Copyright 1999 The Christian Science Publishing Society
The Christian Science Monitor
January 21, 1999, Thursday
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 9
LENGTH: 764 words
HEADLINE:
Reinventing federal education policy
BYLINE: Chester E.
Finn Jr.
HIGHLIGHT:
Congressional Republicans have
their first shot at changing anineffective school spending program. Will they
take it?
BODY:
Education has moved
near the top of Washington's priorities again. Both because President Clinton
cares about this issue and because he hopes to deflect attention from his own
impeachment, he devoted much of the State of the Union address to a far-reaching
plan to overhaul the federal government's role in American schools. But even if
the White House were mute, the calendar says it's time to renew the
Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), the centerpiece
of federal K-12 education policy since 1965 and a statute in urgent need of big
changes. For the first time in 34 years, ESEA reauthorization is in the hands of
congressional Republicans. It's unknowable what they'll finally do. But they'd
be ill-advised to follow Mr. Clinton's lead. He's crafted a classic
Washington-style solution to the woes of US schools: more rules and mandates and
the threat that federal funds will be cut off from districts that don't boost
achievement, end social promotion, hire better teachers, and so on. There's a
far better way to go. The massive ESEA statute now spans 60-odd programs
spending more than $ 11 billion a year, two-thirds of it on the big Title I
program, which aims to boost the achievement of disadvantaged youngsters. But
there is near consensus that most of these programs have failed to accomplish
their goals. Study after study shows that Title I has not narrowed the rich-poor
achievement gap, that the "safe and drug-free schools" program has made US
schools neither safe nor drug-free. Besides wasting money and dashing hopes at a
time when lackluster achievement and weak school performance are our foremost
domestic trauma, these programs are wrapped in red tape that often impedes
worthy reform efforts. Almost half the staff of Florida's education department,
for example, is engaged in making sure that state schools spend federal funds
only on federally approved projects rather than on what a principal or school
board judges most vital. The ESEA legislative cycle recurs every five to six
years, andCongress has always shied away from fundamental change. Programs have
just gotten more complex in each round, and always with the pledge that they'll
definitely work better. So far, they never have. The big question is whether the
106th Congress will settle for another round of tweaking or press for a
top-to-bottom reinvention of ESEA. What might a wholesale overhaul look like? It
depends on how Congress answers three big questions: Which education decisions
should be made in Washington and which by states, communities, and parents? For
34 years, ESEA has taken for granted that federal officials know best. Clinton
still believes that. Reversing it would mean, for example, cutting much red tape
and allowing states to use federal dollars for reforms of their own devising. Is
Uncle Sam's client the child or the school system? For 34 years, ESEA has pumped
money into public school systems. Those funds don't belong to the children or
accompany them to the school of their choice. (That's why charter schools, for
example, don't get their "share" of federal aid.) That's still the Clinton
approach. Reversing it would mean reworking complex formulas, yes, but above
all, it would mean rethinking a basic assumption: making individual children the
explicit rather than the indirect beneficiaries of federal funding. Is the
purpose of federal aid to expand the supply of education services or to pay for
better results? For 34 years, ESEA has acted as if the problem with US education
is that children don't have access to enough of it. Today, however, almost
everyone recognizes - and the White House and GOP seem to agree - that kids have
plenty of services, but the quality is shoddy and the results inferior.
Recasting federal programs to focus on results rather than inputs is as big a
reform as can be imagined. Does the Republican Congress have the imagination and
courage to answer these questions differently - and then go on to reinvent
Washington's role in K-12 education? Don't count on it. They've been outfoxed
before by the administration and its allies in the school establishment, and
it's likely this will happen again. If it does, a rare opportunity will be
squandered, US students will be ill-served, and our public education system will
be even further from the thoroughgoing changes that it needs. Chester E. Finn
Jr. is the John M. Olin fellow at the Manhattan Institute and president of the
Thomas B. Fordham Foundation. He served as assistant US secretary of Education
from 1985 to 1988.
GRAPHIC: ILLUSTRATION:
Showing an elephant juggling books on top of desk while balancing a ruler. BY
LYDIA HESS
LOAD-DATE: January 20, 1999