A number of those who have reviewed the newly revised national standards for history say they are still biased, although an improvement over the original.
Critics point to these biases:
Critics also cite some true or false questions included in the standards as indications of bias. The "correct" answer to each of the following statements is supposed to be "true."
A larger question still needs to be answered, according to some critics: Should educational mandates come from the federal government, or from the states, where education is conducted?
Source: Lynne V. Cheney (American Enterprise Institute), "New History Standards Still Attack Our Heritage," Wall Street Journal, May 2, 1996.
The philosophy underlying the 1994 "Goals 2000: Educate America Act" is that quality in education requires planning and coordination by state and federal governments.
However, the act actually establishes a "national school board" consisting of the National Education Standards and Improvement Council and six other federal bureaucracies, the National Education Goals Panel, National Skills Standards Board, National Educational Research Policy and Priorities Board, National Library of Education, National Occupational Information Coordination Committee and National Education Dissemination System.
Rather than enhancing education, critics suggest, it is an attempt to centralize control over education at the federal level.
Some states have already dropped out of Goals 2000 or refused funding because of the strings attached to funding and participation. They include Montana, Alabama, California, Virginia and New Hampshire.
Source: Sheldon Richman, "Why South Carolina Should Drop Out of Goals 2000," March 1996, South Carolina Policy Council Education Foundation, 1419 Pendleton Street, Columbia, SC 29201, (803) 779-5022.
The U.S. trails other industrialized countries in teaching reading skills, despite the fact that we spend far more per-pupil than they. Experts say this leaves us with the booby prize in the efficiency department.
Surveys show that the preschool language mastery of American children has increased steadily and substantially over the years. But once children begin formal schooling, U.S. students actually make the least reading progress among students in 16 industrialized countries.
The latest data come from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development:
Yet the U.S. spends the most per child in public primary school of the 13 nations in the study for which cost data are available.
Those who have studied the matter say that the problem lies in the way we compensate teachers. Here, they are not paid for performance, but according to their degrees and years of experience -- neither of which consistently correlates with student gains.
Superintendents, administrators and principals are paid according to the numbers and salaries of those who report to them. Experts say these policies are incentives only to multiply the number of administrative staff, and to hire and retain teachers irrespective of merit.
Nothing short of changing this structure fundamentally -- probably through school vouchers and other forms of privatization -- will generate the efficiency gains needed to bring U.S. schools up to world standards.
Source: Herbert J. Walberg (University of Illinois at Chicago) and Joseph L. Bast (Heartland Institute), "The World's Least Efficient Schools," Investor's Business Daily, May 23, 1996.
Voters appear to be increasingly reluctant to raise local taxes to increase funding for public schools. In Florida, for example, six out of eight referenda held in 1995 to raise the local sales tax by a half-cent failed. Researchers performed an exit survey in Hillsborough County, Fla., to find out why they rejected the tax increase. Those who indicated they voted against the tax were given a checklist of possible reasons. Among the 962 respondents:
The researchers also gave a checklist to those who voted for the failed sales tax increase. The number one major reason they voted "yes," according to 74 percent of the respondents: spending money on schools now is better than spending it on prisons later.
Source: Susan A. Macmanus, "The Widening Gap Between Florida's Public Schools and Their Communities: Taxes and a Changing Age Profile," Policy Report No. 18, February 1996, James Madison Institute, P.O. Box 13894, Tallahassee, FL 32317, (904) 386-3131.
Bilingual education began in the late 1960s as a modest federal program to help impoverished Mexican-American children, half of whom could not speak English when they entered the first grade. Critics suggest it has become a $5.5 billion-a-year effort to preserve dual language use, principally by Hispanic students, and that it actually harms students.
Bilingual education is based on the theory that children can learn math, science and other subjects in their native tongue, while taking special classes to learn English.
However, according to researchers, most controlled studies of low-English-proficiency (LEP) students have found that bilingual education is no more effective or even less effective in improving students' English skills than doing nothing. Specifically:
There are alternatives to bilingual education that studies indicate are more effective, such as English as a Second Language (ESL) and structured immersion. In ESL, students attend regular classes, but are pulled out of class for language instruction. In structured immersion, subject matter is taught in simplified English.
Almost the only children instructed in reading, writing and other subjects in their native language are Hispanic. Because of the difficulty of finding bilingual teachers, native speakers of Asian, African and European languages are usually put in immersion-type programs. This may account for different success rates among these groups.
Nationwide, at least 25 percent of low-English-proficiency students get no help at all, according to the U.S. Department of Education, although some 2.4 million children are eligible for bilingual or ESL classes.
Source: Jorge Amselle, ed., "The Failure of Bilingual Education," 1996, Center for Equal Opportunity, 815 15th Street, NW, Suite 928, Washington, DC 20005, (202) 639-0803.