Beware Bipartisan School Reform

If everybody on the Hill is happy, Americans probably shouldn't be.


                                              Katherine Mangu-Ward
 
We are in for a season of grisly partisan bloodletting—or at least some pretty fierce jello wrestling—over health care, budgets, and pork, if the coverage of the opening days of the 112th Congress is any indication of things to come. But when it comes to education policy, politicians and pundits are inexplicably full of sunny optimism.


Patient zero in this epidemic of cheer is Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, who wrote an op-ed in The Washington Post this week expressing the hope that people on both sides of the aisle will “do something together for our children that will build America's future, strengthen our economy and reflect well on us all.”

Set off by Duncan, the rest of the political news pack followed with stories about how this year’s anticipated rewrite of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act—re-christened No Child Left Behind (NCLB) in 2001—is going to be totally bipartisan and awesome. But any touted bipartisan action by Congress should be regarded with suspicion—the more touting there is, the more suspicion is merited—and education reauthorization is no exception.

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Education

"The reality is in this country, we're facing what I call a General Motors moment. We don't have as much money as we did to spend on education. We've not had great outcomes from what we did spend . . . This is one of those true moments in history where all of us must be doing better, and all of us must be willing to make major changes."

Bob Wise, Former governor of West Virginia, President of Alliance for Excellent Education: "Stats underscore push for state education change ," The Charleston Gazette, wvgazette.com, posted May 23, 2010

Education

"Our K-12 system of public schools ... represents perhaps the largest socialized delivery system outside of Communist China. And the results are all too predictable."


Clint Bolick, director, Alliance for School Choice
Leviathan: The Growth of Local Government and the Erosion of Civil Liberty

Education

"The more subsidized it is, the less free it is. What is known as "free education" is the least free of all, for it is a state-owned institution; it is socialized education - just like socialized medicine or the socialized post office - and cannot possibly be separated from political control."


Frank Chodorov, writer, publisher (1887-1966): Why Free Schools Are Not Free

Arvin Vohra Speech on Education - The 5 and a Half Words that Make Ameri...

Education Lessons Are Lost on Obama

Not every failure occurs in the classroom

Steve Chapman | March 22, 2010

I can't pinpoint the moment when the Obama administration went wrong on the subject of education. But I can pinpoint the moment when it demonstrated that it can't be taken seriously.

It happened on Monday, March 15, when Education Secretary Arne Duncan was expounding to reporters about revising the No Child Left Behind law. The new policy, he asserted, "is going to revolutionize education in our country."

No, it's not. We have been at the task of education for a long time, and one thing we have learned is that you cannot revolutionize it. The American system of schooling is vast, complicated, self-protective, slow to change, and even slower to improve.

On these points, No Child Left Behind leaves no doubt. It was inaugurated with grand promises eight years ago. "As of this hour, America's schools will be on a new path of reform, and a new path of results," exulted President George W. Bush upon signing it.

For the first time, the federal government demanded that states create and enforce standards, hold educators accountable, and make prescribed changes. It seemed to hold great potential.

But the potential has gone unfulfilled. In the first five years, there were small gains in reading proficiency among 4th-graders, but the gains were larger in the five years before that. Likewise with math.

Among 8th-graders, there was no change in reading performance. Math scores rose a little, but less rapidly than they had been rising. Nor have minority students improved more than before.

High school students also have nothing to brag about. A 2008 report from the National Center for Education Statistics found that among 17-year-olds, performance in math and reading is worse now than it was in the 1990s and no better than in 1973.

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Time To End The Monopoly In Education

by Andrew J. Coulson

To boost the economy out of the recession, President Obama has chosen to spend an additional $100 billion on public schooling over the next two years. His education secretary, Arne Duncan, is touring the nation to promote this education "stimulus."

However well-intentioned, their effort isn't just futile; it's also counterproductive.

Far from being an engine of wealth creation, the education system is bleeding the economy to death. The U.S. spends 2.3 times as much per pupil in real, inflation-adjusted dollars as it spent in 1970, but the return on this ballooning investment has been less than nothing.

Student achievement at the end of high school has been flat for nearly 40 years, according to a recent study by the Education Department, while the graduation rate fell over the same period, according to a report by James Heckman, a Nobel laureate economist.

If the efficiency of U.S. public schooling had merely remained at its 1970 level, the country would enjoy the equivalent of an annual $300 billion tax cut.

The productivity collapse in education is more than staggering; it's unparalleled. Can you name any other service or product that has gotten worse and less affordable over the past two generations? The reason you can't is that no other field is organized as a state-run monopoly. READ THE REST