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

Closed to Suggestion

In 1992, Diane Ravitch, then assistant secretary for educational research, hired social scientist Maris Vinovskis to assess the effectiveness of the federally funded research centers and education laboratories. The 20-plus facilities scattered across the country were created in 1965 to investigate models for teaching and testing; by 1992, the government was spending about $50 million a year on research and development. For 12 months, Vinovskis poured over five years of R&D data, looking at facilities from Johns Hopkins to U.C. Berkeley. While he found some examples of excellent research, his overall conclusions were grim. One study at Berkeley drew general conclusions from case studies of one or two students in a class. Some programs were spending half of their funds on administrative overhead, allocating only meager amounts to research. He continued his work into the Clinton administration, and in 1993 handed then assistant secretary Sharon Robinson a report addressing key problems and offering suggestions on how to solve them. Without explanation, the DOE opted not to publish it.

"People were upset with what I'd written," says Vinovskis. "There was pressure to keep the report quiet"

Robinson says she considered the report "an academic work rather than an official departmental document," and denies that pressure from lab supporters played a role in the decision not to publish it. But Ravitch says the researchers considered the federal dollars theirs by right, and fought to stop publication. On April 30,1993, Mary Kennedy, head of the research centers, wrote a letter to Vinovskis (which was cc'd to Robinson) warning: "We strongly urge you not to publish this report as it currently stands"

Why would DOE officials bury a report that outlined concrete problems and offered suggestions for improvement? Ravitch, who has written extensively on departmental flaws since leaving, notes: "There are different ways for government officials to respond to their jobs. If you see yourself as representing a constituency, it's not your job to ask, Are you effective?' but rather to deflect criticism and become an advocate"

A more recent example illustrates how constituencies--in this case teachers and college presidents--can prompt the department to water-down creative initiatives. In August, President Clinton announced a plan to spend $2.75 billion over five years on a new literacy program. The plan included $750 million to fund 30,000 reading specialists and coordinators to train tutors across the country. Clinton's aim: an army of no less than 1 million tutors. "America Reads" would dispatch reading specialists to train volunteers, who would in turn help elementary school children with their reading skills. As his model, Clinton pointed to AmeriCorps' SLICE program in Simpson County, Ky., where after nine months of intensive tutoring by AmeriCorps volunteers, reading comprehension for 128 second graders jumped by an average of 2.8 grade levels. It's a program that works.