(Originally written for Malloy for Congress, 2008)
The wealth of nations in the twenty-first century will be determined not by mineral wealth or shipping lines but by the ingenuity and creativity of their people. Unfortunately, America has fallen behind much of the rest of the world at educating its children and honing their critical-thinking and problem-solving skills. Not all American children are poorly served, but those in rural and inner-city school districts are most at risk of being left behind their peers in America and abroad.
Having tens of millions of citizens unable to compete in the global economy severely limits our national development and threatens those Americans with lives of bitter disappointment, struggling to survive while millions of their countrymen move into the professional upper middle class. It creates resentment and nurtures crime, while denying our economy the benefit of their talent and potential.
The primary reason that these students are denied the opportunities they need to succeed is the funding disparities which produce opulent shrines to education in the wealthiest communities while depriving the neediest schools the basics required to prepare children for the workforce. As a result, companies avoid locating in areas with underperforming schools, young people in those areas react to the lost opportunities with hopelessness and despair as they suffer unemployment rates up to ten times the national average, and those neighborhoods become scarred by poverty and crime.
This administration and its supporters in Congress have responded to this crisis by drafting and passing the No Child Left Behind Act. This bill is based, like so many conservative policy ideas, on the mistaken principle that teachers and administrators are lazy and unmotivated and require a threat to their jobs to teach our children. I could not disagree more with this delusion. This bill has merely deprived the neediest schools of the resources they need to improve their students’ lives; penalized states, like South Carolina, who drafted challenging and meaningful tests; and required teachers to teach to the test, pushing real instruction and learning out of the classroom and replacing them with rote memorization of exam questions. The No Child Left Behind Act must be eliminated.
Another thing that the Federal government can do is target more money at the neediest schools, and encourage states to do more. One of the most important things that the federal government can do is help to end the shortage of qualified teachers in struggling rural and inner-city schools. New teachers can be recruited by addressing the spiraling costs of education. Tuition tax credits and subsidies can encourage students to enter careers in teaching, and recipients of Pell Grants in education should be required to spend a few years teaching at an underperforming school. We could provide funding for additional in-service training for teachers in lower-performing schools to refresh their professional skills and to familiarize them with the newest technology. Teachers in all public schools should receive tax credits for continuing education.
Ultimately, inequalities in funding will perpetuate dangerous inequalities in educational outcomes until we address the way schools are funded in America. This is probably one of the touchiest political subjects in American life, and bringing equality of opportunity to America’s children will require enormous political courage, because it will require us to reexamine local control and the role of property taxes in paying for schools. It might not be feasible in the short term. With that in mind, it becomes all the more vital to enact incremental reforms that can deliver some improvement for our children now. Their future is America’s future, and is too precious to endanger through inaction.
