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Failing
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 resident
Bush delivered on his top domestic priority by winning congressional
approval of a 1,200-page bipartisan education-reform bill. The actual
improvement of the schools looks to be a little longer off. The bill
requires states to assess student progress annually in the lower grades,
and from time to time during high school. Annual spending on some
65 federal programs is boosted from $18 billion to $26 billion. A
modest provision, which would have allowed seven states broad flexibility
in spending federal funds, was dropped from the final bill. There
are no federal rewards or sanctions based on the assessments, but
all students are expected to be proficient in basic subject matters
in twelve years. As the legislation went through Congress, the standards
for proficiency were weakened: The originally proposed standards would
have exposed most of the schools in Texas and North Carolina as failures,
and these are the very states that proponents of the bill uphold as
exemplars of reform. The only effective reform of our schools is likely
to come from choice and competition-a lesson that Bush and Congress,
by embracing phony reform, have underscored. |
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