The Atlantic published an excellent article regarding
school funding and its tie-ins to standardized testing:
[http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/07/why-
poor...](http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/07/why-poor-schools-
cant-win-at-standardized-testing/374287/)

------
throwaway781
Currently in my first year teaching in an urban school. It's hard to describe
how physically/mentally/emotionally draining it is. I went through an
alternate certification program and was put in front of a class after a six
week summer program. I am amazed that this is acceptable.

~~~
jostylr
You've been given the task of controlling lots of kids, squishing their
natural learning desires and ways. This should be draining as it is against
the ways of how we evolved.

See for example
[http://www.salon.com/2013/08/26/school_is_a_prison_and_damag...](http://www.salon.com/2013/08/26/school_is_a_prison_and_damaging_our_kids/)

Despite your best intentions, coercive schooling is not a good thing. There
are better ways, such as Sudbury schooling, that are both respectful of
children and actually prepare them for the world that we live in.

~~~
TheBeardKing
Arguments like this make me wonder whether we should pursue homeschooling. My
kids are 2 and 4, and we've been going back and forth on the decision. We
couldn't afford private school, and my wife is already staying home. Our
county's educational system is one of the best in the state, but it still
suffers from the bad practices that plague our national education system.

~~~
Mimu
I live in France but I always wonder how homeschool could work. How can one
parent (or even both) be as efficient than a whole school?

~~~
TheBeardKing
Efficiency isn't the question, of course it isn't efficient. You're giving up
one person's salary to teach a couple kids. The effectiveness of homeschooling
is what's important, which, I think, is largely determined by the education of
the parent. I've met several non-college educated parents who don't seem
qualified to teach their children through higher grade levels, but others who
quit engineering jobs to homeschool who I know are always on the ball and will
produce great results in their kids. With a well-educated and energetic
parent, the results of homeschooling will far surpass that of the public
school system. Research into homeschooling effectiveness is still in early
stages, but the studies produced by my google results show homeschooling
producing sociable, independent kids who do well in college.

------
lordnacho
I was surprised teacher salaries did not come into it. From my relatively
uninformed viewpoint, I would think offering more money would give you a
better choice of candidates. Look at investment banks. They offer lots of
money, and they get the pick of a large proportion of the top graduates.

Here's a conversation I had with a young man in Switzerland:

Me: You seem like a smart, well educated guy (Kid speaks 4 languages, and can
talk about interesting stuff at age 20). So, what do you do when you're not
helping out at your dad's shop?

Him: I've got an apprenticeship at Credit Suisse. So I work there a few days
and study some other days.

Me: Cool. My banker is at CS, and he started at 16, just like you. He's a
smart guy, been sent to NYC as well. Probably doing quite well out of it. I
guess that's your path then?

Him: Nah. I like it and the pay is good. The work is interesting, but I want
to get into teaching.

Me: So, no rat race I guess?

Him: Well, I know you can make good money in banking, but I figure I can help
out young people make the most of themselves.

Me: Sounds like quite a paycut. I remember going into finance thinking how on
earth I could ever change back out.

Him: Well, you do get paid 120K CHF a year after a few years. (That's 125K
USD.)

Me: [Jaw Drops]

I don't know a whole lot about the system here, but I do feel more comfortable
knowing that it's actually competitive to become a teacher.

~~~
dagw
Getting better candidates is not the only problem. Keeping them is the real
trick. I have several friends who've ventured into teaching out of various
more or less idealistic reasons. Most of them quit for reasons that have
nothing to do with money and everything to do with the terrible working
conditions. Constant micromanagement, zero control over lessons or lesson
plans, endless stream of tests they had to teach to, reams of pointless
paperwork that sucked up all their supposed lesson planning time. That is what
drives many young, smart, talented people away from teaching in my experience.

~~~
lordnacho
This sounds right. The guy I was talking to seemed to think conditions were
good. A lot of debate in certain countries carries an undertone that teachers
are lazy, which can't be useful for retention.

------
pastProlog
A recurring theme here seems to be the bottom 10%, or bottom 20%, or what have
you, scores in the US are dragging down the other scores. If those were
ignored, the US would presumably be way up top.

