There is no crisis in public education

After a decade of the nonsense of No Child Left Behind and its deeply flawed offspring, Race to the Top, I am waiting for one courageous politician to come out and say what has always been the case- There is no crisis in American public education.
Most likely, that will never happen. Any politician who defends public education is quickly derided as a tool of the teacher unions. All the while, elected officials on both sides of the aisle make names for themselves by criticizing public schools, and battling to carry the “reform” mantle.
It would be inaccurate to say that all is well in public education. We have serious problems. We have failing inner city schools, high dropout rates in some areas, and a standardized test culture that is not preparing our children to do anything but take more standardized test and is rapidly disabling their ability to master critical thinking skills.
That last serious problem, as you probably noticed, is a direct result of the so-called reformers and their concept of turning American public schools into business operations, notwithstanding the fact that the very business principles they insist will rescue our educational system are the ones that have left many American workers behind as their jobs were outsourced to other continents.
The most crucial “evidence” politicians cite as they urge draconian reform in our educational system is our low scores in comparison to other countries in such areas as math and science.
Seldom, if ever, do they mention that the comparison is being made between elite students in these other countries, since nearly all of them have winnowed out those who are not destined for higher education.
Public schools are being punished for following the truly American belief that all students, whether they are born with silver spoons in their mouths, or in an inner city crack house with two strikes against them, deserve a quality education.
Glory-seeking politicians, seeking to climb that next rung on the ladder of success, are pounding the public schools and teachers because we sincerely believe that all students should receive the best education possible whether they have IQs in the genius range or if they are barely functional.

Which of these other countries that are supposedly providing their children with a better education than the United States can claim such a democratic approach to education?

The biggest threat to American education is not teacher unions and tenure like those who would blow up our current system and replace it with a business model are insisting.

If the American educational system is falling apart, it is due to the dumbing down of teaching caused by a tunnel vision testing process that has taken the joy out of learning both for students and teachers.

Instead of teaching children to critically think and be able to handle the problems of tomorrow, we are providing them with neverending drills designed to get the students to score better on poorly-written standardized tests provided by companies which are making a killing on selling tests, test preparation materials, and even curriculum designed toward the tests (instead of offering tests that determine if you have mastered the elements in the curriculum).

No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top are now waving the carrot of billions of dollars in front of cash-strapped states to force them to move education even further in this direction. Unless you force schools to use failed business models and pay teachers based on standardized test results, you have no chance of getting the money. This is not the way to produce innovative results; this is a recipe for disaster.

Now is the time, before we go too far down this path, for intelligent, courageous politicians, if such a breed truly exists, to step forward and say what has been right before our eyes all along.

This country is not suffering because of a crisis in education. Our problem is a crisis of leadership.