Ambrose: How do we save education?

Despite what has been mistakenly said, the critics weren’t just uninformed masses or skeptical conservatives but highly respected experts of varied political leanings. One was Diane Ravitch, who said it was a dubious plan unproven in the field. Others argued that top systems overseas were going different directions, that the math portion was at the least inadequate and that student testing ambitions went overboard.

Now, five years later, we learn from a Wall Street Journal report, some of the original 45 states that signed on are dropping out while others are hardly on the same page regarding teaching techniques and subject matter. The logistical costs are proving overwhelming, and some are guessing that Common Core will continue to shrink as what’s left goes in varied directions. Sticking to it in toto could do more harm than good, some fear.

Something else offering the opposite of help is the Obama administration policy telling schools to quit suspending or expelling minority students in greater percentages than white students. The administration believes it’s discrimination and not disparate behaviors that account for the punishment differences. That’s not at all clear, however, and a consequence of the policy in some districts has been a virtual surcease of disciplining, with chaos taking its place.

All of us should want fairness and stand against hurting students with overly severe punishments. But a lack of discipline when needed can be a horrible hurt itself. How do you acquire habits required for constructive, successful lives without it?

And this we know: Schools that keep students under control get far better academic results than those that don’t.

What also helps is keeping teacher unions under control, which is what Mayor Rahm Emanuel aimed for in Chicago.

His administration agreed to salary hikes for teachers already averaging almost $75,000 a year, but wanted evaluations to be based on improved student performances and thought short work days should be expanded for the sake of academic enhancement. While he and 400,000 students endured a strike for his supposed presumptuousness, he would eventually have reason to beam. That was when Chicago results on these recent national tests of fourth- and eighth-graders stepped out of the scary national trend by actually going up.

Sometimes you can’t beat the teacher unions, as was shown when the school board in Colorado’s Jefferson County instituted merit pay and — as Emanuel did — furthered the cause of education-improving charter schools that unions largely detest. There were other issues leading to a recall election for three members who did make bad moves they apologized for, even as their opponents made misleading statements for which there was no apology, just victory at the polls.

The lesson isn’t for reformers to run for the hills. It is to keep fighting and innovating, doing what they can to encourage parental involvement and to recruit, reward and train top teachers while avoiding the kind of unflinching federal rule now threatening us in more ways than education.