[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 59 (Friday, May 10, 2002)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E768-E769]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    AMERICA'S EDUCATIONAL STRENGTHS

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. BARNEY FRANK

                            of massachusetts

                    in the house of representatives

                         Thursday, May 9, 2002

  Mr. FRANK. Mr. Speaker, in the Outlook section of the Washington Post 
for Sunday, May 4, Gerald Bracey, has an interesting article which 
makes a point that I have long thought an important one--namely, that 
while it has become fashionable to denigrate the quality of public 
education in America across the board, our country has consistently led 
the world economically in part because we have done so well in 
precisely those areas of the economy where an educated workforce is the 
greatest asset. And as Mr. Bracey points out, those who have argued 
that our entire public educational system is failing have consistently 
argued that is would undermined our economic performance, undeterred by 
the fact that our economic performance has been so good.
  As Bracey's article points out, ``in the early 1990s, as the economy 
tanked and a recession set in, many variations of a `lousy-schools-are-
producing-a-lousy-workforce-and-it's-killing-us-in-the-global-
marketplace' could be heard. But these slackers somehow managed to turn 
things around. The American economy: `back on top was the way the New 
York summed up the turnabout in February 1994 well, if the schools took 
the rap when they went south, surely they would be praised when the 
economy boomed, right? hardly.' ''
  As Mr. Bracey notes, we do have problems with our school systems, 
particularly the inequality in which many of our schools in the urban 
and in some rural areas fall far below standard. Clearly we have to do 
a better job of helping the educational system overcome the social 
problems that contribute to the educational difficulties that many 
students face, and it is our obligation as a society committed to 
fairness to do far more here, both in and out of school. But the 
general point remains--if our school system overall was doing such a 
poor job, it is hard to understand how our economy could be doing so 
well in the areas where education is key. Because this question is so 
central to our deliberations, I ask that Mr. Bracey's article be 
printed here.

                    Why Do We Scapegoat The Schools?

                         (By Gerald W. Bracey)

       There's no pleasing some people, even when they get what 
     they want. So why do we keep listening to them?
       For almost 20 years now, some of our most prominent 
     business leaders and politicians have sounded the same alarm 
     about the nation's public schools. It began in earnest with 
     that 1983 golden treasury of selected, spun and distorted 
     education statistics, ``A Nation At Risk,'' whose authors 
     wrote, ``If only to keep and improve on the slim competitive 
     edge we retain in world markets, we

[[Page E769]]

