President Bush deserves many more cheers for his summit speech on education than he's gotten. A lot of people who heard the speech believed he didn't say much because the only thing they were listening to was a promise of more money. But President Bush didn't define his vision of American education. And in doing so, he took some tough stands and probably made some enemies.
The president could have joined his predecessor and many others who favor moving away from public schools toward government support for private education. Those who wanted this were bitterly disappointed. President Bush not only failed to mention private schools, but he opened his remarks with a ringing tribute to Thomas Jefferson, "our first education president, [who] was a relentless advocate for universal public education."
Our schools and our country are obsessed with "objective' measurements and standardized test scores. President Bush could have joined the chorus in deploring the low scores of our students. Instead, he cited the results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress that show how few of our about-to-graduate high schoolers can write a simple letter, manage fractions and decimals or know within which half-century the Civil War took place. Instead of inviting us to look at SAT scores and percentiles on standardized tests, the president asked us to zero in on the fundamental issues of what our kids know and what they are able to do.
Many are proud of what the education reform movement has done so far. They claim that things are already better, or that they soon will be. President Bush doesn't share that view. He doesn't credit the reform movement with succeeding or being about to succeed; he says only that it has "done well in articulating its criticism." The first six years of reform have brought us lots of new laws, rules, regulations, requirements. If you read his lips and listened to his words, George Bush was saying we need to empower people by getting rid of these onerous rules and bureaucratic regulations. Instead of more rules, he called for us to "give our schools the freedom that they need" to experiment and try new things.
George Bush could have gained applause by saying that the signs are pretty good; we only need to do a little better. He didn't. He called on us to "restructure" our schools. He could have agreed with those who want to go back to the good old days - with former Education Secretary William Bennett and his "James Madison High School." Far from it. George Bush is moving in the opposite direction: "I do not counsel a nai:ve nostalgia, some tame adherence to the past. Business as usual is not getting us where we need to go. So when hallowed tradition proves to be hollow convention, then we must shatter tradition. The polls show what every PT A board member already knows -- the American people are ready for radical reforms. We must not disappoint them."
The president could have joined those who want to go back to the basics. Instead, he took them on: "I see the day when every student is literate. But literacy should mean more than the 'three Rs.' We must be a reading nation. We must grapple with the hard sciences. And because education is as spiritual as it is practical, our children must know why Americans died at Bunker Hill, at Gettysburg and at Monte Cassino. And they must do more than identify names on a multiple choice question. They must understand the generosity of Andrew Carnegie and the genius of Alexander Graham Bell and the heroism of Rosa Parks."
He could have joined others who want to abandon the system we have and put another in its place, but instead he counseled persistence and patience in remarking the public education system, because "some of our reforms and experiments are sure to come up short." And, far wiser than reformers who expect one quick fix to solve problems that have been building for decades, the president warned us that what he envisions is "the work of years."
The president did call for accountability: "Weak performance in the classroom or the principal's office will no longer be tolerated. But neither will indifference towards good educators. Society has no greater benefactors than outstanding teachers and principals." In President Bush's generous vision, accountability means the possibility of "praise and solid rewards" as well as blame.
The president's vision of American education was generous in another way. He spoke about the economic importance of educated workers. But he went beyond seeing education in merely economic terms: "We've discussed the need for educational reform in terms of our national competitiveness .... But ... there is more to learning than just our trade balance or the graying of our work force; it is broader than the important, but narrow, compass of economics and government." And he looked for the day "when every young American can know the life of the mind."
Of course, there was more to the summit than the president's speech. The governors' role was and will be vital, and I'll talk about that in another column.
And of course, fine words - even from the president -aren't enough. It's possible to have great ideas and not follow through on them. But having a vision of where you want to go is the first step in getting anywhere. President Bush has taken a terrific first step