THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, February 13, 1995 TAG: 9502100009
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A8 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Another View
SOURCE: By MAURICE R. BERUBE
LENGTH: Medium: 78 lines
The excellence-school-reform movement passed away on Nov. 8, 1994. It had been in poor health, fading as a national priority. The new conservative national mood, concerned with crime and welfare, cast school-reform aside.
Born in 1983 with the publication of the U.S. Department of Education's polemical study, ``A Nation At Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform,'' excellence reform constituted the third major educational-reform movement in the nation's history.
So dubbed by its advocates, excellence reform was the response of an unlikely alliance of educators and politicians to restore America to international economic dominance by restructuring public schools.
The other two major school-reform movements also were shaped by outside societal forces. Progressive education, with its emphasis on critical thinking and child-centered learning, was a product of the Progressive Movement. Equity reform of the 1960s revealed its debt to the civil-rights movement by focusing on education of the poor. Excellence reform repudiated both in the name of higher standards and content-specific curricula.
What the Gingrich-led Republican conservatives in Congress propose is to recycle former President Ronald Reagan's educational policy which preceded ``A Nation At Risk.'' They have resurrected school prayer, vouchers for private and parochial schools and the elimination of the U.S. Department of Education.
The Democratic Congress rebuffed Reagan's constitutional amendment for school prayer and scuttled his voucher program. He reversed himself on dismantling the U.S. Department of Education as school reform gathered national support. Reading the political polls, Reagan became excellence reform's most ardent cheerleader. In short, the ``new'' conservative educational agenda is, to quote Yogi Berra, ``deja vu all over again.''
In truth, conservative Republicans may well boast that they have a mandate. In the November elections, polls conducted in each state indicated that crime, welfare and immigration were issues uppermost in voters' minds.
A punitive mentality already was evident in America. Prior to the November elections, legislators in 13 states had enacted ``three strikes and you're out'' laws to incarcerate repeat felons. Rather than better schools, Americans want more prisons.
As an example, Virginia Republican Gov. George Allen successfully campaigned in 1993 on a promise to abolish parole. In addition, he recently pledged to cut taxes in an already low-tax state.
The impact on education in the state will be disastrous. Since more than 50 percent of the state budget (as in most states) is spent on public schools and universities, a good share of this money presumably will be redirected to the building of prisons. Moreover, the governor elected not to participate in President Clinton's AMERICA 2000 legislation that would have provided $14 million to implement national goals and standards.
What can one conclude about excellence reform? First, the movement captured the nation's attention, placing education in the forefront of domestic policy. In the 1984 presidential election, voters considered education second only to the economy as a vital issue.
Second, excellence reformers edged closer to a national system of education by establishing national goals and national standards.
But excellence reform may have been motivated by the wrong reason. The aim of education is to live a life rather than enable a nation to thrive economically. And excellence reformers ignored, for the most part, the education of the poor in favor of fine tuning schooling for the best and brightest.
Does the death of excellence reform mean that public education will stagnate? Not necessarily. Our educational history suggests that educators are obsessed with innovation, guaranteeing piecemeal change at the local level.
But the nation has spoken. As a national movement, excellence reform is dead. It had an unexpectedly long life. MEMO: Mr. Berube is professor of educational leadership at Old Dominion
University in Norfolk and author of ``American School Reform:
Progressive, Equity and Excellence Movements 1883-1993.''
by CNB