When President Bush first talked about his education plan this spring, I had some questions and reservations, but there also seemed to be good reason for optimism. The president and governors had already agreed on ambitious national education goals, and now the president was making education a top priority for the national government. It was the first time any president had done this, and I hoped a legislative package would help in meeting the national goals would follow. But was I in for a big disappointment when the president presented his legislative package to the Congress!
The heart of the president's legislative package has nothing to do with meeting the national education goals. Its real center is his version of school choice, which would allow public money to go to private schools. In fact, the proposed legislation calls for more money to stimulate school choice plans than to develop the revolutionary, break-the-mold schools about which there has been so much talk. And, in the name of choice, the proposed legislation would also risk destroying the effectiveness of Chapter 1, the $6-billion program that represents the federal government's largest single expenditure on K-12 education.
Chapter I was designed to provide special programs for poor children by concentrating federal resources in the schools these children attend in greatest numbers. Though the amount provided for each child is relatively small, schools that have a number of these kids are able to mount programs to fit their students' special needs. But the choice feature of the new legislation would require that federal dollars go with individual children who move to other public or to private schools. This would dilute tile effectiveness of Chapter I ---and perhaps even destroy it.
Let's say a school uses Chapter I funds to hire a remedial reading teacher and a couple of school aides to visit the homes of kids who are often absent. If a number of kids take their Chapter I funds elsewhere and the school has to cut the positions, the kids who are left will lose these services. In fact, Chapter I schools would have a hard time hiring personnel or even buying supplies for special programs because they couldn't be sure about how much money they'd have until the first day of school.
Is the administration suggesting this radical change because Chapter I doesn't work---and because choice does? There's no evidence that choice boosts Student achievement, but Chapter I has been a big success, even though it's never been fully or generously funded. Over the past 20 years, we've seen a dramatic rise in the school achievement levels of poor and minority youngsters, and the gap separating their achievement and that of other children has narrowed substantially. The president's proposal for changing the way Chapter I works would replace a program everyone agrees is helping poor children with a plan whose virtues we have to take on faith.
While choice is writ large in the president's legislative package, it's hard to find any solid programs to help us achieve the nation's education goals. For example, the package totally ignores one of the most important goals: "By the year 2000, all children in America will stay in school ready to learn." Kids who don't have proper medical care are those who come to school hungry are not going to be ready learn. And if we don't achieve this first goal, all the others will be impossible. Yet the proposed legislation has nothing to say about any program for preschoolers. Even Head Start, which has done an excellent job of getting poor children ready for school, has never been fully funded.
And take another of the goals we can hardly afford to ignore: "By the year 2000, U.S. students will be first in the world in science and mathematics achievement." The president's plan offers some financial incentives for science and math achievement in the Merit Schools program and some training for some teachers in the "Governors' Academics," but these are a drop in the bucket---almost a placebo-when you consider the magnitude of our problem in this area. We need a massive retraining of teachers, especially those who teach elementary math and science. Many of them have never been properly prepared to leach these subjects, and yet we expect them to work miracles in helping boost our students' math and science achievement to meet world-class standards. This won't happen unless we give them the training to do the job.
There are no new ideas and no smart ideas in President Bush's proposal---and no willingness to commit resources, We know how to achieve ambitious goals: We decide they are important and we devote human and financial resources in abundance to achieve them. That's how we put a man on the moon; that's how we won the war in the Persian Gulf After looking at this legislative program, who would give us a chance of achieving our education goals by the year 2000?
I think the answer is nobody.
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Right now, drastic cutbacks In expenditures for education are being made all over the country. The AFT depends on the dues of our members, and our members are being severely squeezed. Therefore, we are putting Into effect a number of savings. One of them Is to adjourn "Where We Stand" until September 1.