American Conservative Approach to Education a Total Failure by its Own Criteria

When it came to the economy, the American right wing demanded a deregulated, privatized, union busting, low tax, me first, “hands off the wheel” form of crude capitalist economy. They got it and the results are in - an economic meltdown of historic proportions based on their greed. Regulators, fair taxers, liberals and social-democrats are now in the position of being able to say “we tried it your way from Reagan and Thatcher to Bush II. It is time to try what we want.”

What is interesting is that we have also been suffering under a right wing regime in education based on testing, NCLB, EQAO, FSA, charters and vouchers, teacher bashing, merit pay and cutbacks, over much the same period since Reagan’s ‘A Nation at Risk’ report and guess what? It has also been a disaster. The centrepiece of the American effort has been the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) ‘test and punish’ school system demanded by George W. Bush but we must say supported by what we can only call a naive Ted Kennedy and now Barak Obama. Obama wants changes but blowing up this system and starting over makes more sense.

One of the funny quirks of American politics is that conservative Republicans demand that ‘states rights’ be respected so that individual states can continue to do conservative things in the hinterland unencumbered by those effete liberals who inhabit both coasts. This was on display when the Deep South continued segregation long after a national consensus had moved against open racism. They defend states rights in education as well which has meant, for the most part, 50 state education systems just as Canada has 10 systems and resents any Ottawa interference at least from K-12. Each state has its own testing regime like Canada but there is one national test the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), run by the US Department of Education. The federal government has a Department of Education and an Education Secretary, Arne Duncan who does not employ one single classroom teacher. The US D of E basically gives out money the way a federal minister of health in Canada gives out money. The secretary also shares a ‘bully pulpit’ on education with the president.

The NAEP is often referred to as ‘the national report card’ since it is the only national test. State tests are often suspected of giving the results that governors or state legislatures want. Of course that would never happen in Canada. The NAEP is a standardized test itself so it must be taken with all the reservation we would apply to any test but it is rich and doubly ironic when conservative education can be condemned not only by international tests like PISA but also by their own national tests.

The headline from Fairtest, The National Centre for Fair and Open Testing says it all, “NAEP Proves NCLB a Failure, Billions Wasted on Test and Punish System”.

The key promise that sucked in liberals like Ted Kennedy early and still sucks in Barak Obama and Al Sharpton was that testing, merit pay, charters and the like would close the “Achievement Gap”. The Achievement Gap is that huge gap in educational results between social classes in reality but is usually described in racial terms as a White/Asian vs. Black/Hispanic gap. According to Fairtest, “NCLB is demonstrably unable to produce sustained and significant improvements even on tests of the two subjects on which it focuses reading and math.”

According to the NAEP there has been no dent in the achievement gap. Interestingly although states test results have improved the national results have stagnated causing many to go hmmmmm.

Age 13 reading scores are the same as the mid 90s; age 17 scores are lower than the levels from the late 80s. The Black/White gap in reading has widened by 2 points. The Hispanic/White gap has widened by 4 points. In math there has been a small decline for 17 year olds and no change for 13 year olds. At this rate it will take 166 years to close the achievement gap.

According to the Civil Rights Project at UCLA the basic assumptions of NCLB are not working and in fact making things worse on three counts, 1) there is no evidence that high stakes accountability works, it has not improved achievement and the sanctions have had no effect. 2) The NCLB law cannot identify the schools in danger of failing and has no ability, given the resources available to intervene effectively. 3) The law has failed to connect with educators who must implement it. Educators believe it is not realistic, misguided and counterproductive.

The UCLA Civil Rights Project accuses the NCLB pushers of being purveyors of “sound bite politics”. Although this approach has failed for a generation it may be kept since “there are those who derive either economic or political support from it”. Pathetic and contemptible comes to mind.