Summing up a Career

Abstract

The big decisions being made in Washington and state houses inspired me to look back, all the way to my first Washington Commentary. It was in September 1982 during President Reagan's first year in office, and I bluntly declared that the benign U.S. Department of Education had been turned over to ideologues. They were bent on eliminating it, or at least reducing it to being no more than a conduit for their research and statistics. So, not much more than a quarter century later, here we are with the largest infusion of federal dollars into education ever, the almost certain prospect that there will be national standards in a few years, and a federally induced mania for testing that is going to define teaching, just as it has student success. Why do I fear that none of these will work as well as promised? Scanning through many of the subsequent commentaries, I realized that the pushes and pulls, rhetoric and good reforms mixed with bad ones lead to questions, not answers. The American public education system is still below capacity, and I wonder why. Certainly, jagged-edged, rather than cutting-edged, policies often get in the way. But the questions that really stump me probe deeper than any law or reform, so I'm putting a few out there for this summer of heady decisions on education across the country. Why are education institutions--school districts, state policy agencies, teacher preparation programs--so inferior compared to the people who work in them? This idea is not original with me--I heard it from David Simon, the brilliant writer/director of the TV drama series, The Wire. As a beat reporter for the Baltimore Sun, he observed the corruption and mismanagement of local police and government (including the schools) and turned his insights into a series that is an indictment of American society, writ large. Simon's explanation that greed incubates inferiority doesn't exactly fit with education. The principal of Main Street High School has no illusions about being in the same league as a Wall Street CEO. But the issue of power backed by the misuse of statistics (another Simon theme) rings true for education. Everyone jockeys for power, whether it's administrators, unions, think tanks, or politicians, and he who lies best with statistics, wins. Meanwhile, talented or, at least, committed educators who want to do good for kids work inside inferior systems as best they can and for as long as they can stand it. The federalism that governed education for two centuries--evolving into shared responsibility among national, state, and local levels--is in shambles. Mayors, states, and federal officials are trying to move schools forward, but the feds are investing massive stimulus dollars in state finance systems that favor the wealthy and penalize the poor. How is this top-down approach going to change that? The stimulus regulations ask states to show how they're going to address the problems, but such politeness leaves the door wide open for the statistical liars. A related question has to do with leadership. What goes into the thinking of state officials, administrators, school boards, policy makers, and others who make decisions with public money and people's lives that causes them to come up with so many bad or, at least, uninformed choices? Sometimes, they seem like lemmings, determined to follow the latest fad or advice without realizing that it is leading them right over the cliff. I put charter schools (certainly vouchers) in this category. If the purpose is to improve student achievement, neither charters nor vouchers offers proof of working. …