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In 1983, the often-quoted A Nation at Risk warned of the ominous impact of conflicting demands. Some twenty-four years on, the country remains undecided over who can—and how—this system will be reformed.[1] Meanwhile, the doubts only grow.
The kids get the picture. When 307 New York teens were asked by the BBC if their education had prepared them for the future, forty-percent responded that they did not know.[2]
Education in the United States remains a right of each state. As a result, each state determines its own standards and means of fulfilling them. Funding is just the tip of the iceberg. The standards required to be a 'highly qualified' teacher are unduly sporadic.[3] Even the students are not excluded. In a mildly amusing account, one third-grade class marks 70 percent of its class as gifted with some school systems in general as high as 40 percent.[4]
It’s beyond this paper’s conception of gifted that a school’s population can truly reach such excess. The undeserving pose a grater risk of diluting standards; the truly gifted soon underserved. Even this is an irrational response if—as skeptics would have it—it is merely a ploy to prevent flight to private schools.
The No Child Left Behind Act is indicative of the necessity for greater national influence in education. Yet the clinging idealism as education as a states’ right limits its impact. And so it is that the rope of sand returns, with a strong grip on America’s future.
Matters of education can no longer be a state right. They are a pupil’s right and as such, they are attended to most effectively by the preserving the rights of parent, teacher, and school in face of further haphazard consolidation. A lot of good can come out of better management, but fully realizing a preeminent education system requires a more complete reform.
Competition and school choice
Until now, the greatest effort to induce competition to the nation’s schools has been through charter and voucher-based initiatives. In this scope, such competition only dilutes the nature of education—equality. Government must enable every school to pursue success—and must give every student the opportunity to pursue their passion. “We define ‘excellence’ to mean several related things,” Risk describes. “At the level of the individual learner, it means performing on the boundary of individual ability in ways that test and push back personal limits, in school and the workplace. Excellence characterizes a school or college that sets high expectations and goals for all learners, then tries in every way possible to help students reach them.”
When choice as envisioned in this paper is achieved—parents may be enabled to pursue schools consistent with their values—religious or otherwise, while certain that the standards of success and knowledge are unchanged. Schools are no longer the realm of government, but markets that benefit only when their children do.
Such an argument finds broad agreement among conservatives and liberals alike – invoking free market principles or seeing to it that failure does not go without consequence in the aim of an equitable education. The Heritage Foundation, a conservative public policy institute, cites fifteen states with pubic school choice (see table).
Yet, school choice is as fiercely opposed as it is championed. Conservatives align more closely with the latter, teachers’ unions and liberal organizations among the former. Organizations like Parents in Charge look to school choice as a beacon for empowerment. The National Education Association and People for the American Way detest the diversion of “scarce education funding away from public schools.”[5] Of the two arguments, it is ironically, the conservatives that are more progressive in vision. The opposed ultimately detest a competition between systems, threatening to disrupt the foundations of equity – one that this paper shares.
However, if a fundamental reform is achieved in which all schools are afforded autonomy – and a system of “basic academic and fiscal accountability” are in place – does this not assure that student achievement will be the “driving force” as the NEA would prefer it? Would a properly calibrated market not ensure lower class sizes, enhancing teacher quality and that of resource and facilities, too? If what was heretofore the domain of “private” schooling was embraced by a framework that supports equality of opportunity – and recognizes that there are different means by which to achieve it – in the process, radically transforming the very essence of public schooling, how would the organizations defend their strident opposition?
Perhaps it is not an opposition at all, as more or less, value-purists and policy-agnostic. The American Federation of Teachers goals for school reform can be summarized as support for “standards for student conduct and academic achievement.” The NEA supports “innovative schools controlled and organized by teachers,” both ideals embraced by this paper.[6] In the end, they detest only, and admirably, a two-tier education system, with its “relatively homogeneous student bodies” and “students that are the costliest to educate.”[7] Best though to begin with the fifty-tier system of states. All else is swiftly reduced to much ado about nothing. Remember, as Shakespeare would have it for Beatrice to say, “Foul words is but foul wind, and foul wind is but foul breath, and foul breath is noisome.”
