'EDUCATION REFORM" in Massachusetts is now seven years old. It has cost taxpayers more than $6 billion in increased state spending on public schools. It has enjoyed robust support from virtually the entire bay state political establishment. It has been championed by the teachers unions. It has been earnestly covered by the press. And it has failed.
After all these years of "reform," educational achievement is as pathetic as ever. The latest statewide exam scores confirm it. In nearly every grade and every subject tested, a majority of Massachusetts public school students either did poorly or failed outright. Among fourth-graders, 79 percent scored at the lowest levels in English and 63 percent did so in math. Forty percent of eighth-graders flunked math, 45 percent flunked science, and 49 percent flunked history. The number of 10th-graders failing was greater this year than last; a staggering 53 percent cannot solve even simple problems in math.
When the wretched scores were released, the state's education commissioner, David Driscoll, claimed to see in them proof "that we are on the right track." James Peyser, chairman of the Board of Education, said that what is needed is "the fortitude to stay the course." Similar sentiments were expressed a year ago — and a year before that, and a year before that. Like compulsive gamblers, Massachusetts officials are sure that if only they keep wagering more money, the big payoff is bound to come.
At the heart of education reform law is a belief that more dollars will buy more learning. But education spending in the United States, after adjusting for inflation, has soared — from $162 billion in 1982 to almost $300 billion in 1998. Going back even further, per-pupil spending in public schools exploded from $2,422 in 1960 to $6,943 in 1998 — a 187 percent rise. And all the while, public school achievement has worsened.
Recent illustration: the Third International Mathematics and Science Study. On tests administered to students in 41 countries, US high school seniors ranked at or near the bottom in every subject tested. That could have came as no surprise to the countless business executives and college administrators who annually spend billions of dollars on remedial training for high school graduates. Or the millions of parents who go into debt so their kids can attend private or parochial schools. Or the millions of others who have stampeded onto charter school waiting lists.
In 1973, according to Gallup, 58 percent of the public had a high level of confidence in the public schools. In 1999, that number is down to 36 percent. How much lower does it have to go before we open up the debate to the proposition that public education as we have known it — schools run by a government monopoly — has irremediably broken down?
In Massachusetts, the most damning indictment of education reform comes not from angry parents or dyspeptic columnists but from the Board of Education itself. How else to explain its decision last week to set the graduation standard, beginning in 2003, at 220 on the high school MCAS test — a single point above failing? The board adopted the standard by an 8-1 vote, and Commissioner Driscoll cheered the decision for its "fairness," saying it "allows the average kid to graduate."
What the state's educational overseers have announced, in other words, is this:
In the 11th year of education reform, Massachusetts will begin requiring students to prove their fitness to graduate. To get a diploma, high school seniors will have to be able to achieve at least near-failure on a test designed for 10th-graders. Moreover, they will be tested only on English and math; knowledge of science and history will not be required. And the bar will be set at this derisory level because expecting anything more would be unfair to "the average kid."
If, back in 1993, the sponsors of the education reform bill had offered that as their vision of where the public schools would be a decade down the road, they would have been laughed out the door. Senate President Thomas Birmingham was a key author of the law; if anybody should be appalled that the schools are still so awful, he should. He ought to be howling that the reform law has been betrayed, that students and parents are being cheated. He ought to be scolding his loyal allies, the teachers unions, reminding them that the goal of ed reform wasn't the money, it was better teaching. Yet Birmingham says nothing. Strange. Unless, of course, the goal of ed reform was the money.
True reform requires one thing above all: consequences for failure. In New York City, more than 21,000 public school students in grades 3, 6, and 8 were held back a grade this year because they couldn't do grade level work. In Massachusetts, by contrast, kids move up whether they perform at grade level or not. Those who bomb on the statewide tests suffer no penalty. (Neither do their teachers.) Then, when they get to 12th grade, they are told that doing poorly on a 10th-grade test is good enough for a diploma.
Where there is no price for failing, there is no incentive to succeed. Massachusetts thought it could fix incompetent public schools by flooding them with money. All it bought was more incompetence. After seven years and $6 billion, isn't it time to call a halt?
Jeff Jacoby is a columnist for The Boston Globe.
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