Last week President Obama spoke to the US Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and discussed some of the details of his administration’s plan to overhaul education in the United States.
To me, the fact that I can even make a factual sentence like that indicates that there is a problem. First and foremost, the responsibilities of the federal government are described in the Constitution – education isn’t one of them. Secondly, why did he choose a forum of business leaders? Why not speak to a group of parents, or educators, or some other group of persons who have an investment in the state of education in America? Anyway, I’ll discuss his five tier program point-by-point.
1. Head Start
The first is an investment in early childhood initiatives, the largest recipient being Head Start ($5,000,000,000 worth). Studies continue to be done on the efficacy of Head Start. The majority show no effective benefit. Most of the studies that do show a benefit qualify it by pointing out that by third grade, the children are right back at the same level of their non-Head Start peers. Congress performed a massive study back in 2005 and found that any benefits seen were marginal at best and did not carry through as the children went through elementary school. So, here we have an example of increasing spending on a program that isn’t effective, in an area where the federal government shouldn’t even be involved. This is bad news all around.
I love how everyone involved in “fixing” education always comes to the same answer: spend, spend, spend. The irony is that the only parameter that has been shown to reliably guarantee student success is parental involvement. This is irrefutable. Parents who read to their children end up with children who read well. Parents who are involved in the function of the school have children who see that education is important. Etc. Parental involvement is free.
President Obama also pledged that money would be set aside to provide in-home visits from nurses for 55,000 first-time parents to monitor their children for them to make sure they are healthy and ready for the rigors of school. Uhm, is the goal to develop children into capable adults or to take parents and infantilize them and teach them to be dependent on the state for the most basic of their functions? Again, not an arena where the federal government and our tax dollars have any business.
2. Raising Expectations
The send tier is a commitment to raising standards. The President accused the states of low-balling their testing standards in an effort to show progress. Sir, in the context of No Child Left Behind federal funding for schools is based directly on those test scores; and schools that fail to show progress risk being taken over by the federal government. What on earth did you think the result would be? Of course the states are aiming low.
My favorite quote from the President on this topic was:
[states must develop standards] that don’t simply measure whether students can fill in a bubble on a test but whether they possess 21st century skills like problem-solving and critical thinking, entrepreneurship and creativity.
Sir, the last time I checked, those were 18th century skills – well, even earlier, but I’m just talking about America here. To say that these skills are new to our age is a slap in the face of every great man who built this country.
Oh, and while he was at it he said that to up these standards he’d make federal funding even more closely tied to No Child Left Behind results. Wait, were you paying attention three paragraphs up there? This to me says that he wants the states to fail at education so that the schools can be federalized.
3. Teacher Quality
Now we get into a really sticky area. President Obama’s third tier deals with increasing teacher quality.
If a teacher is given a chance but still does not improve, there is no excuse for that person to continue teaching,” he said. “I reject a system that rewards failure and protects a person from its consequences.
I guess you need to fire all of your economic advisors – but I digress.
The President said that money is being set aside to pay higher wages to math and science teachers. What about those who teach english, music, art, foreign languages, phys-ed? Teaching math and science is no more difficult than teaching any other subject – as a homeschool parent I can say this with absolute authority. I’m all for math and science, but putting them on a pedestal and saying that they alone will save the country is just wrong. Look at some of the countries that put tremendous emphasis on math and science over other subjects: India, Russia, China, etc. I don’t see that it’s improved their societies.
The President also encouraged the idea of merit pay. How do you measure that? More testing? Tracking throughout the students’ educational careers? If an art teacher inspires a particular class, and that leads to those students working harder in all of their studies, and consequently math scores for that class rise that year…which teacher gets the merit pay? Or should merit be defined by peer review? That would make more sense, but I think you’d see too much back-scratching going on.
Make teacher salaries high enough that smart, talented people will consider it a viable career choice and then you’ll see our best and brightest fighting for those jobs. That’s the only thing that makes sense. Giving a new teacher a $28,000 salary and then dangling the merit pay carrot in front of them will just create new schemes to fudge results. In years past I’ve written extensively about scandals where teachers helped students cheat so that their class’s test scores would be better. President Obama seems to want this to happen even more – and with financial rewards attached to it now.
4. Charter Schools
Although charter schools have had a lot of failures, mismanagements, scandals (you know, just like real schools), there have also been a lot of successes. I like the idea of a small community creating their own school and running it in a way that makes sense for them. The President asked for states to raise the limits on the number of charter schools they allow. Ok, I guess he had to get something right.
Oddly, mixed in with this tier was also a request to make the school day long, and for more days of the year. See above vis-a-vis China, Russia, and India. Most of the homeschoolers I know spend about three hours per day actively doing school. Homeschoolers, on average, surpass their public school peers on tests and perform better in college. The public school system doesn’t work. Shoveling more of the same down the throats of our nation’s children will not improve the results.
The education budgets of every state are already massively overblown. How are teachers, administrators, support staff, facilities, etc. supposed to fund even more hours during even more days? It’s not possible, and it’s not necessary.
5. Higher Education
The last tier was a pledge to make more money available for Pell Grants and to finally start having them indexed to inflation. He also promised a tuition tax credit for students of working families. I’m unclear what a working family is. Is that just a family that has someone who works? Isn’t that, like, you know, pretty much all of us? Whatever. The cost of college has gotten way out of hand. I don’t know that an extra $2,500 will really help that much. Maybe it will.
Conclusion
What I really would have rather seen from our extremely well-educated President was a plea to parents to get involved. Rather than pointing out how much he wants to spend on “21st century skills” I would have rather he point out how many great Americans were educated quietly at home, or in one-room schoolhouses. I would have preferred that he point out that it is not the job of the government to educate children – that responsibility rests squarely on the shoulders of parents.
Mr. President, you’ve spent $5,000,000,000,000 trying to stimulate the economy (trillion has 12 zeroes, right?) and it hasn’t stimulated anything except my wrath. The Treasury Department’s printing presses certainly can’t stimulate a child. I realize that in order to be a savior you have be seen as the one doing something, but there is nothing you can do – nothing – except tell your zealots to take an interest in their own kids’ lives. That would be change I could believe in.
