Opposing continuance of education reform hogwash

Another broad challenge Pres. George W. Bush presented to Louisiana was to continue reforms improving the quality of public education in the state. Despite the fact that some limited progress has been achieved, as typical a number of naysayers needed to vent after Bush’s State of the Union address argued for renewal of the law mandating federal standards, with some increased flexibility in targets and meeting those goals.

One group argues that the federal government doesn’t provide enough resources to enable schools to get children to higher levels of achievement. As stated by one principal, his school has to spend tens of thousands of dollars a year to hire tutors to do this.

But notice the obvious disconnect inherent in this thinking, by following the simple logic: by definition a significant number of students must need extra help either because they are too dumb or because teachers aren’t doing their jobs properly. One would assume the first instance unlikely because why should standards be written that are beyond the typical human child? Thus, schools want more money to make up for shortcomings in their performances that should be their own responsibilities to solve.

In other words, a school needs to demand more from its teachers, do a better job of hiring, or whatever to provide a long-term solution to inability to perform its function correctly, rather than engaging in short-term triage. And if the complaint is the quality of the teaching pool just isn’t out there, that’s still a state problem with its teacher education in its universities, or with inflexibility in alternative certification programs. Again, somebody isn’t doing their job well enough somewhere in the state and thereby is its responsibility, not that of the federal government. This cry for more federal money is but a smokescreen to cover up incompetency within the state’s educational establishment.

This excuse is related to another often heard, that educators in the field don’t have enough control over the process. Of course, this begs the question about the many decades before passage of reform laws where there was no process to control and so it was totally controlled by educators – and look where that got Louisiana, pretty much last in every category of quality of education. So if the state isn’t going to do a proper job, the federal government must oversee the process. (And, of course, if the state truly objects, it could opt out of meeting the requirements by refusing the federal funding that goes along with them.)

(This complaint of lack of local control is a favorite of teachers’ union because it serves to obscure their true goal – protect as many jobs gathering as high compensation as possible with the minimum of work for teachers. This is why they cannot stand the law because it opposes their “money money, less work” philosophy – never be mistaken, no teachers’ union is interested in actually educating children. Their favorite refrain is to ask for more money to be thrown at teachers, never mind that already Louisiana teachers are overpaid for the outcomes observed. The last thing they want is the only thing that would solve for the lack of teacher quality noted above – strict accountability standards that include testing as in already done in many states.)

Finally, the objection least connected to reality is that emphasis on testing causes “stress” to children. Yes, why introduce stress when their adult lives are going to be so free of it? Why stress them now, since as a result of a better education through the testing process they only will be better able to achieve as adults and thus take away stresses such as living hand to mouth, trying to get a job, overcoming bad choices, etc. Sure, keep the stress off of them now so they can have much more of it later for the rest of their lives.

Anyway, why should anybody ever be stressed over such a simple thing as a test? If you have done the best you think you can do in preparation for it, if you take the responsibility in your own hands to maximize your performance, why worry? If you know the answer, indicate it. If not, you’ve done what you could, and move on. Any anxiety coming from this must stem from thinking you’ll be missing stuff that you thought you should have known, meaning you are not preparing yourself as well as you can. If schools are doing their jobs, and are advising students to prepare on their own as well, this should never happen.

Therefore, these grievances are entirely specious. The real source of these objections are, while not a direct form of accountability, that they introduce an indirect means of requiring accountability from educators. And for too long in this state too many educators (as opposed to the more enlightened ones who have welcomed this) have not wanted the extra demands this improvement of the quality of education makes on them – and thus they try to disparage the reforms or pass off responsibility for them to others. Which is why Louisiana’s national lawmakers need to vote approval on renewing the law before it expires, to allow improvement to continue despite the motivations of others.