Futility's Silver Anniversary

If an unfriendly power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.

-- "A Nation at Risk" (1983)

Americans got very exercised by that report.  That was four presidents ago and none would argue that things have gotten impressively better.  To the contrary. 

... our school results haven't appreciably improved, whether one looks at test scores or graduation rates. Sure, there are up and down blips in the data, but no big and lasting changes in performance, even though we're also spending tons more money. (In constant dollars, per-pupil spending in 1983 was 56% of today's.)

And just as "A Nation at Risk" warned, other countries are beginning to eat our education lunch. While our outcomes remain flat, theirs rise. Half a dozen nations now surpass our high-school and college graduation rates. International tests find young Americans scoring in the middle of the pack.
    Chester Finn, writing the Wall Street Journal

In Vermont, where we spend more than half of state and local tax revenues on K through 12 education, we find that:

Almost 40 percent of Vermont public schools missed academic goals set under the federal No Child Left Behind Act for 2008, ratings released Monday showed.
The number of schools that did not make adequate yearly progress this year hit 116, more than triple the number of schools that missed the mark in 2007.  

So, where does the education establishment focus its considerable energies?  In Vermont, on protesting against a law that might modestly restrain the growth in school spending.  One wonders if a day will ever come when taxpayers rise up against spending more and more money to get the same old results and the same old excuses.     

Students in Williston public schools are taught to be good citizens, to hone public speaking skills and develop talents in athletics and the performing arts, [Principal Walter Nardelli] said. When they succeed in these areas, NCLBA does not notice...
"That doesn't show up anywhere."

 

It may come as some solace to Vermonters to learn that they are not alone.  Across the river, in New York, teachers are upset over the possibility that some property owners may get a little tax relief at the expense of appropriations for education.

And, then, there is Washington D.C., a city where they have all the answers and the worst public schools in America.  Congress is being asked to do something about that, by the city's mayor.  But what he wants -- choice, vouchers, charter schools, and the usual list of departures from the status quo -- the National Education Association fiercely resists.

It is an election year and the NEA plays hardball, so Washington's mayor -- and kids -- are in for rough treatment.  And, who knows, probably another 25 years of the same old same old.

Comments

[Rich Lachapelle]

Do we really wonder why our roads and bridges are falling apart while the teachers union lobbies Montpelier to repeal the most meaningful law to be passed in
10 years for controlling runaway education costs (act 82).
Vermont spends TWICE what Utah spends per pupil and we graduate kids with pitiful basic math skills, atrocious command of the English language and little common sense. They do however excel
in understanding condom use and celebrating diversity and "alternative lifestyles".
Just about every day in the Free Press there is an article about how some class in a Vermont
middle school is learning Tai Chi, or celebrating some West African folk dancing or reciting indigenous poetry from Brazil. And when we taxpayers demand some accountability for our out-of-control K-12 spending, we are told that the low standardized
test scores are because the kids "just dont test well" and those standardized tests "are not a valid indication of learning and ability".
As long as the Vermont Legislature continues to be a
wholly owned subsidiary of the Vermont NEA and it's excuse-making spokesman Angelo Dorta, we will continue to make Cadillac payments on a Hyundai school system.

[James Gatti]

I have spent 35 years teaching economics and finance at the University of Vermont and have seen the dramatic decline all too closely. The ability of my students to read with comprehension, to calculate, to reason abstractly has eroded, but the most severe problem is a refusal to work as hard as is necessary to learn difficult material. I had a student take one of my required courses who had failed it with three other faculty members. She got the highest grade in the course when she took it with me. Why? Because she finally did what the other three faculty members and I told her to do. Do the readings when they are assigned. Do the problems as assigned. If you don't understand the readings or have trouble with the problems come and see us for help. It is not rocket science; it is hard work. They treat 4 years of college as an extended vacation.

[Bryan]

When a business performs well in the private sector, consumers voluntarily spend more there. When that same business performs poorly, consumers go elsewhere and the business earns less.

Why is it that when a government business, like public schools, performs poorly, their solution is to forcibly extract more money from their consumers?

This is cause and effect in reverse and why socialism, (yes, that's what it is), always fails. The disconnect between the consumer and his ability to voluntarily patronize providers of goods and services who perform well removes government's incentive. They get paid whether they perform well or not and get paid even more if they're unsuccessful. Competition also becomes limited by the government's monopoly of those goods and services which are, oddly enough, considered "free."

Competition keeps costs down and quality up as businesses vie for their share of the profit pie. Government monopolies and the forced extraction of payment turn that equation on its head with perverse consequences.