The Public Policy/Education: The Dud of Campaign '88

...Bush and Dukakis have not revealed great differences in their thinking...

...Bush "should work with the NEA if he is going to be the education President," said Dukakis-backer Mary Futrell, but "to date he has not responded to any of our invitations...

...and bringing moribund school districts to account...

...Thanks to Ronald Reagan and Bennett and their well-publicized tussles with the education establishment, it has begun to dawn on most voters that what is good for the professionals is not necessarily good for the country...

...The point has been underlined by a dozen crusading governors whose boldest initiatives have not infrequently been done in by their states' teacher unions and other establishment forces...

...The establishment's effort includes the possibility of radical modification or repeal of the boldest reforms that states have undertaken in the past five years...

...It is, in short, a campaign that deserves to be quashed...

...It was a golden moment for Bush toadopt language he's been using in other contexts and to say, "Damn right I haven't, and here's why...

...Alternative certification," for example, was twisted into the hiring of untrained or unqualified teachers...

...In his keynote address, New Jersey Governor Tom Kean—who has done noble battle against his state's education establishment—came down squarely on the side of the general public...

...The profession would naturally like to fuzz up the distinction once more, to depict itself as the guardian of the public's interest in quality education...

...By emphasizing such concerns as teacher empowerment, school restructuring, and experimentation...

...Save for some impassioned lines about "values" education during the first debate, Bush has lately said practically nothing about education per se, though his staff has continued to flog the half-dozen new federal initiatives set forth earlier...

...Also on the agenda was the much-publicized release of a public opinion poll on various education issues, the kind of poll in which careful phrasing of the questions and careless phrasing of the results produce findings that serve the interests of the sponsors...

...Indeed, the candidates' failure is nowhere more evident than in their tendency to "federalize" education...

...But nothing of the sort has happened...

...Yet it's turning out to be the biggest dud of Campaign '88...

...At the very least, it needs to be exposed...

...So did the Vice President in his acceptance speech, in the few sentences he devoted to education...

...Education lobbyists swarm in Atlanta," reported one newspaper...

...As President, Michael Dukakis would go along with the education establishment's new campaign to regain control of education reform...

...One would suppose that any national candidate fancying himself the "education President" would see that...

...Their unions held daily rallies, briefings, and strategy sessions for delegates, furnished them with information kits, and, at least in the case of the AFT, equipped them with beepers so they could be contacted at their leaders' convenience...

...Instead, the nation finds itself this fall with the educationists' stealthy quest for control going unremarked, while the highly visible presidential contest, on those rare occasions when it pays any attention to education, settles for side-issues, federal gimmicks, and hot air...

...This remains, nonetheless, a campaign to beware...

...Yet that self-same education establishment is now moving to regain control of key education decisions, after half a decade in which the impetus for Chester E. Finn, Jr...

...T here was an easy symbiosis between these two union conclavesand the Democratic convention a few weeks later...

...This was done, explained Carroll, "so the party will not be identified with being run by special interest groups...

...They voted to seek protection for gay and lesbian teachers...

...I think you would find 'that] Mr...

...Bush and a Bush Administration would not blast the education community for failures," one notes, "but rather would look for ways to try to help it to do better...

...Displaying what today passes for political acumen, the unions cooperated in a tactical decision to keep the Democratic platform short and general...

...Whose interests are at stake, anyway, those of the young people attending American schools and colleges or those of the institutions' employees and managers...

...Most of what they've had to say has either been pure rhetoric (wanting to be an "education President") or predictable calls for new federal programs...

...In a recent Gallup poll, for example, 78 percent of those surveyed indicated worry over "the quality of U.S...

...allowing families to choose their schools...

...Who in the education system is properly held accountable for results—and towhom...

...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR NOVEMBER 1988 39...

...This campaign would wrest authority from lay policy-makers and hand it to educationists, boost education spending without increasing accountability, and thrust many more substantive decisions into the domain of collective bargaining...

...Ten percent of all delegates and alternates were NEA or AFT members (with the unions covering their travel up to $1,000 apiece...

