PERSPECTIVE ON SCHOOLS : The ‘Education President’ Stumbles : Bush is leaning on discredited or political remedies. Teaching deserves research funds as much as farming does.

For someone who has devoted more than 30 years to research on education in the United States, as I have, George Bush’s blueprint for reforming our educational system generates a great deal of ambivalence. On the positive side, I am glad to see education put in the spotlight and am encouraged by the emphasis on innovation and experimentation. Most of the other proposals, however, have little to do with our real educational problems and some of them may do more harm than good.

Let’s consider some of Bush’s key proposals in light of what is currently known (or not known) from educational research and practice.

The testing proposal is deficient on at least two counts. First, the list of subjects to be tested seems to have been drawn up with little or no attention to what our most pressing educational needs really are. For example, a fundamental goal of any education system in a democracy should be the development of citizenship. Democratic systems of government are based on two fundamental principles: that the citizenry be well informed, and that it be involved. Judging from the results of recent election campaigns, it seems safe to conclude that many adult Americans are not very well informed about political issues and most are not even involved in the electoral process. Here we have irrefutable evidence that the very system of government on which our country was founded is not working very well. Clearly, the schools must shoulder some of the responsibility for this problem, and it is troubling that the list of subjects to be tested excludes civics and American government.

A more basic problem with the testing plan is the proposed method. The reasoning behind the proposal to give standardized tests to all students in three different grades is presumably that the testing process itself will motivate schools to teach, and students to learn, these subjects. If mere standardized testing really had such an effect, we would have the best-educated citizenry in the world, since we give more standardized tests than any other country.

Properly designed and operated, a national testing program could conceivably strengthen teaching and learning in our schools. One major improvement over traditional methods, for example, would be to test and retest the same individuals at least once a year, to provide a measure of growth and learning. Such “longitudinal” assessments can not only gauge the progress of individual students but also help determine which approaches to teaching are most and least effective. There are many other changes in traditional testing methods that might also enhance learning. Indeed, it would have been much more reassuring if Bush had called for reforms in the way we use tests rather than merely advocating more testing.

Another major recommendation in the Bush reform package is to expand the concept of “choice.” As far as I know, this proposal is political and ideological and has absolutely no educational basis. There is nothing in the research literature or in our recent education experience to suggest that implementing this proposal would improve our educational system, and there is some reason to believe that it could make things worse.

The proposal is apparently based on the free-market idea that giving parents a freer choice among schools will motivate the weaker schools to strengthen their programs to avoid losing students. That this idea could actually make things worse is suggested by the fact that the considerable degree of choice that some parents already enjoy has caused many public schools to get worse rather than better.

What do parents do now when they believe the local public school is inadequate? If they have the means, they can send their children to private schools. Or, if there are “magnet” or other innovative schools in the public system, they can send their child to these (usually superior) public schools. And what happens when the demand for places in the magnet school exceeds the number of places? The magnet school becomes “selective,” a process that inevitably favors the children from the better educated and more economically advantaged families.

Indeed, choice inevitably favors children from such families, not only because of their greater economic resources but also because their parents are usually more conscious of the importance of school quality to their children’s development.

A similar choice process operates with teachers when there are wide gaps in the perceived quality of schools: The better teachers gravitate toward the better schools.

Since the Bush plan shows no recognition of the need for additional educational research and evaluation, it implicitly assumes that we already know everything we need to know about how to improve the system. The fact is that we remain woefully ignorant about many aspects of effective schooling, teaching and learning. This knowledge gap exists in part because federal investment in educational research has been minuscule, especially when compared to research in fields such as science, agriculture, defense and health care.

How is it that the Administration believes that we need lots of money to strengthen national defense, science, agriculture, health care and foreign policy, but we can somehow achieve significant educational reforms on the cheap? Our chief executive’s desire to be the “education President” would be more believable if it were accompanied by a more substantial commitment of resources.