MISSOURI WATCH: MISSOURI SCHOOLS: PASSING OR FAILING?

The politics of public education in Missouri is in a confused and peculiar condition on several levels. Missouri's unique position as the nation's largest contributor to public school desegregation programs now provides another conundrum: how to divide the savings of a 16-year, $3 billion-plus outlay of public money so that it is both equitable and productive. At the same time that it seeks resolution of this critical puzzle, the state must also deal with a more common but nonetheless equally confounding challenge of improving the learning abilities of its K-12 school children. It would be unwise to choose one over the other since each relates to the whole and one defies resolution without solution of the others.

The struggle to raise Missouri's academic achievement record has a long and elusive record, so let's start there. The facts are quite clear: while some progress has been made to raise test scores, Missouri does not particularly compare favorably with scores in some other states, while consistently rating higher in others. To put it another way, Missouri, as well as many of its sister states, is still trying to achieve some kind of spectacular breakthrough in statewide test averages. Such news may be long in coming for one of several reasons.

One obstacle to better achievement averages in Missouri relates to yet another concern: the low rating of U.S. school children when compared to students in other nations around the world, including industrialized democracies in Europe and the Far East. Starting with a majority-held view that educational achievement and economic support are closely linked, we have to approach our country's test rankings with a great deal of pessimism. Let's face it, America's student test scores in such critical subjects as mathematics and science are nothing to write home about. Indeed, U.S. educators probably want to hide these scores from their parental taxpayers as much as possible.

The most important news of international research on educational standards, encompassing schools in 41 countries, was published just the other day. It compared the scores of 13-year-olds in math and science tests, calibrating these numbers so that a mark of 500 was equal to the international average.

In math, as it happens, America's score was 500, placing it 28th in the rankings. The Czech Republic, with 564, achieved Europe's highest score, ranking it sixth. The top of the table was Singapore, with 643, followed by South Korea, Japan and Hong Kong.

Before there are instant cries for more funding, it should be noted that the Czech Republic spends a third as much per pupil as the United States. Many of the most generous spenders, such as America, achieved results that were mediocre or worse. Pupils per teacher and hours devoted to study in each subject were no more closely linked to results. The students in the Orient scored well, without spending more than other countries, a result which suggests "Asian values" as the secret of success. But this too is misleading. English students scored almost as well in science as their Japanese counterparts, so if "culture" is the key, why should this be so?

Using old-fashioned common sense, it is appropriate to ask why nations as culturally different as Japan and Switzerland do so well. The evidence would seem to suggest that teaching methods are the key. In teaching math, for instance, both of these countries spend more time on basic arithmetic than on deeper mathematical ideas, emphasize mental arithmetic, rely on standard teaching manuals and favor whole-class, as opposed to group, teaching. Nobody, however, should claim to have the final answer, given its long-standing elusiveness. Additional research is needed before answers can be finalized, but it would be prudent to suggest that final conclusions be left to those who have no stake in the outcome.

The answer, both nationally and in our own state, has mostly been to increase per-student funding. Persons who habitually inhabit the corridors of political power in Jefferson City offer more dollars in their confident belief that Missouri kids can somehow have intelligence delivered to them in the form of hard cash. Well, consider this then: low-spending countries such as South Korea and the Czech Republic are at the top of the international score board. High spending countries such as the U.S. and Denmark do much worse. Obviously there are dozens of reasons other than spending why one country consistently does well while another does poorly, but these latest results obviously show that spending more on schools is not a prerequisite for improving standards.

Another article of faith, that children automatically do better in small classes, is also undermined by educational research. As with other studies, this latest one finds that France, America and Britain, where children are usually taught in classes of 20 to 30, do significantly worse than East Asian countries where almost twice as many pupils are crammed into each class. There may be social reasons why some countries can cope better with larger classes, but the comparison refutes the argument that larger is automatically worse.

Further, these tests even cast some doubt over the cultural explanation for the greatest success of East Asia: that there is some hard-to-define Asian culture, connected with parental authority and a strong social value on education, which makes children more eager to learn and easier to teach. If this is true, why do U.S. students, ranking poorly in math, do better in science than pupils in Thailand and Hong Kong?

When, and if, agreement is reached on how to allocate millions in lapsed deseg subsidies, Missouri must begin to deal with the causes for our low national test averages when compared to other countries. If education is the key to success in the next millennium, there is hardly a moment to spare. Indeed, we waste time arguing at the peril of our children's future.

~Jack Stapleton of Kennett is the editor of Missouri News and Editorial Service.