Education Myths

Jay Greene, writing in The American Enterprise magazine, notes that myth’s aren’t lies, but rather “beliefs that people adopt because they have an air of plausibility.” But of course, myths aren't true either. Greene identifies several myths about education that currently block improvement of our public schools. What follows is a brief summary of Greene’s essay:

The money myth: [The myth] most directly at odds with the available evidence. . . education spending per pupil has been growing steadily for 50 years. At the end of World War II, public schools in the United States spent a total of $1,214 per student in inflation-adjusted 2002 dollars. [It has climbed since then] to $8,745 in 2002. . . the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) [means it’s] possible to measure student outcomes in a reliable, objective way. . . [Yet f]or twelfth-grade students, who represent the end product of the education system, NAEP scores in math, science, and reading have all remained flat over the past 30 years. And the high school graduation rate hasn't budged.

The teacher pay myth: The average teacher's salary does seem modest at first glance: about $44,600 in 2002 for all teachers. But when we take an accurate account of what teachers are paid for their labor and compare it to what workers of similar skill levels in similar professions are paid, we find that teachers are not shortchanged at all. . . teachers work only about nine months per year. . . the average teacher gets paid a base salary equivalent to a fulltime salary of $65,440. . . in 2002, elementary school teachers averaged $30.75 per hour and high school teachers made $31.01. That is about the same as . . . architects, economists, biologists, civil engineers, chemists, physicists and astronomers, and computer systems analysts and scientists.

The myth of insurmountable problems: [The] argument that schools are helpless in the face of social problems is not supported by hard evidence. It is a myth. The truth is that certain schools do a strikingly better job than others at overcoming challenges in the culture. . . In Texas, for example, schools perform much better than their student demographics would predict: whereas its raw test scores place it 32nd among the states, Texas ranks fourth after its academic outcomes are adjusted for [my] Teachability Index. . .[A] reform that can help overcome the educational challenges caused by social problems is school choice.

The class size myth: In California, the state appropriated $1 billion in 1996 to reduce elementary school class sizes. . . A RAND Corporation study concluded that California students who attended larger elementary school classes improved at about the same rate as students in smaller classes. Though California's overall educational performance went up, it did not seem to be due to smaller classes.

The certification myth: In a review conducted for the Abell Foundation, researchers found that teachers holding a master's in education did not produce higher student performance, and among new teachers, traditional certification made no difference in student performance. After examining every available study on the impact of teaching credentials on job performance--171 in total--Eric Hanushek found that only nine uncovered any significant positive relationship between credentials and student performance, five found a significant negative relationship between the two, and 157 showed no connection.

The rich-school myth: 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. Among Catholic schools (which educate 49 percent of all private-school students), the average tuition was only $3,236. The vast majority of private-school students actually have less than half as much funding behind them as public-school students.

Spread the truth: Over the past 30 years, many of our education policies have been based on beliefs that clear-eyed research has recently shown to be false. Virtually every area of school functioning has been distorted by entrenched myths. Disentangling popular misconceptions from our education system--and establishing fresh policies based on facts that are supported by hard evidence--will . . . be especially difficult because powerful interest groups with reasons to protect and extend the prevailing mythology will oppose any rethinking.