Education policy, like most other areas covered on this site, is one where government could make a big difference but where even the most basic steps are politicized. The left, whose “base” currently includes a core of college-educated urban and suburban dwellers, emphasizes the value of a college education, while the right, which currently needs the support of middle-class voters in factory, farming, and natural resource areas, tends to emphasize school choice and skill-based education in vocations and trades (think “welding”). Neither is entirely wrong, of course, but we do not seem to be making a lot of progress. With unemployment at historic lows, we are failing to advance as a country toward the results we most from better education: (1) increasing the pool of workers who are qualified and capable for the jobs that are available, and (2) improving the life skills of our residents so they get more in quality of life for the same amount of pay.
A sensible education policy would be more of a “kitchen sink” policy than a “one size fits all” policy and having the government pay for college and/or encourage more people to borrow more so they can go to college, can be very expensive and inefficient–ideas that have surface appeal but won’t help much and do not make a lot of sense. The price tag of having the government send more people to college would be raising the cost of college education, building up more debt, and sending more people to college who do badly, drop out, and/or end up working in low paying jobs. Since employers do favor those with college educations, if we simply displace a less educated person with a more educated person in a job that doesn’t require a college education, all we’ve done is increase the cost of getting that job. I went to possibly the most elite college in the nation, and I believe it would have been quite easy to pass there without getting much in the way of either job skills or life skills.
The current administration’s priorities of school choice and vocational education (to the extent that anything is really being done) in many ways make a lot more sense, but still fall far short. Good school choices are not always available to many of the people who in the future may have trouble finding jobs, and will people really make the best choices in terms of learning the life skills and job skills that will best prepare them for the future? Much of the political appeal of “choice” is that it recognizes the people who feel they are already making good choices (and who already have them), rather than, say, people who have little choice but to go the poorly-performing local school.
The current debate, if it can be called that (because it receives so little attention), does not give much emphasis to “No Child Left Behind” and other programs that aim at quantitative measurement and leveling the playing field.
In the District of Columbia, where I live, we have had the benefit of a rising standard of living, a significant influx of well-educated parents, and skilled and strong-handed school administration. We also have parents and city politicians who, I believe, truly want to improve our schools, frankly, in part because of past disgraces (poor performance, high truancy and dropout rates, and systemic corruption). It is an uphill battle. If you believe recent test results and statistics, our schools are doing better, but the benefits have been uneven, concentrated in certain neighborhoods and charter schools. And for many students, getting into the top schools would be winning the lottery (literally). Not really a “choice”.
Every president with school age children in the White House during the past 100 years, except for Jimmy Carter, has sent his children to elite, expensive private schools, hardly a choice available to everyone. Some education proposals include vouchers that would help the presidents pay for this, which may seem fair but hardly seems an effective use of taxpayer dollars. With Amy Carter, the sole White House public school graduate, the press delighted in saying she attended as a “normal” student in a “historically African-American” elementary school, but that made it seem rougher than Thaddeus Stevens school really was, even then, in the West End neighborhood beside George Washington University (one of the most expensive private colleges in the nation) and one block from the Ritz Carlton hotel.
As far as vocational and trade education goes, welders are the oft-used example because they earn a lot of money without a college education. So do Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg (both Harvard dropouts, hardly a representative sample). Stories are told about of underwater welders who earn over $100 per hour or well over $100,000 per year. That makes a nice story for a politician; all we have to do is train more welders and…presto.
Unfortunately, training a lot of underwater welders is just as idealistic and impractical as having the government pay for everyone to go to college. I happen to have a hobby/job that puts me in remote areas where I have worked with some welders and met a lot of others, including underwater welders who earn a lot of money. They are all amazing. When they speak, you know they could have gone to college (and many come from families where others did go to college) but they chose not to. They chose a different, challenging job where they work really hard and it’s hard to have a really balanced life. Every one that I have met so far is a man (I’m sure there are women who are underwater welders, but I haven’t met one yet). In short, not everyone can be a welder any more than everyone can go to Harvard. And, like most others jobs, making it as a welder favors those who got a good start early on.
If we really wanted to get “bang for our buck” in our government education programs, we would train people in prison to be welders. The government is already paying for them, and we are bound to pay a further price if they get out and can’t find a job. It’s also really hard to commit a drug offense while you’re submerged in freezing water welding at a dam site.
This is not really a joke. I have supported a program that selects women in the DC area who have been incarcerated (usually for minor drug offenses) and trains them to be trade practitioners. They never had any real chance of going to college, and quite possibly wouldn’t have done well if they had. But they helped build our new stadium. Theirs is a real story, that’s good policy and its heart-rending. But imagine a politician, right or left, saying that we’re going to train prisoners to be welders? The left wants everyone to go to college, and the right wants to put more people in prison. Actually, the right and the left both like to spend a lot of time talking about whom they want to put in prison, based on political identity, and much less time on policies to help people stay out of prison.
Coming back to the “kitchen sink” policies of education, if we de-politicized the problems, we would stop worrying about whether our policies favor urban America or rural America, white or black, male or female, and just try to get as many people ready for the jobs that will be available, particularly those who aren’t already in advantageous positions. This includes supporting and encouraging education in science, technology and medicine (STEM), making trade and vocational training available to all who qualify, building life skills curricula (such as economic and technological literacy) in all schools at all levels, and continuing to raise the level of acceptable accomplishment in all schools, along with a host of other necessary programs.
Education is important enough that if we can only get past the politics, we can get somewhere with a range of bi-partisan or non-partisan programs.