The Great Classroom Collapse: Teachers, Students, and Parents Expose the Collapse of Learning in America's Schools

The Great Classroom Collapse

by Lance Izumi

July 2024

ISBN: 978-1-934276-55-6

ISBN: 978-0-936488-17-2 (e book)

Pacific Research Institute

P.O. Box 60485

Pasadena, CA 91116

www.pacificresearch.org

Nothing contained in this report is to be construed as necessarily reflecting the views of the Pacific Research Institute or as an attempt to thwart or aid the passage of any legislation. The views expressed remain solely the authors’. They are not endorsed by any of the authors’ past or present affiliations.

©2024 Pacific Research Institute. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise, without prior written consent of the publisher.

This book is dedicated to the memories of Marion

Joseph and Janet Nicholas, who fought valiantly

for effective reading and math instruction.

CONTENTS

Introduction

Section One: The Equity Agenda and the Collapse Of Merit and Rigor

Chapter 1: Equity and the Classroom Collapse from a Student’s Viewpoint

Chapter 2: Equity and the Classroom Collapse from a Parent’s Viewpoint

Section Two: The Collapse of Reading Skills

Chapter 3: Reading Instruction: What Works

Chapter 4: Former Teacher Reveals Reading Failure

Chapter 5: Oregon Teacher Fights for Effective Reading Instruction

Chapter 6: Bad Reading Instruction Is Not Just in Public Schools

Chapter 7: Fighting and Winning on the Local Level

Chapter 8: California Legislator With a Plan

Section Three: The Collapse of Math Skills

Chapter 9: Why Is Math Achievement Falling and What Can Be Done About It?

Chapter 10: Parent and JPL Systems Engineer Fights for More Effective Math Instruction

Chapter 11: A Professional Math Tutor Reveals Why Students in an Affluent School District Are Failing

Chapter 12: A Parent’s Fight Against an Ineffective Math Curriculum

Chapter 13: A College Math Professor Describes the Disastrous End Product of Ineffective K-12 Math

Section Four: Conclusion

Chapter 14: Reform Recommendations

Endnotes

Author Biography

Acknowledgments

INTRODUCTION

T here is no accountability in education, observed California mom Rebeka Sinclair, and it shows you the institutional brokenness that can occur when debate is stifled, when no one questions narratives, or holds anyone accountable.

How broken is education in America?

On the 2022 National Assessment of Educational Progress fourth-grade reading exam, 66 percent of students taking the exam failed to achieve at the proficient level.¹

The results were even worse on the eighth-grade reading exam, with 69 percent of students taking the test failing to demonstrate proficiency.²

According to a NAEP reading report, At the fourth grade, the average reading score was lower than all previous assessment years going back to 2005, while, At eighth grade, the average reading score was lower compared to all previous assessment years going back to 1998.³

In mathematics, proficiency rates were also painfully low.

On the 2022 NAEP fourth-grade math exam, 64 percent of students taking the test failed to score at the proficient level.⁴

On the eighth-grade exam, the bottom fell out. A shocking 73 percent—nearly three-quarters—of eighth graders taking the test failed to demonstrate proficiency.⁵

The NAEP math report stated that the 2022 results showed the largest decline in scores in NAEP mathematics at grades 4 and 8 since initial assessments in 1990.⁶

A lot of these kids are coming out of high school with a fifth-grade reading level, said former longtime California teacher Christy Lozano. They can’t go to [community college] and make up for that, she observed, and so they’re super depressed.

It is no wonder that students are depressed when they discover that they have not been taught core skills effectively. The consequences turn out to be severe.

According to the National Council on Teacher Quality, Students who are not reading at grade level by the time they reach fourth grade are four times more likely to drop out of high school, which in turn leads to additional challenges for them as adults: lower lifetime earnings; higher rates of unemployment; a higher likelihood of entering the criminal justice system; and a greater chance of needing to access government benefits to meet their household basic needs, such as food and heath care.⁷

Yet, parents and their children are often deceived because of rampant grade inflation in schools.

For example, from 2010 to 2022, the grade point average in English, math, science, and social studies courses among students taking the ACT college-entrance test increased, while their ACT scores decreased in every subject.⁸

As math education author Doug Lemov has noted, It is no surprise that national data from the ACT show high school students’ grades rising—a majority of college test-takers now report receiving an A in each subject—even as their achievement scores have stagnated or declined.⁹

The question then is why are students around the country achieving at such low levels in core subjects such as reading and math?

This book seeks to find out the answers to that critical question. Only by identifying the reasons for poor student performance can solutions be crafted to raise the learning levels of our children.

Those reasons are varied and range from schools prioritizing equity and social justice concerns over equality of opportunity and meritocracy; to teaching methods and curricula unsupported by empirical evidence; to teacher training programs that fail to instruct prospective teachers on what really improves student learning; and to bureaucratic adherence to failed education programs.

