Yesterday Kos threw down the gauntlet,
saying aloud about Dean Democrats what
some of us have suspected, that this is not only a reform movement seeking to dislodge the fossilized culture of consultants and cravenness from its grip on Washington, but an ideological movement seeking to transform the Democrats into the party of libertarian populism.
On many levels this makes sense, not least because the Republicans seem increasingly intent on becoming the party of
"big government conservatism."
But it implies not only a particular view of government, and the kinds of candidates Democrats should field, but a particular policy agenda, not all of which - evidenced by yesterday's dust up - all Democrats may be comfortable with at this point. It implies not only support for reproductive rights, civil liberties, drug decriminalization, and same-sex marriage, or even an acceptance of the essential virtues of markets and limited bureaucracy (both of which I think Democrats came to accept in the 1990s, if not more quietly before that), but certain policies: free trade, less regulation of land use, school choice.
I want to talk about the latter, in part because it is a subject that interests me, and in part because I believe school choice is the most certain path to a more liberal and richly funded K-12 education system in America.
Let me tell you about myself. I was born in the 1970s, and came of age during the era of tax revolts, and laissez faire parenting. We were the barefoot kids playing in the street. We were home alone. Important decisions were left to us. There was - proverbially - plenty of money for new prisons, and not enough for schools; this continues to be the case.
Some states have faired better than others. New Jersey - where I was born - has I am told a largely stellar public school system. (Southern) California - where I grew up - by most measures does not.
I attended both parochial and public schools at first. I was more or less an A student, shuttled into gifted and talented courses, brought into school on weekends by a wonderful teacher (who had won state awards) to write code, play with the robots. I had many friends, edited the school newspaper, wrote stories, games and educational software; they were happy years.
But by middle school things were changing. There were problems at home, fighting parents. My father - a former network executive - had bet all on a business and lost; we became members of the formerly affluent. I was increasingly withdrawn, depressed, began to lose interest in school, began to fall through the cracks.
This is not so unusual in American public schools. For many kids, the troubles begin not in grade school but in the early teens. They have difficulty adapting to the darwinian world of middle and high schools. They begin to underpeform, sometimes get into trouble. Even more often though, they kind of disappear; there is no one there - a parent or teacher - to intervene, care.
It is even true of gifted kids. As many as 20% of dropouts from American public high schools are gifted. Needless to say, none of these kids should be dropping out of school, all of them going on to four year colleges.
Some of the other metrics are well known: the tragic percentage of boys and girls of color not gaining basic proficiencies in reading and math, the omnipresence of bullying, school violence.
What I would like to argue is that American public school system not only continues to fail its most vulnerable, but has become - contrary to conservative harrumphing - increasingly illiberal in recent decades. We hear a great deal from the right about teachers who have the audacity to suggest that humankind evolved from apes, that gays may be people too, but little from anyone about the extent to which public middle and high schools (especially) have come to resemble medium security prisons (yes I stole that one from James Howard Kunstler).
We have replaced the paddle and the old school marm - even in wealthy suburban districts - with metal detectors, armed guards, video surveillance, barbed wire fences, drug testing, "lockdown." All that is missing in some places are orange jumpsuits and strip searches; these are not the hallmarks of a liberal education.
And I have not even mentioned the culture of public schools, where some of the least decent elements of young America are elevated to the top of the social hierarchy, the asshole jocks, the mean pretty girls. They say that life is like high school, but maybe it is the case that the vapid, mean-spirited culture of America today imitates the vapid, mean-spirited culture of our public high schools. Regardless, conservatives are right: culture matters.
In his great book "An Empire Wilderness: Travels into America's Future" maverick conservative Robert D Kaplan visits a near-new motel on the Mexican side of the border already falling into disrepair, and then spends the night in a years-old motel (owned by the same conglomerate) on the American side; it is freshly painted, smartly kept. He asks whether the real difference between the West and the developing world is not simple maintenance.
I remember the restrooms of the last public school I attended. There was derogatory graffiti on the walls about blacks, Jews, queers. The toilets were almost always clogged, and overflowing. The place smelled of shit and piss. You thought of a prison in Soviet Afghanistan, or Latin America. It was a richly funded suburban public school.
I was one of the lucky ones, got out of the system and into a small independent school near LA; it was the best decision I ever made. Kids were polite, and bright. They treated you with respect, so did adults. Ideas mattered. Creativity and critical thinking were valued; teachers and administrators cared about you. The art teacher once "caught" me drawing and became my personal mentor, requiring me to come in an hour before school every day. If there was trouble at home, you went home with someone else - a friend, a teacher, a headmaster; real communities take care of their own. That school saved my future. It may have saved my life.
That such a benevolent place could arise out of strictly voluntary associations, and the generosity of a few people, was a revelation to me at the time. It meant that cynicism and despair and indifference were not inevitable. It meant that you could choose to be good, choose hope.
