He charged the commission with addressing “the widespread public perception that something is seriously remiss in our educational system.” The commission included 12 administrators, 1 businessperson, 1 chemist, 1 physicist, 1 politician, 1 conservative activist, and 1 teacher. No students or recent graduates. No everyday parents. No representatives of parents’ organizations. No social workers, school psychologists, or guidance counselors. No representatives of teacher’s unions (God forbid). Just one practicing teacher and not a single academic expert on education.
.. A serious problem in the medical profession is that doctors can make much more money working for the drug companies than working for their patients. A better model is to insulate professionals from financial considerations.
.. Union protections reduce the incentives teachers face to give high grades just to keep everyone happy, to push “difficult” children out of their classes, and to teach to the test.
.. The second reason that strong public schools are in the national interest is that the most important purpose of public education is not to educate students. It is to build the American nation.
.. We provide free public education to everyone because education is primarily about good citizenship, not academic learning. All those hours spent in classrooms should be used to help our children grow into happy, productive, moral, responsible, reasonably well-behaved adult citizens who care deeply about our communities, our country, and our world. Subjects like art, music, and theater are just as important for citizenship as are subjects like English, science, and math.
.. This is where the 1983 report A Nation at Risk went tragically wrong. It excoriated the transformation of schools into community centers and sought to reverse the trend. Ever since then, education reform has focused on turning schools into knowledge factories. Teach more, study more, test more. Everything else—less.