In this book, readers will meet students, parents, K-12 teachers and tutors, college instructors, and policymakers who are experiencing the collapse of learning in America’s classrooms and who are fighting to change things for the better.

Among the people profiled is a mom who grew up in the tiny West African nation of Sierra Leone and who has fought against the efforts of her school district to decrease the rigor in her children’s school in the name of equity.

There is also the high school junior who remembered that in her elementary school the core academics were not too challenging in any sort of way, and, as a result, she had to use an online supplemental program to help her in math.

There is the Georgia mom and former teacher who revealed the shocking deficiency of her teacher education and the tragic consequences for her students.

There is the Oregon teacher who is bucking her school district in order to teach reading effectively to her students.

There is the California mom who revealed the poor reading instruction in an expensive private school.

There is a top engineer at the famed Jet Propulsion Laboratory who has fought against the failed reading and math curricula at his children’s school.

There is the California math tutor who is seeing students from an affluent school district struggle because of ineffective math instruction.

There is the college instructor who detailed the appalling lack of math preparedness of his students.

But there is also the California state legislator, the daughter of immigrants from Mexico, who is pushing to ensure that children receive the foundational reading skills they need to succeed, which gives hope that much needed reform can be achieved even in states where failed pedagogy has been entrenched for decades.

Indeed, research on what actually improves the learning of children is being used by parents to force change and, as Rebeka Sinclair has observed, We’re seeing a huge shift take place across the country.

Through personal stories and data analysis, this book details the battles and the shifts going on in schools across the nation. In too many places in America, learning in the classroom has collapsed, but it can be improved so that our children have a greater opportunity for a successful future.

SECTION ONE:

THE EQUITY AGENDA AND

THE COLLAPSE OF

MERIT AND RIGOR

CHAPTER 1

Equity and the Classroom Collapse from a Student’s Viewpoint

I didn’t speak English until I was about four years old, says Charlotte, who is now a 16-year-old public high school student in California. Charlotte’s name has been changed in this book for privacy.

The daughter of an immigrant mother, she said, my mom spoke Swiss German to me because she is Swiss. Her father is an ABC—American-born Chinese, so he spoke Mandarin Chinese to me.

According to Charlotte, my grandparents on my father’s side were actually both born in China, but because of issues with Communism they escaped to Taiwan.

Both her parents are musicians. Her father plays the viola in a string quartet, while her mother plays in a piano duet and teaches piano.

Her parents have a strong belief in the value of a quality education. They definitely believe in hard work, applying yourself, and to being smart about how we use our time, she observed.

Education is one of the most important things and they have done well in providing us with good support structures, she said.

While she has been blessed with supportive parents, Charlotte has not been as lucky with the schools she’s attended.

She says her public elementary school was definitely very safe and created a lot of space for creativity. However, it was a different story when it came to academic learning.

The core academics, she noted, were not too challenging in any sort of way.

She started having problems in understanding math, so her father introduced her to the acclaimed online Khan Academy. Started by software developer Sal Khan, the Khan Academy produces thousands of free video tutorial lessons on a wide variety of classroom subjects and topics.

According to the organization, Khan Academy offers practice exercises, instructional videos, and a personalized learning dashboard that empower learners to study at their own pace in and outside of the classroom.¹⁰

In addition to math, which was Charlotte’s problem subject, Khan Academy tackles science, computing, history, art history, economics, and more, including K-14 and test preparation (SAT, Praxis, LSAT) content.¹¹

Importantly, says Khan Academy, We focus on skill mastery to help learners establish strong foundations.¹²

The Khan Academy program has proven very successful for many children across America and around the world.

One analysis of more than 1,000 Khan Academy-using students in fourth grade to seventh grade in a school district in Pennsylvania found that during the 2017-18 school year students using Khan Academy for just 30 minutes per week were more than 2.5 times as likely to meet state standards with a score of proficient or advanced compared to students who used Khan Academy for less than 15 minutes per week.¹³

For her part, Charlotte says that Khan Academy became a very big help in mainly my math at that time. She started using the Khan program in the second grade and after that math became very, very straightforward and easy.

If it was not for the supplemental help she received through the Khan Academy, Charlotte believes, I would probably have struggled a lot more in middle school a bit and definitely in high school.

Specifically, she recalled, In elementary school and middle school they definitely went over the big [math] concepts, but Khan Academy gave more details and a lot more example problems and their videos are really good at explaining. In fact, Sometimes I thought it was better than how the teacher explained it.

Many other states, including California, use the controversial Common Core national standards in math, which were adopted in the early 2010s. As The Washington Post notes, Instead of memorizing procedures to solve problems, kids are asked to think through various ways to arrive at an answer to explain their strategies as the program is designed to promote a deeper understanding of the subject and help students make lasting connections.¹⁴

The paper quoted one academic proponent of Common Core who urged that success in math should be redefined: It’s not being able to tell me the answer to three times five within a heartbeat. Rather, being successful means: ‘I understand what three times five is.’¹⁵

Yet, the ivory tower theorizing behind Common Core means little to students like