Post Scripts: Every single child…

We’re still tossing money at schools but, unfortunately, we’re still leaving a lot of children behind. The new report from the National Assessment of Educational Progress involving fourth graders has been received with the usual yawning complacency. Which is unfortunate, since the results are catastrophic.

The report confirms that we are continuing to create a nation radically divided along meritocratic class lines. The top level is held by a small, hyper-schooled and highly competent overclass to which, in our information-based economy, accrues a vast over proportion of the nation’s jobs, wealth, status and power. This class is widely composed of whites and Asian-Americans. The second class, numerically broad, is made up of people who are educated enough to work in blue, pink and low-to-medium-white-collar jobs that often pay too little to support a family, offer no security and little hope for security or advancement.

The third group, also broad, comprises those who are functionally illiterate or close to it, and for whom life holds at best, hamburger flipping, weed-pulling, broom-pushing; marred by unemployment and descent into deep poverty. Members of this group are either back or Hispanic.

As Secretary of Education Roderick Paige put it: "After spending $125 billion over 25 years, We have virtually nothing to show for it." The average scores for fourth graders have shown no improvement over the past eight years. This may be startling but this only hides the real scope of the disaster.

NAEP tested 8,000 fourth graders across the country. Students were ranked in two categories: by a numerical scale and in terms of reading "achievement." Four levels of achievement are, in descending order: Advanced, proficient, basic and below basic. Consider the "below basic" group. Students in this group cannot understand even a general sense the meaning of what they have read. They cannot read. It gets worse. Sixty percent of black fourth-graders, 58 percent of Hispanics, 47 percent of urban students and 60 percent of poor children scored below basic.

We are looking at another lost generation. Pity the kids in the K.C. school district, so mismanaged some people ought to be in jail. Fortunately, high performing students are doing much better, thanks to increased reading and homework assignments.

So we are in a new century with a growing chasm between those who grow up in demanding families and attend demanding schools, and those who don’t have such luck; a nation where 60 percent of poor and minority children are shoveled through the schools and out the other end largely illiterate and all set for that good life at McDonald’s.

So now it is George Bush’s turn. He has proposed a budget that calls for an 11.5 percent increase in government spending for education. Proposals are great. He’s making a lot of ‘em. If he really believes no child should be left behind, he must act as if his promise, and the fundamental promise of America to educate every single child, are endangered. Because, with 37 percent of our children poised to be left behind, they truly are.