Now the Elementaries

Happy St. Patrick’s Day everyone! I’m back from a brief hiatus. It’s good to be back.

There are certain indicators that our current K-12 system is broken and might not be able to be fixed.

Primary amongst those indicators is the fact that our traditional school system has not done a good job at educating our students who are most difficult to educate. Researcher Patrick Wolf, an economist at the University of Arkansas, points to the “90/10 gap” – or the difference in NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress) scores between students who score at the 90^th percentile (i.e., those scoring higher than 89 percent of their counterparts across the country) and those at the 10^th percentile (those outscored by 90 percent of other test takers).

Wolf and his collaborators measured performance data from 2005, the first year that charter schools participated in the test, through 2024.

In an article posted on The 74,

“In all, the research team gathered scores from six million test takers through 10 iterations of the exam, controlling for factors like students’ race of socioeconomic status, as well as the educational background of their parents. Each NAEP administration generates data for both fourth and eighth graders in the core subjects of math and English.”

“Their estimates show that the academic gaps grew fastest in public schools. In each of the two decades between 2005 and 2024, scores for fourth graders at the 90^th percentile increased by about four points in math and three points in reading; 10^th-percentile scores dropped by roughly three and five points, respectively, resulting in a net disparity that was seven points larger in both subjects.”

“While those calculations are somewhat technical, the bottom line is much starker: The already-substantial gap between the most advanced and most challenged fourth graders expanded by 1.3 years’ worth of learning gains between the Bush administration and the Biden administration. For eighth graders, the gap grew by one-half year of learning in both subjects over the same time period.”

Here are a couple of suggested takeaways from what Wolf and his team are reporting:

First, for the longest time, we thought America’s elementary schools were some of the best in the world. We taught kids how to read, write, and problem-solve better than most other countries in the world. The problem, we thought, started to appear when our kids entered middle school. Our middle schoolers couldn’t, and still can’t, apply their reading, writing, and problem-solving skills to higher order learning. Now, based on the University of Arkansas research, we have to ask ourselves how good are our elementary schools, especially for those kids who are the most difficult to teach?

Second, for the longest time, at least since the 1970’s, we thought the purpose of America’s schools was to educate all kids so that all of them had a fair chance to go out and earn a respectable living as a solid citizen of the United States. But maybe that 50 year window from the 70’s to today was just a blip on the screen, and now we are returning to an earlier history when schools were used sort and select the best and the brightest, while the rest were tracked toward vocational and simpler coursework. Even if our elementary schools were built to improve the lowest 10 percent of readers, writers, and problem-solvers, do we really want to see that?

Finally, maybe it’s time to admit that our current K-12 system, now including our elementary schools, needs to be overhauled and a new system of learning should be created. There are those who say that this has already started with the advent of education savings accounts supporting kids and families choosing to move from public schools to privates. But a true new system of learning should begin with the unit of change being the individual learner and not the school. We now have the ability to define, plan, execute, and evaluate learning for every young learner in the world. We only need the courage to do it – especially for those lowest 10 percent achievers who desperately need something different.

Til tomorrow. SVB