Bad news confirmed

The educational crisis is worse than we thought

While education is a noble end in itself, more important is the way it fuels social mobility and prosperity in a knowledge-based economy. So it is amazing that the crisis haunting the nation's classrooms from kindergarten to college has produced more hot air than resolve.

There is plenty of blame to share. Parents shirk responsibility. School boards abdicate authority. Administrators don't set or maintain standards. And society at large has failed to focus seriously on the broad as well as the narrow issues involved.

Obstructing progress across the state and throughout the nation is an unhealthy alliance between the Democratic Party and politically powerful teachers' unions that routinely oppose all but the most minor reforms. Whether it's their outright opposition to admittedly controversial voucher proposals or the lip service they pay to other ideas that might expand parent choice, the unions essentially favor higher salaries and the status quo.

It is a rare Democrat indeed who doesn't perform to some degree as a puppet of the teachers' lobby. It could be argued that the Democrats' subservience to this special interest might -- in a different but nevertheless very real way -- do as much damage to the nation as the Republicans' alliance with the religious right. Common sense is stymied in return for raw political support: votes, contributions, campaign workers.

Senator John Kerry, who is considering a run for president, has taken steps to challenge educational orthodoxies and make the debate over the quality of schools a national one. His most radical proposal has been to abolish tenure, and he's in the mainstream of thoughtful reformers who preach that parents should have a greater range of options. We applaud his imagination and initiative, though debate is needed before a final course of action is decided upon.

Anyone who doubts the magnitude of the problem in Massachusetts need only review the results of the state's new standardized tests intended to measure proficiency in English, math, science, and technology among fourth, eighth, and tenth graders. With mostly the exception of the wealthiest school districts, failure rates were disturbingly high. This growing gap between those with the means to receive a proper education and the rest of society should be as disturbing as the racial fissures that still divide too many of us.

Educational leaders have tried to sugarcoat this bitter news by claiming that the tests provide a baseline against which future progress can be measured. This is true, but misleading.

These results are an indictment of years of failure. If so-called education reform is working, it's not working fast enough.

The president of the Massachusetts Teachers Association, Stephen Gorrie, recently offered a tepid defense of the poor performance. In essence, he argued that we should take comfort that Massachusetts's overall performance ranked better than the rest of the nation's and that our low dropout rate and high incidence of college attendance suggest things aren't as bad as critics claim.

Perhaps. But let Gorrie answer this question: if public schools are so good, why do so many teachers send their children to private schools?

The answer: too many schools stink, and too many teachers know it.

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