SCHOOL REFORM: WHERE ARE WE? WHY?

Think of this as a history lesson.

Jimmy Carter created the Federal Department of Education (DOE). It provided an institutional vehicle for federal "participation" in local public school management.

Ronald Reagan perhaps failed to notice when his Secretary of Education, Terrel H.Bell, staffed, organized and developed the long-term bureaucratic base for DOE control of the public schools, and engaged non-governmental organizations (chief among them the Carnegie Corporation) to brainstorm tactics, methods and media for restructuring education in the nation's k-12 schools. (Bell left government employ for a plush appointment to the Carnegie Board.)

George H. W. Bush brought the program into focus with "America 2000," allegedly inspired by the 1989 Governors' Conference presided over by Bill Clinton. Dr. Shirley McCune, a prominent government bureaucrat, was keynote speaker at the conference. She said, "What we're into is the total restructuring of society.... What is happening....is not simply a chance situation in the usual winds of change. What it amounts to is a total transformation of our society."

Education was the tool selected to achieve that social transformation and the DOE and the laws were carefully structured to manipulate that tool.

In May 1991 President Bush handed Congress his "America 2000: Excellence in Education Act." It was based on six national goals. By the year 2000:

1. children will start school ready to learn.
2. The high school graduation rate will increase to at least 90 percent.
3. Students will leave grades 4, 8 and 12 having demonstrated competency in challenging subject matter, including English, mathematics, science, history and geography...and be prepared for responsible citizenship, further learning and productive employment in our modern economy.
4. U.S. Students will be first in the world in science and mathematics achievement.
5. Every adult American will be literate and will possess the knowledge and skills necessary to compete in a global economy and exercise the rights and responsibilities of citizenship.
6. Every school in America will be free of drugs and violence and will offer a disciplined environment conducive to learning.

William Jefferson Clinton signed the "Goals 2000: Educate America Act," which amplified exactly those goals in appropriate statutory language. He named Marc Tucker, previously employed by a subsidiary of the Carnegie Corporation, as his "education advisor."

Problem: When year 2000 did roll around and Clinton's term ran out, not one of those goals was any closer to achievement than when the program was first contemplated by the governors in 1989. Indeed, SAT testing suggests there has been significant deterioration of the educational base from which Goals 2000 departed.

George W. Bush signed off on "No Child Left Behind," ostensibly to thrust forward the stalled initiatives of Goals 2000. Meanwhile, the educational bureaucracy now speaks in terms of Goals 2014. No matter. Six years into the latter objective, the wheels of that educational bureaucracy are still spinning. The original goals remain no less beyond reach even by the DOE's own measures.

None the less, Dr. McCune was clearly prescient; this federal experiment in managing the schools has in fact radically transformed our public schools and a generation of our children. Whether the desired total restructuring of society is to be achieved thereby, remains to be seen. There are those, however, who believe that Shirley McCune accurately stated the true transformational objective, and that Goals 2000 was and remains but a cover story designed to keep the natives confused and pacified.

This is the history of school reform. As George Santayana said, to be ignorant of history is to be doomed to repeat it. Welcome to 2014.