The Grand Scam: The Economy’s Turned Around But Where Is the Praise for Schools?*
Why is it that now with a bustling economy, rising productivity, and shrinking unemployment American public schools are not receiving credit for the turnaround? In light of scathing criticism of poorly performing public schools, the question sounds foolish. It isn’t if you consider the Great School Scam of the 1980’s.
For the last decade, U.S. Presidents, corporate leaders, and critics blasted public schools for a globally less competitive economy, sinking productivity, and jobs lost to other nations. The United States, as one highly popular report put it in 1983, had educationally disarmed itself in a hostile economic war. “If only to keep and improve on the slim competitive edge we still retain in world markets,” the report said, “we must dedicate ourselves to the reform of our educational system.”
And school reforms have spilled over the country since the early 1980’s. States legislated higher graduation requirements, a longer school year, new curricula, and more tests for students. This year, national school reformers using this belief in better schools as an engine for a better economy crowned their efforts with strong bipartisan support for President Clinton’s education bill setting eight national goals while establishing standards and tests to prod 15,000 school districts to reach those goals.
Reforms have occurred. More students take academic subjects than in the 1970’s. Scores on tests of basic skills are higher now than in previous decades. More CONTINUE READING: The Grand Scam: The Economy’s Turned Around But Where Is the Praise for Schools?* | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice