Twenty years ago this month, an ad hoc commission established by
then-Education Secretary Terrell H. Bell released a report entitled
“A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Education Reform.” The report
quickly became the most widely discussed educational reform
blueprint in American history. One sentence in the report
summarized the commission’s take on the status of American
education: “If an unfriendly power had attempted to impose on
America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we
might well have viewed it as an act of war.”
Although the report generated a landslide of attention and
multiple reform efforts, our education system is still in crisis.
We have not solved the problems identified in the report because
the teacher unions have consistently blocked meaningful
reforms.
Recent reports provide fresh evidence of our continuing
educational emergency. The U.S. Commission on National Security
lately lamented the fact that U.S. students lag behind other
countries in scientific knowledge and mathematics. Most recently,
the Hoover Institution’s Koret Task Force on K-12 Education
released its findings after a review of the state of American
education 20 years since “A Nation at Risk.” The Task Force found
that the performance of U.S. public schools remains stagnant. For
instance, about 80 million first graders “have walked into schools
where they have scant chance of learning more than the youngsters
whose plight troubled the Commission in 1983.”
Certainly, we have seen changes in our schools during the last
20 years. Teacher salaries have been raised, student-teacher ratios
have been reduced, annual per-pupil spending has increased by about
40 percent (from $4,700 per student to $6,600), and total annual
expenditures have grown by nearly 60 percent in constant dollars,
from about $180 billion to $280 billion.
Note, however, that those changes were supported by the teacher
unions. The unions welcome reforms that lead to higher salaries and
smaller classes for teachers and more dues-revenue for the unions.
At the same time, the teacher unions oppose reforms that would
empower parents or allow private schools to compete on a level
playing field for students.
During the same 20 years, reformers have fought desperately for
reforms that would give parents more power, or provide any support
for parents who prefer a private to a public school. However, only
a few states now have a significant number of charter schools and
even fewer allow parents a choice between a private and public
school.
Everywhere pro-parent measures have passed, reformers have faced
intense opposition by the teacher unions. With over 3 million
members and dues-revenues that exceed $1 billion a year, the unions
are an empire-like force. Through strong-armed political tactics
and hefty financial and in-kind support to candidates who support
teacher union positions, the unions are a virtually insurmountable
obstacle to reforms that are essential to educational
improvement.
Today, the unions are better prepared to block constructive
reforms than they were in 1983. For example, teacher union
membership and revenues have escalated, and the unions’
stranglehold on education policy - typified by the failure to
include private school choice in the No Child Left Behind Act - is
as strong as ever.
In their report released this month, the Hoover Institution’s
Koret Task Force correctly identified the teacher unions as one of
the “powerful forces of inertia” that underlies the public
education establishment. These forces proved more powerful than the
Excellence Commission could have foreseen in 1983.
Reformers who want to see schools improve in 2003 and beyond
should not make the mistake of underestimating the opposition they
will face from the teacher unions. Before significant reforms to
our education system can be widely introduced, the power of the
public education establishment, mainly the teacher unions, to block
reforms must be curbed. Twenty years of cosmetic change in
education permit no other conclusion.
