Study Education's Problems or Engage in Radical Reform
Monday, May 1, 2006
Op-Ed By Congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr. (D-IL-2)

In the last two weeks Chicagoans have been exposed to the crisis in public education, but the question is, "What will we do about it?" Continue to study it or, given that it's an educational crisis, engage in radical reform?

Time Magazine and CNN recently joined Oprah Winfrey in a study of public education. Over the course of two shows Oprah's special guests, including former Phoenix Suns All-Star Guard Kevin Johnson, CNN's Anderson Cooper and Bill and Melinda Gates, all told us, among other things, that in the past the U.S. was number one in the world in education but today we rank twenty-fourth in math, behind Poland, Hungary and Slovakia.

Oprah's shows were hardly off the air when the University of Chicago's Consortium on Chicago School Research put out a first-of-its-kind study telling us that only 6.5 percent of Chicago Public School graduates are earning four-year college degrees by their mid-20s, with even lower percentages for African American and Latino males.

Her special guests were all concerned citizens and supporters of public education and were putting their mouths, media, motivation and money on the line for education. Anderson Cooper reported on the plight of public schools in the shadow of the White House in our nation's capitol. Kevin Johnson, through his St. Hope Public Schools, has taken over several schools in Sacramento, California, and is personally involved in an effort to improve where he went to school. Bill and Melinda Gates are arguing that our schools are "out-of-date," built for the industrial age not the digital age, and that America's standing in the world will drop unless we begin to educate students to live in a modern technological society.

The shows were great and very educational. The guests' analysis and proposed practical solutions were insightful and helpful. But will all of it lead to a paralysis of analysis and incremental change, or to radical reform?

In the Chinese alphabet the two symbols that combine to create the word "crisis" stand for "danger" and "opportunity." With public education in crisis can we see both the danger and the opportunity to respond in a dramatic way?

I am consciously and deliberately using the word radical. It means, "to go to the root."

Some will argue that the "root" problem is parents and dysfunctional families. Others will argue that dismal economic conditions and terrible social maladies - drugs, alcohol and teenage pregnancies - are the root cause. Clearly, these are major factors!

But for me the root cause is structural, and the structural problem is the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution. The Tenth Amendment says that if something is not explicitly in the Constitution, or a Supreme Court decision hasn't set a precedent, the issue belongs to the states. The word "education" is not in the Constitution, thus education is a "state right" not an individual citizenship right like the First Amendment's freedom of speech, religion and assembly. In reality, we don't have an American educational system. We have fifty different state educational systems further divided into county, school districts and city school systems - all separate and unequal. Urban minority and rural poor schools are even more separate and unequal as documented by these and many other studies.

Simply, what is fundamentally needed to change the nation's educational system is this: every person, but especially parents, deserve the legal right to challenge state legislatures, local school boards, Governors, the Congress and the President to build the best educational system the nation is capable of building in each local community. Parents need this right within and between states.

In Congress I've offered an education constitutional amendment, House Joint Resolution 29, which says: (1) All persons shall enjoy the right to a public education of equal high quality; and (2) The Congress shall have the power to enforce and implement this article by appropriate legislation. The first part of the amendment gives students the individual citizenship "right" and the second part gives Congress the "power" to establish a school system of equal high quality for all students.

Ultimately, Congress through legislation and the courts through interpretation, would determine what "equal high quality" means, but surely it would not mean having the "same" or "uniform" schools. Equal high quality also doesn't mean the zero sum game of taking from the "have" schools and giving to the "have not" schools. It means raising the lower schools standards up to the higher standard with Congress having the power and money to do so.

Constitutional amendments are broad general statements of goals, not legislative programs to reach the goals. The language must be broad enough to adapt to changing times over time.

Without studying our schools we won't know the varied dimensions of the problem, so I support virtually all such studies. Without reporting and educating the American people to these problems we can never create the political will to solve them. And once the studies are completed, parents need the legal right to implement the findings.

However, without an understanding of the structural nature of the problem facing public education we will never be able to address the root cause of the crisis. We don't just need studies. We need radical reform. We need to add an education amendment to our Constitution to build a more perfect Union.