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THE CONSERVATIVE REVIEW - March 19, 2010
Betting (Again) On an Education Fix
by George Will
WASHINGTON - Doubling down on dubious bets is character-
istic of compulsive gamblers and federal education policy.
The nation was essentially without such policy for grades
K through 12, and better off for that, until 1965. In that
year of liberals living exuberantly, they produced the
Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Now yet another
president has announced yet another plan to fix education.
His aspiration has a discouraging pedigree.
In 1983, three years after Jimmy Carter paid his debt to
teachers' unions by creating the Education Department, a
national commission declared America "a nation at risk":
"If an unfriendly power had attempted to impose on America
the mediocre educational performance that exists today,
we might well have viewed it as an act of war." So in
1984, Ronald Reagan decreed improvements.
They did not materialize, so in 1994 Congress decreed that
by 2000 the high school graduation rate would be "at least"
90 percent and students would be "first in the world in
mathematics and science achievement." Even inflated by
"social promotions," the graduation rate in 2000 was about
75 percent (it peaked at 77.1 in 1969), and among 38
nations surveyed, Americans ranked 19th in mathematics,
just below Latvians, and 18th in science, just below
Bulgarians.
So, eschewing "the soft bigotry of low expectations," in
2001 President George W. Bush undertook the loopy idealism
of preposterous expectations. No Child Left Behind decreed
that by 2014 there will be universal -- yes, 100 percent
-- "proficiency" in reading and math. That will happen if
enough states do what many have done -- define proficiency
down. NCLB gives states an incentive to report chimerical
progress, so, unsurprisingly, state tests almost always
indicate much more progress than does the National Assess-
ment of Educational Progress, the federal test.
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Obama understands that NCLB has perverse incentives. If we
must continue the mistake of increasing federal supervision
of primary and secondary education, Washington should at
least reverse what NCLB does.
Washington should set national standards and measurements
and leave states free to choose how to meet them.
Obama wisely proposes broadening the focus beyond reading
and math, a constructed emphasis that encourages neglect
of science and history. NCLB has deepened the historical
amnesia that conservatives deplore, but conservatives
should know that national standards for public education
will inevitably reflect the public education culture that
is a large part of the problem. To imagine the soggy
souffle of political correctness that national history
standards would be, remember the offensive standards
proposed in the mid-1990s and resoundingly rejected by
Congress.
Obama would sensibly relax NCLB's severe pass-fail judg-
ments on schools, instead measuring the academic growth
of children who, because of family background, start
school far behind. And he admirably proposes making more
severe the consequences of a school's substantial and
protracted failure to produce student progress: A school
might have to replace at least half its staff, or even be
closed.
But how does one fulfill -- or know when one has fulfilled
-- Obama's goal of "college and career readiness" for
every child by 2020. That gauzy goal resembles the 1994
goal that by 2000 (when, Congress dreamily decreed, every
school "will be free of drugs and violence") every child
would start school "ready to learn." Is "college and
career readiness" one goal or two?
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Should everybody go to college? Is a college degree
equivalent to career -- any career? -- readiness?
If such readiness is not measurable, this is another airy
puff of legislative cotton candy, similar to NCLB's
guarantee that every teacher will be "highly qualified."
Qualification measured how? Probably by relying on the
redundantly refuted theory that traditional credentialing
-- e.g., a degree from an education school -- guarantees
competence.
NCLB's emphasis on measuring students' expanding knowledge
has improved education policy that until recently was
exclusively focused, as the public education lobby
preferred, on monetary inputs rather than cognitive out-
puts. From the time the baby boom generation began going
through the school system like a pig through a python,
policy, until NCLB, assumed that cognitive outputs varied
positively with financial inputs.
Abundant evidence demonstrates that money is not an
Archimedean lever for moving the world of education.
Inflation-adjusted per-pupil spending tripled over four
decades; pupil-teacher ratios were substantially reduced
as the number of teachers increased 61 percent while
enrollments rose about 10 percent. Yet test scores
stagnated or declined.
So, what will government do now to reverse the decline
that has pretty much coincided with federal intervention
since 1965? Double down.
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