Yong Zhao on Educational Risk and the Reason to Deschool

From: Yong Zhao » Blog Archive » A Nation At Risk: Edited by Yong Zhao. (n.d.). Yong Zhao. Retrieved March 11, 2011, from http://zhaolearning.com/2011/03/10/a-nation-at-risk-edited-by-yong-zhao/

Indicators of the Risk

The educational dimensions of the risk before us have been amply documented in materials read by this editor. For example:

• For
  the first time, research shows American creativity is declining. Since
  1990, Americans’ creativity scores have been on the decline
  significantly and most seriously among young children (from kindergarten
  through sixth grade).
• As
  a result of No Child Left Behind (NCLB), a significant number of
  schools in America have narrowed their curriculum by cutting arts,
  music, physical education, social studies, science, recess, or lunch.
  “Forty-four percent of all districts nationwide have added time for
  English language arts and/or math, at the expense of social studies,
  science, art and music, physical education, recess, or lunch.”
• Meanwhile, our competitors such as China and Singapore
  have been decreasing their instructional time for math and increasing
  time for creativity, critical thinking, arts, physical education. For
  example, since 1999 China has decreased total instructional hours by 380
  for grades 1 through 6, reduced math instruction by 140 hours and added
  156 instructional hours for physical education.
• Unethical
  and dishonest behaviors have become rampant in American education.
  Teachers, school administrators, and students have been forced to engage
  in all sorts of cheating to raise test scores and state governments
  lower standards to avoid penalties.
• America
  spends $1.1 billion dollars per year testing their children under NCLB
  while many schools have to cut short instructional hours and or lay off
  teachers due to budget cuts.
• In
  2004–2005, Wisconsin students spent a total of about 1.4 million hours
  taking state tests; with full implementation of NCLB testing, that
  number will more than double, to 2.9 million. These figures do not
  include the time spent distributing and collecting materials, taking
  practice tests, giving instructions, and addressing other logistics of
  testing.
• American teachers’ morale has reached a crisis level. Over a quarter of teachers leave the profession within the first three years and nearly half leave within the first five.
• Teacher unions, the last organized line of defense for public education, are being threatened across the nation.
• Yet,
  the governments continue to impose policies that connect teacher
  evaluation with student test scores although research has clearly shown
  that such policies do not improve student learning, even measured by
  test scores.
• American education has become a nationalized standardized
  education system. Locally democratically elected school boards have been
  rendered bureaucratic assistants of the state and federal government to
  enforce implementation of state and federal mandates rather than
  guarding the education of their children.
• Less
  than 20% of American students are enrolled in a foreign language course
  while all Chinese students are required to study a foreign language
  beginning from third grade at the latest.
• Only 11 percent of twelfth graders nationwide demonstrated proficiency in U.S. history.
• More
  than 80 percent of New York City eighth graders did not meet the state
  standards in social studies in 2004.  Moreover, the number of students
  meeting the social studies standards has decreased by almost 20
  percentage points since 2002.
• 25
  percent of college-bound high school students could not name the ocean
  between California and Asia. 80 percent of young Americans (ages 18 to
  24) did not know that India is the world’s largest democracy; 37 percent
  could not locate China on a map of Asia and the Middle East.
• The
  average number of languages spoken by American business executives is
  1.5, compared with an average of 3.9 languages spoken by business
  executives in the Netherlands.
• Business
  and military leaders complain about the lack of international and cross
  cultural skills of American graduates. “A 2002 survey of large U.S.
  corporations found that nearly 30 percent of the companies believed they
  had failed to exploit fully their international business opportunities
  due to insufficient personnel with international skills. The
  consequences of insufficient culturally competent workers, as identified
  by the firms, included: missed marketing or business opportunities;
  failure to recognize important shifts in host country policies toward
  foreign-owned corporations; failure to anticipate the needs of
  international customers; and failure to take full advantage of expertise
  available or technological advances occurring abroad. Almost 80 percent
  of the business leaders surveyed expected their overall business to
  increase notably if they had more internationally competent employees on
  staff.”

Time to Deschool

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