Does mandatory public school in the U.S. actually work, even at a basic level?

Great Debates
1

A lot of threads complain about various aspects of public schooling, but what about the underlying question – is mandatory public schooling actually useful in any way?

A related question is also whether our current trend to encourage more schooling and credentialing (high school, trade school, bachelor’s degrees, professional degrees, etc.) is actually something that should be mandatory/encouraged for everyone.

I’ve spent a bit of time over the past couple years digging up some data that might shed some light on the history of public schooling and its supposed benefits.

Public school attendance was first made mandatory in Massachusetts in 1852 (despite a lot of protests from parents); other states followed over the next few decades. Before that, Massachusetts apparently had a literacy rate of 98%, which you may or may not believe. Census data and surveys of wills show that literacy among free males in the U.S. was at or above 90% in the early 1800s (and free females probably at or above 80%), which is also supported by the ridiculously high sales rates for primers, Sir Walter Scott and James Fenimore Cooper’s novels, etc. (“The Last of the Mohicans” sold a couple million copies alone in the 1820s, in a nation of about 20 million people.) Many anecdotes of foreigners traveling to the U.S. mention the amount that Americans read during this period. Literacy was apparently well-established without any mandatory public education.

Primary school was mandatory in all states by about World War I. Tests given to draft candidates show that about 20-25% were considered illiterate. During WWII, 15-20% were dismissed for illiteracy. During the Korean War, the number was 18%. During Vietnam, the number was at least 17%. Recent comprehensive literacy studies show that the number of functional illiterates in the U.S. is somewhere around 21-23%. For the various drafts, literacy is generally defined as 4th-grade reading level.

Thus, over the past century, literacy levels have not changed significantly. Public schools have failed to help the lowest tier of students achieve literacy. This despite the fact that in 1920, 22% of the adult population had completed less than 5 years of education, but that number was down to 1.6% in 2000.

Public school seems to be failing the lowest tier of students. But what about the rest?

In 1920, 16% of the adult population had graduated high school; graduation rates reached about 75% in the 1960s and have remained relatively stable since. In 2000, 84% of the population had graduated high school or GED. Educational spending over this period was increased SIX-FOLD (even when adjusted for inflation), and doubled in relationship to GDP, while teacher salaries over this time have tripled (again when adjusted for inflation).

To assess all those new high school grads and all the additional spending, it’s hard to find something consistent over the entire period. However, we can look at the SAT, whose format has changed quite a bit over the past 15 years. But before that it was basically stable for about 30 years.

Originally, the SAT was scored so that 500 on each section was the mean score, with a 100-point standard deviation.

In 1962, the average verbal score was 478, math was 502.
By 1990, the average verbal score was 424, math was 476.

By the early 90s, scores had fallen so low that they led to a “recentering” in 1994 to restore the mean to 500.

Now, the standard response by educators to this data is that more people were taking the SAT as more students attended college, therefore the “talented” students were diluted and the average was lowered.

Perhaps.

But take a look at the highest achievers:

In 1962, 19099 students scored 700 or above on verbal, 40644 on math.
In 1983, 9392 students scored 700 or above on verbal, 32469 on math.

In 1962, 2673 scored 750 or above on verbal, 8628 on math.
In 1983, 1588 scored 750 or above on verbal, 7002 on math.

By 1988, only 986 achieved a 750 verbal score.

These numbers are not cherry-picked. The trend was basically steady downward from the early 60s until the mid-80s. They did go back up slightly in the late 80s and early 90s, but they didn’t get anywhere near the 1960s levels.

In theory, enlarging the pool of test-takers should have caused the number of high achievers to rise. Instead, it shrunk significantly. Unfortunately, since the recentering in 1994, the SAT has been changing its format in various ways every few years, so we can’t continue the comparison. But three decades of data are disturbing enough.

If you look at the history of mandatory public education and the expansion of secondary schools, this is not at all surprising. The main goals of many reformers (and corporate benefactors) in the early 1900s were to train an obedient workforce and to keep teenage hoodlums off the streets (both gangs and Socialists). Education was not the primary goal of mandatory secondary schooling, and despite the best efforts of teachers, the system seems not to have improved the situation.

If anything, the statistics suggest that public schools have just made things worse by cramming students into boring jails during their formative years of intellectual development, which has not helped the lowest tier of students (as seen from a stagnant literacy rate over the past century), nor has it helped the highest caliber students (as seen from SAT statistics).

It seems the only thing that mandatory public schools have achieved is a uniform, rather low, educational standard that is not demonstrably better than what we had before, despite the fact that the average American now spends at least twice as many years in school as he/she did a century ago.

