Choice
in Education
Gregory P. Hawkins
A
Nation Still at Risk?
The
greatest watershed event in modern American education occurred
in 1983, when The National Commission on Excellence in Education
published A Nation at Risk, sparking a revolution with their
starkly worded report: “The educational foundations
of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide
of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a nation and
a people”
In
2003 - exactly twenty years later - the Hoover Institution’s
Koret Task Force published their three-year study on the state
of American education - Our Schools, Our Future…Are
We Still at Risk? Comparing their findings in 2003 with
the 1983 analysis they said, “Every word of that indictment
is as true in 2003 as in 1983…Twenty years of entering
first-graders - about eighty million children - have walked
into schools where they have scant chance of learning much
more than the youngsters whose plight troubled the Excellence
Commission in 1983…Test scores are at basically the
same level today as in 1970.” They are talking about
40 years of failed public education.
In
truth, no one denies that nearly three generations of America’s
children have been deprived of an adequate education. Something
needs to change.
Prophets
of Disaster
American
citizens mobilize when any organization - private or governmental
- becomes so entrenched and powerful that all other voices
are quashed, when choice is virtually eliminated. Our society
- founded on freedom and liberty - bristles at the arrogant
“what-other-option-do-you-have?” mentality of
a monopolistic establishment. “No,” we say. “We
won’t allow it.”
Encouraging
choice among public school systems and alternate forms of
education represents one of the best long-term prospects for
improving the education of America’s children.
Entrenched
educational institutions, like all powerful organizations,
abhor choice. As long as they remain entrenched, they will
always predict dire consequences if ideas such as vouchers,
tax credits, charter schools, private schools and home schooling
gain widespread, popular acceptance. They will prophesy an
educational Armageddon if they are deprived of their comfortable
dominion.
Until
recently this fearsome image controlled the actions of policy
makers nationwide. But American parents have begun to distrust
such institutional propaganda. Parents, teachers and even
administrators are beginning to ask themselves, “How
can choice succeed in nearly all aspect of our society, yet,
fail to invigorate a failing educational system?”
Uprooting Education’s
Cartels and Cultivating Choice
The
Koret Task Force was not shy about indicting the 1983 report
for its failure to confront the powerful, well-established
monopolies unwilling to release their stranglehold on education:
“A
Nation at Risk underestimated the resistance to change from
the organized adult interests of the K–12 public education
system, centering upon the two big national teacher unions
and their state and local affiliates as well as administrators,
colleges of education, state bureaucracies, school boards,
and many others. These groups see any changes beyond the most
marginal as threats to their own jealously guarded power,
influence, and monopoly.”
Fortunately
for the future of American education, the 2003 report by the
Koret Task Force made strongly worded recommendations for
choice, declaring:
“[That]
choice-based reform has shown promise and is in great demand,
as witnessed by the growth of the charter school movement,
the rise in home schooling, and parental and community support
for scholarship and voucher programs…
“The
education system’s clients must be free to select other
providers that teach their children more effectively and in
accord with family and community priorities as well as core
American values…By choice we mean that parental decisions
rather than bureaucratic regulation should drive the education
enterprise. Open competition among ideas and methods, with
people free to abandon weak schools for stronger ones, is
the surest way to make major progress.”
To Empower Parents and Teachers
In the Educational Process
Up
to now parents have populated the front ranks in the crusade
for choice. Teachers must join the crusade and stand up for
choice, for the benefit of their students and their own best
interests.
Most
teachers choose teaching as a profession because that is their
calling. They teach because they need and want to inspire
children, to improve their lives permanently. Thereby, they
improve society as a whole. They deserve respect, if not veneration,
yet, have received neither. These last forty years have proved
every bit as difficult for teachers as for their students.
Many have left the profession. Others, who could have been
numbered among the good ones, never become teachers.
Teachers
feel the weight of bureaucracy more acutely than anyone. If
choice has the potential to revitalize education, it has the
same potential to revitalize teaching as a profession, to
engender respect and to empower teachers, both as a group
and individually.
Quashing
the Ultimate Monopoly
Today,
we hear occasional rumblings from Washington about the benefits
of choice. Let’s not mislead ourselves. The federal
government is the most entrenched and choice-adverse monopoly
of all. The federal government has a nearly perfect record
of mismanaging public education and virtually no history of
allowing either choice or competition. We cannot rely on generalized
murmurings of support for choice in education. We must send
representatives to Congress who will work for choice.
Again,
Ronald Reagan correctly perceived a crucial key to educational
excellence by advocating that the federal government "insure
that local needs and preferences, rather than the wishes of
Washington, determine the education of our children."
It would be a tragedy - 20 years from now - if a future, 2023
task force finally concluded that federal control and domination
over American primary and secondary education equals nearly
absolute failure.
Opportunities
for Educational Excellence Now Available
The
growing groundswell of popular support to increase choice
in education is wonderful news for American parents, their
children, teachers and public education. As programs such
as vouchers, tax credits, charter schools, private schools
and home schooling prove their effectiveness, public education
as a whole, will also improve. It will require the dedication
of parents and teachers, local and state officials. At a federal
level we must send representatives to Congress who will carry
the banner forward with resolve.
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