A Top-Down Approach to Education

Amid recent reports of government investigation into for-profits colleges and universities, a poll released by the Gallup Organization shows that President Obama's approval rating in the area of education has dropped as fewer Americans approve of the job he is doing.  This drop in the president's education approval rating mirrors drops in his approval rating in other policy areas, but surprisingly, approval ratings for local school districts are on the rise.  Results of the Gallup poll show that of the 1,000 random participants, 34 percent gave the president an A or B for his efforts in public education; that's down from 45 percent last year.  For overall quality of the nation's schools, participants gave a similar ranking but approve of the job their local districts are doing with limited resources and lessened government intervention.  The poll underscores the importance of understanding of where local schools get their funding and how they use those resources to improve district-wide initiatives.

The school districts in California are a valid example of turning local dollars into real results when public funding dries up.  Five years ago, the state begin requiring high school seniors to pass an exit exam to graduate.  In the May 2010 graduating class, 94 percent of students passed the exam by the time they graduated.  In 2006, 91 percent passed.  This is astonishing considering state support for local districts has continued to shrink as federal education funding is simultaneously rerouted to "failing" school districts.  While test results are not always accurate indicators of success, they do show that California school districts are headed in the right direction - students are retaining information and are able to regurgitate that information as necessary.

The Gallup Poll and the results of the California state-wide exit exams both depict a positive upswing in American thought processes - our nation is beginning to once again focus on education as a policy issue.  As I've noted in past articles, education was one of the most hotly debated topics in politics until around 2002. Over the latter part of the last decade (during the Bush years, notably) politicians and citizens at large seem to have lost sight of education as a priority. Any real changes in education policy must be systemic and have a top-down instead of bottom-up approach.  In other words, support for our nation's schools must start with federal dollars trickling down to states and states dividing that money accordingly to local school districts based on both need and merit.

Photo Credit: Boston Public Library