by Mitt Romney
The teachers’ unions have secured their greatest influence within the Democratic Party, of course, and while both parties have their respective positive attributes, the teachers’ union power in the Democratic Party isn’t one of them. My Democrat friends, in turn, point to influence groups in my party that they find objectionable, but I believe there’s a key difference. In the case of the teachers’ unions, the deleterious impact of undue influence is felt by millions of our children. The unions’ influence directly affects policies that lie at the foundation of our nation’s economy, the core of our ability to preserve freedom, and the heart of our children’s future prosperity. The reform and improvement of our failing schools is a priority that is simply too important to be shaped by such a powerful and self-interested special interest.
Beginning in the 1960s, states began to allow collective bargaining for public employees, and at the time, people plainly didn’t see the future implications for education. So-called campaign-finance reform only strengthened the relative power of the teachers’ unions by allowing them to collect dues from their millions of members and devote them to political causes and candidates. Today, the two major teachers’ unions in the United States have over 6,000 employees and annual revenues in excess of 1.5 billion, more than both political parties combined. The political power they wield to block education reforms is considerable. Even the proposed education reforms proposed by the California Governator were defeated by the massive money-power of the teachers’ unions. It is a fact that [teachers’ unions] are more powerful—by far—than any other groups involved in the politics of education, write Terry Moe and John Chubb in Liberating Learning. To recognize as much is not to launch ideological attacks against unions. It is simply to recognize the political world as it is. Whether you agree with the teachers’ unions’ perspectives on specific reforms or not, it’s difficult to claim that it’s healthy for education policy to be controlled by such a self-interested player.
Are there any realistic hopes for change? Well, a Democratic president or Democratic governors could, at long last, put children ahead of the unions and champion essential reforms. Or the public could vote out of office those politicians who blindly adhere to the union playbook. In fact, I believe it’s entirely possible that one key demographic within the Democratic Party, the African-American community, will see the negative effects the party’s bonds to the teachers’ unions have on their children. They will demand action that brings genuine reform to the schools that are failing their community. When I vetoed the bill that would have put a moratorium on new charter schools in Massachusetts, the Black Caucus of state senators and representatives was one of the groups that came to my defense and to the defense of the charter-school movement.
Change also may come when data about teacher and school performance becomes increasingly available to parents and communities, leaving the unions unable to staunch swelling public demand for accountability and reform. Former president George W. Bush was right to champion the No Child Left Behind legislation, which requires states to test student progress and to evaluate school performance—it was the only way to ensure that critical information reached the public. Only the federal government had the clout to force testing through the barricade mounted by the national teachers’ unions.
Those who object that national testing is too expensive are falling for one of the unions’ most specious arguments. While costs vary by state, testing generally costs less than 50 per student per year, a tiny fraction of the massive amount of funding that federal and state governments send to local schools. The unions also claim that the result of No Child Left Behind is that teachers are now simply teaching to the test. Yet when I went online and personally took the exam that Massachusetts now administers to prospective high-school graduates, I discovered that teaching to the test can only mean teaching the fundamentals of math, algebra, geometry, calculus, reading comprehension, and English composition. If giving student these skills is teaching to the test, then I’m all for it—our kids can’t succeed in life without these basic literacy and numeracy skills.
In an ideal world, all parents would be able to send their children to the schools of their choice, something those with high incomes can do today by selecting the city or town in which they live or by enrolling their children in private schools. Yet for average Americans, the choice is limited, or nonexistent. Some parents with modest incomes still have access to excellent parochial schools. I know, for example, that Boston’s public-school system is highly successful in part because a very large Catholic school system sits alongside it. Over 40 percent of Boston’s children attend Catholic schools, where they receive an excellent education, and the public schools feel community pressure to perform to the same standard. While vouchers that would help middle-income and moderate-income families send their children to private school are, for the most part, politically infeasible, charter schools have become a viable and very promising alternative for school choice in a number of states like Massachusetts.
Reliable studies like the one recently conducted by the Rand Corporation indicate that, on average, charter-school students do not outperform their regular public-school counterparts in math and English scores, even when adjusted for income and background disparities. But even if the results of that study are replicated in other places by other researchers, it’s possible that those literacy and numeracy scores parallel the general results from public schools because charter schools often are designed to emphasize disciplines like music, art, science, or history, and to excel in those areas of study to the satisfaction of both students and parents. Charter schools also succeed when they demonstrate new practices and stimulate innovation in the neighboring regular schools and in other public-school districts. And underperforming charter schools can have their charters revoked. If a charter school fails, it can and should be closed, something that’s hard to do with regular public schools. And, crucially, parents can choose or reject a charter school for their children, a choice that is an expression of parental right on a matter of paramount importance to them. It’s the American way to provide an American education.
