Obama’s school plan offers wrong reforms

American schools need help.

Once among the leaders in educational success, the United States generally falls in the middle of most educational rankings on math, science, graduation rates, etc., putting it behind such economic powers as Estonia, Liechtenstein and Slovenia.

It is a problem that demands attention — and a significant increase in spending.

The Obama administration has made education one of its three priorities (along with health care reform and the environment), including $46.7 billion in its proposed fiscal year 2010 spending plan for schooling, a $500 million increase. The stimulus plan also includes $81.1 billion for education to prevent teacher layoffs and help fund school construction projects, according to press reports.

That is a nice down payment, but doesn’t go nearly far enough to address the disparities that plague our educational system or the difficulty we have in attracting and retaining teachers.

The president, in a speech on Tuesday, reiterated his commitment to education, promising to increase spending on early-childhood schooling and teacher recruitment — which is good news for schools.

At the same time, however, President Obama bought into a dangerous fallacy, one that has been public policy for quite some time and that was enshrined in the failed No Child Left Behind legislation early in the Bush administration.

He said his administration plans to “finally make No Child Left Behind live up to its name by ensuring not only that teachers and principals get the funding that they need, but that the money is tied to results.”

I admit, the proclamation has a nice ring, but it really doesn’t move the reform ball down the field. Rather, it makes clear that the Obama administration is not ready to abandon the high-stakes testing that is at the center of current federal education law.

NCLB was sold to the American public as a way to heighten standards for students and accountability for teachers and administrators. The argument was that American schools were in decline because we no longer expected much from our students or staff.

The legislation required a massive testing regime and tied results to aid, with under performing schools being penalized and the most creative classroom work being replaced by what critics call a “drill and kill” approach to teaching.

Linda Darling-Hammond, an education professor Stanford University, writing an assessment of the law in The Nation magazine in May 2007, said the law “misdefined the problem.”

It assumes that what schools need is more carrots and sticks rather than fundamental changes.

She believes that, to effectively reform the educational system, we need to address “an educational debt that has accumulated over centuries of denied access to education and employment” that has “reinforced by deepening poverty and resource inequalities in schools.” Reform also would encourage creativity, rather than rote learning, and would return teachers and parents to the center of the educational process.

This not only will take money, but a commitment to restructuring schools — especially in a state like New Jersey, where the explosive growth in expensive suburban housing has created a de facto segregation based on race and class, with poor blacks and Latinos centered in the cities and older suburbs.

The newer suburbs, which also have attracted a lot of the corporate growth in recent years, tend to have larger tax bases and a greater ability to fund innovative programs and attract better teachers. City schools, lacking these ratables, are forced to rely on the state and often get by with the basics.

We can do as the president says and institute merit pay for teachers, raise expectations for students, test, test and test some more, but none of this will matter if we are unwilling to pump a significant amount of federal cash into our schools to address the core problems.

Author: hankkalet

Hank Kalet is a poet and freelance journalist. He is the economic needs reporter for NJ Spotlight, teaches journalism at Rutgers University and writing at Middlesex County College and Brookdale Community College. He writes a semi-monthly column for the Progressive Populist. He is a lifelong fan of the New York Mets and New York Knicks, drinks too much coffee and attends as many Bruce Springsteen concerts as his meager finances will allow. He lives in South Brunswick with his wife Annie. View all posts by hankkalet