Why School Reformers Are a Menace -- the Short Version

Dear Reader, I’m sorry that my posts have been so long.  I promise to make them shorter.  Herewith is the short version of the longer post on this topic of October 5, 2010:

     Reformers are buzzing around like mosquitoes on a hot summer night.  The most peskiest of the whole lot are the school reformers.  They are the most self-righteous, cocksure, and determinedly wrong-headed.

     The current reformer-in-chief is Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.  Another example is his acolyte Ms. Michele Rhee, Superintendant of Schools for the District of Columbia.  They are the most dangerous of all people: intelligent, hard-working, and well-intientioned individuals energetically pusuing the wrong agenda!  What have they done wrong?  They have created a horrible, grinding and clanking, bureaucratic monster grinding out metrics that are confusing, inconsistent, and ridiculous – and then basing a system of rewards and punishments on this jumble of statistic put forth under the banner of “accountability.”

     This reform virus started quite a few years ago.  After desegregation (we won’t include this as part of the virus –that came later), attention was increasingly paid to education as a central vehicle for ever wider social reform.  First came the idea of fiscal equalization, a not altogether bad idea but one carried too far and made impracticable by the extreme reformers.  The reformers argued that it’s wrong to have any child educated in a public school that has more money than another district.  They never solved the dilemma of “leveling down” vs. “leveling up.”  They just declared that, since local districts vary in their tax bases, the feds have to equalize everything  -- somehow.  Never mind how—just somehow.  The U. S. Supreme Court put a halt to the schems in the San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez decision.

     Then came the reform of community or school decentralization, a nostrum for inner city schools based on a misreading of how suburban school school boards operated.  This nonsense caused untold grief in New York City and elsewhere (as recounted in my longer blog posting and in my book, with G. R. LaNoue, The Politics of School Decentralization (D.C. Health, Lexington Books, 1971).

     The latest incarnation is the testing, national standards, school choice, student achievement scores, etc. that got started in 1991 with the Goals 2000: Educate America Act.  All sorts of hortatory goals were propounded that made the politicians feel good and got the federal government into the educational act.  The mischief done by the Educate America Act was dwarfed, however, buy the No Child Left Behind Act of 2002, which now added all sorts of new federal powers and punishmentsto under-performing schools and children.  Talk about blaming the victims: students in poor districts were now in danger of being flunked out, having their schools closed, their teachers fired all in the name of fighting “low expectations!”

      With the huge amounts of money from the stimulus bill, Secretary Duncan is now engaged in bribing and bullying the states to adopt the new federal rules and mandates.  Horror of horror!  Ye parents, stop yanking your children in and out of schools in the search for Supermen and Superwomen who will “rescue” their kids.  Have dinner with your children and discuss issues.  Don’t let them watch TV.   Kids, cut out (or cut down on) the texting, video games, and TV.  Study harder, pay attention in class, and respect your teachers. 

   

     O ye reformers, repent of your sins!  Stop looking like you enjoy firing teachers and ruining communities by closing down their schools.  Put on a dunce cap and stand in the corner.  Then write on the board five hundred times:  “I will stop being grandiose.  I will think small, and strive for humility!”