But that is not the case. If you compare the top 10% of PISA scores in Japan,
Singapore, South Korea etc. - or Finland, Switzerland, Holland - to the top
10% in the US, the US top 10% is below their top 10% as well.

[http://educationbythenumbers.org/content/top-us-students-
far...](http://educationbythenumbers.org/content/top-us-students-fare-poorly-
international-pisa-test-scores-shanghai-tops-world-finland-slips_693/)

~~~
acdha
That kind of study is really hard for non-experts to draw conclusions from
because the process is full of confounds. Even before you look at the test
content you'd want to compare across demographic profiles (i.e. parental
education levels or income) to see whether that trend holds up. In the case of
the PISA scores, there's 2013 paper claiming that some percentage of the
differences are explained by a sampling bias over-representing low-income
students: [http://www.epi.org/publication/us-student-performance-
testin...](http://www.epi.org/publication/us-student-performance-testing/)
That could have an effect on the top-end scores as well if it reduced the
percentage of top students in the pool.

The other big problem you get is that this is a very narrow test of a single
subject and Goodhart's law reigns supreme in this kind of comparison. The
total difference being discussed is a 2% delta between the top US decile and
Shanghai, which was the world leader. Even if that's not just random
fluctuation, it could be explained entirely by something as simple as
Singapore making that test a priority whereas it's largely off the radar in
the US. That's not an accusation of cheating – it could be as simple as
whether kids have drilled as heavily on a specific skill which is used more in
one national curriculum than the other.

EDIT: To clarify: this shouldn't be read as criticism of PISA – I'm sure
they've made considerable effort to address this challenges – but simply that
this kind of comparison is a _HARD_ challenge.

------
cies
i did not read the article, just quickly scanned through. but the answer to my
best knowledge is:

1) it isn't always that bad, if you pay the premium for private education you
can get some of the best education available in the world 2) the people who
pay for private schools also pay a significantly larger share of the taxes 3)
those taxes pay for the public schools

thus: public teaching is bad because the ones that proportionally pay more for
it, don't make use of it.

i live in a country (NL) where public schools are the norm, we all pay for
what we (almost) all consume.

~~~
jeremysmyth
I'm not following the cause and effect of your logic. Are you missing a point
or two? Perhaps "The ones who are paying for it are paying less than they need
to"? or maybe "The ones who apportion those taxes have no financial incentive
to apportion them wisely"?

Even in those cases, there _should_ be enough distance between those paying
the tax (in whatever portions) and those spending the tax to ensure that the
government runs without interference and can provide the best service at that
price point. If the service isn't good enough, then increase the price point.
If you don't want to increase the price point, then reduce the quality of your
service.

Either way, I think the argument falls into the category of "Wealth
redistribution is a broken concept", and that's a whole 'nother ball game that
any discussion on schools just isn't big enough for.

~~~
ddebernardy
As I understand what the parent post's author wrote, the ones who pay for the
US school system aren't the ones who use it: their kids go to private schools.

Perhaps this point was missing or too implicit: contrary to what occurs in
Europe, there is no "How is my money being spent?" effect as a result of this.

~~~
jeremysmyth
I'm still not getting it. Are you saying that some taxes should be ringfenced
and only used for the specific purpose of education (and by extension other
taxes to other things), and that taxpayers get to see precisely how their
proportion of taxes are being spent on that particular thing?

In any representative democracy that I know of, the budget (including tax
income and government outgoings such as education) is handled by elected
representatives of the people. There is no direct connection between a
specific tax dollar and a specific public service. Rather, these things are
budgeted for in aggregate.

The elected representatives are accountable to their electorate for these
budgets, not to individual taxpayers. The concept of "How is my money being
spent?" is a feature of this aggregated budgeting rather than any specific
tracking from specific taxpayer to specific service. Going back to the parent
posting, which implied an accountability of legislation (or at least
educational administration) to its funders, I don't see how this works in
representative democracies such as the US, because the funders are not
stockholders in the traditional sense: Their extra tax dollars do not give
them extra voting rights. The only way I can imagine that they _would_ have
more voting rights is through lobbying and other such methods that bypass
traditional electoral accountability.

