Finn Speaks

Proving once again (as if it were even necessary at this point) that when The Quick and the ED speaks, people listen, Fordham's Checker Finn dips his toe in the blogosphere for the first time, by calling foul on the "bizzare piggybacking and ahistoricism" of an upcoming Heritage Foundation event titled "25 Years After A Nation at Risk: Returning to President Reagan's Vision for American Education." The event description says:

When [A Nation At Risk] was released in 1983, President Reagan outlined a bold vision for reforming education. He called for increasing parental choice, limiting federal government involvement, and restoring state and local control in education. But conventional wisdom and education reforms have followed a different path over the past quarter-century – increasing federal authority and expanding government control of education.

As Finn notes, Reagan may have said some stuff about vouchers and whatnot when the report was originally released, but he quickly realized that A Nation at Risk advocated for a completely different agenda--an agenda that he then embraced, an agenda that in fact tracks fairly closely with the past quarter-century of education reforms that Heritage derides.

This is a good illustration of the deep philosophical division among right-of-center folks when it comes to the public schools. On the one hand, you've got the Heritage / Cato types who basically see public education as a gigantic, unreformable black hole exerting immense gravitational pull on the public treasury, a prime generator of demand for the taxation they hate above all else and a revenue source for the unions that are a close second. Thus: vouchers, privatization, abolishing the U.S. Department of Education, whatever.

Then there's the Fordham / Checker Finn / A Nation at Risk perspective, which also starts from a very critical view of the present public education system, but concludes that the answer lies in more rigorous standards and greater governmental accountability for results. There are elements of the basic libertarian / authoritarian divide here; Cato trusts in the magic of the market and parental choice, while Finn thinks the answer lies in more rigor, seriousness, professionalism, and tough accountability.

One of the major findings of A Nation at Risk, for example, was that high school students were taking a mish-mash of low-level courses that didn't prepare them for college or anything else. The report called for students to take a "new basics" curriculum -- four years of English, three years of math, three years of science, etc. The libertarian would leave this up to local schools and parents to decide, while others would say no, everyone needs to learn these things whether they like it or not, and it's the responsibility of society and schools to enforce these standards.

While there are some commonalities between the Heritage and Fordham approaches to education--suspicion of unions, good feelings toward choice-based reforms, and a general sense that the schools waste vaste amounts of money--there are also areas that are fundamentally irreconcilable, and it's silly to pretend otherwise.