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By Robert J. Samuelson
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Lamar Alexander, the ex-governor of Tennessee and the new secretary of education, is a charming man. Like all education secretaries, he talks tough about the need to raise school standards. But the "education strategy" that he's peddling for the Bush administration is mostly a fraud. Even if the plan were fully adopted, it wouldn't result in better-educated Americans or improved schools.
Grade inflation is the national norm: through high grades and easy college admissions, we delude students about how much they know. The place for Alexander to start fighting this is his own department. It dispenses about $18 billion annually in college student aid through grants and guaranteed loans. As I argued recently (NEWSWEEK, May 27), recipients should have to pass a test showing they can do college work. By shunning rigorous standards, Alexander perpetuates the pervasive dishonesty of American education.
A lot of college hopefuls would flunk a tough test. To pass, they'd have to work harder. High-school courses would have to be more demanding. This wouldn't cure all the ills of U.S. education. It wouldn't much affect the best or worst students. It wouldn't repair the damage to children of family breakdown. But it would benefit millions of ordinary students. As one 10th grader from Iowa wrote after my original column:
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"Students which perform less well than they might (and there are many of us) do as little as their conscience allows. A student who intends to go to college usually isn't threatened with failure that would block them from attending State U., which is almost always eager to take them."
Amen. If more were expected of this guy and he worked a bit harder, he'd get his grammar right. We're not helping him (and he knows it) by letting him glide into college. The administration's education strategy won't change matters, and it's important to grasp why. Alexander has a theory of how his reform would succeed. It goes like this.
By the mid-199Os, most students in the fourth, eighth and 12th grades would be taking new "American Achievement Tests" in five subjects (English, math, science, history and geography). Each test would have a "world class standard" - a score indicating what students should know at a given grade. Presumably, hordes of students wouldn't meet the standard. The results of a prototype math test, released in early June, showed that 54 percent of high-school seniors couldn't do seventh-grade math. Only 5 percent were truly ready for college. The devastating results would outrage parents, who would stage a "populist revolt" - Alexander's phrase - and somehow force local schools to improve.
That's the theory. There are only two things wrong with it. First, the populist revolt wouldn't happen. And second, even if it did, it wouldn't be enough.
The evidence that Americans want demanding schools is meager. In a 1990 poll, only 8 percent of respondents picked "poor curriculum/poor standards" as the schools' major problem. What parents really want from schools is to be told that their children are doing well. This relieves any guilt over not paying enough attention to their children's schoolwork and minimizes conflicts with children over their performance. Schools placate parents with easy course demands and lax grading.
People ignore what they don't want to hear. Dozens of tests have already confirmed the poor performance of average American students. It's old news. The trouble with Alexander's new tests (which would report results to all students and schools) is that they don't count for anything. Students could still get good grades, graduate and go to college. Parents may experience momentary unease about their children's real skills - but not much more.
And even a ferocious populist revolt wouldn't improve many students' poor motivation and lousy work habits. The math-test results again corroborate common sense. Students who do homework know more than those who don't. The more TV students watch, the worse they do. (In eighth grade, two thirds of students watch three hours or more daily.) Finally, schools lose control over students as they get older. In eighth grade, 13 percent reported doing no homework. By 12th grade, that was 20 percent.
The way to get students' - and parents' - attention is to threaten something that matters to them personally. Just coincidentally, the law that authorizes all federal student assistance (the Higher Education Act) is up for a five-year renewal in 1991. All that President Bush had to say was: "I will veto legislation without adequate academic standards for aid. We will not fool our students or waste taxpayers' money by sending people to college who aren't ready."
Then we could debate practical questions. Should an easier test be used first and then toughened? Or should there be a grace period of a few years to allow students to prepare? Should community colleges have a lower standard? Should the federal government offer aid for remedial high-school courses?
What would also be triggered, of course, is a political firestorm of opposition. Great. The administration would have to defend its position by exposing the hypocrisy of the current system. Start with the fact that in 1990, 81 percent of college freshmen had a B average or better in high school. Now recall that only 5 percent of high-school seniors are really ready for college math. Something's wrong here. Defenders of the status quo would have to justify it. Personally, I'm eager to hear university presidents explain why low standards benefit America.
This is precisely the firestorm the administration wishes to avoid, because it would arouse passions and anxieties. It might not be popular. A lot of middle-class parents would be upset. The White House would be accused of racism and denying "opportunity." Already, there have been complaints that Alexander's meaningless tests discriminate against blacks.
There's a real dilemma here. Our schools are giving us the mediocrity that we actually want as opposed to the excellence that we say we want. No reform can succeed unless it assaults and overcomes the contradiction. Alexander and Bush haven't tried. Too bad for them - but mostly, too bad for us.
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