The federal government began subsidizing public education in the Elementary and Secondary Education Act in 1965. The initial justification for the act, as I recall it, was to equalize disparity in school funding that was a legacy of segregation. With funding came responsibility, however. The government was quickly sucked into the problem of fixing educational problems (as distinct from funding inequalities). Efforts to raise educational achievement led to creation of content standards and achievement goals, waves of reform of pedagogy, especially in math and the sciences, teaching incentives and standards, imposition of uniform pedagogy, teaching materials, and textbooks on classes, imposition on teachers of accountability for student performance, mainstreaming of special needs children, supplemental teaching for challenged students, meal programs to remedy nutritional deficiency that interfered with learning, among many programs.
Yet, with all of these programs, aggregate student achievement levels have risen slowly and often not at all for the targeted students. Why? The liberal paradigm is: fix the inadequacy of a government program with a new government program. But perhaps the problem is the solutions.
Perhaps the difficulty in raising student achievement is created by the government regulation of the class room. The regulations, together with unionization of teachers and political control of content, have transformed teaching from a profession to an occupation. They have stepped in between the teacher and the student, preventing the teacher from inventing and applying instructional techniques and materials for the needs of the student as she perceives them. Undoubtedly, this diminution of the freedom and creativity of the teacher is part of the reason that students don't prosper and new teachers leave the trade.
Think by analogy to the unionization and regulation of the manufacturing shop floor in the auto industry. It has been unbelievably difficult for the auto companies to increase efficiency and quality of manufacture of automobiles. Because of the thousands upon thousands pages of union regulations and government regulations of manufacturing, the companies have little control over the details of manufacturing their own products. No wonder they have become uncompetitive. Perhaps unionization and regulation of the class room has the same result? Perhaps solution is to remove government "solutions"?
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