Education short on basic reforms

Mon, 05/23/2011 - 23:00 — admin

Let's get serious. For nearly a decade, since publication of A Nation at Risk by former Secretary of Education Terrell Bell, the nation has debated how to improve our children's education.

Everyone has gotten into the act, but especially business leaders, who need work-ready employees from the educational system and aren't getting them.

Let's stand back and take a look at what's going on. What we find is too much cosmetic surgery and far too little fundamental reform. Adopt-a-school programs here, more teachers' aides there, planning grants to planning groups to plan how they are going to plan.

And now a growing consensus, spurred on by business leaders and governors, for a national test to "solve" the problems of K-12 education. This process of ad hoc, piecemeal intervention brings to mind something the venerable commentator Eric Servereid used to say: "The chief cause of problems is solutions."

Let's consider the issue of business involvement. When Fortune magazine gathers leaders to discuss the future of education, who comes? Primarily leaders of Fortune 500 companies, which have lost 3.5 million jobs since 1980. Others include education experts and civic leaders.

But where are the primary consumers: students and parents? Where are the teachers, i.e., teachers representing concerns about learning, not about teachers' economic interests? Where are elected school board members who some think are the root of many problems?

Do we really want the future of American education to be shaped by leaders of big business, big labor and big government?

I don't think so. This is a deadly combination. It has almost no public accountability. It lacks the wisdom you get from grassroots participation. It lacks the sensitivity you get from broad customer involvement in development of a product or a service because in is comfortable with monopoly services.

Most of all, this coalition of cautious people has been timid in its approach to the five fundamental reforms that are needed to fix American education:


  • Publicly supported early childhood education so all children can be ready for the first grade;

  • Choices for students, so they can select the schools they attend based on the performance of the school's programs and teachers;

  • Alternative career paths for teachers, so the best and brightest in our society, including those who spend 20 years is an astronaut or an attorney or a small-business owner, for example, can teach our children without years of mind- numbing "education" courses;

  • Expanded parental involvement in the schools; in fact, many companies would do a lot more for education by making it easier for their two-wage earner family employees to be involved in schools than by giving corporate grants to planners;

  • Expanded use of modern computer and telecommunications technology to jump-start education's woeful record of productivity improvement.

    • These are real reforms. Let's get serious.

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