Education Myths

But we are talking here about education myths, which means things you know that ain’t so. And probably you know them because some special interest has made sure you know what isn’t so.

The American Enterprise Institute’s Jay Greene has put together some education myths that we have all been carefully taught.

Myth One: Education is Underfunded. Not so. We’ve been putting more and more money into education over the last half century. Fortunately we have an assessment method to tell us if the money we’ve been spending has improved educational outcomes.

For twelfth-grade students, who represent the end product of the education system, NAEP [National Assessment of Education Progress] scores in math, science, and reading have all remained flat over the past 30 years.

Myth Two: Teachers are Underpaid. No they are not.

Data from the U.S. Department of Labor show that in 2002, elementary school teachers averaged $30.75 per hour and high school teachers made $31.01. That is about the same as other professionals like architects, economists, biologists, civil engineers, chemists, physicists and astronomers, and computer systems analysts and scientists.

Of course, teachers only work 7.3 hours per day and have three months off in summer. They therefore have an option that the rest of us do not have. They can work or take the three months off.

Myth Three: Insurmountable Problems. Schools are helpless in the face of social problems. No they are not. Some states punch above their weight, for instance Texas, which does better than you would expect given the social problems in the state. And some states do worse: Louisiana, for example. And then there is accountability and choice. Schools do better when they are held to account and when students have a choice.

Myth Four: Class Size. Research shows that small classes may improve student performance. But according to Greene, the research is difficult to evaluate because of methodology problems. What is clear is that significant class size reduction would be enormously expensive.

Myth Five: Teacher Certification. Everyone wants to make sure that teachers are certified to teach their subject matter. But studies show that certification and masters’ degrees don’t make any difference.

One of the strongest and most consistent findings in the entire body of research on teacher quality is that teaching certificates and master's degrees in education are irrelevant to classroom performance.

Myth Six: Rich Schools. “[P]rivate schools do better than public schools only because they have more money, recruit high-performing students, and expel low-performing students.” Not true.

According to the U.S. Department of Education, the average private school charged $4,689 per student in tuition for the 1999?2000 school year. That same year, the average public school spent $8,032 per pupil.

Catholic schools, of course, spend even less per student.

Myth Seven: Voucher Don’t Work. The media is reporting the voucher experiment as though the results aren’t yet in. But they are. Vouchers improve student performance. The only question is, by how much?

The truth is that, so long as there is a government education monopoly, there will be education myths. The stakes are too high to let the truth alone. So every one of us is called to witness to the truth. And the truth is: government education stinks.

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

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