Look out! The feds have come to collect you!
(Guest post by Greg Forster)
Today’s NYT features an op-ed by stand-up guy Rick Hess and pathetically failed charter school founder Linda Darling-Hammond, bemoaning federal micromanagement of schools and also suggesting four things the federal government should be doing in education. Neal replies with a step-by-step critique of the four suggestions. I’m with Neal on most of the issues, but I think Neal underestimates the legitimacy and usefulness of federal data collection.
Neal is correct that much of what Hess and Darling-Hammond ask for under the rubric of “transparency” is unrealistic. But he also writes: “There is precious little evidence Washington can force real transparency. NCLB is exhibit A.” However, he only goes on to discuss the AYP reports. NCLB also required, for the first time, every state to administer the NAEP. That was a huge transformative change. All those state-by-state comparisons everyone has been doing for the last decade, which pop up ubiquitously in education dialogue and have created a lot of real pressure for reform, come directly out of NCLB’s requirement that every state do NAEP.
Neal himself, in the same post, cites a national analysis of NAEP data to argue that NCLB hasn’t lifted scores. I agree! But it was only NCLB’s requirement that every state do NAEP that allowed Neal, myself, and others to know that.
Neal and I have already tangoed on the federalism question enough times before. Short version: I’d prefer to get the feds completely out of education, but since we can’t have that, I’m content to have them ask for basic data collection in return for the funding rather than have them not ask.
Neal is also largely right on the second point in the Hess/Darling-Hammond article; test score disparities shouldn’t be made into civil rights cases. But there are other, more legitimate ways to get at federal civil rights issues. For example, I believe that special education systems that systematically create false diagnoses are a legitimate federal civil rights issue, and if the feds were interested it would be relatively straightforward to create simple auditing systems that would discourage these abuses.
And on the last two items, Neal is bang on. Except insofar as data collection counts as research (see above), government shouldn’t fund studies. It should fund . . . data collection that allows the rest of us to do studies! And the whole competitive grant thing – well, setting up Arne Duncan, Suuuuuuuuuuuuper Geeeeeeeeeeeeenius as a one-man national legislature is just not good mojo.
Jay P. Greene's Blog 
I just sit here and laugh at their solutions to the failed education system in this country. We avoided that disaster by putting our kids in a parochial school. You see, those who can afford it, would not subject our kids to that mess. There is a two tiered system in education and we took full advantage of it.
Sadly for those who cannot afford it, they are stuck hoping that people like Darling Hammond who has proven she failed kids in her Charter School will somehow come up with some magic ticket for the public school system.
While we throw more money down the toilet, I can sit back and feel good that we avoided this mess while the liberals subjected everyone else to complete failure.
When school districts are incentivized to label children as “special ed” in return for extra funding and SPED administrators, school psychologists, etc… who gain added job security from over-diagnosing children, we have a corrupt, self-serving system that is more interested in additional dollars than in what’s best for the child. Far too often, parents feel intimidated by the “experts”, so do not resist pressure from schools to permit testing and medicating of their children. Often, labeled children do not receive a proper education as they are simply warehoused. Many carry lifelong stigma, especially those who should never have been labeled in the first place. It’s a crime.
Too many kids are in SPED classes because of faulty curriculum like Everyday Math. We have SPED and TItle 1 teachers who need to teach children real math because the schools force that nonsense on children.
There are parents who WANT their kids labeled SPED so they can get their children authentic math instruction. It just costs us double and triple what it would cost if they instead used real math programs/text books
I agree. Everyday Math is a disaster. Teachers end up using other means to teach their students when this curriculum fails to accomplish. However, by doing so, proponents of Everyday Math take the credit.
Any parent who would attempt to have their non-disabled child labeled SPED is unfit. A SPED label is a life-long stigma. I would urge parents of students subjected to Everyday Math to start complaining to their school board and demand it be replaced with sound math curriculum.
The federal government is easing restrictions on the use of the taxpayer-funded data it makes available to the public.
Let’s say your vision came about, so feds were out of k-12, besides raw data.
Would you then want states to get out of k-12, and leave things to districts/charters, besides perhaps more data?
YES. THe power should like with the customer/ the parents!! If the Govt. did such a fabulous job with education, we’d be tops in the world.
GGW, that’s how private and home-schooling works. Parents control the education their children receive and amazingly it works well.
No, I’d want states to keep charge of K-12 policy, and I’d want them all to enact universal school choice, which would transfer the real, ultimate power over the content of education to the hands of parents and schools!
School districts are a relic of the past. Most decisions should be made at the building level. The few decisions that legitimately need to be made above that level should be made by states (which have much better transparency and accountability to the voter).
I disagree. Policy is a function of local school boards, not the state. It is important to keep locally elected boards of education in place to ensure accountability on the part of how schools are operated and the local citizenry and taxpayers a voice.
School administrators are only interested in maintaining the status quo in spending as much as possible to ensure an ever-increasing budget, even in situations where school districts are plagued with declining enrollment. They cannot be trusted to be fiscally responsible or accountable to taxpayers. It would be a mistake to do away with school boards.
State and federal education decisions fail because there are no one-size-fits-all solutions. It is locally elected school boards, the local administrators and teachers who best understand how to address their students’ needs.