America’s out-of-focus education priorities

OPINION:

With U.S. schools continuing to focus on STEM disciplines (science, technology, engineering, math), other academic subjects necessary for a well-rounded education are being neglected. This is unfortunate for students and society alike.

According to the National Center for Education Statistics, the United States spends more than $900 billion a year on K-12 public education.

From America’s earliest days, one of the main reasons we’ve been so committed to public education, as Brigham Young University education dean Mary Anne Prater has written, is to help develop “responsible and engaged citizens.”

That was certainly what America’s third president, Thomas Jefferson, had in mind. The purpose of public education, he wrote more than 200 years ago, is “to give every citizen the information he needs … to understand his duties to his neighbors and his country … [and] to know his rights.”

Although science, technology and other STEM subjects are vitally important, they’re not focused on delivering that type of information or developing the perspective students will need as adults to make informed political decisions and exercise the rights and responsibilities of citizenship. What is needed most is an understanding of history, government and economics — sometimes called the “dismal science.”

America’s out-of-focus educational priorities are most clearly visible in the National Assessment of Educational Progress testing program, or NAEP.

The NAEP tests, administered by an arm of the Education Department, are periodically given to thousands of fourth, eighth and 12th graders nationwide. Students are tested on math, science, technology and engineering literacy, as well as reading, writing, civics and U.S. history.

The purpose of the program, better known as The Nation’s Report Card, is to evaluate what “American students know and can do” in the various subject areas, compare achievement “among states, large urban districts, and various student groups” and inform parents, educators, policymakers and the public about the findings.

Let’s acknowledge that the STEM occupations — computer science, engineering and medicine, for example — are important. That’s beyond dispute. But most of our children won’t become computer scientists, doctors, engineers, architects or research chemists.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that by 2033, some 27 million Americans will be employed in various STEM-related fields: computer and mathematics occupations, architecture and engineering, science-related occupations, and medicine and health care. Employment in business, construction, education, law, manufacturing, sales and other occupations is projected to be around 148 million.

In other words, the STEM fields, as important as they are, likely will account for only about 18% of U.S. jobs when today’s high school seniors are in their mid-to-late 20s.

But the story doesn’t end there. In the pre-STEM-focused days, students were also tested on their understanding of economics, geography and the arts.

Those days are gone. NAEP hasn’t tested 12th graders in economics since 2012, or in civics and U.S. history since 2010. The test results on those occasions ranged from underwhelming, with 58% of the students taking the 2012 economics exam testing below “proficient,” to disgraceful, with just 12% of 12th graders taking the 2010 U.S. history test qualifying as “proficient” or better, and just 24% rated as proficient or advanced in civics. No wonder NAEP hasn’t tested 12th graders in these subjects since then, with no plans to do so until 2030.

Meanwhile, the 12th grade students tested in 2010 have been eligible to vote in four presidential elections, and those tested in 2012 have been eligible in three.

If testing has a purpose — and most Americans agree that it does — you would think that a cohort of 12th graders would be tested annually in every subject. Parents, in particular, and taxpayer, have a right to know what 12 years of schooling has accomplished.

In the modern world of specialization, the Western ideal of the broadly schooled Renaissance man has all but disappeared. But the need for a broad-based education — one that prepares students not only for a career but also responsible living — still exists.

• Richard Lorenc is president of Certell Inc., a national education nonprofit that provides schools, teachers and homeschool parents with high school-level education materials, at no charge, on U.S. government, U.S. history, world history and economics. Certell is the official U.S. sponsor of the Economics Olympiad, an international competition that tests students’ knowledge of economics. For more information, visit economicsolympiad.us.