[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 152 (Wednesday, September 27, 1995)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1845-E1846]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                  MAKING AMERICA'S SCHOOLS COMPETITIVE

                                 ______


                          HON. JOHN J. LaFALCE

                              of new york

                    in the house of representatives

                     Wednesday, September 27, 1995

  Mr. LaFALCE. Mr. Speaker, America's schools are lagging behind those 
in most other industrialized countries in student performance. This is 
due in considerable part to problems with student discipline, lack of 
national standards, ineffective testing and lack of student 
accountability. Albert Shanker, president of the American Federation of 
Teachers, has outlined what our Nation should be learning from other 
nations who are dealing with these problems. I would like to share an 
article prepared by Mr. Shanker, which was published in the Wall Street 
Journal on Friday, September 15, 1995.

                    Education Contract With America

                          (By Albert Shanker)

       Successful school systems in other industrialized countries 
     are effective because they have four essential elements: 
     student discipline, rigorous national or state academic 
     standards, external assessments and strong incentives for 
     students to work hard. There is solid evidence to believe 
     that out school system could be just as effective if we did 
     the same. What are the chances? Not good, given that both 
     liberal and conservative politicians are caught up in faddish 
     and radical schemes for reforming schools. Very good if we 
     look at where the American public is on these issues.
       The first essential element is the refusal to tolerate 
     disruptive student behavior that regularly interferes with 
     education. In other industrialized countries, a student who 
     constantly disrupts a class is suspended or placed in a 
     separate class or school. That such disruptive behavior goes 
     unchecked here can be seen in the fact that Americans 
     constantly cite discipline as the top school problem in the 
     Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup polls. The public holds parents 
     responsible but also wants schools to act: 77% want 
     chronically disruptive students transferred to a separate 
     facility.


                         politically incorrect

       Yet this solution remains politically incorrect in the U.S. 
     We are told that we must allow on child to destroy the 
     education of 30 others because a major mission of schools is 
     social adjustment. Or that separating these students would 
     persecute them for having a disability beyond their control. 
     Or that enforcing standards of conduct would have a disparate 
     impact on minorities. (Actually it would: They would benefit 
     disproportionately.)
       So efforts to remove chronically disruptive students are 
     few. When they occur, advocacy groups mount lengthy, 
     expensive legal challenges. And courts are apt to side with 
     the ``repentant'' offender rather than the unseen victims--
     the other students. Few cases even get that far, since there 
     are powerful incentives for schools not to report problems 
     that would give them a bad reputation or tie up principals 
     and school boards in court. Failure to act only encourages 
     more students to misbehave.
       The second essential element in effective school systems is 
     the existence of academic standards at the national or state 
     level. These specify what is taught in each subject at each 
     grade level and the quality of student performance required. 
     Students are taught to the same standards in the early 
     grades, but at some point (between grades 