By the way, I’m not at all advocating the abolition of public schools – only that mandatory schooling doesn’t seem to work and there is little evidence that it ever worked in achieving a better-educated public. Many people might be better off in apprentice programs or whatever in their teenage years (and there should be no shame in encouraging such things instead of the “dream” of going to some crappy college to waste more years and money); but some sort of public school should still be available for those who wish to go.

(Full disclosure: I have taught in both public and private schools as well as at the college level, so I am very supportive of the idea of education in general. I simply question whether our mandatory school system was designed to educate or was ever actually successful in educating.)

2

There seems to be a difference-in World War I, a lot of the soldiers were probably actual full illiterates while to-day most people (other than the mentally handicapped) are at least technically literatre (they can write their names and read basic, basic stuff). And a lot of this may be due to the liberalization of immigration laws post-1964 especially as teenagers are more heavily of foreign stock due to their higher birth-rates.

3

Education involves more than literacy. I mean, a third grader can be literate but not have good reading comprehension skills.

And if you had no reason to learn how to “figure” (like working for a storekeeper), without some kind of formal education, even basic arithmetic would be a considered a high skill.

Sure, there would always be children from families that could afford tutors or private schools. But the vast majority of people would be left putting a piece-meal education together, cobbled together from miseducated parents, neighbors, religious folk, and do-gooder rich people. It would not be reliable. There would be juvenile delinquents in the streets and neglected children everywhere. I’m not seeing a good society emerging from this picture.

4

What percentage of high schoolers took the SAT in 1962 compared to 1990? Are your populations similar enough to compare? My bet is that they aren’t.

5

Mandatory education means that everyone at least *has the chance *to be exposed to literacy, mathematics, logic, scientific realities, and critical thinking skills. Differences in performance simply reflect the natural intellectual spread of the human population. Nearly everyone comes out of the system being able to read (basically), write (basically), figure (at least what relates to their bank account or on a calculator), and have some limited understanding of science. This is an overall positive force for society regardless of how many do not make it out fully functioning in those fields. People are far less likely to be taken advantage of financially, legally, and are less ignorant and credulous in general, as a whole.

What we SHOULD be doing though, is separating out students at the end of middle school for vocation, technical, academic, arts/ entertainment, and professional tracks and tailoring their programs accordingly to produce a more competent, efficient populace.

6

OP addressed that as several points.

What would you expect to see if the percent went up or down?

7

Humph. Since when do 13 year olds know what they want to do with their lives?

It’s not a matter of ‘Is education effective?’ It’s about what kind of education is effective.

8

I understand that the OP has made some criticism of the quality of public education, but I’m not seeing why that criticism applies to the mandatory part of our education policy. If SAT scores show that education was better in the 1960s than it is today, wasn’t education compulsory both then and now?

And I dispute the implication - if not outright assertion - that literacy was better 140 years ago than it is today. The below chart (under illiteracy) shows that even for whites, illiteracy has been reduced by a factor of 20 over the last century and a half. And that is to say nothing of African-Americans, where illiteracy has decreased by a factor of 70.

9

While intellect is likely to be inheritable, it isn’t always – the child of intelligent parents can be dumb, and the child of dumb parents can be brilliant. And while one can be intelligent, he could also have a poor work ethic (which can be partly genetic, partly a matter of upbringing, etc.) and so generations of intelligent people can stay working dead-end factory jobs until one member finally breaks out and does something with himself.

What this means is that a significant percentage of the future leaders and thinkers of any given nation (potentially a majority) are living in middle and low-income households. They are already at a disadvantage for climbing the social ladder to where they would provide the greatest benefit to society. If each one of them is worth a thousand average people if they get to that position, losing them from it is a significant loss. If you could find them and provide them the education, contacts, and resources they need to advance then all would be well. Unfortunately, it’s nigh-impossible to create a standardized test that would demonstrate who will be worthwhile in the real world, and in countries where they attempt to do that, education becomes more about teaching how to do well at such tests – which destroys its accuracy – than in teaching skill sets and problem solving techniques. Which leaves simply presuming that everyone has the chance, and giving them that chance.

From there, it’s simply a matter of looking up statistics and doing math as to whether public education is likely providing a return on investment. Judging by the inordinately high rates of patent application per capita that you see in countries like Sweden, where higher education is available to all, it seems likely that it is.

10

Some education is better than no education. Ignorance is the enemy…school must be mandatory everywhere.

11

Actually, we have statistics on this for the drafts. Being “illiterate” at a 4th-grade level (which was what the draft required) was different from signing your name with a mark (complete illiteracy). I don’t have the number off-hand, but the percentage of people who signed their name with a mark was a lot smaller than the percentage declared “illiterate.”