In short, an argument in the form of "Higher net tax payers are not net
consumers of government spending, therefore government spending that does not
help them does not efficiently help others" assumes either that citizens have
an electoral power relative to the tax they pay (which is undemocratic) or
that wealth redistribution is broken (in this case or in general).

~~~
ddebernardy
> I'm still not getting it.

In Europe, the main group of tax payers are eating their own dog food by
sending their kids to public schools. When the public schools their kids go to
sucks, they know first hand and lobby to get it fixed.

In contrast, the main group of tax payers in the US are sending their kids to
private schools. When the local public schools sucks, it doesn't have the
slightest immediate impact on their kids and they therefor will not care much.

~~~
jeremysmyth
I still fail to see the influential connection between the taxpayer's opinion
and the service his tax pays for. A rich guy who pays tax and doesn't avail of
the state's education is in a minority, regardless of how much tax he pays.

As far as I can see, the only way the argument works is if money is what's
doing the electing, rather than individual voters (as in, we don't have "one
man one vote" but rather we have "mo' money mo' votes" like in private
companies). If that's the case, then that's a way bigger story than "rich guy
doesn't care that his tax dollars make good public education".

------
usermac
My wife is a teacher in China. She taught me that the difference is 2 things:
One is the single child is pushed into competing by the parents who fear the
other parents are pushing their child. Second is she says the Chinese children
can "see" the future is bad without something to change it and that is getting
an education. She says we just don't see that here in America - the child that
is.

------
stoolpigeon
I went through a period of time where I thought I wanted to teach. I took it
as far as completing a 1 year education program that would allow me to be seek
certification at the end.

The article has a paragraph that describes my experience perfectly:

"American education schools are often derided as overly theoretical,
inscribing an arcane vocabulary about education and few real skills for
delivering it. But these institutions actually teach a hollow and decidedly
anti-intellectual brand of theory, as many critiques of education schools have
concluded. Future teachers receive a warmed-over set of homilies about
preparing “the whole child” and “student-centered learning” (with the
requisite homage to philosopher and education theorist John Dewey) instead of
a serious intellectual initiation into the subjects in which teachers will
have to instruct students."

------
threatofrain
I have had some past association with an education franchise, and I'd say that
the biggest thing stopping an American teacher from doing better in
specifically math and science is probably classroom logistics.

When you are paired 1:1 with a young person of peer-ish intelligence, the
speed at which you can teach them specific math skills and principles can be
exciting for both involved. But most people cannot afford 1:1.

~~~
ddorian43
Which country affords 1:1 ?

------
spindritf
It's not. It's on par with the rest of the western world[1], maybe except
Finland which is an outlier whether you include the US or not. At least as of
2009, I doubt it somehow collapsed since.

Not to mention higher education, where Americans lead. Although judging by
tuitions perhaps a little too far in the diminishing returns region.

[1] [http://super-economy.blogspot.com/2010/12/amazing-truth-
abou...](http://super-economy.blogspot.com/2010/12/amazing-truth-about-pisa-
scores-usa.html)

~~~
tokenadult
This thread seems already to have aged off the front page, but it is dismaying
to see that lazy blog post from 2010 still cited here on Hacker News years
after other participants have pointed to better sources on international
educational comparisons. The author's main point seems to be found in the
opening paragraph serving as the thesis statement of his blog post: "What I
have learned recently and want to share with you is that once we correct (even
crudely) for demography in the 2009 PISA scores, American students outperform
Western Europe by significant margins and tie with Asian students."

But this is factually incorrect.

1\. American students are not outperforming Western Europe by significant
margins nor are they tied with Asian students. The blog post is based on data
from the PISA 2009 survey. But the United States National Center for Education
Statistics (NCES) International Activities Program displays results about
high-performing students from PIRLS 2006, TIMSS 2007, and PISA 2009,

[http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/international/reports/2012-hps-
mr...](http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/international/reports/2012-hps-mrs.asp)

and shows European, Asian, and Oceanic countries outperforming the United
States in producing high-performing students in reading, in mathematics
(especially), and in science.

Looking at the comparable chart about low-performing students

[http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/international/reports/2012-lps-
mr...](http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/international/reports/2012-lps-mrs.asp)

shows, especially in the teenage age range after longer exposure to formal
schooling, that the United States has much higher percentages of low-
performing students in those subjects than countries in several other regions
of the world, again especially in mathematics. Comparing national averages
with United States population group averages in the manner proposed by the
author is misleading, and he should have considered other data sources.

