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Schools

New Dems puch big ideas on classroom reform

Guest author

The education reform movement is showing some modest results, but there’s a danger it could stall because of a backlash against higher standards and student testing.

Parents and the education establishment in some states have rebelled at high failure rates on standardized tests and are demanding lower requirements.

And the nation’s largest teachers union, the National Education Association, shows signs of balking.



“What is the purpose of a state-mandated test that many poor and minority students are destined to fail?” NEA President Bob Chase wrote in a recent newspaper column. “These students’ underachievement has already been well documented.”

Chase, whose union is powerful in the Democratic Party, quoted the National Urban League as charging that poor and minority children “are being used as cannon fodder in the education accountability wars.”



“Right now, poor children don’t need more high-stakes tests,” Chase wrote. “They need quality teachers. They need smaller classes. … They need intensified reading programs. They need tutors. And they need a leveling up of school funding.”

The truth is, they need all of the above. But most of all they need high expectations, means of measuring whether they, their schools and teachers are performing and consequences when teachers, principals and school systems fail to deliver.

“High-stakes tests” are also needed, not, as Chase charged, to “get tough on kids,” but to help kids who are being badly served.

Probably the most potentially effective national proposal yet to do all this was unveiled in November by a group of New Democrats, led by Sen. Joe Lieberman (Conn.). Their suggestion would significantly increase funding, state flexibility and accountability.

Lieberman claims his plan represents a “third way” between “the Democratic agenda of more spending” and “the Republican agenda of more block grants and vouchers.”

In fact, it’s closer in one major respect to Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush’s proposals than those of Vice President Al Gore, whom Lieberman has endorsed.

Bush proposes that when schools persistently fail to meet state-determined performance standards, parents would get funds to send their children to private schools.

Gore advocates high standards and accountability in general including reorganizing failing schools but provides mainly financial “carrots” to make the process run, not “sticks.”

The Clinton administration backs higher standards though President Clinton recently has concentrated mainly on lowering class size but no school system has ever been denied funds for failing to provide children with a decent education, as many do.

Lieberman does not propose private school vouchers as Bush does, but he would reduce federal aid to school districts that fail to meet locally determined performance standards.

Another wrinkle of Lieberman’s plan more far-reaching than even Congressional Republicans have proposed is massive consolidation of federal education programs from 200 or so down to just five.

Lieberman’s bill, known as “Three R’s,” would hike federal education funding by $25 billion over five years, targeting most of the money to poor schools.

Gore has proposed a welter of new proposals costing at least that much but there is no expansion of state and local responsibility. Bush has put no dollar figure on his standards-and-accountability proposals.

Lieberman’s plan grew out of a study by the Progressive Policy Institute, a think tank associated with the Democratic Leadership Council. It came with input from Diane Ravitch, until recently an education adviser to Bush.

Ravitch said in an interview that another major step Congress should take is to fulfill its promises to fund programs for handicapped children and poor children freeing up billions in state money that could be used for teacher salaries, school construction or other needs. Congressional Democrats want federal programs that would pay for these items.

Clearly, the fight for better schools hasn’t been won. It needs a push, both from the states and from Washington. (Morton Kondracke is executive editor of Roll Call, the newspaper of Capitol Hill. Copyright 2000 Newspaper Enterprise Assn.)


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