Where We Stand

Washington, D.C., school superintendent Franklin Smith has had a tough time. Almost everything he's tried to do has been severely criticized. Now, Smith is getting his first good reviews from the press because he wants to hire a private company to run some D.C. schools.

When President Clinton and Vice-President Gore talk about the need to reinvent government, there is a tendency to dismiss this as a catch phrase. That's a mistake; it's an effort to deal with a serious problem that can and should be dealt with. Most people agree there are problems that federal, state or local government should be handling. However, they have doubts that government can handle them sensibly and effectively. Their doubts are well-founded.

When it comes to making exaggerated claims for what they've accomplished, educators are real pros. In most fields, people making a notable discovery are careful not to claim too much for it. Medical researchers who discover a new drug or procedure are scrupulous about specifying the percentage of people likely to find it effective, and even a success rate of 10 or 15 percent is considered an achievement.

An amazing mystery about recent voucher referendums in Oregon, Colorado and California is that vouchers, which seemed to be popular in the beginning, were defeated by margins of at least two-to-one. How did this happen?

A few days before the California voucher initiative went down to defeat by a seven-to-three margin, columnist David Broder issued a "pre-
mortem" blast at conservatives for not supporting the measure ("Shameful Silence On School Vouchers," Washington Post, October
27, 1993). Broder called vouchers a "perfect issue" for conservatives,
one that appealed to the "movement's best and brightest thinkers." He
expressed disgust at the lack of support--and especially financial
support--from California conservatives. 

Have school boards become part of the problem with our schools instead of part of the cure? Plenty of critics would say yes, and some are ready to get rid of the democratic control of our schools altogether. That, after all, is what voucher proposals would do.

In a few days, the Congress will vote on NAFTA--the North American Free Trade Agreement. President Clinton and NAFTA supporters believe it will be a win-win situation for Canada, Mexico and the U.S. They believe that increased investment in Mexico will raise living standards there, making it a big market for our goods and services and increasing the number of U. S. jobs. They say U.S. job loss will be small, and workers can be retrained. Also, greater prosperity in Mexico will reduce illegal immigration to the U. S. They cite the success of the European Community as a model.

There are a lot of radical ideas for school reform going around that attempt to handle the problem of raising student achievement with some kind of mechanical gimmick-like vouchers, charter schools or management of schools by for-profit companies. President Clinton's education reform bill, Goals 2000, is a welcome contrast to this gimmickry. It has been moving through Congress with little fanfare, but it goes to the heart of the problem by dealing with what we expect students to know and the kinds of incentives they need in order to learn.

In California and elsewhere, there are big fights going on about vouchers--using public money to send kids to private and parochial
schools. Many of the issues get to be very complicated. For example, to what extent, if at all, should private schools accepting taxpayers' money be regulated? And will vouchers save money or cost billions? So voters trying to decide about California's Proposition 174 are faced with lots of conflicting and confusing analysis about the results of passing this initiative.

The Wall Chart lives! A collection of education data that was used for state-by-state comparisons, the Wall Chart was one of former U.S. Secretary of Education William Bennett's favorite blunt instruments. It's been revived under the name of the Report Card on American Education by a conservative group known as the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), and ALEC uses the report to draw the same kind of crude and misleading conclusions that the Secretary used to specialize in--and still does.

One of the biggest issues on the ballot this November is the California voucher initiative. If this initiative passes, it could start a landslide of similar legislation all over the country. And if it fails, it would be a major setback for supporters of vouchers. Proposition 174, as the voucher initiative is called, would divert roughly 10 percent of the money now spent for public schools into vouchers for youngsters already attending private school. In addition, youngsters moving from public to private schools would get vouchers worth $2,600, which would also come out of funds for public education.

Please inform Mr. Toom about the grading system and instruction methods of THIS country .... I earned a grade of A in my college algebra and trigonometry courses so it makes no sense for me to be doing so poorly in this course. Please straighten this man out.

Voucher supporters often say that American public education is run like the command economy that crippled the former Soviet Union, and if it is to improve, it needs to adopt a market system. The key to school improvement, we are told, is competition. When parents have vouchers to spend for education, public schools will be forced to be more responsive to what parents want. Schools whose teachers and administrators are successful at figuring out how to attract customers will flourish. Schools that continue losing customers will eventually fail and go out of business.

Suppose you were a fourth-grade teacher and, along with the 30 other youngsters on your class list, you found you'd been assigned a Down's syndrome child -- without any preparation and without any extra help. And this was a child who ran around hitting other kids and was not even toilet trained. How would you meet the extraordinary demands of this child without robbing the rest of your students? 

Many education people are worried because ultra right-wing groups have become very active in opposing a reform effort known as outcomes-based education (OBE). In a couple of cases, these groups have succeeded in getting provisions of QBE legislation altered or even blocking the legislation altogether. Some educators are afraid that the fight about QBE could lead to a takeover of American education by the radical right. Is there any basis for these fears?

There is general agreement that many youngsters learn very little in school. One explanation often given is that the kids spend a lot of class time doing undemanding, rote work. After they've plowed through 50 math examples in which they multiply two-digit numbers, they turn to the next page of their workbook where they find ... 50 examples that call for multiplying three-digit numbers. And when they go on to language arts, they open another workbook and fill in 50 or I 00 blanks with the correct verb or pronoun. 

In 1991, Christopher Whittle announced a revolution: His new Edison Project would create a national chain of innovative for-profit schools that would turn around American education. Whittle had already caused a sensation with his Channel One, which offers TV sets and satellite dishes to schools in return for a guarantee that students will watch a daily 12-minute program with 2 minutes of commercials, so the Edison Project was followed with great interest. 

On November 3, Californians will vote on an amendment to the state constitution that would authorize using taxpayers' money to send K-12 students to private and parochial schools. Supporters of this voucher scheme claim it's the medicine California education needs and that it would, among other things, help save the public schools. But it is more likely to be the coup de grace.

A few weeks ago, I received a copy of a new civics textbook being promoted around the country. It's called Civics for Democracy: A Journey for Teachers and Students (Washington, D.C.: Essential Books, 1993), and unlike the usual civics text, which talks about how various institutions of government work, this one aims to show students how they can bring about change in government. As an introduction, the book devotes several chapters to important citizen protest movements like the civil rights and the labor movements. 

Do colleges and universities give a better quality education than public elementary and That's what supporters of vouchers frequently claim. But where is the evidence that competition will produce quality? Student customers in colleges and universities are often glad to get as little as possible for their money as a letter in the Chemical and Engineering News (July 12, 1993) from Nenad Kostic of Iowa State University points out: