Skip to main content
Menu

Main navigation

  • About
    • Annual Reports
    • Leadership
    • Jobs
    • Student Programs
    • Media Information
    • Store
    • Contact
    LOADING...
  • Experts
    • Policy Scholars
    • Adjunct Scholars
    • Fellows
  • Events
    • Upcoming
    • Past
    • Event FAQs
    • Sphere Summit
    LOADING...
  • Publications
    • Studies
    • Commentary
    • Books
    • Reviews and Journals
    • Public Filings
    LOADING...
  • Blog
  • Donate
    • Sponsorship Benefits
    • Ways to Give
    • Planned Giving
    • Meet the Development Team

Issues

  • Constitution and Law
    • Constitutional Law
    • Criminal Justice
    • Free Speech and Civil Liberties
  • Economics
    • Banking and Finance
    • Monetary Policy
    • Regulation
    • Tax and Budget Policy
  • Politics and Society
    • Education
    • Government and Politics
    • Health Care
    • Poverty and Social Welfare
    • Technology and Privacy
  • International
    • Defense and Foreign Policy
    • Global Freedom
    • Immigration
    • Trade Policy
Live Now

Cato at Liberty


  • Blog Home
  • RSS

Email Signup

Sign up to have blog posts delivered straight to your inbox!

Topics
  • Banking and Finance
  • Constitutional Law
  • Criminal Justice
  • Defense and Foreign Policy
  • Education
  • Free Speech and Civil Liberties
  • Global Freedom
  • Government and Politics
  • Health Care
  • Immigration
  • Monetary Policy
  • Poverty and Social Welfare
  • Regulation
  • Tax and Budget Policy
  • Technology and Privacy
  • Trade Policy
Archives
  • April 2021
  • March 2021
  • February 2021
  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • January 2020
  • December 2019
  • November 2019
  • October 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014
  • December 2013
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • December 2012
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012
  • July 2012
  • June 2012
  • May 2012
  • April 2012
  • March 2012
  • February 2012
  • January 2012
  • December 2011
  • November 2011
  • October 2011
  • September 2011
  • August 2011
  • July 2011
  • June 2011
  • May 2011
  • April 2011
  • March 2011
  • February 2011
  • January 2011
  • December 2010
  • November 2010
  • October 2010
  • September 2010
  • August 2010
  • July 2010
  • June 2010
  • May 2010
  • April 2010
  • March 2010
  • February 2010
  • January 2010
  • December 2009
  • November 2009
  • October 2009
  • September 2009
  • August 2009
  • July 2009
  • June 2009
  • May 2009
  • April 2009
  • March 2009
  • February 2009
  • January 2009
  • December 2008
  • November 2008
  • October 2008
  • September 2008
  • August 2008
  • July 2008
  • June 2008
  • May 2008
  • April 2008
  • March 2008
  • February 2008
  • January 2008
  • December 2007
  • November 2007
  • October 2007
  • September 2007
  • August 2007
  • July 2007
  • June 2007
  • May 2007
  • April 2007
  • March 2007
  • February 2007
  • January 2007
  • December 2006
  • November 2006
  • October 2006
  • September 2006
  • August 2006
  • July 2006
  • June 2006
  • May 2006
  • April 2006
  • Show More
November 6, 2008 12:55PM

Nothing Innovative in Federal Education

By Neal McCluskey

SHARE

I’m getting to this paper — a proposal from moderate-liberal, Democratic insiders Andy Rotherham and Sara Mead — kind of late because I was working on other things when it came out, but something in it begs for commentary, especially since folks like Rotherham and Mead will likely have at least part of President-elect Obama’s ear. The report is a call for a new federal role in promoting “21st Century educational innovation,” largely by funding “educational entrepreneurs” and developing “effective educational programs.”

Mike Petrilli over at Fordham has already done a pretty decent job of critiquing the proposal, so read his back-and-forth with Rotherham for a fuller treatment if you’re so inclined. For me, just one thing in the report goes a long way toward demonstrating how foolhardy it is to think that the federal government would ever consistently promote and scale-up truly effective education reforms: It's never done so before. Indeed, Rotherham and Mead offer just two, lonely examples of past success — Brown v. Board of Education and The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act — and they don't really apply.

