Author Archives: Peter Levine

lowering the voting age

The Michigan State House is considering a bill to allow citizens aged 17 at the time of a primary to vote if they will turn 18 on or before the general election. (To be more precise, the bill would put that proposal before the voters as a constitutional amendment.) I’m generally in favor of lowering the voting age by a year or so, because then students will become eligible to vote while they are still in high school, and voting can become part of the curriculum. They can learn the mechanics of registering and casting a ballot and also discuss issues in a moderated forum (the social studies classroom).

Eric Plutzer and others have found that voting is habitual–once someone casts a first vote, typically she continues to participate for decades. Consequently, lowering the voting age could be a way of increasing turnout, if the election became an opportunity for some basic voter education.

This is an argument for enfranchising all 17-year-olds. The Michigan proposal is more complicated and less inclusive that what I would favor, but it reflects an intuition that people who are going to be allowed to vote in a given election ought to be able to participate in the primary, as well. The bill would be a modest change, but better than nothing.

TerpImpact

I’m in a day-long meeting, without a lot of time to ruminate and write, but this is a good chance to link to an ambitious new website: TerpImpact. It’s a portal for students at the University of Maryland who might be interested in becoming more civically engaged (in various ways). It not only offers opportunities for volunteering and political action, but also provides intellectually stimulating material about civic engagement and learning. I think this is a model for higher education.

Feingold and La Follette

On Monday evening, I went to a party to celebrate my friend Sandy Horwitt’s recently released book, Feingold: A New Democratic Party. I haven’t read the whole book yet, but it’s very engaging. I share Sandy’s view that Senator Russ Feingold is a fitting successor to Senator Robert M. La Follette, Sr., who held the same seat a century ago. La Follette is the hero of my New Progressive Era, and I wrote quite a lot about him that didn’t make the final cut. I spent some time with his papers and read most of the major studies of him. La Follette was a true hero, but he was a tragic hero, most of whose causes failed. The reason, I think, is that he never resolved some fundamental dilemmas of modern democratic politics: how to make government effective without making it technocratic; how to mobilize people for popular reform without reducing their capacity to deliberate and form their own views; how to appeal to common interests without losing sight of the particular interests that make us human; how to separate the public sector from private money without shielding government from innovation; how to retain the spirit of the neighborly community in a mass society.

On the basis of Sandy Horwitt’s book, it appears that Senator Feingold is a serious student–and emulator–of La Follette. The modern Senator has the same moral compass as Fighting Bob. He is reacting to the current war much as La Follette responded to World War One, and he abhors G.W. Bush much as La Follette denounced Wilson. (Those two presidents are similar, I’ve argued.) Feingold is as independent as the founder of the Progressive Party was. But I don’t think that Feingold, or anyone in our time, has resolved the problems of mass democracy that arose at the beginning of the 20th century. His agenda of political reform lacks a large and passionate constituency, and that’s because of the atomization and technical rationality of modern society. Sandy evokes the small-town Wisconsin values that shaped both La Follette and Feingold (many decades apart), but he doesn’t say–because nobody knows–how to make those values salient in a nation of 300 million.

strategies for broadening the curriculum

I’m with those (including Senator Harkin–see yesterday–and George Miller, who is a key US Representative) who decry the narrowing of the American school curriculum in recent years. The reason seems to be relentless pressure to raise math and reading test scores. Social studies, science, arts, music, physical education, extracurricular activities, and service-learning appear to have suffered.

It’s not self-evident that this is a problem–maybe we should focus our attention on attaining universal numeracy and literacy. But I believe that the narrowing is harmful because education should have broader and higher goals than basic academic skills. Besides, Senator Harkin is correct that activities like music and service motivate kids and keep them in school.

But what to do about the narrowing problem? I can think of six policy options, none perfect:

1. Fund particular programs or types of programs, such as arts or service. Drawbacks: The amounts of money will be small and may not make much difference for most kids. Small programs use up a lot of their funds on administration. We can’t trust the worst school systems to spend the money well or devote it to the kids who need it most.

