Education Reform Basics

Democrats for Education Reform is an important organization in our state. It’s composed of people–mostly, but not exclusively, Democrats–who want to approach education issues from the standpoint of what is best for children, and without the usual political constraints. (“Political constraints” in this context means automatic obeisance to the teachers’ unions. The organization is not anti-Union, but neither do its members feel obliged to agree with the union on every issue, as Democrats have traditionally done.)

Last night, my husband and I attended an event sponsored by DFER. There were at least a hundred people in attendance, and it was an interesting and diverse crowd: teachers from both traditional public schools and charters, business people, legislators and ordinary citizens concerned with the problems of public education. The speaker was was Stephen Brill, and he was “interviewed” by Matt Tully, the Star columnist who has written movingly about Manual High School and the issues facing educators in our poorer precincts.

Brill has recently written a book (who hasn’t??) about what’s wrong with public education. He is not an educator; he describes himself as a reporter. He made a lot of money establishing Court TV and several magazines; he was self-possessed to the point of smugness, and he made sure the audience knew he teaches a seminar at Yale.

Brill made a number of points that most observers would agree with, and he showed real skill in evading questions for which he clearly had no answers. (Case in point: he forcefully defended testing students as a method of evaluating teacher effectiveness. When I asked him how that should work in inner-city classrooms that experience student turnover in excess of 100% during the school year–classrooms in which the students being tested at the end of the year are not the same children who were tested at the beginning of the school year–he didn’t answer the question; instead, he launched into an extended and mostly irrelevant defense of “doing something” even if that something wasn’t perfect.)

The format was question and answer, and there was a lot of earnest discussion about the importance of good teachers (duh!), the pros and cons of charter schools, and the role of teachers’ unions. But the truly important question was asked at the very end of the program. It was a simple enough inquiry by a woman who identified herself as a longtime proponent of education reform: “how do you define a good education?”

It caught Brill flat-footed. And therein lies the real problem.

Pretty much everyone agrees that the education system is broken. (To his credit, Brill agreed that most suburban schools are no better than the schools serving urban areas–students simply tend to come from homes that have prepared them better.) Pretty much everyone wants to improve public education–I don’t know anyone who’s celebrating the status quo. But all the arguments about how to improve schools, all the fancy talk about measurement and testing and excellence, tends to ignore the central question: what do we mean by education? What should students know when they graduate? What skills should they have? Why? How does education differ from job training? How does education for citizenship differ from education as a consumer good?

The Chamber of Commerce wants schools to produce an “educated workforce.” Parents want schools to provide “marketable skills.” Policy wonks talk about global competitiveness. Our Governor seems fixated on credentialing–turning out students who’ve earned a piece of paper in the least possible amount of time. Some old fogies (me, for example) believe an education requires acquainting students with great literature, with science, with history, with at least a minimal understanding of their government, and–above all–the ability to think logically and critically.

It’s an unresolved–and largely unasked–question, and it’s the elephant in the room. Because if we don’t agree about what an education is, how on earth will we know whether we are providing it?

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Crushing Their Dreams

In last night’s GOP debate in South Carolina, Mitt Romney once again promised that, as President, he would veto the Dream Act. 

I’ll admit that I find opposition to the Dream Act incomprehensible. I was really disappointed when Dick Lugar responded to the rightwing challenge from Richard Mourdock by withdrawing his long-time sponsorship of that measure. And I am constantly surprised and disheartened by those who are so rabidly anti-illegal-immigration that they see nothing wrong with punishing children for the acts of their parents.

The Dream Act would provide (conditional) permanent residency to undocumented residents of “good moral character” who graduate from US high schools, arrived in the US as minors, and lived in the country continuously for at least five years prior to the bill’s enactment. If they complete two years in the military, or two years at a four-year institution of higher learning, they can obtain temporary residency for a six year period. Within that six year period, they may qualify for permanent residency if they have “acquired a degree from an institution of higher education in the United States or has completed at least 2 years, in good standing, in a program for a bachelor’s degree or higher degree in the United States” or have “served in the armed services for at least 2 years and, if discharged, received an honorable discharge.”

People for whom illegal immigration is a high-priority issue almost always defend that position by insisting that it isn’t the race or ethnicity of the people involved–that it is a question of rewarding law-breaking. Okay, I get that. But if the point is to punish those who break the law, why punish children who made no such decision, who had no choice in the matter? Most of these children know no other home but America, speak no language but English, and want nothing more than to be contributing citizens. It is heartless to insist that they must be deported to countries with which they are totally unfamiliar.

Not to get all biblical about it, but why visit the sins of the fathers on the children?

Why crush their dreams?

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Rooting for Santorum

As the interminable GOP Presidential contests proceeds, I’m rooting for Rick Santorum.

Now, I realize that statement requires some explanation.

With the probable exception of Ron Paul, all the other candidates can be counted on to moderate their current positions if and when they cinch the nomination—to pivot from the shameless pandering to the nut-job base that has characterized the primaries thus far—in an effort to woo the sane Republican and independent voters needed for success in a general election. Since the great majority of Americans don’t really focus on the Presidential campaign until a month or two before the election, candidates can usually distance themselves from much of their more intemperate primary rhetoric.

A Santorum primary victory, however, would provide voters with a candidate who is steadfast in his extremism. A Santorum candidacy would be a golden opportunity for the public to really see and understand the fundamentalist Christians who, for all intents and purposes, now control the GOP, and who have recently come together to endorse Santorum in a (probably futile) effort to derail Mitt Romney’s progress toward the nomination.

