You Say You Want a Revolution...

On this night the major party candidates for the presidency will debate each other for a final time. I am hoping but not confident that the topic of education will be mentioned. OK, it might be mentioned, but will it be discussed or actually be debated using the proper language to frame the topic? This is highly doubtful. The major problems with education are not going to make it into a prime time televised debate. The reason is simply that no politician is bold enough to risk an election just to raise a dialogue that mainstream America would find too distasteful to swallow.

Let's start with inequity. Teachers and schools receive pay and funding that varies drastically from state to state, city to city, school district to district, and even from one school to the next within a district. If you ignore the humanity of the issue, you could probably find some manner of justification for this using economic theories. But this is essentially a human issue, not an economic one. When kids in one school are worth $8,000 per child, and twelve miles away in a different school, the state offers $12,000 per child, how can an economic theory encompass the lack of morality behind such inequity? Drive a few more miles and you might find kids worth $20,000 or more. This is all in the same state, yet the state wants all kids to achieve like results on standardized tests. And the poorly funded schools whose scores are certainly lower receive punishments and sanctions, not help.

The second level of the problem defies funding. The racial segregation of our schools has reached levels of separation not seen since before Brown v. Board of Education was argued in the Supreme Court. The poorest communities which contain the most poorly funded schools also tend to contain the highest concentrations of minority populations. When the nation mandated that schools become integrated, they did nothing to offer more equitable funding or teacher pay. So it was like moving figurines around on a map. Mixing the kids around but still placing them in the poorest communities did little to effect lasting improvement in those communities. How could anyone expect that it would? The human element of the issue was always untended.

What is the primary focus of education as it happens in schools right now? Thanks to our government's misguided attempt to fix education through greater accountability, No Child Left Behind, our nation's educational leaders must focus on standardized testing. Everything that happens in a public school today is first connected to a state testing standard or goal, otherwise it is not supported. How much more can the system stand of this constant testing mentality? What will happen in 2014 when the NCLB legislation, as it is currently written, demands that all students in every school must meet 100% proficiency on the state test? That means every student must pass every section of the test, school-wide.

Whenever I see or hear a truly stupid advertisement or product name, I repeat a funny line to my wife. I say, "that was the winning idea?" I imagine some executive board meeting with guys pitching ideas until they hear the winner. Sometimes I change the line to, "I wonder what the losing ideas sounded like." And so it is with NCLB in my mind. I want to talk to Secretary of Education, Margaret Spellings, if only to ask her, "was that really the best idea on the table?" She wrote the legislation with others, but it is known as a Bush initiative. Where else, in what other arena of life is there a demand for 100% proficiency?

Our government allows;-- they created an acceptable amount-- they allow things that aren't food to exist within the boxes of breakfast cereals we buy and consume. Companies sell it to us like that, and it's OK! Our government only has the ability to properly inspect less than five percent of the fish we buy and consume. The government will inspect the cleanliness of your favorite restaurant only about twice a year, according to a schedule. Apples and oranges, you say? Fine. Every licensed driver on an American road had to demonstrate proficiency to earn the card. And how many times can a potential driver take the test? Who cares? If fifty times is the charm, then guess what your license will look like; exactly like mine and everyone else's!

Education reform is needed. It will not become reformed through constant testing. The American public will not support reform efforts that might work until we can admit to and address the deeper social issues at the heart of all of the inequity among schools. It also will not happen until we can recognize the need to make education reform a national priority. Education reform is inextricable from social reform. We have to admit that we all are participants and accomplices to the social maladies that have created an unjust and unequal system of education.

NCLB must change with this next administration. If you don't like the way the school is performing, you don't fix it by testing it more. That's just re-weighing the pig.