No Child Gets Ahead
Posted by BrianThe concept of No Child Left Behind is sound from a distance. Set reasonable, minimum testing requirements for students. Hire only “highly qualified", competent teachers. Force schools to meet certain standards, or at least a steady progress towards such standards, or else face reprisals. The problem is that in the real world what we get is No Child Gets Ahead.
When the government lays out a curriculum that must be taught in order to pass a test teachers are effectively hogtied. NCLB forces passionate, innovative, hard-working teachers to compromise their own standards and goals in order to indoctrinate children with material deemed appropriate by a bureaucrat. My wife was one of those teachers. She trained hard in school, learning interesting ways to teach kids along with a wealth of material that she could choose from in order to build a curriculum that could be tailored to any particular class. NCLB seeks to make teachers like her into interchangeable, assembly line machines, which undermines the entire purpose of education.
This rigid curriculum also has the nasty side effect of forcing teachers to spend a disproportionate amount of time on children who either don't have the desire or aptitude to learn a particular subject matter to the government's approval. Consequently, the other children in the class get the short end of the stick. Instead of being able to engage in more advanced, faster paced studies they must sit idly waiting for the stragglers to catch up. In the end everyone is on the same level. In other words, No Child Gets Ahead.
The government believes that a high quality product can only be derived from intensely regulated and monitored government programs, such as NCLB. Our education system is a perfect example of a failure of that system. Fortunately the perfect solution is all around us: the free market.
The Education Department just admitted that not one single state has met the goal of having 100% of its core teachers qualified. How could this happen? Well, thanks to the combined effect of strong teacher’s unions and comfortable, nearly guaranteed government jobs the schools have no real incentive to improve. The unions make it very difficult to fire underperforming teachers and impossible to monetarily reward star performers. The administrations have no real motivation to hire and retain only the best teachers beyond what will keep the higher-ups placated.
Government required education is not a bad concept. Regardless of its Constitutionality, it keeps a steady flow of marginally intelligent people into the workplace, which fuels our economy. No, the problem is government run education.
The fundamental change needed to improve our education system is school choice. Instead of the Federal education handout directly subsidizing local government schools that money should be made available to the parents so that they can choose what school to send their children to. There should be no barriers to choosing any type of school, whether it be a traditional secular school or a religious academy. The mandated educational standards needed to ensure the schools are actually educating the children should be sufficiently flexible so that parents have a great degree of choice in what their children are taught (and how they’re taught). I would personally like to see my children learn more about economics and real world business practices than are taught in our current government schools.
This system would bring to bear a significant motivation for the school administrators and teachers. If a school performs poorly and parents are unhappy they can CHOOSE to remove their children and send them to another school. The low quality school can either improve or those teachers and administrators can look for other government jobs. On the aggregate level, they will choose to improve. This choice of constantly improving and meeting expectations or losing your job is a choice that anyone in the private sector faces daily and there is no shortage of high quality companies in any given industry. I believe it’s called economic Darwinism.
Parents would love the idea. No longer would they have to buy over priced houses simply because they were zoned to good schools. You can choose to live as close to, or as far from, the school of your choice. Once you make the long term decision of buying a house you wouldn’t have to watch your child’s life be slowly ruined because the school you are zoned to has started to decline – you simply send them to a better school.
NCLB sounded good at first, but its application has left much to be desired. One of the many big ideas that Republicans, or Democrats for that matter (although decreasing government programs and returning power to people is generally anathema to Democrats), could gain support for is school choice. I doubt it will be on anyone’s mid-term agenda, but if the Iraq war abates and the deficit begins to move towards a surplus, it could be a 2008 Presidential platform item.
Update: Just a few hours after I wrote this little diatribe I found this column by Star Parker on TownHall.com. She postulates that the current government school arrangement perpetuates the plight of black poverty by giving poor blacks no way of improving their children's education. She points out that, in addition to the teachers unions, the NAACP is opposed to school choice. The NAACP opposition is a prime example of a large, nationwide advocacy group (such as AARP, many labor unions, etc.) taking a public position askew from the desires of its membership and the greater good of society.
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May 15th, 2006 at 3:48 pm
I’m with you on NCGA. A system that depends entirely on standardized tests for evaluating students and schools is bound to fail in the long run. What we need is a system that gives the principal the responsibility and authority for hiring and firing teachers, and parents the responsibility for hiring and firing the principal (by deciding what school their children will attend).
I have suggested that it is time that we completely abandon the practice of public education. It is clear to me that it is not working. Big government doesn’t do anything very well and the temptation is too great to indoctrinate instead of educate.
We could transition from public to private education by building on the voucher concept. Over a period of, say, ten years we could move all students to vouchers and phase out all the public schools. Then we could phase out the vouchers by not taking the money (through taxes) from the parents in the first place.
Some say: but what about the poor kids? I believe that there will be plenty of scholarship money available to pay their tuition. I, though of modest means, would happily sponsor a child every year.
May 15th, 2006 at 4:20 pm
I completely agree with you about applying free market principals to our education system. There must be however, specific standards established for a high school diploma to actually mean something. Students must be able to read a specific level, must be able to calculate at least basic math problems, and a basic understanding of history. The federal government involvement in education need only to be to establish the standard. How each State, Local School District, Charter School, or Private Institution meet these standards should be up to them.
May 15th, 2006 at 10:36 pm
What business is it for government to establish standards? Is the government responsible for feeding, clothing, and housing my children? Why should I let the government interfere with my children’s education even in the smallest way? The government’s primary reponsiblity is to inflict pain and punishment. The sooner it stops doing everything else the better off we’ll all be.