Why the Right may be right: after two decades, why is the Department of Education still ignoring the basic problems plaguing our public schools?

Washington Monthly, April, 1997 by Greig M. O'Brien, Charles Peters

Most often these days it seems, that, when people hear about some new example of bureaucratic ineptitude, they say to themselves or--to anyone who is listening--"That just shows government doesn't work."

There are also those who, like Charles Murray in his recent book What It Means to Be A Libertarian, argue for minimum state involvement because they see most government as an unnecessary infringement on the freedom of the individual.

What this magazine tries to do is different. We look at the institutions that govern us to see whether what they are doing needs doing, if so, how they could do it better, and if there is anything they aren't doing that they should be doing.

This is the approach taken by the authors of the two articles that follow. It is one we hope to encourage other journalists to follow, instead of just attacking government as so many of them seem content to do.

After two decades, why is the Department of Education still ignoring the basic problems plaguing our public schools?

The Congressional Committee that led the 1995 charge to abolish the Department of Education has embarked on a new mission: Officials are examining more than 200 DOE programs to determine if any stars in the vast universe of federal education programs are actually shining. When asked if GOP members see the investigation as an opportunity to scrounge up dirt for use against the department, a key Republican official on the committee gasped. "If you printed it like that," she said, some Republicans would "just have a heart attack"

And for good reason. Republicans know their constant harping against the Education Department cost them among women voters in 1996--and they know the gender gap at the ballot box cost them the White House. There were signs the issue was a real stinker for them back in September, when GOP pollsters found that 54 percent of registered Republicans were against eliminating the DOE. Their post-election analysis has harped on the point. "Women voters most concerned about education generally didn't vote for [Dole]," Haley Barbour said recently. "All they heard was, `Get rid of the Department of Education."'

Against this backdrop, it is not surprising that talk of eliminating the DOE has dwindled from its frenetic height in 1995, when Florida Republican Joe Scarborough declared, "The great federal experiment in education is over" Today, instead of bluntly asking, "What good is the Department of Education?" some Republicans are taking a more moderate (and politically savvy) approach. The goal, say GOP officials, is to improve educational services for students from kindergarten through high school, and the central issue is--do federal programs under the DOE support that aim?

That's a question that liberals-still basking in the warmth of an issue they owned in '96--will not pose. But they should, because nearly 20 years after its founding, the Department of Education is still failing to address the root causes of America's educational decline.

The fact is, we've known what has been undermining America's public school system since before the DOE was founded in 1979. Administrative bureaucracies, especially in large cities, tend to be feather-bedded, sometimes grotesquely so, and too many administrators are selected on the basis of cronyism rather than merit. Too many teachers can't teach, either because they don't know the subject they've been assigned or because they're just plain inept. And too many bright people who could be wonderful teachers are kept out of public schools--even though they know their subject better than most who are teaching it--because of credentialling requirements that have much to do with the prosperity of teacher training institutions and little to do with the competence of teachers.

There is at least one glaring reason why the department has failed to take on these thorny problems-instead, spreading its resources among the hundreds of smaller programs now under review. DOE officials often have ties to (or come from the ranks of) the "constituents" they advise: the teacher unions, researchers, administrators, college presidents, and lobbyists. The department often tailors its actions to address the narrow interests of these "constituents," regardless of whether such actions best serve students, their parents, or the national interest in a better-educated populace. With so many disparate groups pushing for their parochial needs to be filled, it's no wonder the department is bogged down in a forest of specialized programs. As one official with a federal agency that works closely with the DOE notes, "While there are lots of talented, well-meaning people in the department, they are so tied to their constituency groups and the education establishment that they're in no position to lead reform."

Up to this point, most liberals--the very people you would expect to be most interested in making the department run effectively--have refused to acknowledge this problem. When confronted with the argument that the DOE is too wedded to special interests, they put up their defenses automatically, mouthing tired excuses about insufficient funding and a lack of qualified educators entering the field. To some degree, this reflexive response can be understood when we consider all the years liberals have spent defending the department from abolition: When attacked, a good defensive posture is to withdraw like a turtle into a warm, comfortable universe free of tormentors.