[[Page E 1846]]
     five and nine, depending on the country), students are put in different 
     tracks, each demanding, on the basis of their achievement.
       There are no such standards here. Efforts to establish 
     national standards have been particularly controversial, but 
     if other democratic countries with a range of political 
     ideologies have been able to work them out, couldn't we? The 
     public seems to want us to. The Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup Poll 
     has included different questions about national standards, 
     and support has ranged from 69% to 83%.
       State standards have made more headway, but almost none of 
     them gives real guidance to teachers. Many are vague: e.g., 
     learn to appreciate literature. Some are so encyclopedic that 
     each teacher has to decide what to do.
       The public demands more. According to the 1994 Public 
     Agenda survey, 82% of Americans favor ``setting up very clear 
     guidelines on what kids should learn and teachers should 
     teach in every major subject.'' And the 1995 Phi Delta Kappa/
     Gallup Poll shows that 87% of Americans think students ought 
     to meet ``higher standards than are now required in math, 
     English, history, and science in order to graduate from high 
     school.''
       The disconnect between the public and public officials is 
     also large on the issue of tracking. American schools, like 
     school systems in other countries, track students, but we do 
     it poorly and unfairly. One way to turn that around is to do 
     what other nations do: Have common high standards in the 
     early grades and ensure that students in different tracks in 
     the later grades all have challenging standards to meet and 
     second chances to move to higher tracks. Instead, public 
     officials are jumping on the de-tracking bandwagon, the idea 
     that a 10th-grader who is at, say, a fifth-grade reading 
     level should be taught in the same class as students at the 
     10th-grade level. Why? To avoid the harmful effects of 
     labeling some students as ``slow,'' or to see if lower 
     achieving students will rise to the level of high achievers.
       This is clearly unworkable. What's a teacher supposed to 
     do--teach the same lesson to all? Divide the class into 
     groups, and give each group only a small amount of attention? 
     Ah, we're told, with lots of time, training and other 
     expensive changes, teachers may learn new methods that work.
       The public is not buying. According to a 1994 survey by the 
     Public Agenda Foundation, ``only 34% of Americans think that 
     mixing students of different achievement levels together in 
     classes . . . will help increase student learning. People 
     remain skeptical about this strategy even when presented with 
     arguments in favor of it . . . [because it] seems to fly in 
     the face of their real-world experiences.''
       The third essential element of successful school systems is 
     external testing that is administered by state or national 
     governments. Secondary school students abroad know that being 
     admitted into a university or technical institute or getting 
     a good job depends on passing rigorous external exams. Most 
     nations' college-entrance exams cover four to seven subjects, 
     each taking about six to eight hours of essay writing and 
     problem solving. About 30% of all students pass them. There 
     are also rigorous exams to enter technical schools.
       In the U.S., we have no comparable curriculum-based exams, 
     though the old New York State Regents exams can the closest. 
     The Advanced Placement exams are somewhat comparable but are 
     not required; only 7% of students take them. Standardized 
     reading and math tests given in all schools measure only 
     those skills and don't measure students' performance against 
     objective standards. Minimum competency tests for 12th-grade 
     graduation typically measure seventh- or eighth-grade skills. 
     None of this satisfies the public's demand for high 
     standards.
       The fourth element of successful education systems is high 
     stakes for student achievement--the glue that holds the other 
     elements together. Students in other countries study hard 
     because they know that unless they pass their exams, they 
     will not get into a college, technical institute or 
     apprenticeship program. They may not even get a job because 
     employers hire on the basis of school records.
       In the U.S., almost nothing counts for students--not 
     grades, not behavior, not even attendance. There is a college 
     willing to take all hopefuls in America, no matter what 
     courses they took or what grades and SAT or ACT scores they 
     received. Eighty-nine percent of four-year colleges offer 
     remediation. Those not headed for college needn't worry 
     either. Employers do care whether the applicant is a graduate 
     or dropout, but they don't ask for the student's academic and 
     behavioral record.


                           Not on the Agenda

       Without high stakes, students won't work hard and, 
     therefore, won't learn much. But this is not on the American 
     political agenda. Liberal politicians say it is unfair to 
     hold children accountable until we equalize the resources 
     spent on them. Conservatives seem no more eager than 
     liberals. They spend their time placing blame for low student 
     achievement on teachers' unions, tenure and government 
     monopoly of education--each of which is present in successful 
     school systems.
       The liberals' solution for low academic achievement is to 
     push social engineering first, which has little public 
     support. The conservatives' solution is to push vouchers, 
     which haven't improved achievement and which according to the 
     1995 Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup poll, are opposed by 65% of 
     Americans. And both sides, for different reasons, are 
     embracing an even greater degree of the local control that 
     brought us to this state of low achievement in the first 
     place.
       The American public and parents want high standards of 
     conduct and achievement in our public schools. Surveys of 
     teachers show the same. They're right: Discipline and 
     academic standards work and are workable. Smart politicians 
     should propose this as an Educational Contract with America 
     and deliver.

                          ____________________