Faulty Predictions, Flawed Diagnosis:
A Response to William Bennett’s "The State and the Future of American Education"

 

by
Gregory A. Smith

 

Center for Education Research, Analysis, and Innovation
School of Education
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
PO Box 413
Milwaukee WI 53201
414-229-2716

 

May 31, 2000

 

 

CERAI-00-15

A Response to William Bennett’s"The State and the Future of American Education"

By Gregory A. Smith
May 31,2000

In a March 13, 2000 speechon "The State and Future of American Education" that the HeritageFoundation has recently been circulating, William Bennett repeats themes hebrought to the nation’s attention during his years as Secretary ofEducation during the Reagan Administration: schools fail to educate largenumbers of American children, they are inefficient, their failure threatens theAmerican economy, they promote immorality, and they constitute a publicmonopoly. School choice in the form of vouchers or charters and the adoption ofnational standards and testing continue to be Bennett’s reforms ofchoice. Added to his list of remedies is the 21st century potential of theInternet: a new curriculum he is helping to develop and market that will enableparents and interested schools " . . . to teach, tutor, and test theirchildren with a comprehensive, world-class, on-line curriculum, whose design Iwill oversee." He asserts that technology venture capitalists believeschools are a domain ready for further development, and they are poised to act.1

What is curious aboutBennett’s observations is that his rhetoric is virtually identical towhat it was in the 1980s, even though the nation’s schools have beenengaged for more than a decade in an effort to establish many of the reforms headvocated. Although he points to examples of enhanced student performance inTexas, Florida, and Chicago, the overall level of student achievement in thecountry as a whole remains unacceptable to him. This is despite the fact that,according to his own report, 47 states have adopted standards for reading andmath achievement, and 20 states have passed legislation allowing for greaterschool choice.

Also perplexing, in lightof the warnings of those who pronounced our education system a disastrousfailure less than two decades ago, is the fact that the nation in 2000 is inthe midst of the longest period of economic growth in U.S. history. The centralclaim of "A Nation at Risk" -- the landmark 1983 study that for manykicked off the education reform wave that has consumed much of thenation’s energies since, was that poor school performance wouldjeopardize U.S. productivity. Bennett attempts to wish this disparity away byclaiming that people learn outside of school the skills and knowledge they needto perform on the job and that an influx of skilled professionals from othercountries has offset poorly trained American workers. He ignores entirely therole America’s system of higher education might play in this process andthe fact that it is the envy of the world. Also ignored is the robustproportion of American students who, regardless of their supposedly inadequateK-12 education, are able to take advantage of this opportunity in ways that significantlyenhance the contribution they are able to make to our collective life.

What seems to underlie Mr.Bennett’s remarks is not a close examination of the actual state ofAmerican schools but a deep disregard for any form of public education at all.This becomes especially apparent in his inclusion of a number of anecdotesregarding patently immoral behavior of a small number of teachers and students.Implying that this behavior is common rather than exceptional, Bennett suggeststhat schools are guilty of corrupting minors.

This kind of hyperbole isaimed at nothing less than delegitimizing the institution of public education,a necessary step if more and more people are going to invest in the offeringsof the market in which Bennett himself is now participating. By turningeducation into little more than another commodity, however, Bennett and hiscolleagues at the Heritage Foundation risk doing to education what the markethas done to medical care: transform it into an institution that provides exceptionalservice to those with money and little support or care for people unable toafford the increasingly expensive insurance policies that undergird the entirehealth industry edifice.

Near the end of his speech,Bennett says: "Once people get used to choosing their own education systemand paying for it, the old methods and the controversies surrounding thembecome irrelevant." The operative phrase here is "paying forit," the long-standing strategy for perpetuating social discrimination andmaintaining privilege.

But is education nothingmore than a commodity? Few earlier societies would make this claim. Educationis that range of experiences that draw children into full membership in thehuman community. When it is distributed in a differential manner, the integrityof that community is itself threatened.

For the past 150 years,people have chosen to tax themselves to assure that public schools assist inthe process of integrating children into the increasingly complex and demandingeconomic and political institutions of modern societies. This is not to saythat public schools have succeeded in this mission, for clearly, education hasnot been distributed equally. Public education has, however, helped to weakenthe hold of social elites on the distribution of those goods and assured that abroader range of people have become able to participate in the shaping of ourcommon life. Relinquishing this process to market forces is a recipe forintensifying inequity and marginalizing the voices of those without the abilityto pay.

Mr. Bennett argues thatstandards and vouchers will provide more opportunities for populations thathave been underserved by public schools. Higher failure and dropout rates forpoor and minority students in places like Texas, 2coupled with thequestionable impact on student achievement of voucher experiments such as thatin Milwaukee, 3 suggest, however, that these appeals are largely aTrojan horse, aimed at winning support for a strategy that in the end willreduce opportunities and increase discrimination.

Public education is a workin progress. It has serious flaws, not the least of which is its tendency toperpetuate inequities in the broader society. Focusing on these flaws and thensubjecting schools to market forces are strategies aimed not at improvingpublic education but at supplanting it. This approach will exacerbate thegrowing rift between rich and poor and move our country even closer to theclass-based divisions that once led many of our ancestors to seek out the moreeconomically open and democratic possibilities of North America. Theconservatism espoused by William Bennett is aimed not at conserving thesepossibilities but at conserving the privileges of the few.

Endnotes

1. William J. Bennett,"The State, and Future of, American Education," Washington, D.C.:Heritage Foundation, March 2000. Available athttp://www.heritage.org/leadership/lectures/bennett.html

2. Donald B. Gratz,"High Standards for Whom?" Kappan 81:9 (May, 1999), p. 684.

3. John F. Witte, "TheMilwaukee Voucher Experiment: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly," Kappan81:( (September, 2000), pp. 59-64.