ENCORE

Posted at 7:51 p.m. ET

It is with pride and humility that we present an encore performance by the winner of our first Pompous Fool Award, details available in Subscriber Services.  Nicholas Kristof, of The New York Times, richly deserves the award for his contributions to both pomposity and foolishness.  Today he demonstrates that, although he's won the coveted prize, he hasn't lowered his standards:

The United States is the only country in the industrialized world where children are less likely to graduate from high school than their parents were, according to a new study by the Education Trust, an advocacy group based in Washington.

True.  No problem with citing that.  But we simplistic readers would hope that Kristof, and others along the Manhattan cocktail circuit, would try to understand why.  No such luck.  He writes about the brilliant growth in American education during much of our history, but says:

Then in the 1970s, the United States education system began to stagnate, with high-school graduation rates stuck at about three-quarters of all students. Probably as a result, income inequality increased again.

Why?  Isn't that an important question?  Well, being a good and fashionable leftist, Kristof gives us an answer, the wrong answer, but the acceptable one:

Meanwhile, the rest of the world invested heavily in education and caught up with, and in some cases surpassed, us. As Fareed Zakaria notes in his terrific book, “The Post-American World,” the problem with American education is not the good schools. White suburban schools still offer an excellent education, comparable to those in Singapore, which may have the best education system in the world.

Note the word "invested."  Kristof, who tends to be thirty years out of date, still believes that money is the problem.  No, Mr. Kristof, it's not.  Washington, D.C. spends more per capita than any school district in the country, and produces the worst results.  But why be bored with facts?

A study by the Hamilton Project, a public policy group at the Brookings Institution, outlines several steps to boost weak schools: end rigid requirements for teacher certification that impede hiring, make tenure more difficult to get so that ineffective teachers can be weeded out after three years on the job and award hefty bonuses to good teachers willing to teach in low-income areas. If we want outstanding, inspiring teachers in difficult classrooms, we’re going to have to pay much more — and it would be a bargain.

Kristof would have been a great dancer, for he dances around things better than any other columnist.  Some of those recommendations are good, but they barely touch the issue.

So Mr. Obama, let’s give others the chance to board the escalator that you and your father enjoyed. Let’s pick up where we left off in the 1970s and mount a national campaign to make high-school graduation truly universal, and to make a college education routine.

As Dana Carvey used to say, isn't that special? 

There are several real reasons for our educational decline, none of which Mr. Kristof wants to touch.  First, and foremost, is culture.  Why is that wherever Asian-Americans move, the schools get better?  Why is it that New York City's special high schools, the elite secondary schools of the nation, like the "Fame" school, are flooded with qualified Asian-Americans, yet have trouble attracting other groups?  Culture.  Education begins in the home, not the school.  The parent is the first teacher.  If that parent is absent, or not interested, the child won't excel.

Yet, we are not permitted to discuss culture.  It's not politically correct.  I once asked a guidance counselor from an inner-city Los Angeles school if he could tell in advance which parents would come to PTA meetings.  "Of course," he replied.  "It's the parents of the A and B students."  He then paused and said, "That's why they're A and B students."

The second reason for failure is that we've turned many schools into political instruments of the left.  Consider bi-lingual education, now a complete failure.  Why does it take eight years for a Hispanic child to learn English, whereas a new immigrant to Israel learns Hebrew in six months?  Politics.  It's not in the interest of the Hispanic political establishment for that child to learn English.   Once the child does, he or she is no longer dependent on that establishment. 

But Kristof won't go there either.  He gives us the bromides about spending, suggesting that we're cheap with education.  In fact, we're very generous.  But spending can't overcome culture, and we'll never address that issue unless we acknowledge it, and acknowledge that political corruption can destroy education, no matter how many dollars are thrown at the schools.

Kristof gets an F, but keeps the award.

November 13, 2008.