Schools must find a way to hire people who are actually competent in their subject areas, and States must demand real standards for graduation from their colleges of education.
As February came to an end, a page one story in my local daily was headlined, “Retired teachers told: Medical bills on state.” In what was described as “a side deal with the state teacher’s union,” New Jersey’s Governor Jon Corzine has agreed that taxpayers would pick up their share of the bill cited at $53.6 billion!
These kinds of sweetheart deals exist everywhere state teacher’s unions wield the kind of political power that exists in New Jersey. Political pundits have concluded that, if the National Education Association — a union — ever deserted the Democrat Party, it could no longer exist. They are the volunteers and much of the money that keeps it going.
A week prior, my daily reported, “High schoolers see grades rise even as they lag on tests,” a story by Associated Press reporter, Nancy Zuckerbrod. She noted that, “Two federal reports out yesterday offer conflicting messages about how well high-schoolers are doing academically. One showed that seniors did poorly on national math and reading tests. The other — a review of high school transcripts from 2005 graduates — showed students earning more credits, taking more challenging courses and getting better grades."
One report was the National Assessment of Educational Progress. It was created in 1964 when Congress concluded that American students were lagging behind those in other nations. They still are. The only difference today is that they are getting passing and better grades because no school wants to be deemed a failure under George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind, enacted in 2002. We were assured it was going to be the cure for all our educational woes.
Instead, five years later, critics say that No Child Left Behind is the source of the problem. Have a problem with high standards? Don’t want a school to be labeled a failure? Just lower the standards! The definition of “proficient” is such that not one single State achieved the standards set by the National Assessment of Educational Progress, while at the same time showing that their kids were somehow doing just great.
Why we even have a federal Department of Education defies a decent answer. Ronald Reagan took office with the intention of eliminating it from the federal bureaucracy. By contrast, George W. Bush put it in charge of how education is to be conducted coast to coast, thereby insuring that this, along with just about everything else the federal government is responsible for, will be done poorly.
The Department of Education is the FEMA of education. Got a crisis? They will study it to death and still not come forth with any other answer than to test, test, and test! The National Assessment of Educational Progress, often referred to as the nation’s report card, has been flunking teachers and administrators for decades.
Meanwhile, No Child Left Behind comes up for review in Congress this month. Does anyone think the people elected to public office, many of whom are the products of our failed educational systems, are going to find a way to improve it?
No Child Left Behind currently requires reading and math tests annually in grades three through eight and once in high school. The Bush administration wants to add more testing in high school. U.S. News and World Report recently noted that, “Two top Senate Democrats have introduced legislation that would require the federal government to define the standards against which all states would be measured.”
That’s what we need, a new definition! New federal standards! More tests!
By now, anyone who was blessedly home schooled or has any common sense knows this is not the answer. Something is horribly wrong when just one-fourth of twelfth graders score as proficient or better in math and three-fourths were deemed “proficient” readers at the basic level. One assumes this means that they can read a paragraph without having to move their lips!
Less than half, forty-three percent of the white students scored at or above “proficient” levels on the reading test, compared with twenty percent of Hispanics and sixteen percent of black students. Putting aside the more than half of the white students who were not deemed “proficient,” no one can tell me that Hispanics and blacks possess brains that cannot, if properly taught, master these fundamental skills.
That, however, brings us to the crux of the problem of education in America. The teachers. Thanks to the unions, it is virtually impossible to fire an incompetent teacher. Merit has nothing to do with teaching. Longevity is the name of the game. And the multitudinous layers of “administrators,” the top among whom receive salaries that rival and surpass those employed in private industry, are part of problem too.
America needs another Revolution, an Education Revolution. Parents must rally, school by school, to wrest back control from the teacher’s unions. They must find a way to hire people who are actually competent in their subject areas. States must demand real standards for graduation from their colleges of education.
The Education Revolution can begin by writing to your Senator or Representative in Washington, D.C., and demanding that No Child Left Behind be allowed to go inactive. Then you will have fifty laboratories, the States, in which new curriculums can be tested to see what works and what doesn’t. That knowledge will be shared and the overall quality of education will improve.
And maybe students will not have to attend schools that require armed guards at the doors and patrolling the hallways to maintain some semblance of civilization. Maybe students would not be just so much sausage to process through what passes for schools these days.
