Chester Finn: Education Reform in America

Conversations with Bill Kristol

News, Society & Culture, Government, Politics

4.7 • 1.7K Ratings

🗓️ 18 April 2020

⏱️ 73 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

What reforms would most benefit American education? What are the obstacles to putting them in place? What changes to the education sector should we anticipate in the coming years? In this Conversation, Chester Finn, a former assistant secretary of education and veteran scholar of education policy, shares his perspective on the state of American education—covering preschool, K-12, colleges and universities, and continuing education. According to Finn, American education still boasts sources of strength, such as some very good institutions from pre-K to higher ed. However, he notes America is falling behind other advanced countries in overall educational outcomes. Finn and Kristol address various reform initiatives such as charter schools, the homeschool movement, the marshaling of technology to cut costs and improve outcomes, and various other policy tools that could attract better teachers or otherwise improve schools. While noting the promise in some reform efforts, Finn also highlights the obstacles they have often faced, and reflects on why the education system seems so resistant to change. This is a must-listen Conversation for anyone interested in a sector so closely tied to the success of America.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	And the Hi, I'm Bill Crystal. Welcome to Conversations. I'm very pleased to be joined today by my old friend and colleague, not old, but young, young but long time, friend and colleague,
0:26.2	Chester Finn, who we worked together in the Reagan administration and the education department.
0:31.3	We had met previously when you worked for Pat Moynihan, I think one of I would say the leading education reformer and student of education reform in the last several decades.
0:40.0	You're kind. And so you're going to tell us. It's good to be with you.
0:43.0	And so education reform.
0:45.0	It's when I came in 85, you to work for Bill Bennett, the education department.
0:49.0	It was two years after a nation at risk, which was the report that was done under Reagan that kind of
0:54.0	seemed to coalesce the educational reform movement. We had great hopes and here we
0:58.8	are what, a long time later, 35 years later, as we speak here in March of 2020 and where does it stand? I mean where
1:06.2	do our school stand and where does the reform effort stand? K-12 I'm thinking
1:11.0	of K-12. K-12 for now, yeah.
1:13.4	Our schools are nowhere near where they need to be.
1:15.9	They're nowhere near where the nation at risk commission
1:19.2	said they should be.
1:21.6	They're better than they were. There have been gains. That's right. So you
1:26.2	think from 80 whatever from yeah it's it's there's been a if you just look at test
1:30.8	scores there were considerable gains, especially in the early grades, especially
1:36.4	for poor minority kids, especially in math, through the 90s and into of the 21st century.
1:43.6	It's plateaued over the last five or eight years,
1:47.0	pretty much since the big recession.
1:50.5	A big issue is that the gains that were visible never reached high school.
1:55.0	And so the achievement results in high school are basically flat,
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Conversations with Bill Kristol, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Conversations with Bill Kristol and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.