From the Left - Education
5:36 PM
by Chris Johnson of Drawnlines Politics.
As a liberal- you can imagine how important education is to me. Not only my own, which allows me to make well informed choices and decisions, but also the education of society around me. Our federal education system is broken. I am deeply troubled by this on many sundry levels. Advanced societies depend on education to perpetuate themselves, to continue growth, for the good of humanity, democracy, and ecology… and a few Right-Wing things too.
In the Vietnam era, students would do everything they could to ensure a 1400 or better on their SATs. They would fight for top ranking in class and to endear themselves to their teachers. Not that they were philosophically magnanimous in doing this so much as keeping their names out of the draft… In a slightly different light, my parents and grand parents had a reason to go to school. There was true benefit to it. They would either be prepared for advanced education, or they would graduate with a trade. This rarely happens today—As I see it, the whole system is really in trouble. Children are promoted to the next grade level without the required skills; teachers are forced to teach to a standardized test and are thereby forced to abandon more intensive skills training; gone are the days of shop and other trades; children lack drive and motivation for succeeding because there is no penalty for failure… malaise is the order of the day; in short, the basics aren’t the basics any longer.
Here is where this conversation gets painful for me. In my opinion, there are only two viable solutions to this enormous dilemma that we will see the rotten fruit of in a generation or so. Both of the solutions come from the right hand side of the isle… sigh.
Solution number 1:
Basically, this is the one from “he who shall not be named” (by the folks that side with me anyway). No Child Left Behind is sound in theory. Every industry that exists in the country is regulated by one of two things (or both)- the free market and government regulation. NCLB was shooting for the latter of the two. If you ever hope to manage something and improve it by using tools more sophisticated than a Quiga board, then you must first measure that thing. So how do you do that?? You start with everybody on the same starting line, and you put a yard stick out there. Standardized testing was that yard stick.
Now, here’s the rub with this one. The federal government doesn’t actually come to the schools and do the teaching… They simply decide how to break up the meager amount of money (comparatively speaking) amongst the states in the hopes of improving education. A Quiga board is the current tool of choice, I believe. Because there is money being paid out for performance on standardized tests, there is an inordinate amount of time being spent on teaching the test so that teachers, schools, and states can remain competitive. Why is this such a bad thing? Because if dissecting a frog isn’t on the biology portion of the test, then teachers don’t teach it. Even more damaging is the lack of applicability being delivered to today’s youth. There is very little purpose in the inexperienced and naïve learning facts, that seem obscure and irrelevant to them.
Another issue with this one is that each state is responsible for developing their own yard stick. This can’t be effective when you want to compare children in Arizona to those in Indiana and then make a solid judgment on who gets what money to build more schools or hire better teachers. A national standardized test with certain practical curriculum guidelines may be a better approach to NCLB… but that is for you to decide.
Solution number 2:
This one comes from the Libertarian wing of the Republican Party. Rep. Ron Paul of Texas and I have seen eye to eye on more things that I feel completely comfortable with. Mr. Paul believes that the solution to the federal government collecting taxes and allocating them to the states for education purposes is to just stop doing it. The liberal hairs on the back of my neck want to jump ship at the sound of that, but it does make a certain kind of sense.
If each state was completely responsible for collecting for and running its own schools, there would definitely be a savings on the federal level. Each state would have its own burden of developing their own education plans as it suited their needs. State Treasuries would be the ones who collected the monies that they needed and State Secretaries of Education would be the ones to distribute said monies. I mentioned industrial regulation before- this solution is the free market approach. If you don’t like the education your kids are getting in Mississippi, then pack up and move.
What’s wrong with this one? There are rich states and poor states. There are high performing states and some really bad ones. Most parents wouldn’t move out of state simply because of the poor state of education at the kid’s schools. Also, 50 ways of doing things means 50 ways to screw it up majorly. Would Iowa be forced to accept a diploma from Wyoming? It feels like there would end up being some kids seriously short changed through no fault of their own.
When it is all said and done, these aren’t silver bullet solutions, but they are the best ones I have heard to date. If you were to forget about how classrooms are today, forget how money comes to schools today, and you were given 100,000,000 children to teach—how would you do it?
There's ALWAYS something new happening at Drawnlines Politics.
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Check out our new Election Center!
As a liberal- you can imagine how important education is to me. Not only my own, which allows me to make well informed choices and decisions, but also the education of society around me. Our federal education system is broken. I am deeply troubled by this on many sundry levels. Advanced societies depend on education to perpetuate themselves, to continue growth, for the good of humanity, democracy, and ecology… and a few Right-Wing things too.
