Although the health care debate continues to suck air from public discussion of almost every other domestic policy initiative, a couple of big education stories did hit the headlines last week.
On March 2 President Obama roiled the American educational establishment when he appeared to laud Rhodes Island school authorities for firing every teacher at Central Falls High School (effective for the 2010-11 school year) after the union rejected a modest set of “turnaround” improvements. These included lengthening the school day by 25 minutes, tutoring students before and after school on a rotating schedule, and – as a former teacher I can’t help wonder if this one was the deal-killer – eating lunch with students once a week. The President did not utter the word “union,” but he did say
“if a school continues to fail its students year after year after year, if it doesn’t show signs of improvement, then there’s got to be a sense of accountability. And that’s what happened in Rhode Island last week at a chronically troubled school, when just 7 percent of 11th graders passed state math tests — 7 percent. When a school board wasn’t able to deliver change by other means, they voted to lay off the faculty and the staff.”
(http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-americas-promise-alliance-education-event).
The Associated Press aptly headlined its article on this event “Obama cites RI school firings in education speech”, as it fell somewhat short of an endorsement. Still, teacher blogs crackled with outrage.
On March 4 the Department of Education announced the list of first round finalists in the “Race to the Top” to snag a piece of a $4 billion discretionary education fund kitty. The announced criteria for selection included an embrace of charter schools and a willingness to tie pay to student performance, measured by some form of objective testing. Yet lo and behold, one of the 16 finalist states was New York, where the teacher’s union adamantly opposed lifting a cap on charter schools or including student test scores in teacher evaluations – and where the state legislature just this January dutifully enacted this agenda.” (
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704187204575101553383922336.html).
This isn’t the first manifestation of education policy schizophrenia. Candidate Obama offered an eloquent critique of the educational status quo, and signaled his willingness to challenge an important element of the Democratic Party base. President Obama first proposed eliminating the successful and popular educational voucher program in the District of Columbia, then supported a “compromise” that allowed current voucher recipients to continue to receive them . . . and slammed the door on thousands of other children and parents clamoring to get in.
I am receptive to all the usual accusations about hypocrisy and political expedience. But I wonder if the problem isn’t deeper and scarier. To the President, talk seems to be equal to action, maybe even the highest form of action. When he tells the American people that his health care program will expand coverage and reduce costs, he sounds sincere, and indeed persuaded by his own rhetoric. Maybe he IS sincere and persuaded. Is it possible that to President Obama announcing that he will cut costs is the same as cutting costs? That supporting someone else’s act of “accountability” is the same as enforcing accountability himself?
If we can ever move beyond health care reform, education reform is crying out for intelligent debate. The Elementary and Secondary Education Act – No Child Left Behind in its current iteration – is due for reauthorization, and Congress just held the first hearings. There is widespread agreement that No Child Left Behind was a flawed, if well intentioned, law. There is considerable potential common ground between candidate Obama and the Republicans on the education committees about the future direction of reform. The ESEA reauthorization, indeed even the final awards in the Race to the Top, could hand President Obama an opportunity to begin recovering from either his victory or defeat on health care, much as a bipartisan welfare reform bill helped to restore President Clinton’s presidency. But the President will not be able to speechify his way around conflicts as fundamental as whether or not states should be rewarded for promoting charter schools, or whether teacher pay should be related to improvements in student performance. He needs to walk the talk.
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Education reform is made even more difficult by the fact that, in our political discourse, one- or two-word concepts drive the debate, while the on-the-ground situation is a lot more complicated. I’m a big fan of charter schools, for example, but in Minnesota, where we have a charter school on just about every corner, we realize that they are not a magical fix, and the legislature understandably seems to be getting charter school fatigue. And while “accountability” sounds great on the campaign trail, once No Child Left Behind hits your local classroom, you start to see the problem. A lot of this comes down to empirical data on what’s really working, and that doesn’t usually translate into easy sound bites. In an area that’s this messy, with this many moving parts, it seems that there are significant limits to what the President can or should try to do in terms of pushing states and municipalities in a certain direction, however willing he might be to walk the talk. I know the feds, given the funding issues, are not easily extricated from education, but in an ideal world, perhaps the feds’ role should primarily be assembling and disseminating information about what’s actually working?
Accountability sounds nice…but who are we talking about here?
Students?
Parents of Students?
School Boards?
Taxpayers?
Property Owners?
State Government?
Federal Government?
Private schools have it a lot easier, they are accountable to the parents since they are the ones picking the institution and paying the tuition.
Home schools are similar.
Adding a third party payer sure complicates things.