March Madness is here. Not the NCAA basketball tournament but the latest version of what to do to improve our nation’s schools and student outcomes.
On March 10 the National Governors Association and a team representing state school superintendents released the newly proposed national content standards. The good news is the new national standards are rigorous, internationally calibrated, and vertically aligned K-12. This is a proper step for all intents and purposes, especially in light of their writing-intensive prescriptions for all grades.
On March 15 President Obama sends to Congress the next incarnation of the 2002 legislation we know as No Child Left Behind. Is it possible for this legislation to enjoy a little more bi-partisan support than the health care revamp? Will it be possible for the legislation to make a difference in achieving its aim? If history is any guide the answer to both questions is a resounding NO.
I believe it is easier to predict that the Kansas Jayhawks will win the 65 team b-ball tournament than to predict 25 years from now graduation rates will be significantly higher and students will be more college and career ready, two of the goals of the Obama-Duncan proposed legislation.
The significantly rewritten NCLB, formerly the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, appears to be a sound plan that would emphasize measurement of individual students academic growth over time and assess schools based on learning climate, graduation rates and pupil attendance. The revamped NCLB is an appropriate course of action at this point, but I wonder if any omnibus legislation will ever make a difference in our outcomes for students? The past rhetoric by our nation’s leaders is instructive:
In 1981 Education Secretary Bell convened the National Commission on Excellence in Education which worked for 2 years and published the 1983 A Nation At Risk document and call to action. In its introduction the Commission wrote, “Our Nation is at risk. Our once unchallenged preeminence in commerce, industry, science, and technological innovation is being overtaken by competitors throughout the world.” Today in March 2010, twenty-nine years after the National Commission on Excellence in Education convened, our nation is still at risk. Actually as mad as it makes me to say perhaps more at risk today than in 1981.
In 1991 President George H.W. Bush introduced six new National Education Goals. In October of that year speaking to a national audience and junior high school students he said, “We made a start nationally…to meet the challenges of the 21st century. By the year 2000, at least 9 in every 10 students should graduate from high school. We should be first in the world in math and science. We need to regularly test student’s abilities. Every American child should start school ready to learn…” Today we graduate only 71% of our high school students.
1n 1997 President Bill Clinton said, “To prepare America for the 21st century, we need strong, safe schools with clear standards of achievement and discipline, and talented and dedicated teachers in every classroom. Every 8-year-old must be able to read, every 12-year-old must be able to log onto the Internet, every18-year-old must be able to go to college…” Today in San Jose 2010 40% of our 5th graders are not proficient in language arts/reading, not to mention math. And the dropout rate is at least 40% for Latinos and African-Americans.
On January 8, 2002 President George W. Bush signed the No Child Left Behind Act. President Bush then said, “We know that every child can learn. Now is the time to ensure that every child does learn. Too many children are segregated in schools without standards, shuffled from grade to grade… This is discrimination, pure and simple.” Today we still have a persistent achievement gap, some might say a gulf, between test scores of white and Asian students and their Latino and African-American peers.
During President Obama’s radio address on Saturday, March 13, 2010 on his new blueprint for educational transformation and the overhaul of NCLB he said, “Through this plan we are setting an ambitious goal: All students should graduate from high school prepared for college and a career – no matter who you are or where you come from.”
As we can see from history rhetoric is cheap. Changing the outcomes for education in San Jose and America will be expensive, if we are serious. Any significant change in educational outcomes will require new priorities for the United States of America. We must stop being the world’s police while committing hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars to wage war. Rather we must wage war at home on literacy, numeracy (math skills), school readiness, child hunger, teacher training, health, fitness, drug abuse, critical thinking and problem solving.
Until then I will place my bets, as frightening as that seems to me, on the same rhetoric in education today being used by our new leaders in March 2040. Unless we re-prioritize our goals as a nation we will only reap minor positive changes in the educational outcomes from these initiatives begun in March 2010.
BTW- I am betting on the Kansas Jayhawks to be the final team to cut down the nets at the Lucas Oil Center in Indianapolis this April 5, 2010.
This article sums it up:
http://www.newsweek.com/id/234590
We can all thank the Teacher’s Unions. Incompetence is fine if you’ve been around long enough, and in most states all it takes is two or three years for lifetime tenure.
Until this is fixed, it doesn’t matter what standards the federal government sets.
Joseph, you and many others continue to ignore the root cause of our failing schools. Yes, it’s an ugly and insoluble problem in such a politically correct arena. Nonetheless, it exists and will only worsen until it’s recognized and addressed.
Is it a secret, Greg? Just what do you believe it to be?
Joseph DiSalvo sayeth:
> In 1981 Education Secretary Bell convened the National Commission on Excellence in Education which worked for 2 years and published the 1983 A Nation At Risk document and call to action. In its introduction the Commission wrote, “Our Nation is at risk. Our once unchallenged preeminence in commerce, industry, science, and technological innovation is being overtaken by competitors throughout the world.”
And more pointedly and honestly, the Commission said:
“If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.”
> Today in March 2010, twenty-nine years after the National Commission on Excellence in Education convened, our nation is still at risk. Actually as mad as it makes me to say perhaps more at risk today than in 1981.
Well, Joe, if it makes you mad, it makes me and a lot of other Americans REALLY, REALLY, REALLY mad.
