Establish an 'Academic Bill of Rights'

By Hugh B. Price

President Clinton's proposed Education Accountability Act has sparked the expected debate over whether Washington should play the role of Big Brother or Daddy Warbucks in the ongoing saga of public school reform. Whatever side one picks, there's no question the education standards movement is gaining momentum. With one eye on the pupils and the other on the polls, elected officials of all persuasions delight in proclaiming the end of social promotion. Many states have instituted tough new standards, assessments, and sanctions for flagging students and schools. Those states that haven't yet are scrambling to catch up with the crowd.

The trouble is that politicians and school administrators are going about the business of improving things exactly backwards. The head of the Virginia School Boards Association hit the mark when he said: "The state insisted on testing first, training teachers second, and purchasing new books and teaching materials third, which is the exact opposite of what we need to do."

No sensible corporation would revolutionize its product line this way. Of course, corporations must know where the bar for beating the competition is set. The next logical steps are to design prototypes, retool plants and manufacturing procedures, transform the work culture, retrain workers, and exhaustively test new products, all this before mass-producing the new...