In developing countries, the impacts of education are more obvious than in developed nations. Education in poorer countries is often the determining factor in the spread of AIDS, malaria, poverty, ideological extremism and population growth, among other devastating trends. Education in richer countries is perceived in less volatile forms, affecting salaries and skill levels. Furthermore, in rich nations, the illusion of “pulling yourself up by your bootstraps” oversimplifies the role of education; implied in the American Dream is that, provided you work hard, even the worst education will not impede your success. While President Obama exemplifies that this dream is possible, the vast majority are not so fortunate.
What is dangerous about this paradigm, and the problem with our nation’s educational environment, is that each child is not equally advantaged. The opposite is true: Many children are systematically disadvantaged. The No Child Left Behind Act that professed to fix disparities failed to do so. The National Assessment for Educational Progress says few achievement gaps narrowed since 1999. Perhaps most worrying is that our education system continues to rank poorly among developed nations.
First, on a macro level, we should consider how our educational system is preparing our young to excel globally. On reading, math and science, among 15-year-olds, we fail even to rank in the world’s top dozen. Canada, our benign neighbor to the north, is doing a bang-up job with their young, ranking third in science, fourth in reading and sixth in math. Or take Finland, the world’s top consistent performer, ranking first in math and science and second in reading. The economic impact of our poor performance is clear: Had we improved achievement, our 2008 GDP would have increased $1.3-2.3 trillion (McKinsey 2009).
Examine the problem with a different variable: graduation rates. Among developed countries, top performers like Denmark, Japan, Poland, Germany and Finland are graduating over 90 percent of their population, while the U.S. averages 70 percent, with cities like Baltimore graduating less than 40 percent of their students. We cannot continue to ignore that we are being outpaced by the world.
Second, on a micro level, look at our disproportionate preparation nationally, beginning with economic disparities. Our highest-spending school district spends more than nine times per pupil what the lowest-spending district does. Children raised in low-income communities carry the burden of a grossly under-funded learning environment, where the basics — paper, books, pencils — are absent in the classroom. The economic impact of these disparities is noteworthy: The narrowing of this gap would have raised our 2008 GDP by $400-670 billion (McKinsey).
Racial disparities must also be examined. Students of color and youth from low-income neighborhoods are acutely affected. African-American, Hispanic and Native American high school students have, at best, a six out of 10 chance of graduating on time with a diploma. The Asian-American community is not exempt; at least half of all Cambodians, Laotians and Hmong aged 25 and older have less than a high school education.
But generally speaking, our education funding formulas are outdated, relying on factors such as average daily attendance, average costs for “regular” students and concentrations of low-income, special-education and English-language-learner students. This is untenable for an economically recessed nation that is slowly overshadowed by the education-savvy brain factories in India, China and elsewhere.
This is a national security issue. We are losing our economic edge because the brightest and best are emerging overseas and we are losing our streets to violence as dropouts increase. President Obama notes the “relative decline of American education” is “untenable for our economy, unsustainable for our democracy and unacceptable for our children.”
To stem this decline, I reintroduced legislation, the Educational Opportunity and Equity Commission Act, H.R. 1758 — supported by the National Education Association, American Federation of Teachers and Parent Teacher Association, among others — to create a national commission that gathers public insights about how government can improve education and eliminate disparities in the education system.
As a former teacher, principal and board member in economically and racially mixed neighborhoods, I know well how a comprehensive rethinking and retooling of our educational system can rectify what went wrong. So too, does Secretary Arne Duncan. Meeting with the secretary, I was heartened to hear that the largest one-time federal investment in education, enacted by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, will address the needs of individual students and move away from a one-size-fits-all approach.
Our nation must take a stand for its young, lest Canada and Finland continue to top reading, science and math scores; lest Cambodian-, Laotian- and Hmong-Americans continue to struggle with literacy, and lest African- and Hispanic-American students continue to top dropout rates. This is our developed-world disease, and we must take steps now to eradicate these disparities before they further erode our nation’s development.
Honda is a member of the House Appropriations Committee and the Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies Subcommittee. He is also a former educator, having served for 30 years as a teacher, principal and school board member.