     must dedicate ourselves to the reform of our educational 
     system. . . .'' The document tightly yoked our economic 
     position in the world to how well or poorly students bubbled 
     in answer sheets on standardized tests.
       And it continued in September 2000, when a national 
     commission on math and science teaching headed by former Ohio 
     senator John Glenn issued a report titled ``Before It's Too 
     Late.'' It asked, rhetorically, ``In an integrated, global 
     economy . . . will our children be able to compete?'' The 
     report's entirely predictable answer: Not if we don't improve 
     schools ``before it's too late'' (emphasis in the original 
     report).
       So you might think that these Chicken Littles would be 
     firing up their fax machines and e-mailing everywhere to 
     report the following hot news from the World Economic Forum's 
     ``Global Competitiveness Report, 2001-2002'': The United 
     States ranks second in the organization's Current 
     Competitiveness Index, trailing only Finland.
       The CCI isn't just another survey. It is a sophisticated 
     rating system derived from a wide variety of economic and 
     other factors, including education data. And the World 
     Economic Forum (or WEF) isn't some minor league player. Its 
     annual conference draws a cross-section of the planet's most 
     powerful political and business leaders--including some of 
     the people so concerned about America's schools.
       But the naysayers haven't trumpeted the CCI ranking. 
     Indeed, I wouldn't be surprised if, sometime soon, a leading 
     member of Congress or the business community declares that we 
     must reform our educational system to maintain our 
     competitive edge--or best those pesky Finns.
       'Twas ever thus. Schools often takes the hit for bad turns 
     of events, but somehow never get the credit for upturns. 
     Remember 1957? The Russians launched Sputnik, the first man-
     made satellite to orbit Earth. When people asked how we could 
     lose the race to space, public schools were an easy target. 
     Life magazine ran a five-part series on the ``Crisis in 
     Education.'' Major universities assumed the role of rescuers 
     to develop modern, challenging textbooks. In 1969, America 
     put a man on the moon, a destination that the Russians--with 
     their allegedly superior scientists--never reached. Did a 
     magazine declare an end to the ``crisis'' in education? Do 
     pigs fly?
       I don't mean to suggest, of course, that America's public 
     schools are perfect. The dreary state of some urban and poor 
     rural school systems is well documented. But I've been 
     following the angst over our competitive capabilities since 
     the 1983 report, and I've noticed the same pattern. In the 
     early 1990s, as the economy tanked and a recession set in, 
     many variations of ``lousy-schools-are-producing-a-lousy-
     workforce-and-it's-killing-us-in-the-global-marketplace'' 
     could be heard. But these slackers somehow managed to turn 
     things around: By early 1994, many publications featured 
     banner headlines about the recovery that later became the 
     longest sustained period of growth in the nation's history. 
     ``The American Economy: Back on Top'' was the way that the 
     New York Times summed up the turnabout in Feb. 1994.
       Well, if the schools took the rap when the economy went 
     south, surely they would be praised when the economy boomed, 
     right? Hardly. A mere three months after the Times story 
     appeared, IBM CEO Louis V. Gerstner Jr., wrote an op-ed for 
     the Times headlined ``Our Schools Are Failing.'' They are 
     failing, said Gerstner, because they are not producing 
     students who can compete with their international peers.
       The bashers have kept up their drumbeat. Intel CEO Craig R. 
     Barrett, Texas Instruments CEO Thomas Engibous, State Farm 
     Insurance CEO Edward Rust and then-Wisconsin Gov. Tommy 
     Thompson all took to the nation's op-ed pages in 2000 and 
     2001 to lament the threat that our education system poses to 
     our competitiveness. Gerstner made an encore appearance on 
     the Times op-ed page in March, expressing his continuing 
     concern that our schools will ``limit our competitive 
     position in the global marketplace.''
       None of these fine gentlemen provided any data on the 
     relationship between the economy's health and the performance 
     of schools. Our long economic boom suggests there isn't one--
     or that our schools are better than the critics claim. But, 
     there is a broader, more objective means of looking for any 
     relationship. The Third International Mathematics and Science 
     Study (TIMSS) provides test scores for 41 nations, including 
     the United States. Thirty-eight of those countries are ranked 
     on the World Economic Forum's CCI. It's a simple statistical 
     matter to correlate the test scores with the CCI.
       There is little correlation. The United States is 29th in 
     mathematics, but second in competitiveness. Korea is third in 
     mathematics, but 27th in competitiveness. And so forth. If 
     the two lists had matched, place for place, that would 
     produce a perfect correlation of +1.0. But because some 
     countries are high on competitiveness and low on test scores 
     (and vice versa), the actual correlation is +.23. In the 
     world of statistics, this is considered quite small.
       Actually, even that small correlation is misleadingly high: 
     Seven countries are low on both variables, creating what 
     little relationship there is. If these seven nations are 
     removed from the calculation, the correlation between test 
     scores and competitiveness actually becomes negative, meaning 
     that higher test scores are slightly associated with lower 
     competitiveness.
       The education variables in the index include: the quality 
     of schools; the TIMSS scores; the number of years of 
     education and the proportion of the country's population 
     attending college (these two are variables in which the 
     United States excels); and survey rankings from executives 
     who, the World Economic Forum claims, have ``international 
     perspectives.'' The WEF ranked U.S. schools 27th of the 75 
     nations--not exactly eyepopping, but given all of the 
     horrible things said about American schools in the past 25 
     years, perhaps surprisingly high. (The United states looked 
     particularly bad in one WEF category; the difference in 
     quality between rich and poor schools. We finished 42nd, 
     lower than any other developed nation. That is shameful in a 
     country as rich as ours.)
       So, if 26 nations have better schools, how did we earn our 
     No. 2 overall competitiveness ranking? The WEF uses dozens of 
     variables from many sectors, and the United States rates well 
     across the board. One important consideration is the ``brain 
     drain'' factor. Our scientists and engineers stay here, 
     earning us a top ranking in this category. No other country, 
     not even Finland, came close on this measurement.
       But what really caught my eye were the top U.S. scores on a 
     set of variables that make up what the WEF calls ``National 
     Innovation Capacity.'' Innovation variables are critical to 
     competitiveness, according to the WEF. Ten years ago, the 
     competitive edge was gained by nations that could lower costs 
     and raise quality. Virtually all developed countries have 
     accomplished this, the WEF report asserts, and thus 
     ``competitive advantage must come from the ability to create 
     and then commercialize new products and processes, shifting 
     the technology frontier as fast as rivals can catch up.''
       Innovation is itself a complicated affair, but my guess is 
     that it is not linked to test scores. If anything, too much 
     testing discourages innovative thinking.
       American schools, believe it or not, have developed a 
     culture that encourages innovative thinking. How many other 
     cultures do that? A 2001 op-ed in The Washington Post was 
     titled ``At Least Our Kids Ask Questions.'' In the essay, 
     author Amy Biancolli described her travails in trying to get 
     Scottish students to discuss Shakespeare. She found that they 
     weren't used to being allowed to express their opinions or 
     having them valued. I had the same experience when I taught 
     college students in Hong Kong. Years later, I mentioned this 
     to a professor in Taiwan who said that even today, 
     ``professors' questions are often met with stony silence.''
       We take our questioning culture so much for granted that we 
     don't even notice it until we encounter another country that 
     doesn't have it. A 2001 New York Times article discussed, in 
     the words of Japanese scientists, why Americans win so many 
     Nobel prizes while the Japanese win so few. The Japanese 
     scientists provided a number of reasons, but the one they 
     cited as most important was peer review. Before American 
     scientists publish their research, they submit it to the 
     scrutiny--questioning--of other researchers, Japanese culture 
     discourages this kind of direct confrontation; one Japanese 
     scientist recalled his days in the United States, when he 
     would watch scholars--good friends--engage in furious 
     battles, challenging and testing each other's assumptions and 
     logic. That would never happen in Japan, he told the Times 
     reporter.
       Japan's culture of cooperation and consensus makes for a 
     more civil society than we find here, but our combative 
     culture leaves us with an edge in creativity. We should think 
     more than twice before we tinker too much with an educational 
     system that encourages questioning. We won't benefit from one 
     that idolizes high test scores.
       It could put our very competitiveness as a nation at risk.

       

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