- Posted by David on June 3, 2010
But any honest assessment of the bigger picture is more depressing. That's because the real race we're in is not a "race to the top" within the United States but a race to maintain middle-class living standards in a world where rising, hungry powers such as China and India now threaten them. It's a race against other advanced nations whose school systems routinely outperform ours.
Seen in this light, the outer limits of the Obama administration's ambitions are demonstrably unequal to the challenges we face. A one-time $4.5 billion incentive fund in a system that spends $600 billion a year simply can't produce fundamental change. As a result, for all the useful progress these efforts will bring, it is virtually certain that even if we get eight years of enlightened federal leadership from President Obama and Arne Duncan, America in 2016 will:
-- Still systematically assign the least-qualified teachers in America to the poor students who need great teachers the most -- and recruit teachers for poor neighborhoods from the bottom third of college graduates.
-- Still tolerate dramatic differences in per pupil funding between wealthy and poor districts in ways that no other advanced nation would accept.
-- Still have the federal government contributing a dramatically smaller percentage of K-12 funding than any other wealthy nation.
-- Still be spending more on K-12 than other advanced nations, with mediocre results.
-- Still be losing ground to other nations in college graduation rates and attainment.
-- Still expect American students to incur levels of debt to get a college degree that no other advanced nation allows. And Pell grants, despite increases, will still cover a smaller percentage of college costs than they did 30 years ago.
I'd be thrilled to be proved wrong on these predictions. But suppose, on the trajectory that's been set on education policy, that I'm right? What should we make of this paradox? The most innovative national education leadership we've had in decades -- yet leadership unequal to the magnitude of the challenge.
That's our lesson for today, class. It will take a bolder brand of leadership to get past this conundrum, and to promote an agenda that can deliver what the country needs.
Your homework at the dawn of the 21st century is to figure out how our leaders can ever get there if their followers -- that means you and me -- aren't demanding much, much more.
Matt Miller, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and co-host of public radio's "Left, Right & Center," writes a weekly column for The Post. He can be reached at mattino2@gmail.com.