A recent U.S. Chamber of Commerce "report card" on educational effectiveness ranked D.C. dead last. The District received an "F" in academic achievement due to low marks on nationally comparable indicators. The report noted that D.C. "stands 25 percentage points below the national average in the percentage of fourth graders at or above the proficient level on the NAEP math exam."
Paradoxically, the only parameter for which D.C. earned an "A" was in teacher quality control, which measured if school districts "are ensuring minimum standards for teachers, providing nontraditional alternatives to entering the teaching profession and requiring subject knowledge tests."
So what gives? Often, people presuppose that a child's school performance and probability of career success is entirely dependent upon the "quality" of the school system and its teachers. This is the premise upon which Teach for America, for instance, bases its program. It is assumed that a greater number of high quality teachers will inevitably lead to better school performance.
D.C.'s low educational effectiveness rating certainly isn't due to a lack of funding. The District spends $1,859 per capita on K-12 education, which is actually $200 more than the average per capita education spending nationally. However, 40 percent of the District's high school students will drop out of school, compared with a national dropout rate of 30 percent.
Sociologists who study the causes of variation in individual academic achievement have long known that factors like family environment have a stronger influence on academic performance than school or teacher characteristics. Despite all the efforts of public school systems, children cannot do well in school if their parents are divorced or are both working multiple jobs, if they cannot get adequate nutrition to feed a growing brain, if they live in unsafe neighborhoods, if no extracurricular activities are available to keep them out of trouble or if their parents, due to their own educational background, do not fully appreciate the value of education.
The D.C. government should more broadly target these shortcomings instead of narrowly focusing on school "quality" issues, which has proven rather fruitless. I'm not saying that programs like Teach for America are ineffective and should be discontinued. I am arguing, however, that it is not enough. What is needed is a comprehensive approach to raising student success in D.C. Here are some ideas.
Birth control should be more widely available to reduce the incidence of teenage pregnancies that severely damage the life outlooks of the mother and her baby. In addition, graduated tax breaks should be enacted to encourage couples to marry at a later age, which increases income stability and reduces the likelihood of divorce.
The biggest obstacle that must be tackled is poverty. The cycle of "hereditary poverty" is worsening in this country. With wages being so low today, both parents of most poor families must work one or multiple full-time jobs just to make ends meet. This leads to children being unsupervised for long periods of time. These parents also are less able to offer help with homework and give positive encouragement to their children's studies. We must take strong steps to reduce poverty, even if it means stepping on the toes of the wealthy members of society. The education of our children is more important than some CEO's new yacht.
Like Teach for America, I believe that the gap in academic performance in the United States is our nation's greatest injustice. I ask you to resist the temptation to grab at "obvious" solutions and instead dig deeply to discover root causes of the issues we face. The low level of academic success among D.C.'s students can truly be labeled a travesty.
Travis McArthur is a senior in the School of International Service and a D.C. politics columnist for The Eagle.
