Learning is More Than A Test Score

The events of the past two weeks and the next five will test the mettle of our two candidates. The media will be pressing them to be specific about the impact of the economic crisis on their programs. Our children and particularly our disadvantaged children have a huge stake in how these two men establish their priorities.

We know by now that the Obama education program focuses in large measure on enhancing the lives of children from “zero to five”. He has sought counsel from Nobel prize winning economist, James Hechman, a strong advocate for early intervention in the lives of poor children as an important component of an economic strategy. He knows that we have an unmet “moral obligation” to provide every child with a world class education. John McCain, on the other hand, has no bold proposals for America’s children and is ideologically predisposed to market solutions and competition to incentivise increased achievement. He has already indicated or “floated” the notion of a freeze on all discretionary spending. neither candidate can avoid the inevitable question: what will be your priorities in the face of this crisis?

We expect that by week’s end, the House of Representatives will follow the lead of the Senate and adopt a $700 billion + triage plan for resuscitating our failing economy – not exactly chicken feed. It is worth noting that the total cumulative underfunding of the federal education law is very close to the $70 billion bailout of AIG a few weeks ago.

So let’s talk about priorities.

Virtually every American public school teacher has been hammered with a fusilade of international comparisons suggesting that we are a broken system failing our students and consequently the nation. The press has reported judiciously the results of PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment), a test conducted every three years under the auspices of OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) of which we are one of 30 member nations. The last results were published in 2007 and admittedly we do not fare well. These are not the only international comparisons relating to children that we fail to measure up on, but these statistics are usually greeted with far less fanfare by the American press, policymakers and politicians.

Since 1988, the UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre in Florence, Italy has published seven reports on the status of children in OECD countries. The most recent report, Report Card 7: An Overview of Child Well-Being in Rich Countries and Report Card 6: Child Poverty in Rich Countries 2005 add considerable fodder to those who feel that America’s status in the community of developed nations is in decline. Consider, for example that in Report Card 6 when ranked by percentage of children living in “relative poverty” – defined as 50% below the median income – the US ranks 25th out of 26 nations with nearly 22%. The 25th is Mexico with 28%. We are also somewhat unique in the archaic way in which we define poverty in the US – a measure which 40 prominent scholars in 2000 called “… a defective yardstick to assess the effects of policy reform. The measure was based on a survey of 1955 data by the Department of Agriculture and adopted in 1969 as part of President Johnson’s “War on Poverty”. The ways in which we measure and deal with child poverty have been clearly recognized as flawed but, aside for for adjustments for inflation, remain fundamentally the same to this day.

Report Card 7 seeks to disaggregate the problem by assessing six dimensions of child well-being: Material well-being, health and safety, educational well-being, family and peer relationships, behaviours and risks, and subjective well-being. Once again we distinguish ourselves. When ranked in order of average rank for the six dimensions we are 21st out of 22 nations. In this case the United Kingdom is is 22nd.

These reports taken together provide a sobering dataset for anyone who aspires to lead this nation out of its current morass. If we are really committed both to our most vulnerable citizens and our future ability to compete in a global economy, we ignore them at our own peril.

As Report Card 7 states in its prologue:

The true measure of a nation’s standing is how well it attends to it’s children – their health and safety, their material security, their education and socialization, and their sense of being loved, valued, and included in the families and societies into which they are born.

We can do better.