Posted on 02/08/2010 3:47:16 AM PST by Kaslin
Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said recently, "Our K-12 agenda can be summed up in one word: reform."
If only it were true. But what Duncan calls reform is indeed putting lipstick on a pig. In this case, the pig is Washington's never changing formula for solving everything: spending ever-increasing sums of taxpayer's money.
"Reform" means generating new ideas about how to spend and coming up with clever new titles for programs.
So today it's called "Race to the Top." Duncan has been handed $4.35 billion, taken out of last year's $830 billion stimulus bill, and given personal discretion for dispensing it to states that propose education reform ideas that strike his fancy. It's the largest discretionary sum ever given to an education secretary.
This past week 40 states submitted proposals.
How do we know that Duncan can identify good ideas? We don't.
He says he likes charter schools and performance pay for teachers. He's open to new colors of lipstick that the pig has not sported before. But a pig is still a pig.
There appears to be not a shred of evidence that funneling more taxpayer dollars through Washington to states improves education. Data compiled by the conservative Heritage Foundation analysts shows that since 1970, federal spending per student, adjusted for inflation, has more than doubled with no discernable change in test scores.
Now a new study released by the Department of Health and Human Services shows that the Head Start program -- the federal program started in 1965 aimed at getting low-income, preschool children prepared for school -- has no impact.
Some $166 billion of federal funds has been poured into Head Start. Yet this new study shows that first graders who have been through the program perform essentially the same as those who haven't.
In response to Texas Governor Rick Perry saying "no thanks" to new money with stipulations from Washington bureaucrats, Duncan said, "If states are half-hearted that's probably not a place where we'll invest."
It says it all that Duncan calls a long and unblemished history of shoveling taxpayer funds into a black hole "investing." Can you imagine any investment banker or venture capitalist "investing" in anything with this kind of track record? Chances are zero.
So why must we tolerate it?
If there was evidence that billions of dollars directed into new spending was going to improve education, we taxpayers might be prepared to be put on the hook. But not only is there no evidence, the real problems that the charade pretends to address also just get worse.
It's black and Latino kids who languish year after year in failing public schools as the game goes on.
In normal markets, customers drive the quality of the product. In the case of the public education monopoly, the customers -- kids and their parents -- are pawns in the game. Anything that would give the customers power -- such as school choice -- government and union bureaucrats fight.
The Obama administration, with all its lofty rhetoric about reform, quietly has allowed congressional Democrats to kill the successful Washington D.C. voucher program. The program has demonstrably given 1,300 inner-city kids a better education in private schools at a third of the cost their counterparts are getting in D.C. public schools.
Even the liberal Washington Post has editorialized to save the program, as President Obama and Secretary Duncan turn deaf ears.
Duncan was chastised for recently saying the "best thing" to happen to education in New Orleans was Katrina. But education has markedly improved there as parents were given school choice in the wake of the disaster.
The best thing that could happen to inner-city education nationwide would be a political Katrina that would give birth to parental empowerment and school choice.
These horse manure politicians.
Just like you could not have healthcare reform without tort reform,
Ya can’t have education reform without taking a bite out of the damned unions.
Duncan helped Obama waste hundreds of millions of Annenberg Challenge dollars into nefarious schemes rather than educate the children in Chicago’s south side.
Until such time as the NEA is defanged nothing will come of our public education. NOTHING.
As a teacher it pretty much ALL boils down to this; having classrooms of children who are raised by caring, serious parents who are invested in their child’s education.Without the strong, caring family base you can throw all the money at schools that you want , but you might as well build a bonfire out of that money because w/ out that parent base SCHOOLS CANNOT SUCCEED!!!!!!!!!!!
Duncan is the current representative of the progressive educational movement that has been destroying education for the past 100 years. They express appropriate shock at the lack of improvement, but it is by design.
You look at what they push... group work, more group work, cooperative groups.... because the soviet man, oops I mean worker of today must collaborate with his other workers.
There is no “teacher” that is the “sage on the stage” model. Children today must discover their own learning. Riiiight, any of them come up with the general theory of relativity today in those cooperative groups?
Anything that requires hard work is out. Memorization is out, rote learning is out.
Critical thinking is in, in, in. We need higher level thinking skills. Of course, without actually learning anything, or having a sufficient skill set to critically think about,it is hard to imagine what one would think critically about. Of course that is the key, you learn the politically correct material (e.g. columbus was a racist indian killing bastard, etc.) and then you can have the correct thoughts about them.
The incentive structure of reform in the schools is completely wrong. If you have an underperforming school, you have to go into reform. And who picks the models? The school district does based on what the state/feds allow. And what is allowed? The same repackaged progressive crap with new names that started all the problems in the first place. Of course all the rage these days is “brain based” learning and my personal favorite “data driven” (both of which appears to use the same scientific model and method of the climate scientists).
Now just add into the mix incivility and spoiled kids and viola, there you go.
Your mileage, of course, may vary.
“Inner cities”... “nuke them from orbit... it’s the only way”.
LLS
Are you a teacher or a retired teacher??? Because you have your finger ON the pulse point of the joke that is eduaction!!!!!!!!! Yep, my failing school district is “data driven”- except that the really incompetent(I am not using the words I really want to use for this woman) superintendent doesn’t know what it means. I’m an intelligent person & i don’t know what it means. NO ONE DOES! It’s insane.
It will not change because these fancy sounding new names they come up w/ , for the same old failing programs sound really good to anyone NOT in education. No end in sight, no end in sight. Be very afraid.
I go as far as that money doesn't solve the problem, only parental responsibility does
We don’t need new “reforms”. We only need to remove all the “reforms of the last 90 years. Start by firing everyone with a degree in behavioral “science”. These are the people who have invented every single one of the destructive “reforms”. Fire them all. Prison would be better.
In my area all the public schools are brand new shinny state of the art facilities ... and they are still all adademicly failing.
Meanwhile, the private schools are opperating out of 1950’s commercial structures and are producing excelent students.
hm... makes you wonder.
good parenting helps, BUT if schools could actually DISIPLINE kids things would be far better.
You give me free reign at a inner city school to do whatever I deem appropriate and I would have it cleaned up and performing great in no time at all. Of course half of the students would be kicked out in the first few days, I have NO tolerance for misbehavior.
Years ago New York State administered regents exams that only a fraction of students could pass today. The students who mastered that material frequently went to one-room schoolhouses with wood stoves and they studied by kerosine lamps at night.
The problem is not money.
Ya can’t have education reform without taking a bite out of the damned unions.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
The entire K-12 system must be privatized with parents paying for their own kids. That would take the bite out of the teacher unions.
It is the same here and our county just built a $70 million dollar high school. Unbelievable!
Wherever you go in our nation, in community after community the schools are the largest, most expensive, and lavish buildings in the community. Yes, there are exceptions but they are a small minority.
I'm reminded of New Orleans and 47% of the residents there cannot read or write.
Send more money to the teachers?
You can’t do that.
Make folks take responsibility for their own kids?
You must be one of them crazy conservatives pal.
That’s what gub mint is for.
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