I am completely convinced of two things: That the greatest advances in Western civilization have been lost somewhere between the third and fourth beer for want of a dry napkin; and that the more widely a public policy is heralded as something we ought to do, the less likely it is we actually can do it.
Case in point is the sobering announcement by Minnesota Education Commissioner Alice Seagren that Minnesota is joining the Common Core Standards Initiative, a state-led process to develop nationwide English-language arts and mathematics standards for K-12 education.
Led by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Offices and subscribed to by 46 states and the District of Columbia, the Common Core Standards Initiative would create a framework of content and skills all children must master each year of K-12 education. The standards will be “research and evidence-based, internationally benchmarked, and aligned with college and work expectations,” according to the coalition press release.
Let the heralding begin.
“Common standards will provide educators clarity and direction about what all children need to succeed in college and the workplace and allow states to more readily share best practices that dramatically improve teaching and learning,” said CCSSO President-Elect and Maine Education Commissioner Sue Gendron.
“Common standards … have the potential to bring about a real and meaningful transformation of our education system to the benefit of all Americans,” echoed NGA Vice Chair Vermont Gov. Jim Douglas.
Indeed, who could possibly be opposed? While there is a range of opposition from skeptical to fierce for nationally mandated standards out of Washington, there is broad support for “state-led, voluntary common standards,” said CCSSO President and Arkansas Commissioner of Education Ken James. “This is an idea whose time has come.”
“Only when we agree about what all high school graduates need to be successful will we be able to tackle the most significant challenge ahead of us: transforming instruction for every child,” Gendron said.
Therein lies the rub.
“Many people think national standards would be great,” the Cato Institute’s Neal McClusky said. “But though people may love the idea of na-tional standards, when it comes to actually creating them, love quickly turns to anger.”
After attending a meeting on “International Evidence about National Standards,” McClusky observed, “If you can’t get people who really believe that we need national standards to agree on even their basic shape, why would anyone think that they could get a majority of Americans to agree on a single standard?”
No matter how intuitively it appears we ought to spend money and resources to implement some “awesome” public policy — “ought to” implies that we actually “can.”
Noting that ethicists can imagine all kinds of schemes to remedy perceived social ills, St. Lawrence University economics professor Steven Horowitz writes, “We always have to ask whether it’s humanly possible to do what the ethicists say we ought. To say we ought to do something we cannot do, in the sense that it won’t achieve our end, is to engage in a pointless exercise.”
Of course, it is quite possible to implement a set of rigorous standards as Minnesota has done. As Seagren trumpeted, less than humbly: “By participating in this effort, we will take an active role in helping other states create consistent academic standards that will be as rigorous as Minnesota’s current standards.”
Great. However, the actual objective is not creating standards, but improving student readiness for the serious business of living. High standards don’t necessarily indicate that children are receiving a quality education. Perhaps that’s why the Legislature waived Minnesota’s math test graduation requirement as too difficult for too many students. Education is an individual experience; the path to proficiency is an individual choice, not a national echo.
“People support national standards simply because they are easier to conceptualize than multiple standards,” McClusky said. “And they think they — not people they dislike — will get to write the new, inescapable standards for all.”
Far better for America’s kids if the great idea to implement common standards had come up somewhere between the third and fourth beer. On sober reflection, the idea will cost a lot of money, waste a lot of time and resources, reach consensus somewhere just south of mediocrity, and in the end prove to be an “ought” that simply cannot achieve its objective.
Craig Westover is a contributing columnist to the Pioneer Press Opinion Page and a senior policy fellow at the Minnesota Free Market Institute (mnfmi.org). His e-mail address is westover4@yahoo.com.
This commentary originally appeared in the St. Paul Pioneer Press, Tuesday June 9, 2009.
Interest-Group liberalism — Root, Root, Root for the Home Team
Lowi coined the term “interest-group liberalism” to describe policy-making through deference to organized lobbies. Interest-group liberalism rests on two fundamental beliefs: Government is a positive force and a champion of good, and virtually all interest-group demands are legitimate. Consequently, a primary function of government becomes balancing and advancing any and all organized petitions.
The “end of liberalism” comes about when the appeasement process evolves the perfect storm of unrestrained bureaucratic growth, an unmanageable web of conflicting regulations and an unsustainable skyrocketing budget. Are we there yet, at the end?
Not by a long shot, and the reason is simple: Interest-group liberalism is the prevailing political philosophy of the American public, of Democrats and of Republicans — all the post-election Republican talk of a return to “conservative values” and “conservative principles” notwithstanding.
Slate writer Jacob Weisberg picked up on Lowi’s theme in a 2005 piece analyzing the governing philosophy of then President George Bush. When Democrats were in power, Weisberg noted, they were beholden to unions, lobbies for women’s rights, civil rights and gay rights, senior citizens lobbies, welfare advocates, Hollywood and trial lawyers. The hallmark of Democratic governing was a focus on policies that meant more to those groups than mattered to the welfare of the country at large.
When Republicans assumed power in 2000, the implied promise was the end of liberalism. Instead, Bush-era Republicans practiced their own brand of interest-group liberalism. Out with the old and in with military contractors, evangelical Christians, wealthy investors, gun owners and an alternative conservative media — new regime, new supplicants, but the same process.
Like the repentant weight-watcher who will do whatever it takes to slim down except diet and exercise, after getting hammered in the past two election cycles Republicans seem willing to do whatever it takes to restore conservative “values” — except adhere to conservative “principles.” Consider the touting by Republican Rep. Erik Paulsen of a legislative amendment he authored.
“Our military veterans who own businesses face unique challenges, and government must ensure the policies in place to assist them are achieving their goals,” Paulsen said in a press release. The “Job Creation through Entrepreneurship Act,” to which Paulsen’s amendment ensuring benefits for veterans was attached, also includes specific largess for women, Native Americans and a new grant program for Small Business Development Centers. It passed the House 406-15.
Paulsen and Republican Rep. John Kline voting for a bill that champions small business and veterans is certainly in keeping with “conservative values” (GOP Rep. Michele Bachmann did not vote). But using public funds to create private benefits for multiple interest groups by expanding the federal bureaucracy and deficit spending most certainly violates the conservative principles of limited government and fiscal responsibility (not to mention constitutional fidelity).
Such interest-group liberalism turns logrolling (legislators trading votes) from “a necessary evil into a virtue.” So at a state level, when southern Minnesota legislators earmark state funds for an international volleyball center in Rochester, there is nary a peep from their Arrowhead compatriots who expect reciprocal support in anticipation of a photo-op at a Duluth arena expansion. Both outstate areas support a budget-draining light-rail system between Minneapolis and St. Paul. A combined financial obligation on all Minnesotans, these projects respectively mean more to Rochester, Duluth and the Twin Cities than they matter to the welfare of the state at large.
The irony is that by practicing interest-group liberalism, both Democrats and Republicans are conservatively protecting an unsustainable status quo. Chances of actual reform — say, replacing the inefficient corporate income tax with a more efficient broad-based, low-rate sales tax — is problematic, not because of any flaw in economic logic, but because Democrats and Republicans both have supporters threatened by the reform. Their here-and-now concerns matter more, politically, than the future economic welfare of the state.
While many are outraged at government largess to interest groups other than their own, few are eager to gore their own oxen for the sake of principle. Nonetheless, unless we the people demand reform, it’s more likely the Twins will sweep a series in Yankee Stadium than we will ever achieve an “end of liberalism.”
This commentary originally appeared in the St. Paul Pioneer Press Thursday, May 28, 2009.