Oprah's Disservice to Public Education

I generally enjoy the Oprah show. I don't get to watch it that often, but I did catch snippets of a program she did recently called "Schools in Crisis." To view an excerpt from the show, visit the "Video Dog" section of Salon.com (you have to watch an advertisement to view the video, but it's worth it if you want to get your blood boiling).

According to Oprah, "Bill Gates first sounded the alarm" about a crisis in public education in a speech he gave last summer. Gates believes our public schools are "obsolete," and he is "terrified" about America's workforce of tomorrow. The rest of the video is a reiteration of the notion that we have a crisis in public education.

I want to admit two biases. The first has to do with our notion of "crisis" in public education. Anyone, and I mean anyone, who has taken a course in education history knows that we have always had an education "crisis" in this country. Critics of public education haven't stopped their "sky is falling" mantra since free, public education first opened up opportunities to all citizens and not just the privileged few.

Had Oprah wished, she could have featured several authors of "educational crisis" books that support the thesis of her show:

Quackery in the Public Schools by Robert Hutchins
Why Johnny Can't Read by Rudolph Flesch
Education Wastelands by Arthur Bestor

The trouble is that the crisis these books were concerned with was the state of public education ... well ... 50 years ago.

I'll also mention a second bias. When I watch Bill Gates and Oprah Winfrey, two of the richest people in the world (the kind of folks who live in gated compounds and shop after hours in exclusive Paris boutiques), get together to talk about what's really happening in America's public schools, I start exhibiting a neurotic tick.

Playing Fast and Loose with the Facts

The really creepy thing about this video is the way the show plays fast and loose with the facts. After watching it, I looked up every "fact-let" spouted off in this video. Admittedly, there was a grain of truth to each, but you really had to dig deep to find it. It was like watching the equivalent of a high school debate where the other team didn't show up and the one team that did felt free to exaggerate.

For example, Melinda Gates (who appears on the show with her husband) states that of all the U.S. students going to college, "more than 40% are doing remedial work." It took a bit of time to track down the obscure study to which Ms. Gates was making reference. The study in question looked at Ohio students, and it found that up to 40% of of college students in that state took at least one remedial class in college.

If you enroll in a community college after high school and try to brush up on your algebra skills by taking a remedial class to get yourself ready for calculus, then you get to be part of Melinda Gates' students in crisis. The fact that I did just that when I attended Northern Virginia Community College more than 20 years ago makes me part of Melinda's crisis--I suppose.

Ignoring Improvements in Public Education

Today's critics of public education pick and choose among their facts. They decry U.S. students' drop in scores when compared to other countries. They cull through large data-sets looking for any drop in our standings in order to decry free public education in this country and to promote everything from the privatization of public education to the dismantling of the institution altogether.

Never, and I mean never, do they point to US students' significant improvements in achievement over the last decade. They never mention the fact that during the 1990s and up through today, after rolling up their sleeves and working hard to help students, American public school teachers improved their students' performance on international assessments. Additionally, big achievement gains made by U.S. African-American and Hispanic students over the last 10 years are all but ignored by such critics.

Critics of public education simply side-step the results of a massive government-financed study that recently concluded that when it comes to math (the only subject area reviewed in the study), students in regular public schools do as well as or significantly better than comparable students in private schools.

Despite the significant improvements and ongoing successes of public school students, these critics still decry U.S. public education.

Didn't Oprah Learn Anything from the James Frey Fiasco?

If all this wasn't enough, Oprah ends the episode with a video of a Chinese student who could name the first five presidents of the United States. Then, the video goes on to show some American students who could not. Oprah says it's worrisome and eyebrow-raising (she actually raises her eyebrows when saying it). I say it just means you can go out and find some kids that can't name the first five presidents. I'm sure they could have found many that could--had they wished to feature them in the video.

Didn't the fiasco with James Frey’s falsehoods teach Oprah anything? Sensational exaggerations may sell books and get you ratings, but hard facts and information are what this country deserves--especially when we are talking about the education of our children.