It was in short as much a political education, as an education itself. I have always been a liberal by temperament, but I came to question whether the state is always the best agent of liberalism, its institutions the most free, and humane. The question is not whether every child deserves a world class liberal education at taxpayer expense - they do - but whether the state is always best equipped to provide it. There is a scene in that movie "Rushmore" where Herman Blume (Bill Murray) wonders aloud what "the secret" is. Max says: "I think you just gotta find something you love to do, and then do it for the rest of your life. For me, it's going to Rushmore." The kids who get out of the system know he is only half-kidding.
I feel bad for public school teachers. They are underpaid, and hamstrung by all manner of ridiculous rules preventing them not only from disciplining troublemakers but in some cases having anything resembling human contact with young people. I want them to be paid reasonable if not generous salaries, have old age benefits. In the end though it is the kids that matter most, and right now I do not believe they are getting what they deserve.
Our national debate about education policy has until recent years been stuck in neutral, with conservatives largely arguing in favor of vouchers for the wrong reasons (to keep their children from being "indoctrinated" with "satanic" ideas about where they came from and how their bodies work), and liberals defending an illiberal system to no small extent because they're afraid of public school teachers losing their pay and benefit guarantees. NCLB has solved literally nothing. Christian conservatives remain angry about the perceived cultural liberalism of American public schools, and liberals are unhappy with draconian mandates from Washington.
I am not arguing that the kind of private school I attended with its formalities - uniforms, prayer - is the kind of place for everyone. I am not arguing that a voucher free-for-all like the one in Milwaukee (where a convicted rapist opened a school) is the answer (although there are new rules and oversight in place there today).
What I am arguing is that in a multicultural society like America the elites are never going to be fully invested in the public school system; they send their own kids to Andover or the local day school. The American public school curriculum and culture was shaped by nineteenth century industrialists with two aims in mind: to produce compliant workers and consumers. What I am arguing is that this matters. As Henry Adams said, "All State-education is a sort of dynamo machine for polarizing the popular mind; for turning and holding its lines of force in the direction supposed to be most effective for State purposes."
Ironically, several far less pluralistic countries in the West - the Netherlands, Sweden, and Denmark have gone far further than their more multicultural counterparts in the British Isles and North America in adopting policies that ensure school choice. The Netherlands, with its large traditional population of evangelical Christians, went first (a center-left government actually introduced the reforms), changing its constitution to ensure equality of funding for public and private (mostly parochial) schools alike. The Dutch will provide foundational and developmental funding, as well as per-student funding, to any group of (150 or more I believe) parents who want to open a school along any denominational lines, and according to any educational philosophy. These schools are regulated by separate, independent school boards, and rather than provoke a culture war in the country they have helped to resolve longstanding cultural and religious divisions. The left got its gay marriage, abortion rights, drug decriminalization, legalized prostitution. The right got school choice, and faith-based funding. I don't think that anyone would seriously argue that the Netherlands is a theocracy.
The goal in my estimation should be a richly funded system with a high level of choice. What I would envision for America is a more mixed - four tiered - system similiar (though different in crucial ways) to the one the Danes have introduced in recent decades.
The first tier would be the public schools (conventional and charter), which would continue to be subsidized by taxpayers, overseen by local school boards, and regulated by states and the federal government.
The second tier would be foundational schools, which could be started by groups of parents, teachers, or anyone with abiding an interest in primary and secondary education. They would have to meet basic criteria (persuant to the public good), but could be affiliated with any religious denomination and based upon any educational philosophy. They would receive both foundational and developmental funding, as well as per-student funding, and be regulated by independent school boards at the local level with state and federal oversight.
The third tier would be progressive, partial (perhaps 3/4 at most) tuition remediation (as in vouchers) for students who attend accredited private and parochial schools; this is the Danish addition to the Dutch system. These schools (which currently have little to no government oversight, but must undergo an accreditation process even more rigorous in some respects than standards public schools must meet) would not receive foundational or developmental funding from the government, but middle and working class kids would have better access to them. Some of these schools are for the developmentally disabled or for kids from troubled families, but the bulk of them are of course relatively elite private and parochial. The latter are always going to accept for the most part only kids who score in the highest IQ and aptitude ranges, and gifted students from lower and middle income families (who may earn too much to qualify for aid and not enough to afford eight or twelve years of tuition) are the ones being locked out from these schools (which are for no small number of them their best hope of staying on the right path).
Vouchers would be tied not only to family income but also to average per-pupil spending in the district or state. That way, taxpayers would not be compelled to provide 20k a year tuition credits to Andover parents. Going to Andover is no doubt a wonderful thing, but it is not a right.
The fourth tier would be a modest tax credit (perhaps one or two thousand a year) for homeschool parents to help cover the cost of supplies, seminars, the basics. Taxpayers are never going to provide "foundational" support for homeschooling families so they can build a new wing on the house to educate their children, but they deserve a leg up too (not to mention the fact that the more families who are enfranchised the broader the support for high levels of overall funding will be).
I believe a system like this would be so successful and wildly popular across the political spectrum the American people would be willing to fund it far more lavishly than they're willing to fund the current system.
When the downturns come today, public schools are the first to suffer. With the kind of system I'm proposing the American people would allow cuts to happen over their dead bodies.
America's founding liberal Thomas Paine supported school choice. Why don't you?
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