Reforming Education Means More $?

posted at 6:08 am on May 16, 2009 by Michael van der Galien
[ Education ]    regular view

There is something seriously wrongwhen politicians and opinionmakers believe that to reform education you just need to spend more on it and ‘open up’:

The recent economic stimulus bill contains more than $100 billon in education spending, a historic investment equal to about 16 percent of the nation’s annual expenditures on public elementary and secondary schools. In exchange, states are required to report more information about student performance and make “assurances” that they will work to improve schools. However, the law requires little in the way of actual changes. “States have made these assurances over and over again, the question is whether they’re going to have to meet the promises they keep making,” argues Charlie Barone, formerly a top aide on the House of Representatives education committee and now policy director for Democrats for Education Reform, an advocacy group.

The article quoted above is written by Andrew J. Rotherham, who criticizes both Obama and Bush, but who is equally wrong himself:

The Bush administration assumed the federal No Child Left Behind law would produce a tidal wave of student and school performance data that would swamp opposition to school improvement efforts. Seven years later the political resistance to education reform is as potent as ever and former Bush aides now acknowledge placing too much faith in the power of information…

Data, transparency, and public availability of educational information are all highly desirable elements of education reform. It’s ridiculous that today a parent can find more information about choosing a new washing machine or automobile than about choosing a school, and it’s a travesty how frequently ideology trumps evidence in education policymaking. But given how the politics of education work, transparency will drive change only in concert with policies actually requiring change. Information alone is not enough.

Rothberg does not actually offer a solution – that would be taking responsibility and that is of course above the good man – but he implies that more government interference is the answer. Perhaps the author should read “School Choice: The Findings,” by Herbert J. Walberg and published by CATO.

As Walberg explains in this important work (if you don’t own a copy of it yet, order it now) not more money nor government interference but less of both is needed to improve American schools. They suffer not from too little money and too few checks, but from a tremendous lack of competition. It has to become easier for parents to send their children to private schools: this will help those students receive a better education, and research shows it helps the public school they left behind improve as well, because teachers feel pressure to improve the quality of their work if they want to keep their students (and they do).

American kids have been treated unfairly, almost criminal, for decades now, and not (fiscal) conservatives and other opponents of Big Government but the ‘do-gooders’ who want to spend more on education but refuse to give students and their parents a choice about which school they want to attend are to blame.

Blowback

You must be logged in to post a comment.