[Vision2020] Deciphering Mitt-Speak on Schools

[Art Deco]

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May 25, 2012
Deciphering Mitt-Speak on Schools By GAIL
COLLINS<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/opinion/editorialsandoped/oped/columnists/gailcollins/index.html>

Today, we’re going to talk about Mitt Romney’s education speech.

Whoa! Calm down. Of course, it’s exciting — policy, Mitt Romney, education,
speeches. That’s why I brought it up at the start of a long weekend, so
there would be plenty of pondering time.

This was Romney’s first foray into education since he became the
presumptive nominee, but it had a quality of mushiness seldom seen outside
of a six-week-old pumpkin. At one point, in a tribute to American
entrepreneurs, Romney announced that “if every one of our small businesses
added just two employees, Americans could pay more mortgages and buy more
groceries and fill their gas tanks.”

Or, you know, if they each added one. Or if the guys in the third row each
hired 46.

But about the schools. Romney laced into President Obama for failing to
resolve the nation’s “education crisis,” after he took over. “Wouldn’t it
be great if we could look back on the last four years with confidence that
the crisis had been confronted and we’d turned the corner toward a brighter
future?” he asked.

Now this was interesting. Remember No Child Left Behind, George W. Bush’s
enormous education reform law that became the domestic hallmark of his
administration, if you want to be generous and not count the deficits? Bush
spent eight years rolling it out, tweaking it and cheerleading for it. Also
underfunding it, but you can’t say the attention wasn’t there.

The result, apparently, was an “education crisis” that Romney put right up
there with the “jobs crisis” and “spending crisis” — all of which he said
Obama inherited, and then failed to solve. The president often complains
about the mess Bush left for him to clean up, but you don’t often hear
Republicans singing this song.

What do you think’s going on here? So far, W.’s presidential endorsement
has consisted of saying: “I’m for Mitt Romney” as an elevator door closed
between him and a persistent reporter. Do you think there’s a connection?

The Tea Party folk hatehatehate No Child Left Behind as a federal intrusion
on states’ rights to screw up their schools in whatever way they see fit.
Romney vaguely referred to it as not being “without some weaknesses,” then
promised to end “that political logjam that has prevented successful reform
of that law.” Are you with me so far? I kind of like the logjam. I am
seeing Mitt, in lumberjack garb, in the middle of a river full of downed
trees and the occasional committee chairman. Perhaps the Romney boys are
along, singing family songs. Maybe the dog is strapped to a fallen
sycamore.

If there’s an education crisis, it’s one of at least 50 years duration. By
the best national assessment we have available, it appears that the math
skills of American fourth- and eighth-graders have been going up slowly but
steadily for decades. Reading scores are also a tad better, although pretty
flat. We need to do much better, and the fight over what to do next is
mainly between people who think the big problem is a lack of resources and
those who think it’s all about accountability and standards and tests.
Romney is definitely way over in camp two.

Also, Mitt is going for “bold policy changes.” He said “bold” almost as
many times as “education crisis,” even though the Romney verbiage was
un-bold in the extreme. Did he want vouchers so kids could use public money
for private school tuition? The one brief mention in the prepared text of
“private school where permitted” vanished in Mitt-speak.

Here, in total, were his thoughts on the terrible problem of college costs:
“We got to stop fueling skyrocketing tuition prices that put education out
of the reach of way too many of our kids and leave others with crushing
debt. Now, these are bold initiatives. ...”

But about school reform. Three big ideas: First, Romney is going to make
the states provide “ample school choice.” Unless we’re talking, mushily,
about vouchers, this one sounded exactly like the Bush law that allows
parents whose children are in failing schools to move them elsewhere. It
hasn’t really worked well. It turns out the parents wanted their local
school to be better, not to ship their children out of the neighborhood.
The magic of the marketplace works great for iPods, but not apparently for
fourth graders.

Second, Romney wants the schools to have “report cards” on student
performance so parents can make good decisions about choice. The only
problems with this plan are: A) The parents don’t want that kind of choice;
and B) the schools already have report cards.

Finally, he vowed to encourage teacher evaluation and accountability. This
is something the Obama administration has been doing through its Race to
the Top initiatives, much to the dismay of some teachers’ unions.

Romney then concluded with a long attack on Obama for being in the pocket
of teachers’ unions.

Happy Memorial Day.


-- 
Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)
art.deco.studios at gmail.com
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