What's Right with Education.

Abstract

Iet's start with the problem: Com j pared with other professions, ? education is an easy mark for any journalist trying to scare people. This tendency caused William Grieder of the Washington Post to respond with a fierce commentary on his colleagues called Stop Knocking Our Public Schools. By contrast, when we think of medi cine we think of elaborate surgical tech niques (which are good), not of Ameri cans' health (which is very bad). We are now fourteenth in the world in infant mortality and losing; driving from Harlem to Forest Hills is to move from 41 infant deaths per 1,000 births to 14. There are few nations in the world in which one can take a drive like that. Males in 18 other countries live longer than in the U.S. And in Los Angeles, when surgeons went on strike, the death rate went down! Indeed, the damage done by doctors and lawyers is so extreme ? burial or execution ? that their professions seldom allow the public to see this information. (How many Americans are seriously damaged by lawyers every year?) Educa tion is particularly vulnerable in this re gard, as we must report data on every stu dent-client for every day that person is being educated. That data is in the public domain. We have almost no facts on the performance of many of today's non school education programs in assisting youth ? CETA and Job Corps, for exam ple, and community-based programs. The press is not necessarily hostile to ward education; it's just that we hand them such excellent information on our failures. What follows is an attempt to correct that balance, to present evidence of the very real and solid accomplishments of America's schools and colleges.

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