The draft stats are actually a pretty good measure of literacy, since they not only include a large population sample, but the standard has to be set at a certain minimum level for a soldier to do really basic things.

As for immigration, the highest number of illiterates due to that was undoubtedly in the U.S. in the late 19th and early 20th century – when immigration was at its peak – which is probably part of the reason literacy went down a bit by WWI. The literacy of immigrants would probably have had a much smaller effect in the late 20th century in comparison.

12

Surely in the same sense health care is ‘socialized’ ‘public education’ is actually ‘socialized education’?

It’s a shocking thing this ObamaSchooling plan.

13

You’re absolutely right. The national literacy surveys done in the 1990s and 2000s concluded (as I said) that 21-23% are functionally illiterate. They also tested levels of comprehension. The percentage of the population that was considered to be fully proficient in literacy (i.e., they could do things like reasonably compare contrasting viewpoints in two editorials) was less than 10%. By the comprehension standard, about 90% of the population lacks pretty basic skills. (They also tested math illiteracy, etc. and found similar things.)

14

Which is why I gave the educators’ explanation, which is essentially the same as your rhetorical question.

But I get to ask you one now. I understand that there may be all sorts of reasonable explanations for the gradual downward drift of the mean. But can you come up with some good explanation for why the actual numbers of topmost achievers (with scores over 700 or 750) consistently dropped as the pool of students got larger?

15

Absolutely agree that education is better than no education, and I am in no way endorsing ignorance. The question I’m asking is whether our mandatory public school system actually increases education and decreases ignorance.

We cannot assume that schooling = education.

16

I don’t exactly disagree with you, but I also don’t see a better alternative. If you don’t make at least elementary eduction mandatory, the kids who are already at the worst disadvantage because they have shitty parents are not going to get sent to school, because the parents won’t be bothered to send them. This might raise overall SAT scores, but surely it isn’t a net positive for society to have the kids who are most likely to become social problems to have no education at all. What are you suggesting, here?

17

Yes, but if we read the methodology: “The more recent focus on illiteracy has centered on functional literacy, which addresses the issue of whether a person’s educational level is sufficient to function in a modern society. The earlier surveys of illiteracy examined a very fundamental level of reading and writing. The percent of illiteracy, according to earlier measurement methods…”

That’s why I quoted draft statistics, where the Armed Forces actually required an absolute minimum standard of functional literacy – they needed men, so they wouldn’t turn you away unless you were basically useless because of functional illiteracy. The chart you cited has illiteracy at less than 1% during the Vietnam era, yet 17% of draftees were turned away for illiteracy at this time (and perhaps higher – including other excuses that might have also included illiteracy, some cite numbers as high as 25% or higher).

I don’t know the exact source of data for the chart cited, but similar data often comes from census sources. That’s the same sort of data that says the U.S. has a 99% literacy rate today.

Compare that to what the actual study you cited found (i.e., >12% functional illiteracy in all categories):

Take a look at the sample questions and tasks in this study to see what “basic” literacy means. It’s not entirely clear that even some of those with “basic” literacy according to this study would have been acceptable to the draft.

Also, getting back to the question of how schools fit into this, please note that this study found that 45% of those who were “below basic” (i.e., functionally illiterate) graduated from high school.

18

But what does any of that have to do with whether school is mandatory or not? You are suggesting that poor literacy rates mean mandatory schooling has failed (please correct me if I’m misreading you). So why would abolishing mandatory schooling make people better educated?

19

We’ve had mandatory schooling almost everywhere for over a century. I am obviously not suggesting that we could suddenly drop it and expect everything to work out okay – the expectation of schooling has become part of our culture. A detailed solution would require a lot of stages.

What I’m really questioning in this thread is the assertion made by many that public schools have had a positive benefit on education levels in the U.S. Most people are willing to admit that public schools have their problems, but I think fewer would believe that the entire system NEVER created a significant improvement. The only way we can examine that question is to look at historical data, before mandatory schooling, before and after mandatory secondary schooling, etc.

To answer your specific question about neglectful parents – if their neglect rises to the level that society deems harmful, we have legal mechanisms for dealing with that. Part of those mechanisms could argue for state supervision of the children, perhaps including schooling, if deemed necessary. But part of the problem is that our society just isn’t set up to deal with a bunch of kids that aren’t babysat by the state most days of the week… so we can’t simply dismantle the system overnight.

I would prefer kids to have some education, rather than 13 years of mandatory schooling with little to no education.

20

Why do you insist on the word “mandatory”? Public education is NOT mandatory. I’m not aware that it ever has been. There have always been private school options, though not always universally available. Some form of education is mandatory in modern times.