...Half a continent away, in San Francisco, the AFT was doing practically the same thing...

...Bush, in turn, has shrewdly faulted Dukakis for the latter's now-notorious "pledge of allegiance veto," which is a sort of para-education issue—but which certainly helps document Dukakis's reluctance to act against the political preferences of teachers and their unions even when a larger public interest is at stake...

...Quality, standards, accountability, choice, and other concepts familiar from the Reagan-Bennett years were reiterated...

...reform has come from elected officials, business leaders, and other laymen against strong professional resistance...

...Recent state-mandated reforms, such as Arkansas's teacher competency test, New Jersey's alternate certification program, and Tennessee's teacher career ladder, were vigorously denounced by NEA executive director Don Cameron...

...What's more, the "grassroots" prescription will only work if the "building-level" educators to be empowered are able and eager...

...An opportunity was thus missed to take up the big questions, to stress the central differences, and to make plain to the nation that the Republican party does not want the schools turned over to the employees...

...He is our Nelson Mandela," proponents said...

...Second, that little is known today about how to boost the skills and knowledge of school children, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds, and accordingly a hundred different education bulbs should be planted in the hope that someday, somewhere, something will bloom...

...Yet which of the candidates has rushed forward with his diagnosis of the problems of American education much less offered his proposals to solve them...

...This is, moreover, a curiously anti-intellectual campaign, one that spurns clear evidence from research and experience in favor of trial-and-error...

...When national candidates shun such fundamental but politically tricky subjects and address themselves instead to banal generalizations and microscopic programs, they waste the potential of the education issue...

...paying principals and teachers according to their effectiveness...

...To judge by this summer's NEA and AFT conventions, however, both of them held during the July 4 weekend, these people should not be allowed to get away with it...

...The Vice President dutifully completed the NEA's candidate questionnaire...

...Indeed, the big news coming out of this summer's teacher conventions was the convergence of the two unions in most areas...

...Shanker calls his experimental plan "schools within schools," but it rests on the same principles: that true reform comes from empowerment of teachers, from a decentralized approach, and from trying a lot of different things...

...T f education never really quickens as an election issue this year, despite the deep concern and boundless enthusiasm voiced by the candidates, it won't be for lack of public interest...

...Meanwhile, convention planners did not allow Bennett's hard-hitting speech to be scheduled for prime time...

...T hough far less visible than the 1 presidential contest, this campaign to return education to the educators is much more consequential for the future quality of education than are any federal programs the candidates may debate...

...A few hundred perhaps, but what about the other seventy-odd thousand, many shackled by union contracts, mediocre faculties, omnipotent janitors, gross indiscipline, and former football coaches in the principal's office...

...They liked it when Dukakis said he favored an educational venture capital fund to improve teacher pay...

...As for the proposition that true school reform comes from the grassroots and that governors and legislators should therefore butt out, this would mean abandoning the bold changes that no one but elected officials can make: abolishing tenure laws...

...Some obvious reasons suggest themselves...

...The national elections weren't the only matter preoccupying the NEA...

...Said leaders also hosted posh receptions for delegates, candidates, and party big-shots...

...Given all this reform-bashing, how could the NEA still pass itself off as favoring excellence...

...Except for a weird new college loan scheme for middle-class students, the details of which his staff has been unable to explain, the Massachusetts governor has settled for blaming Bush for earlier (and largely unsuccessful) efforts by the Reagan Administration to reduce federal education spending...

...was assistant secretary of education until October 1, when he rejoined the faculty of Vanderbilt University as professor of education and public policy and director of the Educational Excellence Network...

...Dukakis has been about as distant...

...Bush aides make no bones about it...

...One resolution urged counseling for students concerning their "sexual orientation...

...That is why the candidates' amiable credulity toward them poses acute risks to the quality of American education...

...In recent months the leaders of the profession have done a turnaround and are now trying to pass themselves off as sophisticated engineers of improvement...

