Do You Believe in Education Myths?

With something as politicized as education you always wonder about what you read in the paper or watch on the news.  After all, the media is not called the media for nothing.  It is a medium, a channel of communication.  There is a lot of money in education.  Money and power.  With all that money and power, how much of what we know about education is true? 

Jay Greene is an expert on education policy and he’s written about his findings in Education Myths.  The full title is Education Myths: What Special Interest Groups Want You to Believe About Our Schools--And Why It Isn’t So.  So you can see where he is coming from.  Greene writes: 

Over the past 30 years, many of our education policies have been based on beliefs that clear-eyed research has recently shown to be false. Virtually every area of school functioning has been distorted by entrenched myths.

OK.  Let’s have a test of education knowledge.  Which of the following generally accepted ideas are true?

• Schools are underfunded.
• Teachers are underpaid.
• Schools can’t be expected to overcome the effect of social problems.
• Smaller class sizes produce better results.
• More credentials means better teachers.
• Penniless public schools can’t compete against rich private schools.
• School choice and school vouchers don’t work.

The answer, of course, is none of the above.  All of the above ideas are education myths.  Want to know the correct answers?

• Schools have received a vast increase in funding in the last 30 years. 
• Teachers are paid at about the same hourly rate as engineers, architects and other professionals.  They are less well educated and have better tenure than the other professionals.
• Schools can make a dent in social problems; in fact that is what the father of the common school, Horace Mann, promised 150 years ago. 
• Smaller class sizes don’t seem to make much of a difference. 
• Credentials don’t seem to make a difference. 
• Public schools have much more money per student than private schools, and that is still true if ignore the money spent on bureaucracy and special needs.
• And, of course, school choice and school vouchers work, not just for the kids at charter schools and private schools but at the public schools forced to compete with them.

It’s a grim prospect.  How could we all be so wrong?  But Greene isn’t discouraged.  He takes the long view.

Disentangling popular misconceptions from our education system--and establishing fresh policies based on facts that are supported by hard evidence--will be the work of at least a generation.

Go ahead, read the whole thing.