An Armistice Proposal
Seizing the middle ground in the war over education.
We are living in an age of uncompromising ideological certainty. From the debt ceiling to Medicare to labor relations to most other hot-button issues, the major players choose a side and never give an inch, even if that means governments shut down, bills don’t get paid, or people lose their jobs and their health care.
I became politically aware just as this phenomenon was picking up speed in the mid-1990s, when the rise of cable news and the Internet accelerated the movement toward extreme partisan gamesmanship that had been growing since the Nixon presidency. But instead of being inured or resigned to it, I am completely exhausted and fed up with it.
Looking back at the last twenty years, it’s difficult to find any significant national challenges that have been confronted and solved. As soon as any issue is raised for debate, a pitched (and predictable) dogmatic battle ensues, and the same tired and trite arguments are brought out to provoke maximum outrage on both sides. The lines are drawn before careful consideration can even begin, and our elected representatives shrink back into their corners, nurturing the die-hards in their camps lest they be branded as traitors to the cause.
Not surprisingly, that dynamic has infiltrated the question of how to improve education in our country, which includes all of the elements certain to inspire factional ferocity: public spending, labor unions, race, class, urban versus rural culture, national versus state control, and, of course, our children.
It’s not that the passion is unwarranted. Indeed, this issue is critical to our future. The problem is that we have made little progress over the last few decades; the debate has become repetitive and is driving us in circles.
As with most issues of great public concern, the way forward will only come through brave compromise. Strongly held beliefs are nothing new, but political paralysis used to be the exception, not the rule. When this country was founded, no single interest group achieved its own idea of perfection. But the result was a nation that is as close to perfect as any that has existed in history.
Therefore, with the hope of inspiring a fresh dialogue that leads to measurable movement toward an education system worthy of the richest and most powerful nation on earth, here are a few observations that may chart a middle course here in the South and beyond:
1. Teachers are neither sinners nor saints
How you feel about teachers usually depends on the image you conjure up when you think of one. It might be the lazy, mediocre instructor pulling down a nice salary who gets summer vacations and is untouchable because he or she has tenure and the protection of a strong union. Or it could be the underpaid, overworked educator who changes the lives of some of his or her students but who is unfairly penalized for working in a school where overall test scores will never adequately represent his or her teaching abilities.
There is truth in both of these profiles. The main problems are that we are never going to attract the best talent to the teaching profession if we don’t offer competitive salaries (with combat pay for working in the most challenging areas) and we won’t retain the best talent or public confidence if we maintain a tenure system that rewards mediocrity and avoids accountability.
Long gone are the days when educated, dynamic women were teachers at low salaries because they didn’t have access to other jobs. Education in this country will not improve until teachers themselves are among the best educated and most energetic workers, and that requires better pay in exchange for performance measures.
2. Reform is not inherently good or evil
The school-reform movement (charter schools, vouchers, etc.) is either designed to destroy the public schools or provide the only viable alternative to them, depending on who is giving the opinion.
Once again, neither perspective is totally without merit, but it would be more helpful if people would stop singling out particular policy ideas as panaceas or poisons. A charter school can fail as miserably as any regular public school, depending on how it is managed, so it shouldn’t be afforded any special considerations (including the ability to cherry-pick good students and/or dismiss undesirable ones—something a regular public school cannot do). However, there is no reason to oppose reform at face value. Unfortunately, most reform provisions these days are not fairly or objectively evaluated. They are either pushed through by pro-reform adherents who do not subject them to the same rigorous measurements as public schools, or they are dismissed and defeated by anti-reform activists without a reasonable hearing.
3. Rural vs. urban: A distinction without a difference
In most Southern state legislatures (and probably in most other states, too), there is a divide between rural and urban representatives that borders on mutual contempt. The rural schools resent the amount of money that is directed toward urban districts (often for desegregation efforts), while the urban advocates think the rural schools are unreasonable for demanding comparable funding for fewer and more dispersed students. The reality is that urban and rural school districts have the same problems: crumbling infrastructure, a dearth of good teachers (see above), and an exodus of students from the middle class and above. These schools may confront different specific challenges, but they are fundamentally faced with the same burden: educating poor children with inadequate resources.
4. Highs and lows of higher education
We love our state colleges here in the South, at least when it comes to football and other sports. But the primary purpose of public higher education seems to be getting lost in all other respects. State appropriations to universities have been steadily declining over the last two decades, which puts pressure on the schools to raise money in other ways: They accept more students to get the per-pupil allocations, and in the process they lower admission standards and end up spending more on remediation, which relieves the pressure on secondary schools but helps to perpetuate underperformance there. They raise tuition, eliminating college as an option for some prospective students, while forcing others into debt that severely limits their prospects after graduation. (If they graduate, which is a fifty-fifty proposition at most public universities in the South.) They try to justify their existence to short-sighted politicians by touting their role in “economic development” (as if education were not a noble purpose on its own) and cutting programs in the liberal arts in favor of business-related degrees. At this point, it is worthwhile to revisit the higher-education experience as an end in itself. Should everyone be encouraged to go to college if the product is overpriced and watered-down?
The war over education will be interminable as long as each ideological camp demands total victory. Time is not on our side, however, if we are truly serious about maintaining our global competitiveness and recognizing our obligations to the young people being underserved by the current system.
Ultimately, the future of our country will be determined by the ability of interest groups to put aside their religious devotion to an agenda in service to the greater good. Like most profoundly educational moments, it will be exhausting, humbling, exhilarating, and transcendent—for all of us.
Art credit: “US” (2007), an installation at the Telfair Museum, Savannah, by Marcus Kenney.