2\. The author, a person who did not grow up in the United States, has
acquired English as a working language for his personal writing and scholarly
publications after growing up knowing two other Indo-European languages. It
amazes me that he didn't even point out that young people in the United States
are especially unlikely to have strong foreign-language instruction in school.
Way back in the 1980s, the book _The Tongue-tied American: Confronting the
Foreign Language Crisis,_

[http://www.amazon.com/The-Tongue-Tied-American-
Confronting-L...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Tongue-Tied-American-Confronting-
Language/dp/0826404049)

which I read soon after it was published, pointed out that the United States
appears to be the only country on earth in which it is possible to earn a
Ph.D. degree without acquiring working knowledge of a second language. In
those days, one way in which school systems in most countries outdid the
United States school system, economic level of countries being comparable, was
that an American could go to many different places and expect university
graduates (and perhaps high school graduates as well) to have a working
knowledge of English for communication about business or research. I still
surprise Chinese visitors to the United States, in 2012, if I join in on their
Chinese-language conversations. No one expects Americans to learn any language
other than English. Elsewhere in the world, the public school system is tasked
with imparting at least one foreign language (most often English) and indeed a
second language of school instruction (as in Taiwan or in Singapore) that in
my generation was not spoken in most pupils' homes, as well as all the usual
primary and secondary school subjects. At a minimum, that's one way in which
schools in most parts of the world take on a tougher task than the educational
goals of United States schools. So if learners in those countries merely equal
American levels of achievement in national-language reading, in mathematics,
and in science, with additional knowledge of English as a second language,
that is already an impressive achievement. As long as international
educational comparisons don't include comparisons of second language ability
acquired by schooling, it will be easy for the United States to rank
misleadingly high in those comparisons.

3\. Moreover, the author's conclusion is suspect even on the basis of the PISA
mathematics scores, correcting thoughtfully rather than crudely for
demographic factors. More experienced educational researchers who published a
peer-reviewed popular article, "Teaching Math to the Talented"

[http://educationnext.org/teaching-math-to-the-
talented/](http://educationnext.org/teaching-math-to-the-talented/)

dug into the same PISA 2009 data and reached a differing conclusion:
"Unfortunately, we found that the percentage of students in the U.S. Class of
2009 who were highly accomplished in math is well below that of most countries
with which the United States generally compares itself. No fewer than 30 of
the 56 other countries that participated in the Program for International
Student Assessment (PISA) math test, including most of the world’s
industrialized nations, had a larger percentage of students who scored at the
international equivalent of the advanced level on our own National Assessment
of Educational Progress (NAEP) tests."

The PISA program itself has published summary reports suggesting, based on the
same 2009 data, that the United States schools underperform relative to levels
of public spending on the school system,

[http://www.oecd.org/pisa/49685503.pdf](http://www.oecd.org/pisa/49685503.pdf)

with the report noting that "successful school systems in high-income
economies tend to prioritize the quality of teachers over the size of
classes," which is not the policy in most states of the United States. Based
on those data, a scholar commented, "There are countries which don't get the
bang for the bucks, and the U.S. is one of them,"

[http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/education/2003-09-16-edu...](http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/education/2003-09-16-education-
comparison_x.htm)

The PISA program issued another report on how disadvantaged students overcome
their backgrounds in national school systems,

[http://www.oecd.org/pisa/pisaproducts/pisa2009/48165173.pdf](http://www.oecd.org/pisa/pisaproducts/pisa2009/48165173.pdf)

and the United States underperforms the average of OECD countries in this
regard too.

4\. The blog author suggests comparing countries as "Asian" or otherwise
belonging to a United States "race" category with students in the United
States classified by the current official federal "race" categories. The
latest TIMSS report,

[http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2013/2013009_1.pdf](http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2013/2013009_1.pdf)

consistent with a previous TIMSS report available when the author wrote his
blog post, shows that the "Asian" average score in the United States in eighth
grade mathematics (568) indicates American students underperform, not tie
with" students from Singapore (611), Taiwan (606), and Korea (613). The group
average comparisons understate the large gap in the percentage of students who
reach the highest level of performance in the high-performing countries, which
is visually quite apparent in the national comparison tables (e.g., Table 4,
page 11 of the link immediately above). Similarly, "white" United States
students mostly tie with, not "outperform" students from a variety of
countries mostly inhabited by people of European ethnicity.

