Issue Page

Why Quality Education?

Scott Laczay — Sat, 11 Nov 2006 22:40:05 -0800

America has led the world in educating its citizens. It championed universal public schooling. It was among the first to mandate kindergarten-to-12th-grade education. With the GI Bill and the land grant colleges, America became the first country to make college affordable and widely available. This commitment to learning is the foundation of America’s democracy and of its prosperity.

In the modern global economy, learning is more important than ever – for individual and national economic success, for individual fulfillment and for responsible citizenship. Good schools are where America’s future takes shape; if we want that future to remain bright, America's education system must keep pace with the challenges of a global economy, advancing technology and increasing cultural interactions.

College education is especially important in today's economy. As America has moved away from manufacturing to a technology- based economy, access to quality higher education, now more than ever, is the difference between getting a job that can support a middle-class family and being stuck at the bottom of the economic ladder.

The Challenge

Scott Laczay — Sat, 11 Nov 2006 22:40:04 -0800

Public schools educate 90 percent of the nation’s children, according to the Center for Public Education. Most of the funding comes from state and local sources, but these resources are increasingly hard-pressed to keep up with growing needs. The public education system faces a crisis that demands a national response.

Record numbers of students will enter school over this decade. Many will go to schools that are overcrowded and in need of repair. One in three schools now use trailers for classrooms. The demand for teachers is rising, even as half of new teachers leave the profession within five years.

More than six in 10 high school graduates go on to college, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But neither family incomes nor college grants have kept pace with soaring tuition costs. Students and parents take on higher levels of debt and scramble for part-time jobs. Some students take time off from school to earn money and many drop out along the way. Those that graduate are burdened with ever-higher levels of debt that take years to pay off. The large burden of college debt with high-interest loan rates prevents many graduates from entering public service careers, such as teaching, and further exacerbates the problems of the public school system.

At a time when a good education has never been more important, we’re increasingly failing to provide even the basics. More affluent families send their kids to better schools and can pay to supplement their educations. But working and poor families don’t have that capacity – and increasingly their children are denied equal opportunity from the start.

Conservative Failure

Scott Laczay — Sat, 11 Nov 2006 22:40:03 -0800

For conservatives, public schools are a red flag—bloated, bureaucratic, tax-consuming institutions. Their first priority is to privatize public education, just as they would privatize Social Security. They push private school vouchers—seeking public funds for tuition to private and religious schools—even though numerous studies prove that private schools are not inherently better than well-run public schools, and several funded as a result of Bush administration and conservative congressional initiatives have done significantly worse.

Conservatives starve investment in public schools, arguing that too much is being spent already. Although they profess to believe in the free market, they reject the need to give teachers salaries competitive with what they would earn in the private market and instead push for breaking teachers’ unions.

The Bush administration exemplifies the consequences of conservative education policy. The No Child Left Behind Act mandated testing to identify failing schools, but Bush broke his promise to provide enough resources to remedy the problems of those schools. Despite the fact that tuition at four-year public colleges has risen an average of 37 percent since he came into office, Bush broke his promise to raise the level of Pell grants, the primary federal scholarship program, and instead cut $12 billion from the student loan program. Instead, Bush and the Republican Congress offered government supports to a college loan industry that has led to huge profits for lenders but unprecedented levels of debt for students.

Progressive Solution

Scott Laczay — Sat, 11 Nov 2006 22:40:02 -0800

Education has to become a real national priority. "No Child Left Behind" was great as a slogan coined by the Children’s Defense Fund. It is a disaster as a national education law. The rapidly increasing cost of a college education precludes many potential students from pursuing a degree. Progressives must unite Americans to meet the challenges facing our education system in the 21st century. We must make progress in several key areas.

More Learning Time: All children should enjoy quality pre-school and kindergarten learning and socialization, and students from first through 12th grades should have meaningful after-school education opportunities. The school year should move from the agricultural calendar of the 19th century to a calendar that maximizes learning.

Quality Teachers and Principals: All students should be taught by skilled educators. Every teacher and principal should receive high-quality training before he or she enters school, have on-the-job training opportunities, and be rewarded for excellence. If we hope to retain the best teachers, we need to pay them more and provide them with career opportunities. Our best educators should receive financial incentives to teach in those schools with the most at-risk children.

An Equal Education: Every student should have an opportunity to learn. Adequate health care and nutrition, and an end to the savage inequality in school funding, are keys to providing an equal education.

A Rigorous Education: Every student should be provided a first-rate education with demanding curriculum standards in core subject areas. Voluntary national standards can help parents hold schools accountable.

Affordable College: Every child must know that he or she can afford a college education. No student should be priced out of the college or advanced technical training they need to succeed in the modern economy. Tuition rates, grant aid and loan forgiveness must be readjusted to make college affordable.

Progressives should challenge every sector of society and every level of government to make education a top priority. Doubling federal expenditures on education – from 3 percent to 6 percent – should be adopted as a near-term goal, even as states and localities are challenged to invest more. Of course, we should require that districts are spending money wisely and in accordance with best practices.

America’s future depends on how well we educate our children. To provide every child with a world-class education we need to start sooner, set standards higher and provide opportunities for advanced training and college for all. We need to attract and retain skilled teachers. We need to restructure the school day and the school year. Money alone won’t solve the problems facing our schools, but a policy of reforms without resources mocks the scope of our challenge.

Elevator Speech

Scott Laczay — Sat, 11 Nov 2006 22:40:01 -0800

America has long been heralded as the land of opportunity, and public education has always been essential to that promise.

Historically, among the first things settlers in a new town did was to build a school and hire a teacher. After World War II, the GI Bill helped educate a generation and fueled the prosperity that built America’s middle class. Now in the global economy, education is more important than ever. We need to keep faith with our public responsibility to educate our children so they can go as far as their talent and hard work can take them.

But we aren’t providing the basics—early child nutrition and health care, preschool, small classes, a school year that maximizes learning, skilled teachers, after-school programs, school buildings that aren’t dangerous to children's health and affordable college.

We have to make investing in education a top priority at every level of government. Instead, the Bush administration and Congress have hacked education funding—while pushing tens of billions of dollars in tax breaks that will go largely to wealthy Americans and corporations. Investing in quality schools is far more important to our prosperity, our democracy and our decency than more top-end tax breaks and corporate tax dodges. Far more economic vitality will come from good schools and affordable colleges than from the scraps that fall from boardroom tables.