Since 1983, the educrat establishment has steered hundreds of billions of dollars into a mammoth sucking black hole of programs, initiatives, acronyms, conferences, teacher training seminars, back waxes, outreach, inreach, backreach, upreach, downreach, and every other kind of reach with NOTHING to show for it. NOTHING! NADA! ZILCH! ZERO! NOTHING!
Nothing, that is, except a lot of retired educrats and teachers on plump pensions with cadillac health insurance and a trillions of dollars of budget deficits across the economy.
I would say that the crowd that’s been running American education for the last twenty-five plus years has failed spectacularly, and it’s long past time to give them the Donald Trump treatment: YOU’RE FIRED!!!
Shut down the Department of Education. Shut down the teacher’s colleges. Defund the state education bureaucracies. Fire the teachers unions. If you don’t know how to fire the teachers unions, ask Ronald Reagan how he got rid of the air traffic controllers. It can be done.
Education is not some arcane mystical art known only to Ed. D’s. It is ninety-nine percent clear thinking and common sense, and one percent good management.
If, as you say, we are “more at risk today than in 1981”, then hope and change isn’t the answer.
People have to be held accountable. A LOT of people, and a LOT of accountability.
The concept of equal opportunity in this country has been amended to require equal outcomes.
It will never happen! Admit it, get accustomed to it, because it’s inevitable that we will not EVER have equal outcomes, no matter how much money you want to throw at education. At least fifty years of failed programs make it clear that throwing money at education will not produce equal outcomes.
We concentrate on the underachievers. Switch the plan. Concentrate on the achievers, since they will be the ones that pay for everything.
This is about priorities.
If education were as important to us as many people say they think it is, we would be building a world class education system and we would spend whatever it might take to make sure that everyone in this country got the best education on earth. That would include raising teacher salaries to equal other valued professionals that do important work (doctors, engineers, firefighters, police).
But instead, the priorities of our society are about:
RICH PEOPLE: Congress bailed out the already rich bankers with 3 trillion dollars in cash and tax breaks in 2008 for the service of fleecing individuals with fraudulent loans, and then getting lost in their own rhetoric of bullishness and speculation.
I appreciate JMO’s frankness when he says he wants us all to “concentrate on the achievers, since they will be the ones that pay for everything”. Like I said, this is about priorities and resources. Giving resources to the haves is what our society did with the bailouts/TARP/tax-break package to the tune of 3 trillion dollars. That was a theft from all of us that went to people so rich they have abandoned any respect for us or our interests as a society. Attacking public education that everyone in our society relies on as a floor for a dignified life instead of attacking the rich to stop them from walking away with our trillions that congress handed them is cowardly at best.
downstater:
> Attacking public education that everyone in our society relies on as a floor for a dignified life instead of attacking the rich to stop them from walking away with our trillions that congress handed them is cowardly at best.
Somehow, you neglected to mention that it was a DEMOCRAT Congress that handed the trillions over to the rich DEMOCRAT bankers.
Here are some Democrat Goldman Sachs insiders: Robert Rubin
Jon Corzine
Neel T. Kashkari
sham wow,
Anyone who had anything to do with that bailout should be in jail, whatever party, whatever rhetoric they use: politicians, bankers, bond rating agencies, and everyone who made a profit off it.
Those 3 trillion dollars is still our money and needs to be recovered with interest and lots of convictions. Until then, all budget cutting in the public sector should be halted since it was not the fault of teachers and public servants that the thieves running the country screwed up, and it certainly is not the fault of our children.
But, if in your heart you believe that what congress, the bankers, and the shareholders of the financial world did was necessary or acceptable to make a buck, keep blaming other workers for your problems, maybe public sector workers, or unions, or people of color, or immigrants, or liberals for your economic problems. Someday you may be rich and powerful too, so defend the rights of the rich to steal all of us blind in the meantime, under whatever political party is occupying the seats of government. But stop calling that “populism” and admit that it is boot-licking.
I am all for accountability from each person in this society, but cutting crucial public services because you don’t like unions or teachers is cowardly because we all know that the real thieves are the owning class in business suits raking in unearned billions. Accountability is worth fighting for, but honest people must ask themselves why they are afraid to demand accountability from the rich.
My honest answer is that the political structure is bought and paid for by the thieves who have profited off this country since it started and they will die, or more likely hire others to kill, before they will give up their right to profit off of us.
I challenge anyone to offer another explanation of why nobody, least of all politicians, is demanding the recovery of our $3 trillion dollars from the rich and serious jail time for everyone involved in the crime.
I think it is because we are choosing the easy politics of:
1. Accepting the theft of our resources by the rich and powerful, then cutting resources from people with even less power than us, and using the puny amount we save on taxes to ape the rich and powerful and calling that freedom.
or
2. Accepting the theft of our resources by the rich and powerful, and then trying to make do with those diminished resources and calling that freedom.
Frankly, I tend to end up following the second one because I would like to see as many people as possible have access to the limited resources available to us under the rule of the rich. But I still see the second one as obsequious and ineffective and definitely not freedom. But at least I am not trying to take away the public resources that do exist from the people who desperately need them. But if anyone wants to try to get those trillions back from the rich so we don’t have to keep fighting over scraps and then cut those scraps 10% every year, let me know and I’ll be there in a second.