This methodology is "crude," to use the author's term, because the categories
"Asian" and "black" in the United States do not have the same composition of
persons from varying ethnic and language backgrounds as the categories "from
an Asian country" or "from an African country."

The Census Bureau says

"The U.S. Census Bureau collects race data in accordance with guidelines
provided by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB), and these data are
based on self-identification. The racial categories included in the census
questionnaire generally reflect a social definition of race recognized in this
country and not an attempt to define race biologically, anthropologically, or
genetically. In addition, it is recognized that the categories of the race
item include racial and national origin or sociocultural groups. People may
choose to report more than one race to indicate their racial mixture, such as
'American Indian' and 'White.' People who identify their origin as Hispanic,
Latino, or Spanish may be of any race."

[http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/meta/long_RHI525211.htm](http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/meta/long_RHI525211.htm)

5\. The blog post author is counting on readers not to challenge his
assumption that "once we correct (even crudely) for demography" is correct
procedure for comparing varied national populations with culturally distinct
historical experiences and differing school systems. The author's argument
appears to be based on a discredited hypothesis built on poorly collected data
about the origin of group differences in IQ, with the peer-reviewed
refutations of the hypothesis published well before the blog post.

Dolan, C. V., Roorda, W., & Wicherts, J. M. (2004). Two failures of Spearman's
hypothesis: The GAT-B in Holland and the JAT in South Africa. Intelligence,
35, 155-173.

[http://wicherts.socsci.uva.nl/dolanSH2004.pdf](http://wicherts.socsci.uva.nl/dolanSH2004.pdf)

Wicherts, J. M., Dolan, C. V., & Van der Maas, H. L. J. (2010). A systematic
literature review of the average IQ of sub-Saharan Africans. Intelligence, 38,
1-20.

[http://wicherts.socsci.uva.nl/wicherts2010IQAFR.pdf](http://wicherts.socsci.uva.nl/wicherts2010IQAFR.pdf)

Anyway group differences of the kind to which the author refers are, according
the most up-to-date peer-reviewed research, based mostly on environmental
factors,

Nisbett RE, Aronson J, Blair C, Dickens W, Flynn J, Halpern DF, Turkheimer E.
Group differences in IQ are best understood as environmental in origin. Am
Psychol. 2012 Sep;67(6):503-4. doi: 10.1037/a0029772.

[http://people.virginia.edu/~ent3c/papers2/nisbett2012groupdi...](http://people.virginia.edu/~ent3c/papers2/nisbett2012groupdiffs.pdf)

so they still raise the question of how learning environments may be improved
for learners in some social groups in the United States.

[http://www.ams.org/notices/200502/fea-
kenschaft.pdf](http://www.ams.org/notices/200502/fea-kenschaft.pdf)

------
general_failure
And yet they are the worlds leading economy and tech center of the word. Can
some explain this paradox?

~~~
dagw
Their (good) universities are very good and not all their schools are bad. A
percentage of kids in the US do go to genuinely great schools, and then there
is another group that due to various factors manage to get a decent basic
education despite the school system. Due to the large US population, in
absolute terms these two groups are quite large. Now feed these people through
a genuinely world class higher education system and you end up with a quite
large number (again in absolute terms) of genuinely smart and and well
educated people.

Add to this the fact that the US has historically been very good at attracting
the best and the brightest from around the world to move there and you end up
with probably the largest collection of 'leading' people in the world.

~~~
themartorana
I think there's also an important bit of learning attached to independent
thinking and problem solving. Some programs, like many Asian countries,
overly-rely on rote learning. The schools that I went through - NJ public
schools in the 80s and 90s - had many teachers that focused on teaching me/us
how and why to learn in good balance with factual rote learning.

Now with all of the focus on standardized testing, I worry the focus on
independent thinking and problem solving is all but destroyed. Teachers now
have what I consider "mandatory sentencing" with no room to inspire - only
time to teach the test and shuffle kids through.

You might see some of that US magic fade away this generation. I hope not.

