Education: Equal, Fair, and National

I rise to the Mark Schmitt challenge:

If one party shoots over to an extreme, and the other opposes it, the opposition party has not automatically moved over to the other extreme. In fact, if the center is open, it is because Bush, Rove and DeLay ceded it. There is no reason for Democrats not to claim it. Democrats can become -- or, I should say, they are -- the party of responsible long-term federal budget choices, of sensible progress on health care, of political reform and ethical behavior, of leaving settled social issues as mostly private choices, and of reasonable Justices like Ginsburg and Breyer. Moving beyond Brownstein's list, add responsible stewardship of the environment, and more support but less federal intervention in education. Is there anything on that centrist list that the most committed MoveOn.org member would not be comfortable with?

Well, I doubt I cound as the "most committed" MoveOn.org member. And, indeed, as Mark has observed in an important sense there are no MoveOn.org members. But I object! Why "less federal intervention in education?" Because the NEA doesn't like No Child Left Behind and in order to make common cause with conservative NCLB critics they've decreed that liberals should start pretending to believe in federalism? Not for me, sorry. Now maybe you like NCLB less than I do, but bracket that. Given some set of education standards you do approve of, you want to see them everywhere. Federalism isn't a liberal point of principle. When you hear Kansas is taking evolution out of the curriculum, you don't approve. You don't say, "well, we can teach evolution in Maryland and let them teach whatever they want in Kansas." Nor do you think it's okay if Georgia wants to teach "The War of Northern Aggression." Nor do you think the horrendous inequalities in school funding inside Connecticut is bad, but the inequalities in funding between New Jersey schools and New Mexico schools is a-okay. The federalism critique of the Bush education policy is, perhaps, good politics. If so, then fair enough. But it has no place in liberalism.

Let me also just note more broadly that the idea of moral federal spending but less federal "intervention" is a mirage. Where there's money, there will be strings, and rightly so. Insofar as spending decisions shift from the local level to the state level, the accountability drifts away from school boards and toward state capitals. As the money shifts toward Washington, the focus on accountability shifts there too. If a Senator votes for huge new spending on schools and the schools don't get better, we don't want to let him get away with saying, "well, we didn't tell them what to spend the money on. They just made bad choices." The only way to hold federal officials accountable for their education spending decisions is for them to exercise a reasonable degree of control over what the money is spent on.

Lastly, in a totally utopian vein, let me note that there's reason to think that poor kids, in particular, are disadvantaged by local control of the schools. These families tend to be more transient, moving town-to-town, school district to school district. Switching schools is hard on all kids. It's especially hard when the curricula are totally different in School A and School B. The French model where all the schools are the same everywhere would treat these kids much better. The military, which needs to focus very closely on the problem of transient students, uses a uniform curriculum in the schools it operates, and it's a very successful school system operating under what are obviously difficult circumstances.