NATIONALIZATION
School Restructuring, by Hillary
Wednesday, June 16, 1993
By Robert Holland
So who are the movers, the shakers, behind the monolithic effort to remake
public education on a nationally prescribed model?
For one, try this name, friends: Hillary Rodham Clinton. And for
another, this one: Ira Magaziner.
What's that, you say? Right Social Democrats, wrong cause? Sure,
I know that a national health care plan has been the First Spouse's pet project,
with Magaziner as her main helper.
Ah, but I'm telling you that Lady Hillary has a national education plan, too.
Even though it is barreling toward implementation in many states, discussion in
the major news media has been scant -- in contrast with health-care reform,
which has received intensive coverage even before its unveiling. But
anyone willing to spend hours in the library combing mostly obscure journals can
find the Hillary (and --ouch! ---Big Business/Labor Department) education
connection.
Before my fan club at the Department of Education accuses me of conjuring
apparitions, here are some of my references:
Monthly
Labor Review (July, 1991);
Industry Week
(August 19 1991); Employment Relations Today
(Winter, 1992-93); Educational Leadership (March
1992); Public Management (February, 1993); and
Chemical Week (March 11, 1992).
The key components of the Hillary Plan are found in the Outcome-Based
Education being marketed in Virginia and elsewhere as World Class Education.
Mrs. Clinton serves as co-chairman for implementation of the Commission on the
Skills of the American Workforce, which laid the foundation for the Labor
Department's heavy intervention in school restructuring through its ominously
dubbed SCANS system, beginning in May, 1990.
Hillary also is on the governing board of the New Standards Project, in which
the Virginia Department of Education is participating Based at the
University of Pittsburgh, the NSP has the explicit purpose of destroying the
current testing system and replacing it with an ungraded OBE curricular approach
allowing pupils to take a group mastery test as many times as they need to pass
it.
In the 1992 article with Magaziner in
Educational
Leadership, Mrs. Clinton sought to justify her scheme in the context of
national industrial policy. To meet inter-national competition, she said,
U.S. workers must be trained in a wholly new way -- as members of teams that
produce more. Toward that end she laid out an OBE blueprint:
There would be one standard for all American students, to be met at or around
age 16. "This standard should be established nationally and benchmarked to
the highest in the world," she declared. Yet states would be responsible
for ensuring that "virtually all students" passed this common "world class"
test. (Can you say 'norming," boys and girls?)
With a Certificate of Mastery in hand, students then would choose among
college-prep, taking a job, or a technological certificate. Meanwhile, the
Labor Department would set "voluntary" skill standards -- almost surely the
precursor to sharp-toothed mandates -- for entry to virtually all occupations.
Guess what? That is almost exactly the centralized scheme that now has
come down as hubby Bill's "Goals 2000: Educate America Act."
Meanwhile, with the backing of elements of Big Business, DOL's SCANS principles
-- extolling OBEish "higher order thinking" and downgrading basic education --
are becoming staples of school restructuring. SCANS asks schools to test for
such worker "competencies" and skill "foundations" as "works with others,"
"self-esteem," "sociability," "self-management," "integrity," and "honesty."
This emphasis on probing the psyche, educator/author Chester Finn has
remarked acerbicly, neglects that "factual knowledge is to thinking skills as
bricks are to mortar."
In fairness, the Presidents Clinton are not solely responsible for this
utilitarian push. The self-proclaimed "education President," George Bush,
set much of this in motion with America 2000.
And trade journals name such corporate prime movers in OBE and SCANS as Union
Carbide, Motorola, TGI Friday's, MCI, Xerox, and Gannett.
But all this is made to order for Hillary. In fact, it may be what she
has in mind when she speaks modestly of aspiring to lead "a remaking of the
American way of politics, government, indeed life." One of her
philosophical gurus --Michael Lerner of a leftist rag called
Tikkun --actually wrote the following in an essay
on the "politics of meaning" (a phrase Hillary has adopted):
"The Department of Labor should create a program to train a corps of union
personnel, worker representatives, and psychotherapists in the relevant skills
to assist developing a new spirit of cooperation, mutual caring, and dedication
to work."
That may be gibberish, but it's not far from what's actually going down.
Yes, Americans do receive too few solid results for their investment in
schooling. But this ailment is certainly not the result of excessive local
autonomy; rather educational standards began sliding precisely as powers were
taken away from local communities and placed in the hands of central
bureaucracies, beginning with LBJ's Great Society in the 1960's.
Now we are asked to believe that Hillary Clinton, the race-norming-happy
Department of Labor, corporate Clintonites, OBE gurus, and central educrats have
the magic for transforming the schools. Even were such institutions
"effective," would everyday Moms and Dads want their children to attend and be
cast in the desired Total Quality Management mold as good Organization Men and
Women? And would teachers want to teach in such centers of indoctrination?