ACaruba@aol.com
http://www.anxietycenter.com/
Read more articles by Alan Caruba
I agree with you Alan to an extent. Unfortunately, I think your suggestion that letting NCLB sunset will create 50 "laboratories" of reform is naive. Before NCLB, states had the opportunity to reform public education and they blew it. My own state, California simply continued to maintain the status quo of teacher union domination of public education.
The legislature's reforms were simply new categorical programs which further limited district's abilities to decide how to spend money. Unfortunately, in California, the teacher unions have co-opted everyone, the legislator, the governor, school administrators, classified staff, the PTA… everyone. They all think that simply spending more money on education will allow every student to succeed. That's simply not the case. Never has been. Never will be. Yet, they keep pushing year after year for more money to please their teachers union masters.
While it isn't perfect, what NCLB has done is getting people talking about achievement gaps which were ignored before.
Left alone on their own, without the incentives of NCLB, the states will just continue to make excuses, spend more money and get the same crappy results.
Comment by dave | March 5, 2007
We have given education a blank check and they have managed to overspend it. How did they do it? In several ways related to building monuments (latest greatest buildings and equipment) and yes, the unions are a problem since they reward the mediocre and penalize the highly competent. However there is a larger problem that has two parallel issues driving us to a much lower level of competence in basic skills much less advanced skills. The two driving forces are:
1. Non-English speakers. If you review school growth over the last 30 years it becomes clear that almost all of the growth came from students not proficient in English. Were these students removed from our analysis of achievement our overall results would be much higher. Instead we waste resources on ESL classes and attempting to educate those that do not wish to be educated. Welcome to the political dumbing down of America.
2. Political intentional lack of understanding of statistics. Setting a target for an "average" level of achievement sounds wonderful from a politician. The trouble with average is that about half will be above it and about half below it. Therefore we would expect a large number to fall below our target and not lament about it. Classroom ability just like IQ fits a standard normal distribution…the old bell shaped curve. So how do you set targets that can be discussed in sound bite size chunks? Create something like no child left behind because it sounds good. The fact is many will be left behind due to their limitations but many will also excel due to their work and gifts.
Maybe it is time to recognize ability groupings instead of idiotic mainstreaming ideas and go to tracking with targets set within the tracks. The end of public education is in sight buried under six feet of politically correct euphamisms. It will be followed by a return to the old way where some people will stop with a few years of education and others will go on further. Not everyone should go to college.
Comment by Mickey G | March 5, 2007
Thank you, Mickey G. Public education IS buried under six feet of politically correct euphemisms. Point #1 was actually new info for me.
Tangent: As miserable as the state of education is over all, I get very tired of perfectly nice conservatives bashing teachers. I know they don't mean all teachers, but the fact is that most teachers are competent, and in fact over trained for a job that pretty much won't be successful without (limited) corporal punishment. The problem is not teachers themselves, it is unions, (which, in California we are not given a choice about joining), administrators, and POLITICIANS.
I was a teacher not long ago, and I must tell you first off that failing students is effectively banned. I taught at a high school full of kids from affluent, business owning families. These were people you would expect to be interested in the actual education of their progeny. After my first year, and nine million parental complaints about me (assigning one two-page paper per semester is apparently too high of standards for a 10th grade CP class. Or so I was told repeatedly.) they did not tenure me. I have seen this happen with other perfectly good teachers. The administrators are actually firing the good teachers and tenuring the soft-ball make-a-puppet-show-of-the-Iliad teachers who pass students with 40%.
Incidentally, my classes tested quite highly.
If we can just chill with the teacher bashing, y'all.
P.S. I'm in accounting now. Much happier.
Comment by audriana | March 5, 2007
The degree in "education" is a joke. Everyone has always known it. Schools of "Education" should be abolished. Plain and simple.
There is a reason why top tier prep schools will not hire people with degrees in "education": they are not bright.
Furthermore, top tier prep schools want teachers who have degrees in the subjects they teach.
While in the 4 the grade at a prep school, students study under people who have Ph.D.s and MAs in the subjects they are teaching.
At public schools, 4th graders are studying under semiliterate knaves who have degrees in "education."
For conservatives, or liberals who actually care about their childrens' education, private schools or homeschooling are the only alternatives.
Especially popular now among homeschoolers are great-books programs and aristocratic-influenced classical models of education. I believe that Chronicles Magazine sells some of these on their website.
Comment by OldRepublic | March 20, 2007