...And it is surprisingly romantic, full of late-sixties talk of power-sharing, autonomy, self-determination, and group decision-making and just as full of that era's contempt for authority, standards, and majoritarian politics...

...But Jackson brought them to their feet when he said that teacher pay should be doubled...

...The major players, of course, are the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), led by Mary Futrell and Albert Shanker, respectively, who are spearheading what they term a "second reform movement" based on a pair of seductive half-truths: First, that effective schools cannot be created by "top down" stratagems such as executive edicts or legislative mandates, but must instead be cajoled into existence from the bottom up, by "empowering" those at the "building level" to make the crucial decisions about what will happen at that level...

...And while they did not formally endorse Dukakis—the AFT having agreed not to preempt its parent AFL-CIO's August 24 endorsement—they heard from him and Jesse Jackson by satellite hookup...

...For all their allure in stressing diversity and local control, the problem with those propositions is that, for one thing, much is already known about the basic elements of good schools...

...Just as importantly, both candidates are handling the education establishment, especially the two major teacher unions, with kid gloves...

...These are the sorts of education issues that national leaders ought to address: who should be making the big decisions, governors and legislators or teachers and principals...

...Rhetorical deference was given to the states, localities, and parents (though the detailed programmatic suggestions in the platform echoed the new federal initiatives that Bush had previously urged, including an experimental school district scheme much like the NEA's...

...At their convention in August, by contrast, the Republicans crafted an endless platform full of specifics...

...Futrell termed her union's success in stopping the move to require teachers to pass competency tests an "organizational slam dunk...

...AFT delegates also endorsed a new $8 billion federal "urban school advancement" program...

...But what made the Democratic plank truly remarkable is that it said nothing whatsoever about educational quality, standards, or content...

...Of how many public schools can this honestly be said today...

...The NEA surprised nobody when at its New Orleans convention it officially endorsed Michael Dukakis, no doubt responding to Futrell's witty line about "a President who will invest more to make every American child a star than he will to fill God's heaven with star wars...

...Barely defeated (in a rare roll call vote) was a demand to free Elmer 38 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR NOVEMBER 1988 "Geronimo" Pratt, a former Black Panther now serving a sentence in San Quentin for murder...

...In other words, by endorsing the campaign to regain control...

...Accordingly, delegates agreed to Futrell's plan to create an "experimental district" in every state...

...Shanker was as blunt: when the platform ends up with lots of specific pledges, programs, and promises, he explained, "it allows the Republicans to say, 'Look what they promised to their groups.' You add it up and add it to the deficit and you come up with a loser...

...It was as if the nation had never been declared "at risk...

...These teachers weren't there merely as individuals, either...

...After savaging the Reagan Administration, she characterized the Massachusetts governor as the "most electable and desirable candidate," one who "understands and embodies the link between education and the American dream...

...We cannot yet be sure whether George Bush would resist...

...This might be expected from Governor Dukakis, but why has George Bush opted to placate the educationists...

...A teacher-delegate from Utah told the press that Bush had agreed to meet with Futrell this fall...

...Instead of refining and making use of proven strategies, we are in effect told to bide our time while the newly empowered teachers conduct their experiments in self-government...

...They heard Shanker discourse at considerable length on the failures of the "excellence movement...

...But the kid gloves stayed on...

...These teacher-dominated "learning laboratories" are to be designed and developed by means of a "consensus among stakeholders" that is based on the principle of "bottom up" reform...

...First, no matter what their party platforms say, Messrs...

...Delegates took time to adopt dozens of resolutions on every sort of issue, from international interdependence and nuclear freezes to multilingualism, homelessness, and the death penalty...

...The few teacher unionists present were said to be grieved (the NEA fielded forty-three Republican delegates this year, the AFT eight), not so much by the platform as by the sense that they weren't being courted...

...They were a "pervasive presence," the NEA's Howard Carroll boasted...

...Here we have an authentic nationwide issue, an area in which ideas matter and where leadership counts—a topic that for all its portentousness does not have to be boring, as William Bennett has shown...