Nobody’s right
Schools fractured by the conflicting wishes of a wide range of thought know all too well the impossibilities of catering to the multitude of proven philosophies. These philosophies, more often than not, were assessed purely without the influence of other alternatives, and indeed were proven right. The wrong is in hobbling them together.
Converting the nature of each school—to purely pursue the philosophy that works best for its students—can more effectively replicate the progress found in simpler research environments. It is encouraging that many districts are proposing smaller high-schools and pursuing new formats in structure. The means are different, the ends are not.
Newly liberated, schools may find relevance in George Bernard Shaw’s Man and Superman: “Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.”
Learning the poor child
“Of all our institutions,” Napoleon said, “public education is the most important. Everything depends on it, the present and the future.” Indeed, it is the ultimate ends of education that should be liberating – empowering any student, regardless of background to receive a competitive education that enables them to improve their lot in a continuous cycle of prosperity. (College degrees increase pay by 45% more than non-graduates.)[8] The reality, however, is far removed from this utopian dream. The most specific cause for schools reform can be attributed to the broad failure of schools educating the poor—and as a result, disproportionately minority—students (see chart).
The kids get the picture. When 307 New York teens were asked by the BBC if their education had prepared them for the future, forty-percent responded that they did not know.[2]
Education in the United States remains a right of each state. As a result, each state determines its own standards and means of fulfilling them. Funding is just the tip of the iceberg. The standards required to be a 'highly qualified' teacher are unduly sporadic.[3] Even the students are not excluded. In a mildly amusing account, one third-grade class marks 70 percent of its class as gifted with some school systems in general as high as 40 percent.[4]
It’s beyond this paper’s conception of gifted that a school’s population can truly reach such excess. The undeserving pose a grater risk of diluting standards; the truly gifted soon underserved. Even this is an irrational response if—as skeptics would have it—it is merely a ploy to prevent flight to private schools.
The No Child Left Behind Act is indicative of the necessity for greater national influence in education. Yet the clinging idealism as education as a states’ right limits its impact. And so it is that the rope of sand returns, with a strong grip on America’s future.
Matters of education can no longer be a state right. They are a pupil’s right and as such, they are attended to most effectively by the preserving the rights of parent, teacher, and school in face of further haphazard consolidation. A lot of good can come out of better management, but fully realizing a preeminent education system requires a more complete reform.
Competition and school choice
Until now, the greatest effort to induce competition to the nation’s schools has been through charter and voucher-based initiatives. In this scope, such competition only dilutes the nature of education—equality. Government must enable every school to pursue success—and must give every student the opportunity to pursue their passion. “We define ‘excellence’ to mean several related things,” Risk describes. “At the level of the individual learner, it means performing on the boundary of individual ability in ways that test and push back personal limits, in school and the workplace. Excellence characterizes a school or college that sets high expectations and goals for all learners, then tries in every way possible to help students reach them.”
When choice as envisioned in this paper is achieved—parents may be enabled to pursue schools consistent with their values—religious or otherwise, while certain that the standards of success and knowledge are unchanged. Schools are no longer the realm of government, but markets that benefit only when their children do.
Such an argument finds broad agreement among conservatives and liberals alike – invoking free market principles or seeing to it that failure does not go without consequence in the aim of an equitable education. The Heritage Foundation, a conservative public policy institute, cites fifteen states with pubic school choice (see table).Yet, school choice is as fiercely opposed as it is championed. Conservatives align more closely with the latter, teachers’ unions and liberal organizations among the former. Organizations like Parents in Charge look to school choice as a beacon for empowerment. The National Education Association and People for the American Way detest the diversion of “scarce education funding away from public schools.”[5] Of the two arguments, it is ironically, the conservatives that are more progressive in vision. The opposed ultimately detest a competition between systems, threatening to disrupt the foundations of equity – one that this paper shares.
However, if a fundamental reform is achieved in which all schools are afforded autonomy – and a system of “basic academic and fiscal accountability” are in place – does this not assure that student achievement will be the “driving force” as the NEA would prefer it? Would a properly calibrated market not ensure lower class sizes, enhancing teacher quality and that of resource and facilities, too? If what was heretofore the domain of “private” schooling was embraced by a framework that supports equality of opportunity – and recognizes that there are different means by which to achieve it – in the process, radically transforming the very essence of public schooling, how would the organizations defend their strident opposition?
