America is falling behind the rest of the world in basic skills, and the policies that public schools have pursued will not close the gap, Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney said last month.
“We have an excellence gap,” said Romney, “15 year olds are 24th out of 29 countries in mathematics. High school seniors are in the bottom 10 percent in math and the bottom 25 percent in science.”
China has 7 times the number of people with engineering degrees than the United States, said Romney.
“We also have an achievement gap,” he said, citing the serious gap between black and Hispanic students and white students on the English proficiency exam given in 10th grade in Massachusetts.
“The achievement gap is the civil rights issue of our generation,” Romney said.
So what can be done to fix these problems?
Governor Romney said that because the home is the center of education “we should encourage marriage before kids, remove incentives for single-parenting, teach abstinence, and enhance incentives for marriage.”
“What children become, a nation becomes,” said Governor Romney at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) on March 29th.
Governor Romney was talking about education reform and the need for well educated students, in a special address to coincide with the release of a new report, “A Better Bargain: Overhauling Teacher Collective Bargaining for the 21st Century,” by Frederick M. Hess of AEI and Martin R. West of The Brookings Institution.
Governor Romney also shared some of his insights and successes with education reform in Massachusetts. He said that the unions always want more money and smaller classrooms, but examining data proved neither solution is necessarily effective.
Instead, in Massachusetts they implemented rigorous standards including graduation exams and testing, started charter schools through foundation funding, merit scholarships including free tuition to the top 25 percent of students, and English immersion, according to Governor Romney.
The results were much better scores on 4th and 8th grade exams in the public charter school versus the public district school in Lawrence and the demographics were similar, said Romney.
The governor also had suggestions for the future that had five main points: 1) Make teaching a profession with better pay for better teachers, advancement and mentoring opportunities and need-based teacher development. 2) Give superintendents and principals authority and responsibility for hiring, assigning and firing teachers as well as allowing them to participate in evaluation and compensation decisions. 3) Measure progress with annual testing. 4) Implement a math and science excellence initiative by having Advanced Placement in all schools, offering college dual enrollment in math and science courses and offering teachers training and testing in math and science. 5) Mandate parental preparation specifically in troubled school districts to help parents know what their children are doing in schools and to have the parents teach discipline and understand homework.
“The unions frequently oppose such reforms,” said Governor Romney, who offered an answer to overcoming unions’ attempts to block reform. His answer is to mobilize the minority community, get media coverage of test results to show improvements and explain school choice.
Regarding collective bargaining, Romney said that there should not be a prohibition on pay for excellence in collective bargaining agreements.
During the question-and-answer time, Governor Romney was asked how unions have reacted to his data. His response was that those without a financial stake see the progress being made and support the reforms, but some union leaders simply dismiss the data although Romney believes the financial interest in the outcome is the reason.
“Democrats said education reform was theirs; I came out and was told that this isn’t a Republican issue; but the Democrats are tied to the unions and placed a moratorium on charters. I vetoed and it was the minority community that helped,” said Romney as he sought to explain that the need for education reform should not have anything to do with partisan politics.
Romney was elected the governor of Massachusetts in 2002, has a background in consulting and the venture capital industry and is married with five sons. He is a graduate of Brigham Young University, Harvard School of Business and Harvard School of Law.
Julia A. Seymour is a staff writer at Accuracy in Academia.