Education and Innovation
Parents and students in Washington, D.C., recently got a taste of school choice, when 1,700 families received 7,500 vouchers per student to help them attend private schools under the Opportunity Scholarship Program. The recipients, 99 percent of whom were black or Hispanic, liked what they saw—there were four applicants for every opening. And the student outcomes were encouraging as well. Early participants in the program developed reading skills that were nineteen months ahead of their public-school peers, and an evaluation by the Department of Education confirmed that the students had made big gains. But under intense pressure from opponents of school choice, Congress and the Obama administration passed legislation that terminated the program. It reminded me of my experience with the legislature’s attempt to impose a charter-school moratorium in Massachusetts, although in the District of Columbia, children and parents did not have a happy ending. (There are still efforts under way at this writing to restore the program. The intense criticism of the presidential and congressional indifference to these students may yet win the day, or at least a reprieve.)
In Detroit, students in the city’s public schools were offered a lifeline by a philanthropist who pledged to personally fund 200 million to establish fifteen charter schools. Unbelievably, the teachers’ union successfully persuaded their friends in the Michigan state legislature to turn down the gift. As those experiences in Washington, D.C., and Michigan attest, the political forces thwarting education reform are extremely powerful, and their exercise of that power is often very discouraging.
There is, however, a burgeoning new type of reform that likely will be far more difficult for the special interests to defeat. As Moe and Chubb describe in Liberating Learning, a company called Advanced Academics currently provides classes over the Internet for 60,000 students in twenty-nine states, and each of their cours
es is supervised by a teacher who federal regulations certify as highly qualified. A number of other companies offer varieties of supervised Internet learning as well, and now nearly a million public-school students a year complete courses online. At two public schools in Dayton, Ohio, children spend several hours online each day in classes that have twice the average number of students and are taught by teachers who receive higher pay for the innovative teaching they do. The state of Wisconsin has chartered a virtual academy from a private company that pioneered distance learning, providing a rigorous, customized curriculum to students who ‘attend’ from locations all over the state . . . [and] whose needs were not being met by their own districts. At Pennsylvania Cyber, the largest virtual charter school in the country, eight thousand students receive textbooks and are assigned individual teachers who work with them online and in real time. A faculty adviser is required to e-mail each student’s parents every week and speak with them by phone every two weeks, providing feedback and counseling. The results are impressive—Pennsylvania Cyber students have posted SAT scores 97 points above the average for the state.
At least thirty-eight states have now established so-called cyber-schools, with Florida boasting the largest enrollment—100,000 students. This new learning technology is a far cry from the computer labs of the 1990s. Students today are presented with materials that are tailored to match their capabilities and progress. Teachers monitor each student’s advancement, intervening to help guide them through whatever learning challenges arise.
These and other technology-driven innovations are bringing to education something that has long been available in the private sector. Some years ago, the CEO of a firm that provides software for computer-assisted engineering around the world explained to me that his company’s system determines the level of proficiency of each of its users, which it then matches with the tools, tutorials, and prompts that can best help that user perform his or her work. Education software has now made the same transition, from one size fits all to individually crafted and individually guided materials and mentoring. Students with different learning abilities can now attend the same class without some being held back and others being left behind. And teachers can be far more effective, applying their guidance where and when it is needed most.
These new technologies also enhance the education experience of kids that are homeschooled. My sister-in-law Becky Davies has homeschooled four of her children. My hat is off to her and to other parents like her. Having the kids at home for most of the day, preparing and providing daily instruction, arranging for social interactions with other kids, and simply knowing that your child’s education is wholly in your hands—this is a burden many of us would find overwhelming. I admire such parents a great deal and applaud every innovation that assists them in their efforts. As cyber-tools become even more available, I expect that the number of homeschoolers will grow exponentially.
