A Failing Nation

This week’s draconian cuts to the Department of Education are nothing to cheer about.

Among the less than cheerful aspects are the losses of livelihood and dignity experienced by those subject to the chainsaw. Unlike Trump’s claim about the neo-Nazi thugs at Charlottesville, there are not fine people on both sides of this issue. People who work to advance education are fine people. Trump and his Musky henchmen are despicable.

Exactly a month ago I wrote a piece titled “Go, Elon, Go.” He went.

I don’t retract the sentiments expressed therein, despite the bloodbath that ensued. The research funded through the Ed department and the useless uses of the mountains of data collected have done more harm than good.

Of course that’s not what Trumpettes and Musketeers intended. The inhibition of a data-driven policy mission is inadvertent. If not for their other nefarious intentions, I suspect that all these Magattes would continue to love data-driven, mechanistic approaches to education . . . if they loved anything about either education or children. Which they don’t.

It bears repeating: Decades of measuring, testing, prescribing, re-testing, analyzing, publishing and pontificating have done absolutely nothing to improve America’s public schools.

This is for many reasons, among them the fact that the methods prescribed and the mechanisms for delivering the prescriptions have almost nothing to do with how actual children learn. It is very much like taking a group of frail children and marching them down a long corridor of different kinds of scales, then wondering why the hell they don’t gain weight.

Ask good teachers whether the requirements of No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top, or Every Student Succeeds Act were of any value to their work. My guess is that most, if not all, would report that these massive boondoggles made their work more difficult.

I sincerely ask any teachers among my subscribers to address this assertion in a comment. I also encourage wide sharing of this post among educators so that they may also weigh in.

There are other Ed department functions of great value, particularly support for students with disabilities and meager Title I support for schools in the least advantaged communities.

But the forest is easily seen through the trees.

The cuts to education are: 1. An expression of stupid disdain for anything government does. 2. An effort, explicitly declared, to send education back to the states.

Yes, back to the states, where there are no pesky requirements and segregation and racial inequality are features, not bugs. Back to the states, where vouchers can benefit the affluent and restrict the choices of the less affluent to crappy schools looking for a buck. Back to the states, where state and local officials want schools to be very patriotic and very, very Christian.

A major talking point in education for decades has been the “We’re falling behind the rest of the world” mantra. This statistical argument is, somewhat humorously, employed by those on both sides of the Department of Education divide. One side argues that the Department of Education has struggled in its mission and we need a stronger, better-funded federal effort if we are ever to catch up. The other side argues that the Department of Education has failed, so who needs it.

Both arguments are irrelevant. It is, excuse the trite but apt metaphor, like arguing whether we need more deck chairs on the Titanic or should just toss them overboard while ignoring the iceberg entirely.

To the extent that any scores matter, and I would argue that they matter very little, low test scores are the consequence of a profoundly failing nation.

We have unforgivable income inequality, millions of children who lack adequate nutrition, parents who have two or more jobs to pay increasing rent costs, deep and steep-sloped pockets of poverty, and a coarse, all-consuming, and highly profitable popular culture that distracts children from learning. What could go wrong?

The United States is a sick country. The current administration is both a symptom of the national malaise and the cause of accelerating deterioration.

In that context, the fate of the Department of Education is just a sad sideshow.