The Thursday New York Times has a series of letters reacting to this earlier piece: One Classroom, From Sea to Shining Sea by Susan Jacoby (NYT, 3/18/10).
Jacoby had argued for full-bore nationalization of education:
Our lack of a national curriculum, national teacher training standards and federal financial support to attract smart young people to the teaching profession all contribute mightily to the mediocre-to-poor performance of American students, year in and year out, on international education assessments. So does a financing system that relies heavily on local property taxes and fails to guarantee students in, say, Kansas City the same level of schooling as students in more affluent communities.
Her solution? Put the “experts” in charge of curriculum. The locals just can’t be trusted.
No Frenchman could conceive of a situation in which school officials in Marseille decide they don’t like France’s secular government and are going to use textbooks that ignore the Napoleonic code (and perhaps attribute the principles of French law to Aquinas). But publishers will have to comply with Texas requirements in order to sell history books to that state’s huge school system. Indeed, they will likely start producing one edition for conservative states and another for the saner precincts of American schooling.
That is exactly why local control of schools is often an enemy of high-quality public education. The real question is whether anything, in the current polarized political climate, can be done about educational disparities that are inseparable from our fragmented system of public schooling. I can imagine at least three baby steps that would pave the way for success.
And they are (in short): (direct quotes, but excerpts)
- Serious public intellectuals of varying political views need to step up and develop voluntary guides, in every academic subject, for use by educators who do not disdain expert opinion.
- The federal government must invest more in training and identifying excellent teaching candidates.
- The idea that educational innovation is best encouraged by promoting competition between schools and pouring public money into quasi-private charter schools should be re-examined by both the left and the right.
Now take a look at the reactions.
Pick your favorite.
I like this one:
The framers of the Constitution believed that, more than as a matter of tradition or convenience, states were best suited to meet the everyday needs of their citizens.
Contrary to Ms. Jacoby’s assertion, the purpose of education is not meeting “the needs of a 21st-century nation competing in a global economy,” but preparing young people to lead successful personal and professional lives and to become informed and caring participants in a democratic society. If education fulfills that purpose, it can’t help but raise the economic status of the nation also.
Despite the errors made by state and local boards in managing schools, they are right more often than the federal government. Not because they are smarter, but because they are closer to the successes, failures and needs of their students and more affected by them.
Anyone who thinks that the Department of Education or experts appointed to federal panels should be designing curriculum and tests for all — or even any — students should reflect for a moment on the failures of No Child Left Behind.
But read them all! There’s an opinion there to suit everyone’s taste!