The teachers’ unions oppose a good deal of this computer-learning revolution, and the homeschooling movement drives many of them to near apoplexy. They have gone to court to close cyber-schools across the country, including Wisconsin’s virtual academy. They may well prove to be just as successful in blocking technology innovations as they have been in blocking other education reforms. But Clayton Christensen, Harvard Business School’s eminent innovation scholar, is more optimistic. In his Disrupting Class, he argues that technology will penetrate education just as it has private enterprise, pointing to rates of technology adoption in public education that closely parallel those that have occurred in the private sector. As parents are increasingly exposed to performance data, I’m convinced that the resistance to specious arguments for limiting technology will grow. And I sense that enough political support is building to overcome resistance to effective reform generally. I simply cannot believe that the teachers’ unions and the Democratic Party can successfully persist in opposing the very fundamentals that have propelled America’s leadership in every other dimension of our economy—competition, innovation, and higher rewards for better performance.
Far too much is at stake for America to stand by as yet another generation falls behind. The solution begins with doing everything we can to support stable marriages and families, but it goes well beyond that enormous challenge. Even students from the most disadvantaged homes can achieve, something that’s been proven in highly innovative programs around the country. The key to successful schools is providing students with excellent teachers. We must recruit teachers from among our brightest students, pay them well, and provide them with excellent mentors. Accountability and school choice matter, whereas class size and spending levels do not, at least up to a certain point. Plus, innovation and technology are critically important as we move forward. They moved our nation’s economy out of heavy industry into the information age, and they can similarly help restore American public education to the heights it once achieved. I am convinced that the barricades to competitive, high-quality education have begun to tumble.
There are so many outstanding and passionate people in education—as governor, I felt that not a week went by without my meeting a number of them. They know the system desperately needs to change and they want to be a part of a brighter future for our children. What we need is leadership at the higher levels of government to free education from the grip of forces that are keeping our schools and our kids from realizing their potential.
No Apology: The Case For American Greatness
9
Running Low
There wasn’t much about having a Rambler in the driveway that qualified as cool to a ten-year-old. My friends’ parents drove Buicks, Pontiacs, Plymouths, Chevys, or Fords, cars that were bigger, faster, better looking, and more popular. Yet there was one thing going for my parents’ car: Rambler, the plain-Jane car my dad built, was the television sponsor of Disneyland, the predecessor to The Wonderful World of Disney, and my friends certainly thought that was cool. At home every Sunday night, we would gather around the television set as Walt Disney introduced episodes of classic features like Lady and the Tramp, or my favorite series, Davy Crockett. Each show was sponsored by Rambler, and everyone in the Romney family was proud of it.
My father chose to advertise on the Disney program because he viewed Rambler as a family car, and Disneyland was the preeminent family show of the era. Ramblers were inexpensive, easy to service, and most important, they were fuel efficient. One of the most anticipated announcements at our house every year was the winner of the Mobil Economy Run, and Rambler often won because it achieved thirty miles a gallon or more—not bad even by today’s standards. Dad called his competitors’ cars gas-guzzling dinosaurs, a term that he helped make popular. He wore a tie with a dinosaur print on it, and there were two brontosaurus sculptures in his study. My friends may have been cool, but their parents drove around in fat, giant, extinct reptiles. Our car got great mileage, and even with relatively inexpensive gas prices at that time, good mileage meant less pressure on a family’s budget.
In the 1950s, good mileage wasn’t about reducing reliance on oil imports—the U.S. produced 90 percent or more of the oil we needed. The threat of global climate change didn’t concern anyone yet, either. In fact, some scientists were predicting a return of the Ice Age. Gasoline cost about thirty cents a gallon—the equivalent of about 2.10 today—and people wanted good mileage simply to save money. Then things began to change.
By the early 1970s, America’s oil production had sharply declined and its import of oil had risen dramatically. Oil went from being a pocketbook issue to a strategic one. By 1975, we were importing almost as much oil as we were producing, and President Gerald Ford declared that our oil trade imbalance threatened our national security. All six presidents since then have repeated that same warning, yet today we import about 50 percent more oil than we produce.
America’s dependence on oil for transportation and consumer products is huge and dangerous, insists Thomas Friedman. It limits military and foreign policy
options, handcuffs the economy, and generates a steady stream of revenue that helps finance Muslim terrorism. He is absolutely right. From a foreign policy perspective, our addiction to imported oil necessitates a massive military presence in the Middle East, and it has contributed to involving us, whether we like it or not, in ancient and seemingly intractable conflicts. Oil profits fund global violence against America and Americans. Oil finances the development of weapons of mass destruction. Our thirst for oil has led us to sell advanced weapons technology to states like Iran, which then saw revolution turn a former ally into an enemy, a transformation that could happen again in other oil-exporting states to which we sell advanced armaments. And of course oil and the profits it promises have led to war in the past, most memorably when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in order to seize his neighbor’s oil wealth, triggering the first Gulf War.