CED's insistence that the academic mission should be at the center of our educational arrangements is refreshing and important.
Restore the academic mission of the schools: That's the principal message of the Committee for Economic Development (CED)'s powerful, important -- and politically incorrect -- new report, "Putting Learning First: Governing and Managing Schools for High Achievement."
This idea might seem pretty obvious, but many people around the schools still frown at the mention of "academic mission," perhaps imagining it to be a quaint idea inserted in A Nation At Risk by Ronald Reagan. And the majority believe that the chief purpose of the schools is the socialization of youngsters -- teaching them how to get along together rather than how to do math or science.
This view of schooling is one reason why the movement for full inclusion, which would place youngsters with disabilities in regular classrooms, regardless of the severity and nature of the disability, has gotten as far as it has. If the major purpose of school is to help the kids with their social development, it won't matter if a class of fourth graders falls behind in math and reading because a youngster who has a behavioral disorder disrupts the class every day; it's all right to sacrifice academic achievement if kids are learning to be nice to one another. Given this view of what school is for, CED's insistence that the academic mission should be at the center of our educational arrangements is refreshing and important.
The report's attack on federal, state and local rules governing education is a relatively easy hit. But CED doesn't talk simply about freeing schools from ritualistic compliance with rules. Once the regulations are substantially reduced, CED would replace them with a system of incentives that would get everyone pulling in the same direction of academic achievement.
"Putting Learning First" talks about group incentives for professionals, but, more important, it is the first national report to talk about creating real incentives for students. As we know, most U.S. students don't achieve at very high levels because they don't work very hard. There's no point to it. Unless a student wants to go to a selective college, he will have no trouble finding a college to admit him, no matter how poor his grades are. And because civil rights laws make it problematic for employers to use high school records in screening applicants, recent graduates who look for jobs also find that their school record -- whether good or bad -- doesn't count.
CED suggests that we make it worthwhile for students to work in school by raising college admission standards to the point where students entering college are actually capable of doing college-level work and by making student loans and grants contingent on achieving those standards. The report also says that employers should start considering the school achievement of job applicants, and it asks the courts to consider changes in civil rights laws to make this possible.
Since CED is an important business group, you might think it would come out in favor of vouchers, which would allow parents to use public money to send their children to private schools. But while the report recognizes the important contribution of private schools, it considers public schools the primary means of educating the majority of young Americans. And it fears that diverting money to vouchers will make it harder to bring about the necessary improvement in the public schools.
You might also look for a business group to hit teacher unions and perhaps even attack collective bargaining, but again the CED report goes against the grain. "Putting Learning First" does call for a change in the nature of collective bargaining so relations between teachers and the administration will be less adversarial. But it recognizes an important role for teachers and unions in planning ways to improve student learning and managing the schools.
Finally, the delivery of social services to youngsters in school is one of the motherhood ideas now sweeping the country. Given the chaotic families many students come from, why not make schools a one-stop center where students can receive their psychiatric and medical care and learn how to take care of their infants? The CED report rejects this idea because, as it points out, we have already seen the results of meeting every new social problem by expecting schools to deal with it. The more we demand of the schools, the report observes, the less they are able to achieve their primary mission -- educating students -- and it calls for limiting the non-educational services offered at schools to those that have a direct effect on student learning.
"Putting Learning First" raises tough issues about the purposes of education and how to achieve them. Since the issues are controversial, the report should provoke a national debate. But unless the issues are resolved along the lines CED suggests, we cannot expect our schools to improve.