Don’t get me wrong, Brown v. Board was a critical turning point in American history, and IDEA was important at least for ensuring that public schools don’t ignore disabled kids. Neither of these federal offerings, however, are remotely similar to scaling up, say, KIPP schools, or identifying and nurturing the world’s most inventive reading program. Brown was an achievement of a federal court — specifically, the Supreme Court — not a federal bureaucracy. IDEA was essentially a piece of civil rights legislation for the disabled. Neither had anything remotely to do with picking and expanding the truly most promising educational waves of the future.

Looking at much more analogous precedent demonstrates clearly that the feds are about as capable of promoting effective innovation as John McCain is of appearing calm in the face of economic crisis. I give you Diane Ravitch, speaking in 2003. She headed the Department of Education’s Office of Education Research and Improvement in the early 1990s, an office intended to do just what Rotherham and Mead propose, and she has a very definite assessment of how much true “innovation” the feds have supported:

My impression, based on the last 30 years, is that the federal government is likely to be hoodwinked, to be taken in by fads, [or] to fund the status quo with a new name.

Or look at the once-vaunted New American Schools, a federal initiative launched under President George H.W. Bush to identify and replicate “break-the-mold” school designs. The effort failed because, according to researcher Jefferey Mirel, the schools that got funded weren’t really new, but old models already beloved by the educators authorizing the grants:

NAS asked for revolutionary ideas and for the most part got the “revolutionary” ideas that educators have been trying to implement since the nineteen twenties. Invited to diagnose and reform themselves, schools found the problem to be a misguided public policy emphasis on measurable knowledge and skills, not faulty ideas about teaching. The notion that their pedagogical ideals were at fault was-as E. D. Hirsch puts it-“unthinkable.”

Quite simply, the federal government will rarely if ever be able to promote true innovation in education, especially since in education, unlike defense or health — which Rotherham and Mead point to as areas of successful federal innovation efforts — people can’t even agree on the final goals. Protect troops from incoming missiles? I think all us Generals agree. Find a cure for cancer? OK. Foster critical thinking or content knowledge? Uh-oh…

Ultimately, to think the feds could effectively promote true educational innovation would be to conclude that the Department of Education — and any office within it, such as Rotherham and Mead’s proposed Office of Educational Entrepreneurship and Innovation—would not be staffed with human beings who have preconceptions, opinions, or experiences that bias them toward one thing or another, and that educators don’t have biases that tend to be skewed in particular ways. They do, and that is why having a single entity try to pick innovative winners just results in “the status quo with a new name.” People know what they like, and when you make just one set of them into innovation gate keepers, what you tend to get is what they would have given you anyway.

With that in mind, file this proposal in the already overflowing “history ignored” drawer.

Related Tags
Education, Center for Educational Freedom

Stay Connected to Cato

Sign up for the newsletter to receive periodic updates on Cato research, events, and publications.

View All Newsletters

1000 Massachusetts Ave. NW
Washington, DC 20001-5403
202-842-0200
Contact Us
Privacy

Footer 1

  • About
    • Annual Reports
    • Leadership
    • Jobs
    • Student Programs
    • Media Information
    • Store
    • Contact
  • Podcasts

Footer 2

  • Experts
    • Policy Scholars
    • Adjunct Scholars
    • Fellows
  • Events
    • Upcoming
    • Past
    • Event FAQs
    • Sphere Summit

Footer 3

  • Publications
    • Books
    • Cato Journal
    • Regulation
    • Cato Policy Report
    • Cato Supreme Court Review
    • Cato’s Letter
    • Human Freedom Index
    • Economic Freedom of the World
    • Cato Handbook for Policymakers

Footer 4

  • Blog
  • Donate
    • Sponsorship Benefits
    • Ways to Give
    • Planned Giving
Also from Cato Institute:
Libertarianism.org
|
Humanprogress.org
|
Downsizinggovernment.org