Yet Another Report On The Education Crisis

IT IS NEARLY a quarter century now since the National Commission on Excellence in Education issued its somber warning about the nation’s education system: “A Nation at Risk.”

Luckily it was at that moment in 1983 that the US economy struggled out of the 1980-82 recession on the back of Reaganomics and never looked back. So it turned out that the nation wasn’t at risk, at least not then.

Yet the education system has, if anything, got worse in the years since. Reforms come and go—your Goals 2000, your No Child Left Behind—yet nothing seems to change. For instance, despite all the reform, our kids still need remedial courses before they can start college.

Though higher education is now a near-universal aspiration, researchers suggest that close to half the students who enter college need remedial courses.

The shortfalls persist despite high-profile efforts by public universities to crack down on ill-prepared students.

That’s what The New York Times reported back in September. Yet do we see educators taking responsibility for this, pledging their lives, their fortunes, their sacred honor, to right a terrible injustice—in emulation of an earlier generation of American leaders? We do not.

What we do have is another blue-ribbon report. “Tough Choices or Tough Times” is a product of the New Commission on The Skills of the American Workforce. The commission worries the usual worries about globalization and outsourcing. “While our relative position in the world’s education league tables has continued its long, slow decline... a swiftly rising number of American workers at every skill level are in direct competition with workers in every corner of the globe.” Since the “best employers the world over will be looking for the most competent, most creative, and most innovative people on the face of the earth...” and so on. How can we hope to compete in the global economy, the commission worries, when, educationally:

Teachers are recruited “from among the less able.”
We tolerate “enormous amount of waste.”
The system is getting “more inefficient over time.”
“Growing inequality in family incomes’ contributes to “growing disparities in student achievement.”
“We have failed to motivate” children to “take tough courses.”
Teacher compensation doesn’t reward the best teachers.
The testing system rewards students “good at routine work.”
“People who have responsibility do not have power” and vice versa.
It’s already too late for most of the workforce.
It is hard for adults to get the continuing education and training they need.

Maybe it’s because... But you know the script. After identifying these ten problems, the commission proposes a Ten Step remedial program, all of which is long on government spending, bureaucratic reorganization, and new subsidies like tax-free accounts. And you will be glad to know that the remedy includes a big increase in teacher salaries, even though teachers are already paid about 50 percent more than equivalent workers in the private sector.

But before we sign on the dotted line we should ask some tough questions. Why is it that the United States with its nation-at-risk education system continues to lead the world economically?

In his 2004 book The Power of Productivity William W. Lewis provides an answer to this question. Based on his research on the economies of 13 different countries, he concludes: “The importance of the education of the workforce has been taken way too far.” You can train most people on the job, whatever their education.

And the key to wealth and productivity is a level playing field, an absence, in other words, of blue-ribbon commissions proposing new programs, privileges, and subsidies.

If the importance of education “has been taken way too far,” how important is it? Obviously the politicians and educators on the New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce have their agenda, and public choice theory can give us a glimmer of what that agenda might be. But what about us? What do the Education Moms want?

At the Cato Institute Andrew J. Coulson, author of Market Education: The Unknown History, has just published the first “Cato Education Market Index.” It is designed to show how each state allows education “producers and consumers to voluntarily associate with one another” and “encourage families to be diligent consumers and educators to innovate, control costs, and expand their services.” In other words, he is measuring just easy it is for Education Moms to shop for the education that their children need.

Today, alas, the index is pretty low. In the United States, education producers and consumers are not allowed to voluntarily associate with one another. In consequence, families do not act like diligent consumers and educators do not innovate and control costs.

Here’s an idea. If education isn’t all that important to our national income then why not just let American parents go shopping for education at the mall just like we do for our food, our cars, and our clothes?

Then we can appoint blue-ribbon commissions to worry about pseudo problems like educational obesity, sports utility schools, and cheap education imports.

Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

print view

To comment on this article at American Thinker click here.

To email the author, click here.

TAGS

Faith & Purpose

“When we began first to preach these things, the people appeared as awakened from the sleep of ages—they seemed to see for the first time that they were responsible beings...”
Finke, Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990

Mutual Aid

In 1911... at least nine million of the 12 million covered by national insurance were already members of voluntary sick pay schemes. A similar proportion were also eligible for medical care.
Green, Reinventing Civil Society

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

Living Under Law

Law being too tenuous to rely upon in [Ulster and the Scottish borderlands], people developed patterns of settling differences by personal fighting and family feuds.
Thomas Sowell, Conquests and Cultures

German Philosophy

The primary thing to keep in mind about German and Russian thought since 1800 is that it takes for granted that the Cartesian, Lockean or Humean scientific and philosophical conception of man and nature... has been shown by indisputable evidence to be inadequate.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Meeting of East and West

Knowledge

Inquiry does not start unless there is a problem... It is the problem and its characteristics revealed by analysis which guides one first to the relevant facts and then, once the relevant facts are known, to the relevant hypotheses.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Logic of the Sciences and the Humanities

Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.” —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

Democratic Capitalism

I mean three systems in one: a predominantly market economy; a polity respectful of the rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and a system of cultural institutions moved by ideals of liberty and justice for all. In short, three dynamic and converging systems functioning as one: a democratic polity, an economy based on markets and incentives, and a moral-cultural system which is plural and, in the largest sense, liberal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

Action

The incentive that impels a man to act is always some uneasiness... But to make a man act [he must have] the expectation that purposeful behavior has the power to remove or at least to alleviate the felt uneasiness.
Ludwig von Mises, Human Action

Churches

[In the] higher Christian churches… they saunter through the liturgy like Mohawks along a string of scaffolding who have long since forgotten their danger. If God were to blast such a service to bits, the congregation would be, I believe, genuinely shocked. But in the low churches you expect it every minute.
Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm

Conversion

“When we received Christ,” Phil added, “all of a sudden we now had a rule book to go by, and when we had problems the preacher was right there to give us the answers.”
James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

Living Law

The recognition and integration of extralegal property rights [in the Homestead Act] was a key element in the United States becoming the most important market economy and producer of capital in the world.
Hernando de Soto, The Mystery of Capital

mysql close