Education in Crisis: "Race To The Top" and Other Gimmicks

by Herbert I. London
December 21, 2009 at 5:00 am

http://www.stonegateinstitute.org/967/education-in-crisis-race-to-the-top-and-other-gimmicks

Over the last several decades in education, there has been a lot of “racing,” significant funding -- and abysmal achievement.

In an attempt to correct this, in the 11/25/09 issue of the Wall Street Journal three eminences of public education, Harold Ford Jr., Louis Gerstner Jr. and Eli Broad reflect on ways to improve public education, “Race to the Top in Education”: “Now, however,” they note, “President Obama has launched ‘Race to the Top,’ a competition that is parceling out $4.35 billion in new education funding to states that are committed to real (my italics) reform.” This package, note the authors, augurs well for meaningful change.

However, despite the emphasis on so called “performance standards and competition,” clearly goals that are needed, this initiative willprobably fail as all of its predecessors have, for three principal reasons: democracy, unions and the culture.

Several years ago as an advisor on educational matters for a midwestern state that had competency exams for 3rd, 5th, 8th and 12thgraders, it was my job to review the exams, which had reasonable requirements, although hardly excessive by Korean standards. In the first year of this program, less than a third of the students passed. Parents were outraged. “My Johnny is very bright; the exam is a foolish exercise,” wrote one parent; Similar letters came pouring into the governor’s office like gushers . A governor, like every elected official, wants to be reelected. As you might guess, he asked to have the exams “modified,” (read: made easier). This was done, not once but twice, until the reading and math passing scores exceeded 80 percent. Like the characters in LakeWoebegone, everyone must be above average. It is good for politicians, and a conclusion that satisfies parents. Unfortunately Johnny doesn’t read, write and compute as well as mom and dad think.

Then we have the unions, whose leadership is concerned solely with their constituencies. As Al Shenker of the A.F.T once noted “when students start paying dues I’ll be as interested in them as my teachers.” Hence competition of any kind among teachers, such as merit pay, is anathema.

Unless the NEA’s grip on public education is broken, competition, genuine competition, cannot be implemented. Moreover, how can this administration, already beholden to the teachers’ union for financial support, challenge the NEA?

Finally, even the most dedicated and effective teachers cannot compete with the suffusive distractions of the culture: Television, computer games, Facebook, sports, texting, and diversions of every kind vie for attention with scholarship. And if the general level of cultural ignorance is any measure, guess which side is winning?

Although it is unfair to generalize from a sample of one, and admittedly my experience is anecdotal, but as I visit American universities,students seem more familiar with the words to the latest rap songs than a Robert Lowell poem or the Constitution and Declaration of Independence. As Thorstein Veblen noted, “students are being trained in incapacity.” In large part, this is the case because the culture forces deviancy down. This is America’s accelerated dream of egalitarianism in which the bottom quartile moves slightly upward and the top quartile moves down, creating a compression at the mean.

The gang of three, Ford, Gerstner, Broad, mean well. They are sincere in their desire to improve public education. But “Race to the Top” is no different from “No Child Left Behind” and dozens of predecessors. Until the real issues are addressed – if they can be addressed – do not count on any more success in education than we have encountered in the past.

Herbert London is president of Hudson Institute and professor emeritus of New York University. He is the author of Decade of Denial (Lanham,Maryland: Lexington Books, 2001) and America’s Secular Challenge (Encounter Books).

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