OPINION:
School’s out for the summer, so now it is time to examine the state of our educational system.
Our school performance is fair or poor for most children by any objective measure. Math scores hit a 20-year low, and ACT scores dropped to a 30-year low last year. In dozens of schools across the country, not one child is reading or doing math at grade-level proficiency. Not one.
Some of this poor performance is because of the unforgivable mistake of shutting down our schools as the COVID-19 pandemic got underway — even though children were never vulnerable to the virus.
But the inadequacies of our schools were in long-term decline before COVID-19.
One of the world’s top education scholars, Erik Hanushek, has just issued a report on the 40th anniversary of the famous federal study published in 1983 called “A Nation at Risk.” That study famously warned that “if an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.”
Tragically, nobody listened or paid attention to the warning. The teachers unions kept pushing for more money with no accountability. Schools were turned into social welfare agencies instead of factories for learning. So they started to pursue both missions — poorly. In more recent years, the educators decided that their job was to teach social justice, climate change radicalism, LGBTQ issues and “systemic racism.”
In many public schools, patriotism and love of country gave way to a “blame America” narrative.
Math, reading and science took a back seat.
But taxpayer money poured in as if from a fire hose. Mr. Hanushek notes that per-pupil spending has quadrupled since 1960 after adjusting for inflation. Since 1980, the funding per student has doubled.
Yet over the past several decades, there has been little evidence of improvement (if any). In most school districts, the reverse is true.
The feds have kicked in hundreds of billions, too. Yet there is virtually no evidence that Uncle Sam’s spending has added much value. Mostly it’s added more red tape. Test scores haven’t budged.
Still, President Biden plans to spend hundreds of billions more — mostly because the teachers unions are the strongest force in the modern Democratic Party. Unions, not parents.
Finally, after 40 years of failure, parents are taking notice and taking action. The parental choice movement is gaining steam, especially in red states. In the last two years, some 13 states have added programs to allow education dollars to follow the kids. That means lower-income parents are provided the funding to send their kids to charter schools, Catholic schools or other alternatives.
This should hopefully provide incentives for the public schools to compete and improve.
One of Mr. Hanushek’s key conclusions provides some glimmer of hope. He finds “some evidence that spending more money can improve student learning in public schools.” But he adds conditionally that the dollars must be tied to “rewarding performance.”
For example, offering an incentive for teacher excellence through pay for performance and getting rid of bad teachers — by eliminating or reforming tenure — can improve schools and provide a lifeline to kids.
Here’s the problem: The teachers unions are adamantly opposed to anyone measuring their performance.
They can grade the students, but no one dares to grade the teachers.
Back in 1983, the warning was that our schools had slipped into a cesspool of “mediocrity.” Here we are 40 years later, and in too many cities and states, mediocrity would be an improvement.
Reforms are coming — but will they get here soon enough? We certainly can’t wait another 40 years.
• Stephen Moore is a visiting fellow at The Heritage Foundation and a co-founder of the Committee to Unleash Prosperity.
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