The Manufactured Crisis.

Two of the most important contributions the United States has made to civilization are the principle of separation of church and state--indispensable to maximizing freedom of conscience and intellectual, religious, and personal liberty--and the institution of democratic, religiously neutral public education--the indispensable key to a pluralistic democratic society. Neither of these contributions sprang into existence fully perfected (and are certainly not perfected yet), but they have evolved further in this country than anywhere else in the world.

(Lest I be accused of jingoism, I hasten to point out that there is much that Americans can learn with profit from many other societies.)

Organized attacks on church state separation have been the main subject of this column for more years than I care to count. These campaigns have in eluded attacks on the religious neutrality of our public schools, threats to freedom of conscience on reproduction, endless attempts to coerce public sup port for sectarian private schools, efforts by authoritarian clericalists to obtain or retain special recognition by and favors from government, and so forth.

Attacks on public education per se have received less attention here, except as they have been closely linked to the campaigns to weaken public school religious neutrality or to get public funding for sectarian and other nonpublic schools through voucher or tuition tax credit plans. Those attacks are the subject of an important new book, The Manufactured Crisis (Addison Wesley Publishing Company), written by David C. Berliner, a professor of education at the University of Arizona, and Bruce J. Biddle, director for social research at the University of Missouri.

The Manufactured Crisis is a much needed antidote to the poisonous waves of myth, distortion, and misrepresentation that are eating away at the foundations of and the public's confidence in public education. The authors trace much of this disinformation to efforts by Reagan and Bush administration officials who misled the media and the American people about the problems of public education, diverted attention from the schools' real problems, and promoted phony solutions.

Berliner and Biddle show that what appears to be a decline in Scholastic Aptitude Test results is actually the result of the great expansion of the testing process to include vast numbers of less advantaged students. The authors show that SAT scores tend to be directly proportional to family income. They angrily reply to the propaganda against public schools:

We have little sympathy . . . for

critics who run down America's

schools for their putative failures

when the ongoing accomplish

meets of those schools are manifest

and the society they serve is

deteriorating. When school

achievements are steady or even

improve in a society that is

falling apart, we think that

educators have pulled off a

miracle. It is time to celebrate the

public schools of the nation, not

to blame them.

The authors further show that the data do not support the widespread view that average student achievement and performance are declining, that students are "dumber" than they used to be, that American schools in general fail badly in international comparisons. Rather, the data show that the U.S. spends less money on elementary and secondary education than most other industrial countries, that money does make a difference in the quality of education, and that sharp increases in school spending are due primarily to the high costs of providing for "special circumstances" children (who are found in proportionately far higher numbers in public than in nonpublic schools).

Advocates of tax support for denominational private schools often claim that public schools fail to promote moral values. Berliner and Biddle, however, cite research at Baylor University's Center for Christian Education to show that public schools still perform the function of "introducing students to shared moral values"

Berliner and Biddle attribute much of the "manufactured crisis" to propaganda campaigns by the religious and secular radical right and to media sloppiness and irresponsibility. The authors succinctly explain why voucher plans--currently being touted by many Republican politicians, by the Catholic bishops, and by televangelist Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition--would harm rather than help education. (For further documentation on this subject, check out The Case Againse School Vouchers by Al Menendez, John Swomley, and myself, available from Americans for Religious Liberty.)

One of the best sections of The Manufactured Crisis deals with the real problems of American education--the problems that politicians and the media prefer not to discuss because solving them will cost money, lots of money. Many of our educational problems Berliner and Biddler demonstrate, are related to this country's worsening distribution of income and wealth--a distribution less equitable here than in any other democratic industrial nation--and to the fact that this country allows far more children to live in poverty than is the case anywhere else in the developed world. Nearly a quarter of America's children live below the poverty line, a figure far higher than that in the north western European democracies.

Even more scandalous than our country's toleration of high levels of child poverty are the gross discrepancies in spending between public school districts--a problem largely nonexistent in other advanced democracies. Some school districts in Texas spend more than five times as much per student as the poorest districts. Berliner and Biddle present the statistics showing the spending differentials state by state. Still worse, they tell us, is the fact that this problem isn't being addressed at all:

If Americans public school

system were truly to offer equal

opportunity, it would provide

extra resources for schools

serving the poor. Instead,

America turns its back on the

educational needs of its poorest

children and offers them the

worst public schools in the

nation. Moreover, many

Americans don't seem to know

this is happening.

Despite its problems, public education in America enjoys widespread popular support, except in the inner cities. About 90 percent of American kids attend public schools, while non public school attendance has slipped from 13 percent of enrollment in 1965 to about 10 percent today (largely as a result of the implosion of Catholic private education).

With the alliance of sectarian special interests and the religious and secular radical right has come resourceful and ever more determined campaigns to cut back funding for public schools and to transfer the "savings" to religious private schools that are exempt from public control. The threat to public education couldn't be more clear. The Manufactured Crisis should be read by everyone who cares about the future of our children and our country.

Edd Doerr is president of the American Humanist Association, executive director of Americans for Religious Liberty, and the author of several books.