Perhaps it is not an opposition at all, as more or less, value-purists and policy-agnostic. The American Federation of Teachers goals for school reform can be summarized as support for “standards for student conduct and academic achievement.” The NEA supports “innovative schools controlled and organized by teachers,” both ideals embraced by this paper.[6] In the end, they detest only, and admirably, a two-tier education system, with its “relatively homogeneous student bodies” and “students that are the costliest to educate.”[7] Best though to begin with the fifty-tier system of states. All else is swiftly reduced to much ado about nothing. Remember, as Shakespeare would have it for Beatrice to say, “Foul words is but foul wind, and foul wind is but foul breath, and foul breath is noisome.”
Nobody’s right
Schools fractured by the conflicting wishes of a wide range of thought know all too well the impossibilities of catering to the multitude of proven philosophies. These philosophies, more often than not, were assessed purely without the influence of other alternatives, and indeed were proven right. The wrong is in hobbling them together.
Converting the nature of each school—to purely pursue the philosophy that works best for its students—can more effectively replicate the progress found in simpler research environments. It is encouraging that many districts are proposing smaller high-schools and pursuing new formats in structure. The means are different, the ends are not.
Newly liberated, schools may find relevance in George Bernard Shaw’s Man and Superman: “Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.”
Learning the poor child
“Of all our institutions,” Napoleon said, “public education is the most important. Everything depends on it, the present and the future.” Indeed, it is the ultimate ends of education that should be liberating – empowering any student, regardless of background to receive a competitive education that enables them to improve their lot in a continuous cycle of prosperity. (College degrees increase pay by 45% more than non-graduates.)[8] The reality, however, is far removed from this utopian dream. The most specific cause for schools reform can be attributed to the broad failure of schools educating the poor—and as a result, disproportionately minority—students (see chart).
The devil, after all, is in the details. Funding inequities, as the result of local dependence on property taxes, severely limits the opportunities available to the impoverished. It makes out to be a vicious cycle: 82% of children whose parents do not have a high school degree live in low-income families. At the same time, 45% of poor children's parents are either unemployed or employed only part-time.[9] “Male black workers,” Richard Rothstein writes in the New York Review of Books, “with only high school educations earn on average 79 percent of what similarly educated whites do. If only high school graduates with similar test scores are compared, then black wages are 87 percent.” Even these figures understate the true difference in earnings.[10] Such a lifestyle is unsustainable for investing in a future.
Without the means to finance a competitive primary education, the potential for realizing education’s liberating power grows narrower – resulting in delays in language development, aggression, social withdrawal, substance abuse, poor attendance, and depression, setting the stage for further problems.
The fate for national funding equality was sealed in the Supreme Court’s 1973 San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez ruling, which by a vote of 5-4, found that the Constitution does not require equal funding among school districts. States have largely taken up the issue – in favor of equity, providing additional state resources for poor schools. Yet, less than half of equity challenges profiled by a 1993 report were successful.[11]
Alas, the gap remains. New York City per-pupil funding was some $11,700 for the 2002-3 school year. In Manhasset, New York, some mere miles away, per-pupil funding stands at $22,000. Education, like most institutions, requires a minimum threshold for its effect to be reached. This puts oneself in a position to advocate further equity.[12]
Skeptics, author Joe Nathan writes, often denounce school reform as a “con job” detracting attention away from ultimate social issues.[13] This is a legitimate argument (and not a focus of this paper), but who is to deny the promise of an empowering education in fostering the amelioration of the tragedy of poverty?
An economic problem, then, should have a market solution – not one, as the Wall Street Journal would have it, dependent solely on expanding the voucher program, but by fully liberalizing school choice – and with it, accountability. Back-door privatization is by no means that option.[14] Still, one must be equally careful in seeing to it that “legislated excellence … concentrating only on the weakest of schools, reforms … that at best apply only to a narrow band of schools and at worst hamper or destroy the excellent work being done” elsewhere.[15]
And the bored one
Just as important is the significance of boredom and dropouts. Never mind Time magazine’s cover, Oprah’s ‘crisis,’ or Bill Gates’ dollars – the numbers (as a result of the triumvirate’s confluence) do fair enough justice.
