The Way We Were?: The Myths and Realities of America's Student Achievement

by Richard Rothstein

According to conventional wisdom, American public schools have suffered a terrible decline and are in need of dramatic reform. Today's high school students, it is alleged, display an ignorance of things that every elementary student knew a generation ago. American business leaders warn that rising illiteracy and "innumeracy" threaten our competitiveness in the global marketplace. Political scientists worry that poor schooling is undermining the very foundations of our democracy as American adults exercise their citizenship on the basis of dumbed-down sound-bites. But are things really that bad? What evidence are these criticisms based on, and does it hold up under examination? In this book, Richard Rothstein analyzes the statistical and anecdotal evidence and shows that public schools, by and large, are not falling down on the job of educating our children. To the contrary, by many measures they are doing better than in the past. Minority students have improved their test scores significantly, and overall dropout rates have fallen. Moreover, our schools educate more poor children, and more children whose native language is foreign, than ever before. Further improvement in American education, Rothstein argues, should be based on an accurate appraisal of strengths and weaknesses rather than on exaggeration. Rothstein shows in convincing detail how standardized tests comparing American students' performance today with that of the past, and with student performance internationally, frequently confuse apples with oranges. The nation's student population today is very different from that of decades ago and from the student population in other nations. As critics of public education promote private alternatives and politicians debate the value of standardized national testing, The Way We Were? is especially timely.

Genres: Education, Nonfiction

140 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 1998

About the author

Richard Rothstein is a research associate of the Economic Policy Institute and a Fellow at the Thurgood Marshall Institute of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. He lives in California, where he is a Fellow of the Haas Institute at the University of California–Berkeley.

Reviews

[Nicholas · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very good book. The author goes through all of the evidence regarding school success and shows how there is no evidence that school's are worse, and much that it is better. He makes his arguments very straightforward, always relying on logic and evidence, and not making any claims that can't be supported by the data, either way. He looks at claims that have been made in the past, starting in the early 1800's. and he examines briefly some of the reasons why these arguments continue to be made.