Where We Stand

Why do our kids do so badly in school? Lots of people will tell you it's because they spend too much time in front of a TV set. And it's true that the numbers are staggering. In 1990, one in four 9-year-olds spent six or more hours, seven days a week, watching TV. That's more than most adults spend at work and certainly more than these kids spent in school. It's also true that kids who watch lots of TV have poor test scores. What should we do? 

American schools have been unwilling to teach about the superiority of democracy as a form of government. One reason has been a desire to appear open-minded. Since ours is a democratic system teaching the superiority of democracy seemed like patting ourselves on the back. This attitude led to some extreme relativism in teaching--things like, "Well, we think democracy is superior, but it's our system. The Chinese and the Soviets have their systems, and they like them just as much as we like ours."

One of the things that has most impressed people about the work of social scientists John Chubb and Terry Moe is their scientific expertise. Instead of just asserting that children would get a better education if we sent them to private schools, their book "Politics, Markets and America's Schools" offers many pages of data analysis to "prove" their point. 

During the past 12 years, we have suffered from divided government. Those of us, in the Congress and outside, who wanted to improve the lot of children fought for a variety of programs. Some never reached the president's desk because of Senate filibusters. Others were passed by the Congress only to be vetoed by the president. There were a few exceptions. One was Head Start. 

When people talk about the importance of parental involvement in education, they often mean involvement in the schools--things like PTA committees and restructuring task forces. This kind of involvement can be positive or it can exacerbate tensions and conflicts. Anyway, it is a form of political activity, a way of participating in the political life of the school. There is another kind of parental involvement that we don't hear so much about and that is far more important. I'm talking about the involvement of parents with their children's education at home.

One of the most controversial issues in U.S. education is homogenous grouping -- that is, separating youngsters into classes according to how well they achieve -- vs. heterogeneous grouping -- putting children achieving at all levels into the same class. There are people who say that homogenous grouping, or tracking as it is sometimes called, is essential to providing every child with a good education. Others are convinced that tracking labels kids in lower tracks forever and makes them perform worse than they would in mixed classes. 

There is lots of talk about changing education with "break-the-mold" schools or with alternative or restructured schools, but when you look at restructuring in a major company, you're likely to find that business has a much better idea of how to carry out this kind of change. The Saturn project is a case in point.

In most fields, statistics are put together in the same way over time. So people know, for example, what unemployment or trade deficit figures mean and are able to rely on them. Not so in education. We spend $250 billion a year on education in the U.S. and it's important that we know what is going on.

Why all the fuss over President-elect and Mrs. Clinton's decision to send their daughter to an elite private school in Washington rather than a D.C. public school?

A couple of weeks ago, after one of my columns on how national standards would be an important step
toward improving the achievement of all our students, I got a letter from a former Peace Corps
Volunteer, Tom Hebert, who is now a consultant in Washington, D.C. He offered, as a case in point,
education in West Africa in the 1960s.

Last year, around Thanksgiving, a disturbing letter appeared in the New York Times. A father reported that, in preparation for celebrating an "international" Thanksgiving, each child in his son's pre-kindergarten class was told to select a flag identifying his national origin. The American flag was not one of the choices until some parents complained -- too late for this man's kid to choose it.

History is an exciting story about the real adventures of heroes, villains and people who are a little bit of both. But most children never find that out.

Usually when I write this column, I'm trying to convince thousands of people about something. This time, I'm trying to reach one or two people. I don't even know who they are, but they'll have to be people receptive to spending money on a good cause.

One hundred years ago, when kids in Jersey City were taking this exam, children in other industrialized nations were struggling with similar ones. There, too, only a small elite passed and went on to high school.

We can hardly pick up a paper these days without reading that a child has been wounded or killed on a school playground or in the halls -- often by another child

Why do students from France or Germany work harder than our kids? They have the same distractions as American students. They have TV sets and pop culture.

In recent years, a number of education researchers have been saying that it really doesn't matter how much money we spend on schools and teachers and books and technology because, in education, there is no
connection between money and outcomes.

Some people have said that a big reason for your victory was a sign that hung in your campaign offices. It read, "The economy, stupid!" It reminded you to stick to this issue. 

It's time to debunk one of the enduring myths about American education: that while our elementary and secondary schools are generally lousy, our colleges and universities are the best in the world.

When the Republicans began stressing "traditional family values" during the recent presidential campaign,they got a lot of flak. Nevertheless, they were on to something important.