2. Increase general funding for education, on the theory that dollars are fungible; if we cover fixed costs like facilities or special education, schools will spend more money on arts, service, etc. Drawback: They may not actually spend the money for those purposes, or use it well. Also, money is not the only limited resource; equally important is time.

3. Hold schools accountable for providing specific educational opportunities, such as school newspapers, music, or service-learning classes. Drawbacks: This means extra layers of accountability for schools that are already buried in rules. Unless these mandates come with cash, the burden is particularly unfair.

4. Hold schools accountable for student outcomes in areas like civics, arts, and health. Drawbacks: This means an extra layer of tests. Besides, tests don’t always measure the impact of programs; they may reflect students’ home backgrounds. And it’s hard to develop high-stakes tests of attitudes and values.

5. Relax federal tests and rules that interfere with broad education. Drawbacks: Civil rights organizations will–with some justification–complain that relaxing the rules will allow schools again to tolerate poor outcomes for minority kids, poor kids, and disabled kids.

6. Avoid federal law altogether and focus on the states or school districts. Drawbacks: It’s very hard to organize systematic change in 50 states, let alone tens of thousands of districts.

Senator Harkin on education

I’m on Capitol Hill at a meeting of United Voices for Education, a group organized by Peter Yarrow (of Peter, Paul, and Mary) to support the aspects of education that are overlooked in current policy: the arts, civic and character education, extracurriculars, service-learning, physical education, and the like. Senator Harkin addressed us. His views matter because he chairs the Senate appropriations subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education and serves on the Senate authorization committee for Health, Education, Labor and Pensions.

The Senator said that he voted for No Child Left Behind (NCLB) but now wants to work with UVE to improve it. He said, “we’re all concerned about the imbalances … that have come about.” He cited the recent study by the Center for Education Policy that found cuts in social studies, arts, and other subjects that are not tested under NCLB. “I find this extremely disturbing,” he said. “For many children, what motivates them and keeps them in school is things like music, theater, clubs, and field trips.”

This is a view of youth as assets. But Senator Harkin said that he voted for NCLB because it addressed the “savage inequalities” identified by Jonathan Kozol. He cited Kozol as saying that the learning abilities of disadvantaged kids have been “destroyed” by the time they reach secondary school. This is partly because of inadequate funds and partly because schools discriminate against minorities and disabled students. However, if teenagers are already crippled by a lack of early support, then why will they flourish if we give them positive opportunities? If school systems are discriminatory and inequitable, why should we trust them with funds for positive opportunities like arts and service?

Senator Harkin said that he wanted to amend NCLB to provide “appropriate assessments” that measure social, behavioral, and mental health services in the community and the school as well as (or instead of?) student performance. He also wanted federal funds for elementary school counselors.

In general, the Senator said that NCLB requires more money. It has been underfunded by a total of $56 billion so far (using the original authorization levels as the benchmark). He is obviously most comfortable with federal funding for school facilities (to fix “our crummy infrastructure”) and nutrition programs. These forms of federal support do not require testing, control over curriculum, or accountability; they merely reduce local schools’ costs. Senator Harkin claimed that our system is the best in the world for creativity, thanks to local control; our weakness is the inequality of funding. Thus the main federal role should be to support facilities.

He argued that we can rely less on standardized tests because we can trust teachers to assess the kids in their class, just as we ought to allow judges to set sentences. Assessments, he said, should be holistic and should take into account behavior and values as well as knowledge. “What good is it if someone is intelligent, but they don’t respect other people’s views? I don’t mean to get philosophical, but I think one of the things that’s happened in this country is, we’ve lost respect for other people’s views.”

I detect a tension in the Senator’s remarks between a redistributive progressivism of the Jonathan Kozol variety and respect for teenagers and teachers. I also detect a tension between trusting schools and teachers and viewing them as discriminatory. Saying that schools need more funds for facilities bypasses those tensions, and it is a valid point. I’m not sure, however, that it is an adequate approach to education policy.