The same new mistakes

The Founding Fathers were wary of giving their new federal government too much power. They’d endured too many decrees from too many experts in London, who didn’t know how things worked in our villages and towns.

They weren’t eager to hand the reigns to new experts in New York, Philadelphia or Washington once it got built, as they also didn’t know how things worked in our villages and towns.

Public education is the quintessential example of Jefferson’s maxim that “government closest to the people serves the people best.” State governments should tread lightly when they consider imposing their relatively distant and uninformed will on local school boards. On the national stage, civics teachers have long cited education as the textbook case of Constitutional territory that doesn’t belong to the federal government.

This makes it difficult to explain how there’s a secretary of education. We sidestep this awkwardness by making federal education programs voluntary, as in, “You don’t have to go along, but you won’t get any federal money if you don’t.” Other education programs we file under civil rights.

Every so often, it’s good to compare current events to past events. We need to be mindful of what we’ve already tried, and when the things we’ve tried turned out to be mistakes.

Back at the dawn of the millennium, the report card for the nation’s schools and our reigning education experts was written in red ink. That’s why it was unnerving when President Bush launched his administration’s stab at reform by convening a body of more politicians and experts who don’t teach.

The kick-off ceremony for “Education Week” gathered “about one hundred advisers and representatives from Washington think tanks.”

It’s inauspicious when you perennially lay plans to save our schools without consulting the real world. No wonder we keep recycling the same pipe dreams, bad ideas and resuscitated slogans.

Speaking of slogans, the president’s sunny No Child Left Behind sounded good, but like every other “success for all students” mantra, it was a lie. It would make as much sense for health care reformers to promise, “No One Will Die.” That’s because, no matter how good your hospital is, some people will die. And no matter how good your school is, some students won’t learn. Nobody wants to say it, but it’s true.

It’s fine to strive to do better. But it’s wrong to make promises our schools can’t possibly keep. And it’s perilous and counterproductive to compel schools to do backflips in a vain attempt to fulfill those empty promises, especially when those backflips steal time and resources, and corrupt the education that schools and teachers otherwise could be delivering.

Like today’s new wave reforms, President Bush’s NCLB stressed accountability based on intensive testing. He proposed rewarding “successful” schools and withholding funds and governing power from districts that didn’t meet assessed “performance objectives.”

The same week the president announced his proposals, Minnesota officials were blushing over the statewide assessment scoring error that mistakenly flunked 8,000 students. Around the same time Massachusetts revised its test for fear it might be “too rigorous,” Rhode Island canceled its exams due to “wide-scale security breaches,” and CTB/McGraw-Hill publicly “apologized” for faulty scores that affected students in six states. As a result, the wrong students weren’t promoted, and some districts suffered incorrect funding “adjustments.”

Two decades later, today’s menu of “proficiencies” and “rubric scoring” hasn’t solved the assessment problem. In January, under the banner “Is It Time to Kill Annual Testing,” Education Week spotlighted the “near universal agreement that we have a dysfunctional standardized-testing system in the United States.”

Like the current administration, NCLB favored vouchers, despite the evidence that charter schools and other choice formats are at best neutral in improving academic performance. Where achievement does improve, it’s doubtless in part due to regulations alternative schools don’t have to follow, disruptive students they don’t have to tolerate, and the fact that families and students who care enough to exercise school choice commonly care more about school and learning itself.

President Bush proposed bolstering teachers’ authority to remove violent and disruptive students, a monumental step in the right direction. Today, the counseling culture and focus on “trauma-based” classroom management prevailing in many schools continue to undermine teachers’ ability to maintain safe, productive classrooms and students’ ability to learn.

President Bush supported “research-based” reading programs, as opposed to whole language, which still stands as one of the worst reform calamities to ever befall public education. Today, the expert corps who acclaimed whole language, and their descendants, are still conducting research and offering guaranties that expire with the debut of the next guaranteed literacy method.

Mr. Bush also wanted teachers trained to deliver “character education.” Yes, teachers should demonstrate ethical behavior and enforce a civilized code of classroom conduct and decency. But we can’t spare instructional time for programmed homilies on virtue any more than we can for today’s lessons in antibullying “conflict resolution.”

Some recycled NCLB-era ideas are worth discussing. That’s because they tilt toward a renewed focus on academic knowledge and skill, and safer, more orderly classrooms. But those discussions are best held, not in Congress or in state legislatures, but at our local school board and faculty meetings.

We can restore our schools if we’re resolute and patient. But we’ve got to stop making the same “new” mistakes.