Are America's students getting dumber?

Well, duh! Read the papers, dude! Talk to teachers. Pick up what people are saying:

• Test scores are dropping like stones in a well.
• Illiteracy is rising like a hot-air balloon.
• Textbooks are being dumbed down.
• Tests are being dumbed down.
• Everything's being dumbed down.

Ah, but what's the other thing you hear from stodgy old codgers like me? "I can't set my digital watch." "I don't know how to program my VCR." "I need a fourth-grader to help me."

Maybe adults are getting dumber even faster than kids are?

I decided to look into it. Let me confess: I thought I knew the answer before I started. Human beings don't get dumber, they get smarter--we've been doing it for millions of years. Consider how experts gauge the intelligence of our evolutionary forebears: by their "toolkits." Well, look at our "toolkit," even compared to 20 years ago. Instant-replay live TV! Aspirin-sized surveillance cameras! How dumb could we be? Someone's making this stuff.

What's the score?
"But not them kids," you might say. However, let me note ...

The warning bells about kids getting dumber started ringing in the 1960s. That's when SAT (Scholastic Aptitude Test) scores really took a dive. The SAT is taken by more than a million college-bound kids every year. Average scores in both the math and verbal portions of this test peaked in 1963. They slid after that, steeply and then slowly, until they bottomed out in the early 1980s. Math scores then began to rise, but verbal scores remained stagnant. Those low-scoring kids of 1970 are almost 50 now. They are the ones designing aspirin-sized spy cameras.

And today? Well, here are the average scores for five recent years, as reported by the college board.

They don't look too bad, really. To me these scores say we are holding steady. And the latest math scores are about the same as in glorious 1963. That should settle it, right? Numbers have no place to hide. If the numbers are the same, it means nothing has changed, right?

Not that simple
Oh, but wait. Sometime from 1963 to 1987, the college board "recentered" the scores, which means the whole scale shifted south. Someone who scored 507 in 1987 would have scored about 494 in 1963. If the numbers are unchanged, that actually means kids are doing worse!

Got that? "Same" means "worse."

So kids are dumber? Not that simple ...

A college education was once the domain of the wealthy and privileged. But beginning in the 1960s, this opportunity was extended to other, less privileged groups. Census Bureau figures show that college enrollment more than doubled between 1960 and 1970, and tripled between 1960 and the late 1990s.

More enrollees meant more test takers, many of whom came from middle- or lower-class areas, where schools and the quality of education typically received less funding and less community support. In other words, many of these students had attended lower-quality elementary and secondary schools, and this affected their test scores. While experts caution that this phenomenon is only one of many factors affecting test scores, they agree that it has contributed to a lower nationwide average. So if scores haven't changed, it must mean kids are smarter now.

Got that? "Same" actually means "smarter."

Oh, but wait. Since 1963, a booming test-prep industry has emerged. Many kids now train for the SAT in classes that promise to raise their scores by as much as 100 points. So, wow, if scores are unchanged since 1963, it must mean students are dumber now.

Got that? "Same" means "dumber."

I could give you four more oh-but-waits just on the SAT, but you get the point. The soil under every statistic is crawling with worms.

One more example--I can't resist:

A massive study done in 1970 showed that 25 million adult Americans were illiterate. A similar study released in 1992 put the number closer to 85 million. Now can we panic?

No, not yet. Look closer.

From 1970 to 1992 the definition of "illiterate" changed. In 1975, if you could sound out the words "bus schedule," you were literate. Today, if you can read every word in the bus schedule but can't use it to catch a particular bus, you're illiterate. I'm not saying the new definition is wrong. I'm just saying you can't tell--from these numbers--if illiteracy has gone up or down.

Let's consult some experts
I called Tom Williamson, a former president of the Psychological Corporation (one of the big three of American test publishing). "Do you think kids are getting dumber?"

"No." His answer was so emphatic and immediate--it almost preceded my question. "We always tend to complain about the achievements of the current generation and exaggerate the accomplishments of our own."

True of me, certainly. Why, when I was a kid ...

"I think both schools and kids are doing a better job than they ever have," Williamson said. "You have to take into account that classrooms are much more diverse now. With mainstreaming, you've got kids with physical and emotional problems in regular classrooms. Students who used to be excused from taking standardized achievement tests are no longer excused. If you test a broader range of kids you're going to get a slightly lower score."

Williamson then brought up the "mystique of testing" question, which is: Do standardized tests really show whether kids are getting dumber?

"We test what's easy to measure, not necessarily what's important," said Williamson.

He'd get no argument from the Educational Testing Service, the people who create the SAT. I talked to Tom Ewing, communications director of ETS. What I got from him was a carefully crafted statement that sounded like boilerplate created to beat back the millions of reporters who call in every day to ask, "Are American kids getting dumber?"

His bottom line: The SAT scores can't tell you.

"Why not?"

"Because," he said, "the sample is self-selected."

In other words, students themselves decide who among them will take the SAT. There are no controls. Here's an example to illustrate the point. Suppose you go to a mall and weigh everyone who lets you. Then a month later you go back to the same mall and weigh everyone who lets you. If the numbers are higher the second time, you can't conclude that people are getting fatter. All you can conclude is that more heavy people participated the second time around.

Ewing told me the best and most reliable statistics to look at on this question are put out by the National Assessment of Educational Progress. (Without getting into details, that would be the government.)

What's so great about their numbers?

First, their mission is to get a snapshot of how we're doing. Second, to get the best picture, they get a representative sample of all students--all walks of life, all parts of the country, all grade point averages, every ethnic group--the works.

They test every two years at 4th, 8th, and 11th grades, and they've been doing it since the 1960s. What they forge out of all this is something they call ...

The nation's report card
So I looked up their numbers. For reading, which is the subject many people are hollering about these days, the scores look like this:

To me, we're back where we started. These numbers say we are holding steady.

So is that my conclusion? Kids are the same as ever? Actually, no. You could probably rip the lid off these report card numbers too and use them to prove that kids are getting dumber or smarter. I am, however, prepared to set forth one conclusion without qualms:

I don't know if kids are getting dumber
You may not think that's much of a conclusion. But I beg to differ. Not too many people are publicly drawing this conclusion. Take a look at this opening sentence from an article written by Wayne Williams, a professor at George Mason University, in Headway magazine:

For decades now, we've known about the scandalous, broad-based decline in the academic preparation of our high school students.

We have?

In the face of such certainty, I believe I'm taking a real position when I say, loud and proud, "Beats me."

In other words, before we mount our steeds, draw our swords, and yell "Charge!" let's be sure we have an enemy. Otherwise we might thunder off in all directions, swinging at windmills and jousting with cows like Don Quixote.

And I'm too old for that. Let the kids do it.