GSE dean advocates education reforms

Susan Fuhrman, dean of the Graduate School of Education, delivered a spirited speech yesterday on the need to improve the nation's public school system. She discussed a variety of topics in a speech entitled, "Education Reform in the United States: The University Role," to the Association of Women Faculty in Houston Hall's Bodek Lounge. Fuhrman, however, was not as concerned with academic life in the Ivy League as she was with public education in grades K-12. She focused primarily on reforms she said are desperately needed to bring the nation's public schools up to the level of its foreign counterparts. While fourth graders in the United States placed fourth in the world in math, that ranking plummets down to 27th for eighth graders. "In fourth grade we start to repeat what we taught in grades one through four," Fuhrman noted. "We are not keeping up our curriculum -- it is not challenging or focused." Microbiology Professor Yvonne Paterson, who was one of about 30 people in attendance, attributed the state of education in the U.S. to the nation's socioeconomic conditions. "It is a problem of money," she said. "No one wants higher taxes but the schools need more money. It is a real problem, a real dilemma." Fuhrman, meanwhile, advocated a complete restructuring of the nation's school system and described a four-point plan -- based on standards, coordinating policies, accountability and flexibility -- for improving the system. The plan includes a national exam which would test students' knowledge of a core curriculum and would use a set of national standardized texts. Flexibility would allow teachers to use any other materials they choose and to decide how much time to allocate to a given subject. If a specific school enjoyed success, Fuhrman explained, it would receive more federal funding. But if a school were to fall below a minimum level of education, it could lose federal support. Fuhrman, however, did not call this plan infallible, and admitted that standardizing curriculum for states such as California and New York, where students come from many ethnic backgrounds, could be problematic. A universal core curriculum, for example, could be biased against certain ethnic groups, she said. Turning to higher education, Fuhrman questioned the importance Penn and other universities place on Scholastic Assessment Test scores. "By putting an emphasis on the SAT and not achievement tests, colleges are doing a disservice," she said, making note of the fact that the SAT tests aptitude. By emphasizing SAT scores, Fuhrman added, the nation's universities are indicating to students that what really matters is not success in school but how well students perform on tests. She continued, "If we as universities really care about education pre-university, K-12, then we better look at the signals we're giving."