If You're Scoring at Home...
Earlier this week, Maryland became the first state to take overpublic schools under the auspice of the No Child Left Behind Act. The State Board of Education voted to take over four chronically failing Baltimore City high schools, and strip away the city's direct operations over seven additional middle schools.
Other writers have already hit on some of the fundamental issues that this development raises, but let us get on the record and raise an important question...
What happens if the schools don't get any better after Maryland's State Board of Education tries to work its magic?
In principal, it's certainly a good thing that the No Child Left Behind emphasizes the importance of results, since talk means little if minority, low-income, and "geographical disadvantaged" children continue to suffer from a sharp achievement gap. And if any company saw that an employee or contractor failed to fulfill its responsibilities time after time, they'd be foolish not to look for a new worker or service provider who might do a better job. But state takeovers of schools (forgiving for a moment whether they are based on too narrow a set of metrics for defining "quality") only beg the question: why should a child be limited to only that kind of education which his or her state is able (or willing) to provide, when a superior education can be had just across an invisible state boarder? This is not to suggest, of course, a complete federal takeover or overhaul of schools, but rather to ask what the whole purpose of today's track of education reform if the end-game still consists of a vision in which 50 different states have 50 different standards for what constitutes quality education - and in which heavy incentives exist for a race to the bottom, rather than a race to the top?