U.S. still ‘a nation at risk’

April 29, 2003

WASHINGTON – Twenty years after the seminal report “A
Nation at Risk” warned of a “rising tide of
mediocrity” in American schools, scholars are divided
over the progress of education reform.

Those who see teachers unions as a growing obstacle to
reform don’t think much has changed since the National
Commission on Excellence in Education issued its
wake-up call in the spring of 1983. Whereas those who
support teachers unions are more sanguine about the
state of education.

That much is predictable.

What’s surprising is those pushing the most radical
reforms give the Bush administration high marks for
its education policy, despite the absence of
private-school vouchers and the addition of massive
new outlays in its No Child Left Behind Act, which the
president signed into law in January 2002.

“They’ve done a remarkable job establishing an agenda
in education reform,” said Paul E. Peterson, member of
the Hoover Institution’s Koret Task Force on K-12
Eduction, which puts vouchers at the top of its
agenda.

Peterson and two other members of the task force
debated three Harvard University education scholars
about the state of education in America on the 20th
anniversary of “A Nation at Risk.” The debate was held
Friday at the Education Department here.

Asked by WorldNetDaily to grade the administration’s
education policy-making so far, Peterson gave it an
“A-” – the minus because “there’s always room for
improvement,” he explained.

Meantime, pro-union pundits on the panel gave Bush low
marks, even though Bush teamed up with liberal
Democratic Sen. Ted Kennedy in passing No Child Left
Behind, the biggest education-spending bill since
1965, when President Johnson signed the Elementary and
Secondary Education Act.

Patricia Graham, one of Harvard’s leading educators,
asserted that Bush is guilty of practicing what she
called “false certainty” in relying on annual testing
of students to determine the quality of the nation’s
public schools.

“He thinks student scores by themselves will tell us
all we need to know about whether children will be
productive members of society,” said Graham, former
dean of Harvard’s Graduate School of Education.

She declined to assign Bush a letter grade, to which
Peterson quipped, “Pat believes in portfolio
assessment.”

Her colleague at Harvard, Robert B. Schwartz, gave
Bush an “incomplete,” explaining that Bush has
underfunded his 2002 spending legislation. He then
credited the Clinton administration and its Goals 2000
policy for having “laid the groundwork” for allowing
states to move forward with state assessments.

At times, liberals and conservatives on the panel
reversed traditional roles.

While Schwartz seemed to applaud more state and local
control of education, Peterson argued for stronger
federal education efforts “to encourage states and localities
to give parents more choice to go to private and
public schools.”

Peterson blamed teachers unions for blocking
school-choice initiatives. He suggested they are more
interested in protecting the public education system
“monopoly” than improving education for students.

Although Schwartz decried what he called
“union-bashing,” he urged unions to move toward a
merit-based pay system to attract more qualified
teachers and incentivize existing ones to perform
better in the classroom.

Caroline Hoxby of the Koret Task Force noted that
fewer than 1 percent of public school teachers have
received merit pay in the past 20 years, even though
the “A Nation at Risk” report recommended it.

“That was a key prescription, yet it was never
implemented,” she said. “There was enormous political
opposition to it, which tells us something about the
power of unions.”

Deputy Education Secretary William D. Hansen opened
the discussion by showing a chart of reading scores
and federal spending on education over the past 20
years. He lamented that government spending has soared
while reading scores have remained flat.

Some reformers are hopeful that Bush’s No Child Left
Behind law will open the door to federal support for
a voucher plan. The law allows students at
high-poverty Title 1 schools that “fail” the new
federally mandated assessments two years in a row the
option to transfer to a different public school.

However, few parents so far have exercised their new
option to have their children moved to better schools,
even though the bus service is free.

Reformers blame the unappealing option of other public
schools. If private schools were offered as an
affordable alternative, through vouchers, then parents
might be more inclined to switch schools, they argue.

Others say parents may just prefer keeping their
children in a familiar neighborhood, while still
others simply blame parent apathy.

Regardless, the quaint new entrance to the Education
Department building may be the only thing Bush’s new
reform law has changed. Visitors now pass through
little red school houses constructed around the front
entrance and exit. “No Child Left Behind” is painted
at the top of the wooden school houses.

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Not much reform in ed reform bill

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