Reforming America's Public Schools
Earlier this week, I was pleased to attend a dinner sponsored by the Media Institute in Washington, which does tremendous good work defending the First Amendment and highlighting the importance of property rights for free speech. Instead of speaking on the future of newspapers and media, however, I offered a few thoughts on the state of education reform from the perspective of a CEO. Today’s Wall Street Journal carries a somewhat cut-down version on its Opinion page.
I’m impressed by what schools chancellor Michelle Rhee has been doing in Washington. I’m also a fan of what her reformist counterpart, Joel Klein, is doing in New York. It strikes me that the failures of our public schools, especially for low-income and minority children, have now grown so large that people are coming together across traditional political lines to try to solve the problem. If you doubt me, go see “Waiting for Superman” – a documentary on the scandal of our failing public school system produced by the same gentleman who gave us Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth.” And take a look at this op-ed in the Washington Post by a group of school superintendents.
I realize we’ve had a great many false starts before. But I sense a mood shift. And I wonder if others believe we are now in a moment of opportunity that we’ve never had before.
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May '10
Re: Reforming America's Public Schools
I appreciate your optimism Mr. Murdoch and appreciate as well your using your bully pulpit and standing in the business world to draw attention to this matter and place the politicians on the hot seat.
But I'm somewhat more concerned, because the momentum I see is increasingly toward a federal solution, despite there being no objective evidence that this will result in any meaningful change or improvement. The bigger and more widely accepted the problem is, the more Congress feels it needs to pass more complicated legislation and spend more money and the Department of Education grows larger and larger. Its a very hard concept to grasp that decentralizing authority is the solution. And even then, with the unions having such a strong influence on local school boards, its hard to imagine much will change.
If the Gates foundation were to spend its money simply backing anti-union school board candidates they would arguably do far more good. But that's not so satisfying to a giant foundation employing so many "experts."
May '10
Re: Reforming America's Public Schools
Rupert Murdoch:
I realize we’ve had a great many false starts before. But I sense a mood shift. And I wonder if others believe we are now in a moment of opportunity that we’ve never had before. ·
I sense this as well, and hope and pray that it is more than just a mood shift. If Americans cannot reach across racial, class and ideological divisions to rescue our own children, then we contemptible indeed.
Your remarks from last evening (thank you for the link, btw) listed several of the more practical reasons for concern over failing schools, including economic competitiveness and the creation of a permanent underclass. But there is also an important moral point to consider.
If we honestly consider ourselves to be one nation and one people, how can turn our backs on American children, comfortable that our own are safe in a well managed private school? We cannot plead ignorance, and the excuses of the past are no longer believed, and I do think that Americans will take real steps toward reform this time.
May '10
Re: Reforming America's Public Schools
My observation is that the combination of financial problems at the state and local level, where revenues are tanking as pension and health benefits are highlighted, and the continued political tin ear of the AFT and NEA leaders, has finally brought the spotlight onto this four decade (since the large scale unionization of public school teachers) scam. In Minnesota, the pattern is: 1) the union does constant image advertising on TV; 2) major push for property tax mil rate increases to "reduce class sizes"; 3) any new revenues are sucked up by labor cost increases in the next year's (annual) contract negotiations; 4) repeat infinitely.
However, despite the usual MSM coverups regarding Obama's criminal behavior killing the DC voucher program, the current Rhee situation, and, finally, the Guggenheim documentary, are at long last puncturing the armor.
A conservative is a liberal who has been mugged; an education realist is a liberal who has encountered the AFT/NEA in its full glory and has a modicum of intellectual integrity.
To cheer everyone up, here is very-liberal Joel Klein's story about his experiences with the teacher union in NY:
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/08/31/090831fa_fact_brill
Edited on Oct 8, 2010 at 11:00amMay '10
Re: Reforming America's Public Schools
Trace, I'm with you. More federal government involvement means less tailoring to individual needs or local community needs.
Re: Reforming America's Public Schools
I'd like to believe there is shift in focus in education, but I'll believe it when I see the following:
Vouchers and tax incentives for private schools in failing districts.
The death of the image of public school teachers and administrators as sacrasanct, underpaid Mother Teresas. They aren't.
The death of the self-esteem movement. Reward on effort. If one ten year old can read Tolstoy then he belongs in one class. If another 10 year old can't read at all he belongs in another. Watching teachers struggle to teach to the middle is frustrating for them, detrimental to the upper and lower end of the spectrum. Let kids work their way up the ladder...that's where real self-esteem comes from.
And finally the reality that not all kids come from homes that are able to, or want to support education, and get those kids out of the way of the ones who do. And find other ways to engage those kids. Not everyone should go to college!
Finally, on a personal note...BREAK UP THE LOS ANGELES UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT! There is no "economy of scale" when it comes to the government!
Edited on Oct 8, 2010 at 11:17amAug '10
Re: Reforming America's Public Schools
Murdoch needs to keep banging his very large drum. Thanks very much so far !
Let's judge the Department of Education on the job it's done to date.