Put simply, thirty percent of America’s graduating class of 2003 dropped out. More tellingly, 45% of blacks and 47% of Hispanic students dropped out.[16] The cost is significant and its reach dizzying: the Alliance for Excellent Education’s report cites a potential savings of some $7.9-$10.8 billion each year if educational attainment for the poor increased. Dropouts are tallied to contribute some $60,000 less in taxes over their lifetimes. An increase in the male graduation by just 5% would eliminate $4.9 billion in crime-related costs alone.[17]
Beyond cost, the Milton & Rose D. Friedman Foundation has found that a dropout in the state of Missouri is twice as likely to be incarcerated and unemployment of 20.1% in the state for dropouts is understandably far above the 4.4% rate for graduates.[18]
Politicians, of course, like cause and effect issues: Indiana now dictates that dropouts will lose their driver’s license and work permit if they drop out before they are eighteen or without declared financial hardship. As an alternative, students can now enroll in community college or employment granted they attend school for at least three hours each day among other criteria.
This is all very well and good, but why do students dropout in the first place? Forty-seven percent of dropouts cite uninteresting classes as their principal reason for leaving. More tellingly, 81% of dropouts would have stayed for real-world learning (with “relevance” thrown in), “better teachers who keep classes interesting” (tied), and smaller classes (75%).[19] Academia, thankfully, couldn’t have said it any better.
[1] A Nation At Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform. National Commission on Excellence in Education. April 1983. http://www.ed.gov/pubs/NatAtRisk/index.html.
[2] Generation Next – Global Research Poll. BBC World Service. October 2006. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/04_12_06_gen_next.pdf.
[3] For Teachers, Being ‘Highly Qualified’ Is a Subjective Matter. Michael Alison Chandler. Washington Post. January 2007.
[4] Schools Seek and Find ‘Gifted’ Students. Daniel de Vise. Washington Post. 3 January 2007.
[5] Vouchers and Tuitition Tax Credits. Public Education. People for the American Way. http://www.pfaw.org/pfaw/general/default.aspx?oid=12074.
[6] Teacher’s Unions and Teacher Politics. American Education. Joel Spring. Tenth Edition. McGraw Hill. 2002. Page 58.
[7] Ibid. Page 56.
[8] Letter: America’s new class division. BBC. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4284161.stm.
[9] Demographics of Low-Income Children. National Center for Children in Poverty. http://www.ncp.org/state_detail_demographic_US.html.
[10] Must Schools Fail? Richard Rothstein. The New York Review of Books. 2 December 2004.
[11] School Finance Reform: The Role of the Courts. CPRE Finance Briefs. http://tinyurl.om/2jz6bz.
[12] Per-Pupil Spending in Public Schools of Six Metropolitan Areas. The Shame of the Nation. Jonathan Kozol. Crown Publishers. 2005.
[13] Charter Schools: Creating Hope and Opportunity for American Education. Joe Nathan. 1999..
[14] Somewhere, Milton is Smiling. The Wall Street Journal. 5 February 2007.
[15] Schools That Work: America’s Most Innovative Public Education Programs. George H. Wood, Ph.D. Penguin Books. 1992.
[16] Leaving Boys Behind: Public High School Graduation Rates. Jay P. Greene, Marcus A. Winters. Manhattan Institute for Policy Research. http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/cr_48.htm.
[17] The High Cost of High School Dropouts: What the Nation Pays for Inadequate High Schools. Alliance for Excellent Education. January 2007. http://www.all4ed.org/publications/High Cost.pdf.
[18] Missouri’s 2005 dropout class will cost taxpayers $71 million dollars every year. Milton & Rose D. Foundation. March 20, 2006. http://tinyurl.com/yuwns2.
[19] The Silent Epidemic. John M. Bridgeland, John J. Dilulio, Jr., Karen Burke Morison. March 2006. http://www.standup.org/pdf/TheSilentEpidemic.pdf.
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