What do Santorum and his supporters believe? Well, there’s the obvious hatred of gays—a hatred that has often seemed more of an obsession with gay sex than a policy position. There are the well-known quotes comparing homosexuality to “man on dog sex,” the frequently repeated assertion that same-sex marriage will “destroy the fabric of society,” and the “slippery slope” argument that recognition of such marriages would necessarily be followed by legalization of polygamy and incest.

But it isn’t just gay sex. A cursory review of his quotations paints a picture of a man who—not to put too fine a point on it—doesn’t seem too comfortable in the 21st Century.  Consider a sampling of recent quotes:

  • “One of the things I will talk about, that no president has talked about before, is I think the dangers of contraception in this country…It’s not okay. It’s a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be.” (October 18, 2011)
  • “In far too many families with young children, both parents are working, when, if they really took an honest look at the budget, they might find they don’t both need to…Here, we can thank the influence of radical feminism.” (From his 2005 book, It Takes a Family: Conservatism and the Common Good in which he decries working mothers).
  • “All the people who live in the West Bank are Israelis, they’re not Palestinians. There is no ‘Palestinian.’” (On the campaign trail in Iowa, Nov. 18, 2011). (Even the Israeli government doesn’t go this far!)
  • “I don’t want to make black people’s lives better by giving them someone else’s money; I want to give them the opportunity to go out and earn the money.” (Iowa again, Jan. 2, 2012).

There is a lot more along the same lines.

Santorum is a poster child for the small but noisy segment of American society that is still fighting science and the Enlightenment—a spokesperson for the contemporary Puritans who reject evolution along with the idea that liberty means the right to live your life in accordance with your own conscience and beliefs. They believe instead that liberty means “doing the right thing” as they interpret their bibles to define the “right thing.”

They believe it is government’s job to legislate their version of  “Godly” behavior.

You have to give Santorum credit: unlike the other candidates, when he’s been challenged about his controversial views, he hasn’t evaded or backtracked. These are his beliefs and he’s forthright about them. He doesn’t “do” complexity, or nuance, and he obviously doesn’t see shades of gray. His views about the past may be ahistorical and retrograde, but he doesn’t let distractions like facts or evidence—or humility—shake his certainty in his own righteousness.

He’s the perfect representation of today’s Republican base.

Now, I don’t think Rick Santorum is going to be the Republican nominee, but what if he were? What if the American public had to choose between that black “elitist” Barack Obama, with his fancy Harvard education, and this anti-woman, anti-gay Christian Zionist who believes global warming and evolution are myths, and black people are taking “someone else’s money”?

Given the number of crackpots we’ve elected to public office, I’ve lost a lot of my previous faith in the wisdom of the American public. But I have enough left to believe that—given a choice between the 14th Century and the 21st—Americans would overwhelming choose the latter.

Wouldn’t we??

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Not-So-Private Enterprise

This morning’s New York Times has a story about Mitt Romney’s campaign-trail praise for a “private” enterprise that–just coincidentally–happens to be owned by one of his largest contributors. It’s a story that could undoubtedly be written about several of the other candidates in an era when money makes the political world go around, and it wouldn’t merit much more than a sigh and a shrug if it weren’t for two things: the enterprise in question and the increasingly dishonest characterization of what constitutes “private enterprise.”

The business that Romney praises as a “cost-effective” alternative to soaring tuition rates is a for-profit college in Florida named Full Sail University. As the Times points out,

“Mr. Romney did not mention the cost of tuition at Full Sail, which runs more than 80,000, for example, for a 21-month program in ‘video game art.'”

Nor did he mention the institution’s 14% graduation rate.

In fact, there has been a growing recognition that many, if not most, for-profit colleges are royal rip-offs, promising students credentials that prove worthless in the marketplace and vastly overcharging for poor-quality instruction. In response, President Obama has proposed new regulations that would make it much more difficult for students attending such institutions to receive federal aid.

And that leads to the problem of mis-characterization. The reason so many of these for-profit colleges are lobbying so frantically against the Obama proposals is that they are “private” enterprises in name only. They depend almost entirely upon the financial aid available to students courtesy of the American taxpayer.

I’m told that for-profit colleges got their biggest boost in the aftermath of the Second World War, when the availability of the GI Bill promised quick profits to educational entrepreneurs who could best market their programs. Today, most of them would disappear without the ability to tap public funds.

We have a long history in this country of politicians extolling the virtues of those who fund their campaigns, and we have an equally long history of people railing against “socialism” and “bailouts” and “welfare” while happily sucking at the public you-know-what. (Remember Ross Perot, that apostle of private-sector “can do” attitudes who made his fortune contracting with the government?)

As the Times article points out, the for-profit college industry has “been the target of withering criticism in the last few years in the wake of federal investigations into fraudulent marketing practices, poor academic records and huge loans assumed by students ill-prepared for the expensive programs.”

Bottom line: these enterprises are not examples of private entrepreneurship. And what they are offering bears little resemblance to an education.

Short and Sweet

In lieu of my usual morning fulminations, this morning I’m turning the task over to Steve Benen, at Political Animal, who chronicles–and refutes–some of the many “misstatements” (aka lies) of Mitt Romney.

Maybe there’s some truth to the claim that you can’t trust a man who would drive for hours with his terrified dog strapped to the roof….

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