Jonah Goldberg Still Dumb

Recently, Goldberg attempts to make sense of the relationship between Liberalism and the failure of American Education.  He claims that

[i]n 2008-2009, the  District of Columbia spent $1.3 billion dollars on 45,858 students. That is slightly less than the entire GDP of Belize. In 2007, 8 percent of DC eighth graders were able to do math at the eighth grade level. Clearly what’s needed is more money!

According to this

 the DC Public Schools gross budget for fiscal year 2008 as of October 1, 2007

was $949,087,062. Goldberg doesn't provide a link for his claim so  maybe there is another number out there, but he appears to have misplaced a decimal or so.

He continues

Yes, yes, the horrid state of American education is an American problem, and to that extent we’re all to blame in some abstract sort of way. But is there another major area of American public policy that is more screwed up and more completely the fault of one ideological side? 

 In 1980 Milwaukee began an experiment with charter schools, vouchers and all that right wing gobbledygook. The system created redundant schools, drained funding from the public schools, and more generally, sought to use market-based reforms to fix something that isn't a market.  The net result? Vouchers and the rest don't work.  How many school districts have had to deal with this kind of nonsense day after day? How much of the Conservative rage about education has funneled itself into this specific set of policy prescriptions? All of it.  The news that vouchers et alia didn't work led long timer supporter, Diane Ravich, of vouchers and similar reforms to conclude that these kinds of reforms don't work and are actually undermining successful reform efforts.

Ravich also argues that

Teachers feel, with justification, that they are being scapegoated and blamed whenever test scores don't go up. My book appeared at a time when there was only one narrative about school reform, which privileged the views of businessmen, lawyers, politicians, foundation executives, and government officials who are imposing their ideas without regard to the wisdom and experience of those who must implement them.

While Goldberg frets that 

[i]n the last few presidential elections I’ve heard more from Democrats — by far — complaining about leaky school roofs, cracking paint, and the need for more computers in the classroom than I’ve heard about the fact it’s easier to find and train a brontosaurus than it is to fire a horrible teacher.

It really is all the teachers fault and we need more market based solutions.

He then fumes that

I’m sure not that many people follow the DC education controversy, but in a nutshell: Mayor Adrian Fenty lost his reelection bid in large part because he tried, through Michelle Rhee the education chancellor, to fix the schools over the objections of the teachers’ unions. Fenty’s opponent and the liberal black establishment turned it into a racial issue (surprise!) and now education reform in DC is seriously in doubt. 

Rhee's favored solution was firing teachers.  The Teacher's Union, indeed any union, has as one of its main priorities protecting its members from being fired.  Goldberg seems not to have paid attention to the past 30 years of American history, during which the lessons of PATCO went unlearned by "centrists" while movement conservatives sought to destroy more unions, deregulate more industries, and, in the end, succeeded in screwing up the country.

He concludes with anguished cry over the unfairness of it all.  Because  if

you listen to these endless seminars and interviews on NBC and its various platforms, I never seem to hear Matt Lauer or David Gregory ask “Isn’t the education crisis a failure of liberalism?” After all, liberals insist all social problems can be reduced to root causes. Well, they’ve been in charge of the roots for generations and look at the mess they’ve made. Look at it.
Largely because of the Iraq war,  Katrina and Bush’s unpopularity,  a host of liberal intellectuals pronounced conservatism to be dead. The decrepit state of American education is a far more sweeping, profound and lasting indictment of the very heart of liberalism and yet the response from everyone is “Let’s give these guys another try!”

Actually, no. The problems we face today are  the result of the Neoliberal, Reaganite, Glibbertarian, and Thatcherite crap that has dominated policy making for the past 30 years. Starve the state of revenue, destroy unions, blame workers, traduce the state's ability to do what it has been doing successfully for since at least 1933, and deregulate.  What has this led to?  Look out your window.

In a sign of their seriousness about tackling education reform, when a recent study came out that showed that Head Start made little or no difference in academic achievement, Conservative demanded its immediate dismantlement and used as a stick to beat the stupid Liberals and the Liberal Liberalness.  Of course, they missed the fact that individuals who had the pleasure of Head Start did better by other measure, time in jail, etc, than their peers who did not benefit.


Can we all do better in the process of continuing to reform our educational system?  Yes we can.  Does this require jettisoning Neoliberal, Reaganite, Glibbertarian, and Thatcherite critiques of a by and large successful system?  Yes, it does.  We cannot afford to let these flying monkeys back into power. No, we can't

And as a bonus, remember that Yglesias wants the same market-based, Olive-Gardenesque reforms and thinks that firing teachers is the first step to nirvana.  It ain't.


UPDATE:
Goldberg's claim about 8% is in error.  In their self assessment DC schools have a 48% in "elementary math" on a nationally administered test they have, for 2008-09, 11%.  They did, it's true, have 8% on the nation test in 2007-08, but they improved their scores.

Remember "Good ideas do not need lots of lies told about them in order to gain public acceptance"