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Ok, what are we going to do with the extra building space now that we're closing the Dept of Education ?
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If you don't fire the problem, the problem just gets bigger. Trace is right- decentralize. Don't let Randi Weingarten leave the state of NY. Don't let her travel anywhere unless it's on her own dime. Send her to China, maybe she can help.
And when you're done with that, take the collective bargaining away. Never enhanced a child's education in any way. Recognize the mission, follow through. Meritocracy forever.
Jun '10
Re: Reforming America's Public Schools
Denise, you said it all!
Jul '10
Re: Reforming America's Public Schools
The way to fix the public education system is to do away with the Department of Education and privatize it.
Jun '10
Re: Reforming America's Public Schools
Beat me to the punch.
A choice of private schools financed in part with public vouchers will eliminate the vast bureaucracy that sucks up so many education dollars. The free market will provide a variety of schools to meet different needs instead of the one size fits all model we now have. Competition will promote efficiencies, and the power of teacher's unions will be diminished. Public education doesn't need reform. It needs to be nuked.
May '10
Re: Reforming America's Public Schools
Whether people wish to admit it or not, the rigid standards required by NCLB have contributed to the reform agenda, just as has the NAEP. You can't criticize unmeasured results. Local school board control is meaningless if every district is a lockstep clone of every other one and they all operate in government schools mode.
I actually agree with Michael that once there is competition and free choice for schooling, where, as with the GI Bill, the money follows the student rather than being sent to the district, the Dept. of Education could well be largely privatized as a quality-standards beltway bandit, perhaps inside the re-constituted Dept. of HEW. Someone has to compare, measure, and post the competitive results of the free-choice school districts.
May '10
Re: Reforming America's Public Schools
A moment of opportunity, maybe so. Will it be taken advantage of, no.
The special interests are simply too entrenched. Public funding, via vouchers, replacing public provision of education would provide the best result (not a perfect result, but the best result of all the other options) but that won't happen anytime in my lifetime.
Jun '10
Re: Reforming America's Public Schools
A lot of us live in very nice areas with high property taxes supporting good public schools and are still paying additionally to send our own kids to private schools. Not saying I wouldn't be willing to pay for improving some additional schools in another county or even another state, but I demand a model that I believe has real promise for radical change.
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Did you hear the one about the two guys driving down a highway; they saw another car disabled on the side of the road with flat. The stranded motorist was standing beside his car with his wallet out, pitching money on the ground. When the one guy said to his buddy, "What the heck was that about?", his friend replied "That was a Democrat trying to change a tire."
,Eds - don't you dare call me off-topic
Aug '10
Re: Reforming America's Public Schools
http://film.waitingforsuperman.com/
It's time we all made a minor statement and saw a movie made by this guy. All my kids had to see the other one in school ad nauseum.
Edited on Oct 8, 2010 at 4:02pmMay '10
Re: Reforming America's Public Schools
One hopes you are correct about this Rupert for the sake of the many children let down by public education.
I see at the recent Tory conference in the UK, a Deputy Principal telling how she realised the damage done by left wing ideology in the teaching profession.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_L2l-MA-8Dk&feature=player_embedded
Well worth considering her comments on how the poor have learnt how to fail .
May '10
Re: Reforming America's Public Schools
When I read about proposals to end unions, I recall my first day at a troubled school. One teacher told me that I should join the union so that when a child took a swing at me, I'd have a lawyer to back me up. The school wouldn't help. Luckily, a child never did take a swing at me, but I broke up a few fights in the hallways. You know who had my back? Not the administration, but the janitors. Things are bad. Worse than you realize. And quality teachers get crushed under the wheel of incompetence from the top on down. Teaching to the test. Unqualified and lazy administrators and educators. Not dealing with chronic discipline problems for fear of losing rank/funding. Hostile or absent parents/guardians. Students who want to learn, but are confronted by a culture that resents and suppresses academic achievement. These kids are failing because they don't think any adults care about them. Mentor. Tutor. Engage in a child's life. There are kids who are in the worst performing schools as bright as pennies who at least deserve the chance to succeed.
May '10
Re: Reforming America's Public Schools
After reading Michael Kinsley's piece in the Atlantic called "The Boomers' Last Chance," I don't have much confidence that anyone on the Left will come up with a viable idea for the Boomers to beat out the Depression/WWII Generation for the "Greatest Generation" title. But I think that Boomers can make it up to us by going back to school after they retire by volunteering their time and experience in failing public schools as mentors, tutors, teacher aids, whatever.
Upon reading about the passing of Tony Curtis, I was surprised that at his funeral, the US Navy gave a twenty-one gun salute. Only after asking my husband, who knows more about WWII in the Pacific than Lileks knows about Star Trek, did I find out that Curtis served on a submarine during WWII. It's not often you see the military at a celebrity's funeral. But Curtis and his generation were different. Everyone did their part to help. The only way we will save our education system is for us to confront these problems the way the Greatest Generation confronted WWII - with everything and everyone we've got.