In the Vietnam era, students would do everything they could to ensure a 1400 or better on their SATs. They would fight for top ranking in class and to endear themselves to their teachers. Not that they were philosophically magnanimous in doing this so much as keeping their names out of the draft… In a slightly different light, my parents and grand parents had a reason to go to school. There was true benefit to it. They would either be prepared for advanced education, or they would graduate with a trade. This rarely happens today—As I see it, the whole system is really in trouble. Children are promoted to the next grade level without the required skills; teachers are forced to teach to a standardized test and are thereby forced to abandon more intensive skills training; gone are the days of shop and other trades; children lack drive and motivation for succeeding because there is no penalty for failure… malaise is the order of the day; in short, the basics aren’t the basics any longer.
Here is where this conversation gets painful for me. In my opinion, there are only two viable solutions to this enormous dilemma that we will see the rotten fruit of in a generation or so. Both of the solutions come from the right hand side of the isle… sigh.
Solution number 1:
Basically, this is the one from “he who shall not be named” (by the folks that side with me anyway). No Child Left Behind is sound in theory. Every industry that exists in the country is regulated by one of two things (or both)- the free market and government regulation. NCLB was shooting for the latter of the two. If you ever hope to manage something and improve it by using tools more sophisticated than a Quiga board, then you must first measure that thing. So how do you do that?? You start with everybody on the same starting line, and you put a yard stick out there. Standardized testing was that yard stick.
Now, here’s the rub with this one. The federal government doesn’t actually come to the schools and do the teaching… They simply decide how to break up the meager amount of money (comparatively speaking) amongst the states in the hopes of improving education. A Quiga board is the current tool of choice, I believe. Because there is money being paid out for performance on standardized tests, there is an inordinate amount of time being spent on teaching the test so that teachers, schools, and states can remain competitive. Why is this such a bad thing? Because if dissecting a frog isn’t on the biology portion of the test, then teachers don’t teach it. Even more damaging is the lack of applicability being delivered to today’s youth. There is very little purpose in the inexperienced and naïve learning facts, that seem obscure and irrelevant to them.
Another issue with this one is that each state is responsible for developing their own yard stick. This can’t be effective when you want to compare children in Arizona to those in Indiana and then make a solid judgment on who gets what money to build more schools or hire better teachers. A national standardized test with certain practical curriculum guidelines may be a better approach to NCLB… but that is for you to decide.
Solution number 2:
This one comes from the Libertarian wing of the Republican Party. Rep. Ron Paul of Texas and I have seen eye to eye on more things that I feel completely comfortable with. Mr. Paul believes that the solution to the federal government collecting taxes and allocating them to the states for education purposes is to just stop doing it. The liberal hairs on the back of my neck want to jump ship at the sound of that, but it does make a certain kind of sense.
If each state was completely responsible for collecting for and running its own schools, there would definitely be a savings on the federal level. Each state would have its own burden of developing their own education plans as it suited their needs. State Treasuries would be the ones who collected the monies that they needed and State Secretaries of Education would be the ones to distribute said monies. I mentioned industrial regulation before- this solution is the free market approach. If you don’t like the education your kids are getting in Mississippi, then pack up and move.
What’s wrong with this one? There are rich states and poor states. There are high performing states and some really bad ones. Most parents wouldn’t move out of state simply because of the poor state of education at the kid’s schools. Also, 50 ways of doing things means 50 ways to screw it up majorly. Would Iowa be forced to accept a diploma from Wyoming? It feels like there would end up being some kids seriously short changed through no fault of their own.
When it is all said and done, these aren’t silver bullet solutions, but they are the best ones I have heard to date. If you were to forget about how classrooms are today, forget how money comes to schools today, and you were given 100,000,000 children to teach—how would you do it?
There's ALWAYS something new happening at Drawnlines Politics.
For videos and archives visit our homepage
Check out our new Election Center!
Posted by Nick Stone
on 5:36 PM.
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Chris,
How practical!
I love your praise for two basically conservative ideas. I'm hearing that you are pro-standardized testing for practical reasons and for funding and regulating at the local level rather than having the feds dole it out.
How about school choice? Should a poor child be stuck in a failing school because of the color of her skin or the money in her mother's bank account?
You've demanded accountability and performance, how do we hold feet to the fire besides witholding funding? Teachers unions argue that failing schools can't produce better results with less money, but isn't that blackmail perfectly appropriate?
We know failing schools already have a benchmark approach to maintaining their budget levels which they rarely meet, so surely throwing money at failing schools isn't a solution. If it was, the District of Columbia would have the greatest public schools in the nation. To say the least, it does not.
What say you?