American education (Signifying Nothing: how does saying nothing at all become so loud?)

Wednesday, 1 December 2004

American education

The Economist has a good article on the American school system that makes a number of good points on its failings:

ONE reason that America’s public schools do badly in international rankings, despite getting more money, is that nobody is really accountable for them. The schools are certainly not run by Washington: the federal government pays only 8% of their costs. Most of their money comes from state and local government, but often responsibility for them lies with school boards. And within the schools themselves, head teachers usually have little power either to sack bad teachers or to expel rowdy pupils.
Until recently, the main villains of the piece had seemed to be the teachers’ unions, who have opposed any sort of reform or accountability. Now they face competition from an unexpectedly pernicious force: the courts. Fifty years ago, it was the judges who forced the schools to desegregate through Brown v Board of Education (1954). Now the courts have moved from broad principles to micromanagement, telling schools how much money to spend and where—right down to the correct computer or textbook

Not much to disagree with in the entire article.

1 comment:

Any views expressed in these comments are solely those of their authors; they do not reflect the views of the authors of Signifying Nothing, unless attributed to one of us.

1. Blargon wrote @ Wed, 1 Dec 2004, 11:34 pm CST:

Thanks for pointing out the article—an interesting take on a subject that rarely receives attention from outside its own forest. The article is dead on in its criticism of the bureaucratic nightmare that is American public education. Ditto the missing connection between spending and results. The time and cost necessary to terminate an incompetent teacher in union-strong states is absurd indeed, but let’s be serious: The system is broken, and broken specifically because of the way we attempt to finance it.

American schools are funded overwhelmingly through local property taxation, rendering communities helpless to escape their taxable property valuations. Furthermore, many state constitutions explicitly cap local tax rates—hit the ceiling and there’s nowhere else to look. It doesn’t take a statistical model to figure this one out—poor communities pay higher property tax rates to raise less per-capita revenue; wealthy communities pay a lower rate to raise more. We need a broad-based revenue foundation for public education if we are going to get serious about ending educaitonal inequality. Everyone knows this, but it’s not where state politicians’ bread is buttered.

The experience of most American states is quite different from what our friends at The Economist describe. State courts, interpreting their state constitutions anew after nearly a century of neglect and lockstep adherence to federal constitutional doctrine, have actually been quite hesitant to micro-manage schools. The education funding cases now in the news have been winding through the courts for more than a decade, as reluctant and bewildered state courts have seen their more reserved rulings wholly ignored by legislatures unwilling to make hard decisions on matters more easily laid at the feet of judges.

Why have courts at last taken to appointing special masters and engaging in impossible micromanagement? Because state legislatures, with very rare exception, have abdicated, notwithstanding many years and many chances to feel for a backbone and fix the defective school funding structure. In New York, this was done with a wink and a nod. “Please,” said the governor and legislators, “don’t throw us into that briar patch.” And happily they went.

It’s a pitty that astute international observers aren’t in on the legislators’ joke.

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