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The American Voice Institute of Public Policy VIEWPOINT

The Future of Education Reform

June 12 , 2001

When President Bush ran for office, one of his most important campaign promises was to address the poor state of public education in American schools. With report after report describing how American students fall far beyond other nations academically, citizens across the nation were eager to see education reform. Once in office, the President, along with First Lady Laura Bush, spoke throughout the country about the changes needed in American education. At the same time, Congress began work on an education bill. Tragically, the House of Representatives' version of an education reform bill on May 24, 2001, entitled the "No Child Left Behind Act," (H.R. 1) promised little improvement for schools. Instead of changing the American educational system to one where local municipalities and parents have a direct influence on curriculum and individual schools, the House bill continues to follow along Washington's same old pathway of spending more money on education and hoping that it would increase academic achievement.

During President Clinton’s eight years in office, the Department of Education's budget increased 57 percent. Despite the steady rise in educational costs, the achievement gap between middle and upper income schools and minority schools never budged. Last year alone, the Department of Education had a record increase of 18 percent over the year before. This could be expected of a politician with a liberal socialistic agenda. But when a Republican-controlled House was given the opportunity to implement real education reform in a bill that the President would undoubtedly sign, what did the House of Representatives do? It increased education spending by an additional 29 percent in one year ($24 billion increase for 2020) – more than half of the increase during President Clinton’s entire time in office.

If the increases in educational spending would guarantee an improvement in schools, the added costs could be better justified, even encouraged to help the United States catch up to foreign nations exceeding America’s level of educational achievement. However, there are a number of studies that support the concept that increased spending will not increase academic achievement. One study, while comparing various schools to the U.S. average achievement, found that inner city public schools typically spent at least 50 percent more per pupil than middle and upper income public schools and were the greatest failures. In addition, the federal role in education has also increased. With each new spending increase, a little more local autonomy has been eliminated while the country becomes more and more dependent upon the federal government. The President's proposal to give greater control to the states over the spending of federal education dollars was eliminated in the House's education bill along with school choice in the form of vouchers. Despite the proven statistics that states with the highest level of educational freedom produced the higher scores in student standardized tests, the latest House bill quickly discarded any form of vouchers for charter schools and homeschooling from the legislation.

Although politicians in Washington do not offer school choice to the parents of America, a 2000 Heritage Foundation survey of the members of Congress found that 40 percent of the House members and 49 percent of the Senate members believed in school choice for their own family having sent at least one of their children to a private school.

The "No Child Left Behind Act," will continue to produce children of minimum competencies because schools will be forced to comply with federal standards in order to receive funding. How long can this nation continue the current trend of declining achievement because of a failed education system before it is no longer able to provide skilled workers for a twenty-first century work force?

The federal government should not increase its role in education, but devolve its power and funding over education. The deteriorating performance of this nation's schools as well as the declining academic achievement of its students can only be reversed by fundamental reform centered around school choice and deregulation

 

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