Education as funny business - business and educational reform

National Review, Feb 24, 1989 by Chester E. Finn, Jr.

DOUBTLESS THERE ARE other examples of businessmen who don't go squishy when they pass through the looking glass into the land of education. The Boston episode was not unique. But it was unusual. Tough-minded merchants who wouldn't dream of asking doctors to design efficient health-care policies or inviting social workers to straighten out the welfare mess are nevertheless apt to trust the instincts of the professionals who inhabit this field. Thus the fall 1988 meeting of the Business Council was full of solemn talk of education woes. But who was invited to the posh Homestead resort to inform and advise the nation's corporate chieftains on this grave matter? Teacher-union chief Albert Shanker and establishment kingpin Ernest Boyer. Do you suppose that if it had been a session on the failings of American foreign policy the Business Council would have summoned Corazon Aquino and Andreas Papandreou?

The choice of experts is symptomatic of the underlying malady, which is the choice of ideas. And here Fortune has in the past half-year become the handbook of folly. In the education section of its "agenda for President Bush," published in January, the editors proposed slashing the child-care tax credit, being cautious about expanding the successful and popular "magnet school" programs, and under no circumstances going forward with the new tax credit that candidate Bush had suggested as a way of helping families pay for child care. Why? Because some families "will use it for food, shelter, luxuries, even cocaine." So don't trust parents with additional resources to use for the benefit of their children. "A far wiser idea," proclaimed Fortune's policy savants, "would be to give the money to the states to expand their early-childhood programs for the disadvantaged."

Why is it that in education more than in practically any other domain, the business community cannot be counted on to hew to its own precepts?