A serious mistake

Bureaucracy’s killing education Guest writer

Recent news items have reminded us that the public education system in Arkansas is far from healthy. The same could be said for the country as a whole.

For more than a decade, American student performance has ranked about 30th in international standings. Many people can remember when the U.S. would have ranked at the top. This decline has come about despite the rapid growth of the bureaucratic education industry—the federal and state departments of education, the accreditation organizations, and the burgeoning school administrative apparatuses.

The federal Department of Education was created in 1979. No one can say that the ensuing infestation of schools with herds of “experts” has done much good. If the Department of Education were a business accountable for its performance, it would have collapsed long ago.

It needs to be said that the education industry is not primarily to blame for the pitiful disaster that is our system of public education. The primary problem is parents who don’t care. Classroom teachers continuously feel the harassment of the education bureaucracy, but more poignant is parental apathy.

Parents who don’t read, don’t think, indulge in Internet conspiracy theories, and immerse themselves in their phones and pop culture trivia are a primary problem.

Parents who dismiss science (even as they benefit from it) and neglect their own health, and stand by complacently as their kids to do the same, bear primary responsibility.

Parents who look to schools mainly as elaborate day care or juvenile detention centers are the problem.

Parents who expect teachers to compensate for their own failure to grow up are the problem.

The collapse of the family and the growth of the bureaucratic education industry go hand in hand. Family dysfunction spreads, government tentacles lengthen.

But if the education industry housed people committed heart and soul to the cause of learning, as opposed to their own career advancement within the machine, it would make a great difference. Alas, 20 years of teaching has taught me that the last place to look for seriousness about learning is among education bureaucrats. Socrates wouldn’t survive a day among them.

This was driven home to me in 2003, when I moved to Northwest Arkansas after three years of teaching at a small private high school in Texas. I was glad to move to a university, but knew I would miss teaching introductory psychology, as I had done in Dallas.

Mistakenly thinking I would have more time as a professor than I had as a teacher, I visited with a high school administrator and volunteered—volunteered—to teach Advanced Placement psychology. I expected at least some feigned interest. His response wasn’t “that’s interesting” or “thank you,” but purely bureaucratic: “Do you have a teaching credential?”

I responded that I didn’t have a credential, but that I did have a Ph.D. in a social science, that I had majored in psychology as an undergraduate, that I had worked five years in psychiatric facilities, and that I had previously taught AP psychology with success. He said that none of this mattered. In the eyes of the state of Arkansas, I wasn’t qualified.

He seemed to enjoy delivering this regulatory slap-down.

Then there’s the case of an outstanding high school teacher I know who led a high school history class for college credit. Some genius in a regional accrediting agency decided that she needed a master’s degree. Her skill and success mattered not at all. Her class was killed, and the students lost their chance for college credit.

It’s likely that the public school system will have to collapse entirely before real change can be effected. In the meantime, the dwindling number of parents who care about learning need to face reality: Entrusting your child’s education to the whims of the education bureaucracy is a serious mistake.