by: Evan Knott
The 1996 presidential campaign is careening further and further away from substansive issues as election day draws nearer. Should one manage to catch a glimpse of the important issues beyond the mudslinging this fall, one may find that some candidates are trying to take a serious look at public education reform. President Clinton has carefully tiptoed around the modest agenda of publicly accountable charter schools, while Republican challenger Robert Dole has tried to aggressively embrace the more ambitious idea of enacting full school choice plans through tuition vouchers. The need for substantial public education reform poses a crucial election-year issue like few others. It is imperative that voters challenge the failed practices plaguing our nation's schools and implement positive change for our children.
The direction our public schools are heading is terrifying. Today, more than 45 million young people, or three-fifths of all Americans under the age of nineteen, attend one of 85,000 public schools. According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), six out of seven eighth-graders are not "proficient" in American history, and 57% of high-school seniors registered "below basic" in this subject. The California state university system in 1994 has reported that half of the entering freshman required remedial instruciton in reading or math or both- the fifth straight year in which this number has increased. These alarming figures represent only one survey; other research in this area has turned up even more disturbing results.
This sad reality hit even harder here in the state of Michigan. Recently, the state released a report displaying the performance of high school juniors on basic proficiency tests in such fundamental subjects as mathematics, reading, writing, and science reasoning. According to the results, fewer than 40% of all Michigan high school juniors managed to demonstrate minimum levels of proficiency in these subjects.
Our nation's public schools have performed even worse in providing quality education for minority students. While two out of five fourth-graders fail to read adequately, two out of every three African-American and Hispanic youngsters are unable to meet minimum levels of reading proficiency. With so many of our nation's minority students locked into inner-city school districts unable to acquire the necessary staffing and funding integral to a quality education, it is hardly any wonder that these students constantly face an uphill battle in making a better life for themselves and their communities.
The increasing degradation of our public schools obviously was not the cruel intentions of our founding fathers, but rather the unfortunate result of the federal government and teachers' unions gradual takeover of school management. The word "education" appears nowhere in the Constitution, thus the responsibility was certainly reserved for the states. Even John Locke, in the classic Second Treatise of Government, wrote "The first part then of paternal power, or rather duty, which is education, belongs so to the father..." However, the progressivism of the 1920's joined and extended the "mental-hygiene" movement, promoting not informed and skilled students, but students with healthy personalities. The system further deteriorated after World War II as the federal government enlarged its role in regulating standards and requirements. By the 1970's and 1980's, a growing army of teachers' unions and other special interests infiltrated the system, thus imposing 1,000- page federal education statutes. In fact, in 1992, the U.S. spent 7% of its gross domestic product on education, while educationally superior nations such as Japan spent only 4.8% of its GDP on similar investments. Clearly, our educators have not yet mastered proper management and productivity. Today, our schools are up to their necks in irreversible operating procedures, making real change almost impossible.
Several courses of action exist that will permit us to take back our nation's schools from the bureaucrats. First, we need to cut the strings from which teachers' unions are able to manipulate our policymakers. Whereas unions like the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers once had bona-fide grievances to argue about, such as poor pay, bans on marriage for female teachers, and race-based hiring; they are now actively engaged in filing lawsuits against students for attempting to enroll in charter schools. At other times, they are busy defending the perverse teaching of revisionist anti-American accounts of history and the further balkanization of American culture and society. To put it mildly, today's teachers' unions have become a malignant and pernicious evil in the face of real educational reform.
Secondly, we need to reinvest in the machinery vital to the educational process. This entails upgrading teacher-training programs, stiffening graduation requirements, installing modern technology, revamping reading programs, reducing class size, monitoring teacher performance (or lack thereof), and making schools more productive. The manner in which these ideals are best achieved is through permitting parents to choose the school that is best for their child.
President Clinton, whose own daughter attends a prestigious private school, and who himself is the product of parochial schooling, refuses to acknowledge the successes of various charter and voucher school programs throughout the country. For example, voucher plans in Milwaukee and Cleveland provide parents with public money to pay for private schools and some other forms of charter schools in 25 states running independently from district regulations are attracting more than 1.2 million students annually. Instead, our nation's leader , with the teachers' unions in his back pocket, has attempted to appease the American public by proposing ridiculous schemes such as mandatory uniforms and curfews in place of real structural changes. On the other hand, Dole has unsuccessfully promoted a strong school voucher plan, and for good reason.
America seems to be on the brink of shaking up our nation's schools. The combination of tax revenues redirected toward tuition vouchers and the determination of our nation's parents, companies, and investors can certainly rise to the challenge of creating academically excellent and autonomous schools for our children. Already, a number of Wall Street firms have sponsored conferences for investors eager to take part in these reforms. Several major corporations are launching ambitious plans for privatizing education.
A large segment of our population has decided to abandon this failure. The rising enrollment of students into charter, private, and parochial schools should be telling our legislators that alternatives to education are not only much needed, but also perform above and beyond the status quo. Last year, 269 charter schools enrolled more than 70,000 students, while plans for the creation of another 350 are still in the works. Private school enrollment has risen faster than public enrollment for that past five years; Catholic schools have arrested their long-term slippage; and home schooling is even on the rise.
The facts present a strong case for the need for school choice. Mr. Dole, at the Republican National Convention earlier this year, proclaimed that "if education were a war in America, the teachers' unions would be losing it." Whatever your political affiliations may be, these words simply cannot be denied. As former Secretary of Education Lamar Alexander recently stated, "The lack of school choice is the Berlin wall of domestic social policy, and it's all going to come down." We can only hope that our policymakers will tackle this unfortunate reality in the spirit of those who have already worked so hard for positive change. The future of our nation's children is depending on it.