Grade Inflation and the Economic Crisis

In "The Bigger Bailout" -- the latest posting to Irascible Professor -- Peter Berger draws some interesting parallels between trends in education and the current economic crisis, claiming that "the sickness in our schools, like the sickness on Wall Street, is symptomatic of a national disease."

What is that disease? Surely Berger doesn't mean greed, though that would be my first answer when examining the trouble on Wall Street. I'm not sure I agree with Berger's position here, but it is persuasive when he suggests that there are no such things as shortcuts when it comes to both earning and learning. Although everything, it seems, takes funding, one can't throw money at a problem and expect it to solve itself; indeed, that can lead to an unhealthy dependency.

Berger mentions the promises of the presidential campaign as examples of the bankrupt agendas that set policies without genuinely understanding how students learn. He cites the educational policies in California and elsewhere, for instance, that mandate that all students take Algebra in the eighth grade, even when they might flunk out simply because they may not be intellectually ready for it. As an example of the "entitlement" mentality of kids today, he also cites policies in Washington DC and other cities where some middle school students are given a $100 a month paycheck if they show up to school and do their homework.

I'm not sure if these are inherently bad ideas for educational reform, and I still question whether or not they are really symptoms of any "disease." But it is true that changing the rules of the game to accommodate the losing players -- which has all the marks of a just and equitable policy -- can sometimes lead to problems in other areas that are working right, if it isn't done wisely. Berger makes a sobering comparison of such matters -- as well as grade inflation -- to the manipulation of mortgages that contributed to the country's economic mess:

Artificially declaring all kids algebra students isn't any different from contriving to turn all adults into homeowners or their shaky mortgages into sound investments. You can't get something for nothing, or from nothing. Legislating inflated grades doesn't make anybody smarter. Paying kids to receive the already free benefit of a public education substitutes the motivation of a little ready cash for self-discipline and the internalized desire for self-improvement and self-government that a free people require to prosper and survive.

The cash will run out. It's already running out.

Of course, Berger may be casting the blame rather quickly here. After all, schools can still teach "motivation" and other forms of disciplined autonomy, if the teachers of those classes have the drive to do so.

Berger in particular goes after the mandatory algebra laws, and cites a controversial Brookings Institute report by Tom Loveless that claims mandatory algebra fails many students. I'm an English prof, not a math whiz, and though I've heard about this legislation before, I haven't paid it much thought. So I set out to try to learn more, and looked up the Brookings Report. In it, Loveless takes issue with the way the problem is displaced in the curriculum (classes are merely 'renamed'; remedial courses don't seem to help; students aren't quite getting the college prep the mandate seemed to promise). But my reading of that report is that there are both positive and negative effects of such legislation. For example, it does help some students to learn these forms of math who wouldn't otherwise have been selected for "honors" or "advanced placement" courses. As the report puts it:

The push for universal eighth-grade algebra is based on an argument for equity, not on empirical evidence...From this point of view, expanding eighth-grade algebra to include all students opens up opportunities for advancement to students who previously had not been afforded them, in particular, students of color and from poor families. Democratizing eighth-grade algebra promotes social justice.

Some call algebra learning a new Civil Right, particularly for marginalized people who have been denied access to a basic form of cultural literacy. And it stands to reason that if one can't understand the abstraction behind the algebraic expression "x < y" then one cannot understand the fundamental relationship known as "inequality."

Empiric evidence should drive policy, but often this evidence is not present before a reform can be made and if we are too fixed on demanding it, nothing will ever change. Instead, value-based goals are more fundamental motives for driving such reforms, and they can be studied or modulated as they are put into practice. "Equity" is still an important value that shouldn't be abandoned in the process. One can and should have equitable learning systems that lead toward changes that will not only teach successfully, but also teach fairly. "Equity," after all, is also a financial term. If you blame "social justice" for the injustices of the economic downturn, then you're probably blaming confusing democracy with capitalism, concepts that, perhaps, also need to be taught more often. Public and liberal arts education is supposed to be democratizing. It is intended to promote social justice. Education liberates us; that is how it enriches us. When done right, it does not make any of us poorer. It may, in fact, be the key to solving the economic crisis itself.

I like how the Irascible Professor himself (Mark Shapiro) responds to Berger, in a comment appended to the article:

...The economic crisis of 2008, in part, speaks to the weakness of our education system when it comes to educating the populace about economic issues -- both at the personal level and at the policy level. Very few students graduate from high school with even a basic understanding of compound interest, and relatively few graduate from college understanding the dangers of excess consumption based on easy credit.

If the recommendations from alums I know are empiric evidence, then college students today yearn for this kind of "personal finance" learning. And what's more: perhaps we all should learn about an advanced math concept early in our educations: the imaginary number!

Educating students to be better, smarter consumers -- as well as better and smarter business professionals -- is the obvious solution. It takes time for an investment like that to pay off, but very little risk, save to those who profit from the ignorance of the masses.