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Show HINCKLEY JOURNAL OF POLITICS SPRING 2001 Striking the Middle Ground on the Education Debate: The Overarching Question of What is Best for Our Children - Representative Jim Matheson, Utah's Second Congressional District INTRODUCTION Lately, for a politician to espouse the value of education is as downright American as loving your grandmother and watching baseball. In fact, there is probably not a single public servant who would not claim to believe that education is a high priority. Everyone believes that providing for our future requires the education of our children. However this widening emphasis on education at times creates ideological schisms between political parties and avoids the practical nature of what is being discussed. THE NATIONAL RHETORIC The national education debate right now is characterized by three major themes: choice, accountability, and flexibility. In many ways there is great consensus, and in many ways there is bitter partisanship over these three concepts. CHOICE Both political parties believe that there should be some form of school choice. No one thinks that every public school is a perfect fit for every child. Yet the form that school choice should take has great variation. President Bush has proposed a program where any child that is in a school receiving Title I funds under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (Title I funds are given to schools that serve high numbers of children in poverty) which is designated as "dangerous" or as "failing" be given the opportunity to transfer to another school. School transfers are to be financed by breaking apart the Title I funds given to the school, and giving a portion of them to each child to finance their education at another public school or private school, or even to finance tutoring programs. Educators believe that public funds should remain in public schools, and they should be targeted to the neediest of children. However, opportunities for public school choice, innovative charter schools and magnet school programs receive National Education Association (NEA) support. School choice characterizes the pattern of education debate: consensus on concepts, division on details. ACCOUNTABILITY A similar pattern is evolving in discussions about accountability. Everyone believes that schools should be accountable. No politician, educator, or public administrator would declare the value of funding failing programs; no one wants to put money into something, which does not work. The broadly accepted answer is accountability. President Bush defines accountability as yearly testing of all students in grades three through eight. Without testing educators do not know where a child is, they cannot provide needed remediation, and they cannot be held responsible for the results of their efforts. Test scores should be used as indicators of student progress, and schools failing to meet standards should lose funds, while rewards should be given to those who meet or exceed standards according to the President's plan. Others express concern about what they call "high stakes testing," the use of a single measure to evaluate students and make funding decisions. They decry the practice of "teaching to the test" in which all that occurs in schools is tailored to a single test. They insist that other forms of assessment are necessary. Again, what emerges is a broad difference in the details, despite agreement on the concept of accountability. FLEXIBILITY In the area of flexibility there is again an over-arching acceptance of the principle. Most bureaucrats would not design a program with impossible paperwork and hundreds of restrictions - on purpose. Everyone believes that local educators should have power to make decisions about what occurs in their classrooms and should be supported in providing the best possible education to each of their students. Yet, again the policy implications of these beliefs take very different forms. Some believe that there should be options for states showing high achievement on standardized tests to opt out of all federal program requirements. There should be no guidelines on how money is to be used, and instead it should all be left to the state's discretion. There is a movement to consolidate federal education programs into few funding streams, and then have limited requirements on how these funds are to 83 |