Why is it so darn difficult to improve public education in America?

SAT scores fall, literacy falls, and American competitiveness falls. Most critics agree that public schools are stuck in mediocrity. But we seem powerless to fix our problems. Why?

The answer, according to research by Improve-Education.org, is that the Education Establishment, for many decades, has been sidetracked by social engineering schemes. Our elite educators devised dozens of classroom strategies whose true purpose was the creation of more cooperative children, not improved academics.

Improve-Education.org has released a helpful new report titled "38: Saving Public Schools--A New Paradigm" that explains why we need to start reform by cleaning house. In effect, we need to strip away the many layers of old paint; only then can we add fresh paint. This report is a must-read for everyone committed to improving public education.

"Education reformers typically promote specific new policies," says Bruce Price, founder of Improve-Education.org, "or they recommend that so-called ´best practice´ be followed. The unseen obstacle in both cases is that the top educators want to hang on to their collectivist dreams. Those schemes are the problem. Here's my take: before we can try bold new policies, we first have to identify and eliminate all the tired old ideas now crippling the public schools. We need an intervention."

Here are the major troublemakers that should be discarded:

WHOLE WORD (also known as Look-say, Dolch Words, Sight Words, etc.) makes sure that nobody becomes a fluent reader. It's hard to believe that this has been an official pedagogy for 70 years. This approach is the main reason that the US now has 50,000,000 functional illiterates.

"NEW NEW MATH" (e.g., TERC, Connected Math, Everyday Mathematics, MathLand, and others) makes sure that nobody masters much math.

NO MEMORIZATION says that children should not be required to memorize anything. Rote memorization is evil. Children can "look it up." This rigmarole effectively guarantees that nobody will ever know anything.

CONSTRUCTIVISM is another sounds-good approach that encourages students to invent (i.e., construct) their own answers in every situation. Results: everything in the school slows down while children figure out as if for the first time that 4 + 6 equals 10.

COOPERATIVE LEARNING dictates that every school activity must be a group activity. Children do not learn to think independently.

SELF ESTEEM basically offers a carte blanche excuse for not teaching anything. No matter what a teacher tries to teach, some children might not get it all, which will make them feel bad. Answer? Teach less.

FUZZY MATH, FUZZY ENGLISH, FUZZY ANYTHING. These are sarcastic names for the pedagogical concepts that guessing is good, wrong answers should get full credit, and precision is not a reasonable expectation.

HOSTILITY TO TESTS, GRADES, HOMEWORK AND EXCELLENCE. Schools discourage standards and competition. Everything becomes slower and sloppier.

It's easy to see that public schools are like injured patients with a dozen wounds, any one of which could be fatal. As long as a school preaches Whole Word, kids won't be able to read. If a school has a New New Math program, kids won't be able to count. Imagine the practical effects of each of these methods, used singly or in combinations.

"I've been writing about education for more than 25 years," Price says, "and all this work has been converging on this article. I first had to figure out how these methods function in the real world, and that the usual results are not what was promised. Remember, our educators present these ideas to the community as if they are panaceas that must be embraced. My conclusion is that each of these ideas is much like Whole Word: the more you understand it, the more you will condemn it."

For a fuller presentation of this analysis, please see "38: Saving Public Schools--A New Paradigm" on Improve-Education.org.

Bruce Price is the author of the new book titled "THE EDUCATION ENIGMA--What Happened to American Education."