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"Education" as an Issue in the 2000 Elections
As November 7 draws near, we read and hear that
"education" is one of the most important, if not the most
important, issue in the elections. This cliche is so
strongly entrenched that it is probably futile to question
it, but for therapeutic purposes if nothing else, let me
try.
First of all, "education" is a word, not an issue. An
issue is a proposition or recommendation about which people
disagree. "Education" is not a proposition or recommendation
about anything, hence it is not an issue.
Second, it is ridiculous to think that the president's
role in education, an activity wherein the federal
government has been and will continue to be a minor player
is more important than his role in national defense, foreign
policy, and the economy, to cite just three areas in which
the president's performance is critical to our safety and
prosperity.
Third, people who buy into the cliche are not thinking
about the same thing. The public school lobby thinks that
the most important issue is how to generate more money for
public education. Ethnic minorities think that the most
important issue is how to raise the levels of educational
achievement among minorities, especially in the large urban
districts. Denominational leaders believe that the main
educational issue is how to get more government funding
available for denominational schools while maintaining their
autonomy. And so on. The point is that agreement that
"education" is an issue obscures the fact that individuals
do not necessarily agree on what the issue is, let alone
what to do about it. Of course, most people in the education
business like the idea that "education" is an important
issue; it invests their work with an aura of importance that
it has not previously enjoyed.
Whatever the importance of formal schooling, the
differences between the presidential candidates are clear.
The Gore/Lieberman ticket supports the educational policies
and programs endorsed by the NEA/AFT. The teacher unions
support smaller classes, higher teacher salaries, existing
federal programs generally, and other "changes" that are
good for teacher unions; after all, these were NEA/AFT
objectives long before they were endorsed by the Democratic
ticket. All require more government support without any
significant changes in K-12 education.
The vacuity of the Democratic agenda is apparent once one
probes into it just a little. It emphasizes that smaller
class size is an important reform. How much reduction in
class size will get us how much improvement in educational
achievement? What are the subjects that would show the
greatest improvement with reductions in class size -- or is
it assumed that pupils in every grade level and subject will
improve to the same extent? How much will reduction in class
size cost taxpayers? How and why will the increase in
teachers be allocated among states and school districts? It
is a mystery to me why these questions are never raised,
especially since it is clear that the Democratic ticket
doesn't have viable answers to them.
The all out teacher union support for the Gore/Lieberman
ticket becomes even more clear in light of the substantial
federal funds going to teacher union controlled
organizations, such as the NEA and AFT foundations. The
agencies most active in granting such funds are the U.S.
Department of Education, the Centers for Disease Control,
Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and the
Environmental Protection Agency. Their grants to the NEA/AFT
are worse than wasted funds; they provide the NEA/AFT with
additional resources to sabotage reforms. For example, the
AFT received a grant from the U.S. Department of Education
to evaluate charter schools. The entirely predictable
conclusion of this grant is that charter schools don't bring
about higher achievement. Perhaps they don't, but why should
the Department of Education fund a party in interest to
evaluate pupil achievement in charter schools? The all out
NEA/AFT support for the Gore/Lieberman ticket and a
Democratic Congress are part of the answer.
In view of the heavy reliance on the teacher union
agenda, and even on its slogans and talking points, it
should have been easy for the Bush/Cheney ticket to come up
with a much better program. Unfortunately, despite the
effusive praise from virtually every Beltway conservative
who wants a job in the forthcoming (they hope) Bush
administration, Bush's education program is not especially
impressive. His promise to replace nearly 60 federal
programs with block grants, but also to insist upon "real
annual accountability and high standards" in return for this
flexibility illustrates this point. All it takes for states
to adopt higher standards is a stroke of the pen. And since
each state can choose the standardized tests to measure
progress toward the standards, we can expect results akin to
those discovered by John Jacob Cannell, who discovered that
every state asserted that its pupils were achieving at or
above the national average.
The conservative educational pundits and most Republican
members of Congress are emphasizing state flexibility in
utilizing federal funds as the primary reform in the next
session of Congress. I have no quarrel with this, but the
notion that state flexibility in the use of federal funds is
going to make a significant difference in educational
achievement is pie-in-the-sky, in outer space, really. It is
precisely the kind of bureaucratic tweaking that is intended
to give the impression of progress while avoiding the
difficult political and educational issues associated with
significant reform.
The most hopeful aspect of Governor Bush's proposals on
education relate to his willingness to confront programs and
interest groups beholden to the status quo. His proposals
relating to Title I funds illustrates this point. Most
notably, there is his flat-out recognition of the fact that
the billions spent on this program since 1965 have not
achieved their purpose, to wit, to remove the achievement
gap between children from low income families and others.
Unfortunately, Governor Bush's proposed remedy is
unimpressive. If test scores improve, the schools continue
to receive Title I and perhaps additional funds. If test
scores do not improve, "the school" will be warned and given
time to remedy the continuing failure to improve. If there
is no improvement at the end of three years, the federal
funds will be made available to parents to use in ways they
deem most likely to bring about improvement.
First of all, if you add the time required to enact the
legislation and work out the regulations to the three-year
period before the funds are voucherized, there will not have
been any change in achievement over a four-year span except
for the schools that managed to raise achievement levels
under the implied threat of losing the funds. Very few
school districts will be able to do this, at least on the
basis of honest tests and honest administration of tests.
Furthermore, by the end of the four-year period, there will
not have been any opportunity to determine whether Governor
Bush's remedy is any more effective than the preceding
solution to the problem. It is not clear whether educational
or political reasons or both underlie his proposals on Title
I, but the outcome is predictable. The Democrats will argue
that there has not been improvement; the Bush administration
will argue that its plan is just at the point where
improvement is supposed to emerge.
One of the confusing aspects of the Bush proposal is his
constant reference to "school" as the unit of reform. Unless
he is using "school" as a synonym for "school district," his
proposal would lead to regulatory chaos. What about
"schools" that have a large influx of immigrant children? Or
that lose many of their best students? Or what happens when
some schools in the district show improvement for two years
and some do not? Teachers will want to avoid assignment to
the failing schools inasmuch as they may be out of a job
through no fault of their own. In this situation, only the
newest teachers with the least seniority will be teaching in
the non-achieving schools -- a development virtually certain
to ensure failure to improve in the third year. By the time
you get through all the plausible reasons and litigation why
voucherization of Title I funds might be unfair in
particular situations, I suspect that few "schools" will
lose their Title I funds this way.
Despite these and other caveats regarding the Bush
proposals, there is reason to be hopeful if Governor Bush's
proposals are more of a signal than proposals to be taken
literally. He has demonstrated recognition of some problems
and proposed remedies certain to be opposed by the public
school establishment. No matter what remedies he proposes,
they will not lead to greater opposition from the public
school establishment, which is working all out to elect Vice
President Gore. In the absence of any concern that what he
proposes will lose support from the establishment (having
already lost it), there is a chance that, if elected,
Governor Bush will propose and work for substantive instead
of cosmetic changes in K-12 education. Still, although hope
may spring eternal in the human breast, some of us would
like a shorter time period for improvement in K-12
education.
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