Having districts and schools get too big, and the rise of
government interference, have been very devastating to education. Districts getting too big cause schools
to also get too big, as I have explained on my website, www.smallerschools.org. The site also shows data supporting and
explaining why size can be so negative.
Government interference mainly started when John Kennedy
used education as an issue to get elected in 1960. He blamed the schools for the USSR getting a man in space
first. This accomplishment had
nothing to do with schools and everything to do with the fact that the USSR had
spent so much of their budget in this pursuit, and we hadn’t. By promising federal funds, he got just
enough votes to win. His
successor, Lyndon Johnson, fulfilled this promise in 1965. We did get to the moon first, but it
was because we invested in NASA, not for anything the government did to or for
the schools. Federal funding was
followed by legislation year after year, seldom with sufficient funding for
implementation, adding to the burden imposed on local schools. The legislation then invited judicial
rulings that further increased requirements without funding
There were many educators who began to see, first in the
federal government and later in states, a source of money and power by
promising reform and training to improve teachers. After almost 50 years, there is little evidence that these
diversions of funding made any improvement. Indeed most of the “reforms” in teaching only undermined
good teaching, such as the constructivist-based philosophy of teaching, which
produced such failed programs as Whole Language, New Math, and Open
Schools. Most of the efforts to
reform teachers and the system have only complicated education and weighed down
good teachers.
Until these events are reversed, education will only get
more expensive, more complicated, and with less quality provided.
