Adding More Collectivism to Public Schools Won't Help

'Universal' curriculum proposal planned by senator (Link will probably rot in a few days)

As Texas lawmakers continue wrestling with whether school financing will be changed and how, one state senator wants to focus on teachers and their curricula in what she calls a cost-saving plan.

Sen. Florence Shapiro, who is authoring the legislation, said the universal curriculum proposal is designed to save school districts the estimated $600 million a year that they spend developing curricula for the courses they offer.

On it's face, it may seem like a good idea. In the current high-pitched climate of figuring out how to pay for Texas public education, just about any proposal that reduces costs seems reasonable at first glance. But real solutions should, at the very least, do more good than harm. This idea of further centralizing the education of millions of Texas children will do more harm than good.

"We've decided there ought to be a universal curriculum created by the state that would be made available to all school districts so they would no longer have to spend so much money developing curriculum," Shapiro, R-Plano, told The Dallas Morning News.

Experts, under the Senate proposal, would develop a daily instructional road map for each teacher based on the subjects they teach.

"We're talking about laying out a day-to-day planner for each course so that an algebra or English teacher would know what material should be covered on the first day of class," she said.

Although Shapiro said the universal curriculum would not be mandatory for school districts, many would likely embrace it because of the money they could save by not having to write their own course guidelines for instructing students in most of the courses taught in Texas schools.

The only consolation to me in this plan is that it wouldn't be required. That's a small consolation. As the Senator herself says, if given the choice of paying for curriculum development or getting the state (i.e., Texas taxpayers) to pay for it, schools under a budget crunch (which would be most of them) may jump at the chance. Just as federal transportation dollars provide an effective "voluntary" bludgeoning tool for Washington, D.C. to influence state policy, I see this as little different.

If this idea is passed into law, we'll have the educations of increasingly more children become determined by a few people under political influence. Those people would wield tremendous power when you consider how deep an impact a person's early education can be. Hell, the people and the jobs already exist, both on state level and federal level. Objections to my criticism that say only good, decent people will fill these roles are irrelevant. It cannot be guaranteed that those people will make ideal choices all the time, nor should we even expect to get such a guarantee.

But we'd need it if the choice is taken further away from the consumers of education services and closer to the bureaucrats in the state. More importantly, what constitutes "ideal" is different for every person.

This isn't to say that a fully privatized education system would be free of curriculum problems; far from it. People are fallible and make mistakes whether they are in the government or in private business. The crucial difference is that when private business screws up, the costs and burdens associated with that screwup are localized. Only the students in that school suffer from a bad education. The costs and burdens of the state screwing up are socialized. Every student using that "master curriculum" gets shafted.

In addition, only those who voluntarily pick a private school that fails get stuck with the tuition bills. Public schools spread those fees around the whole taxing district...and some want to spread them around the entire state.

Guidelines would be based on the curriculum standards that are the basis for the student testing program, the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills.

Copyright 2004, The Associated Press.

This statewide standardization of a testing program with serious problems of it's own isn't to be desired either. "Teaching to the test" will become more institutionalized than ever before as all manner of financial and public relations incentives become tied to the results. This would have the additional non-benefit of placing more influence on the writers of the TAKS test, resulting in additional education centralization.

Then there's the small matter of the test not even existing for high schoolers to take, assuming one of the bills/amendments being bandied about the special session gets passed. Kinda odd to place so much importance on a test that may get killed in a few weeks.

The tragedy in this is that since the cost issue wouldn't be a public issue if the public didn't have to pay the cost, some now think we have to cut costs in the important area of what we teach our kids. Of all the educational areas under the political gun, this may be the most important to protect. Hopefully this idea gets nuked early and is never resurrected.

Posted by Drizzten at May 10, 2004 01:24 PM