Why Our Children Fail

9. School boards in the middle
Manipulated by the legislature (where, constitutionally, the power over education in this state lies) and besieged by the often emotional demands of parents and self-proclaimed “community leaders,” local school board members deserve purple hearts for their service. Too often, however, boards buckle under the pressure. Witness, two years ago, the Minneapolis board’s disgraceful waffling on its decision to hire ideally qualified David Jennings as superintendent, which led to his withdrawal from consideration.

School boards are like hospital emergency rooms performing triage with limited resources. They need the fortitude to redirect the charge of their irate constituencies toward the puppetmasters in St. Paul.

10. A brainpower shortage in Washington
No Child Left Behind, the centerpiece of President Bush’s education program, would have produced howls of outrage from most Americans were it not the product of a self-proclaimed “compassionate conservative.” In addition to badly underfunding a program rightly targeting the poorest-performing students, NCLB draws conclusions and even threatens school closures based solely on the results of statewide tests. Recent data show that many states run dumbed-down tests to avoid federal sanctions. (Minnesota is one of the honorable exceptions to that practice.) Yet it’s hard to blame the states too much when they’re struggling to meet a federal mandate that almost guarantees failure.

Historically, federal education assistance targeting the poor has delivered beneficial results, as studies by the RAND Corporation and others have shown. But this unwisely structured, weakly funded mandate sucks resources out of the standard classroom. Washington must relax its requirements (a process belatedly under way) and fully fund their completion (sadly, not yet on the table). Until then, public school students will remain besieged by tests designed to grade their schools, but do nothing to improve student achievement, and the cacophony of criticism of “failing” public schools will remain misdirected.

James P. Lenfestey is a former Star Tribune editorial writer. Marcia Appel is a Mpls.St.Paul contributing editor.