Right Problem; Wrong Solution

According to Lou Gerstner in his December 1st op-ed piece in Wall Street Journal, schools today are failing miserably to educate students for 21st knowledge and skills. He's right. Scores on national achievement tests are flat and, in some cases, down over the past two decades. Today, we have the dubious honor of leading all developed world countries in the proportion of students who drop out of high school.

But his solutions are dead wrong. He recommends, among other wrong-headed solutions, abolishing local school districts, nationalizing standards, curriculum, teacher certification, and tests. Forget local control, and leave it up to the feds.

It is this very effort -- to create an overarching federal policy in education -- where No Child Left Behind has gone so wrong. In its great effort to be all things to all people, it left families, communities, and local participation behind. Hopefully, President-elect Obama is listening to parents, and local communities who want their schools back. By engaging the community and getting parents involved, we'll get better standards, better curriculum and better results.

Comments

[Rule Of Law]

And what is next? A federally approved version of what we are allowed to teach, and learn? And approved by who and for what political reasons? This would be a Nationalizing of the Schools, just like the one taking place in Finance and the one coming in industry, like the Big 3.

We saw how well this all worked in Russia. But if you want to turn out right thinking robots, it's definitely the way to go.

[splinky]

No, overarching federal policy in education is not wrong, bad federal policy is wrong. There is no reason not to have national standards for education, unless you seriously contend that a certain level of education is appropriate in one city, but not in another (repeat to self: "competing in the global economy").

If you want something to be uniformly good across the country, you need national standards (interstate highways leap to mind); if you want some places to lag behind, especially in education, leave it in local hands (we all remember attempts in Kansas to repeal evolution, right? Parents' love of abstinence education in some areas, in spite of its proven ineffectiveness, also occurs to me).