The frightening urgency for education reform
A photo by Mc Morr, a Flickr.com user, shown under Creative Commons
“Let us ask ourselves — if our children should live to see the next century; … what change will they see? What progress will we have made?”
My answer to President-elect Obama’s question is education reform.
According to Pulitzer prize winning journalist Nicholas Kristof, education reform is ranked fifth among Obama’s priorities. Education reform is not a primary concern of the Obama administration from what we have seen. Of all the industrialized countries, only children in the United States are less likely to graduate from high school than their parents were, under a new study by the Education Trust.
The majority of children around the world are outperforming American children in Math and Science (Center for Public Education). Of all high school graduates in the US, only 53% enter college and 35% graduate with a college degree (American Youth Policy Forum / Washington, DC).
More children are dropping out of schools than ever before. The Philadelphia Inquirer writes, “The dropout rate in American cities has hit epidemic proportions and threatens to leave a generation of students falling further and further behind. Each year, a staggering 1.2 million students nationwide drop out of school. A recent report by America’s Promise Alliance found that 17 of the 50 largest cities, including Philadelphia, had graduation rates below 50 percent.”
What progress will our nation have made if our schools are failing? How will we compete against other countries with our failing schools?
The future of this country rests on education reform. Our economy and national security will be severely threatened if our children cannot compete with the rest of the world, in areas like Math and Science. As I was told when I was younger, children are the future. While we enjoy our status as the world’s only superpower, this will inevitably be short-lived without education reform. Poverty will grow and the economy will unable to adapt as the rest of the world invests in new high-tech industries.
In “On College-Entrance Exam Day, All of South Korea is Put to the Test,” Sungha Park of the Wall Street Journal says that more than 80% of South Korea’s high-school seniors go on to college. When high school seniors take the college entrance test every year, South Korea is a “changed country.” The stock market and offices opens an hour later to keep the roads free for testtakers. Planes are prohibited from taking off or landing during the listening portions of the test. Other students are given the day off to allow testtakers to enjoy quiet. Park tells the story of how an officer raced on his motorcycle to a student’s home to retrieve her admission ticket, after he received a distress call on his radio.
There is intense debate on how education should be reformed.
A recent reader stressed the need for school vouchers. Tristan Yates writes, “Every parent is frustrated by their lack of choice. While Obama can afford to send his daughters to Sidwell Friends or Georgetown Day, most Americans are stuck with whatever school is down the street, and if it’s a failing school then your kids lives are basically ruined before they even begin. School vouchers don’t cost anything and could save a generation of students and make the inner cities livable again. It’s a winning issue that needs to be championed - if only for moral reasons.”
Kristof writes, “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.”
As Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now.”
I’ll need to research Obama’s plan for education reform…I’m hesitant on a lot of his “plans.” Hopefully some progress will be made these next four years.
From the looks of it the only way we’re going to get “change” (aka “Reform) from Obama is that if he takes education seriously.
When you look at the top 3 political strife’s we’re faced with today they are:
Economy
War in Iraq
War in Afghanistan;
Those are going to demand so much of Obama’s time and effort that I have a feeling his first term is going to be over before it starts. Also heard an interesting spin on CNN this morning… A veteran CNN reporter said: (paraphrased)
“Obama doesn’t want to inherit the problem… he wants to provide the solution…”
So I get the feeling that while we will have a President that wants to provide solutions for the top 3 crisis’s, education (per usual standard) is going to get the shaft.
I think the children unfortunately have accepted their “status quo” of which is why the government providing for them is so appealing. I hope and pray that we don’t become that way, but inaction of local and federal governments is a deafening sound of silence in these troubled times.
-Aaron
Back in the 1940’s the United States had a top notch public education system, since then the Department of Education has ruined the quality of education by taking power away from the States not only in the particulars of curriculum but more importantly in funding. States are more informed to what regions/cities/counties funds need to go than bureaucrats in DC. I see getting rid of the Department and keeping education a State power exclusively as a positive step. Also, I strongly believe in vouchers and shutting down poorly administered/performing and essential useless schools.
The first question isn’t whether we should have education reform. It is, does Congress have the power to regulate education at all.
As Sherwin put it, get rid of the Department.
I agree completely with Sherwin! Until we get the feds out of our schools and put the power back in the hands of state and local authorities, community leaders and private citizens we are going to continue down this dead end road.
The Fed should set high standards and encourage states to meet them, and states should look at how to meet the standards and how to
It’s not the government that is the problem. It’s the people who run the Department that are the problem. If you put someone in there who understood the challenges of education instead of your buddy buddy (like Bush Sr and GW did), they’d know how to motivate states and communities to elevate education values.
Also, privatizing all schools? Not an option. Since corporate attention to quality is at an all time low, letting someone run a school for profit would put more emphasis on the “profit” part over the “education” part.
*and how to pay for it.
Somehow that part got cut in my previous post. Sorry.
Mcclaud:
You are absolutely right the problem is definitely that we aren’t setting high enough standards for our students. We should have a system that sets high standards for our students and incentivizes states to meet those standards. To make sure the system is accountable we should also punish states that don’t. Oh wait…that’s called No Child Left Behind and it’s an UTTER FAILURE. All systems like NCLB do is encourage teachers to cheat to meet the standard: there’s probably a story about some district getting busted every other week in the news.
I don’t claim the Republicans have a viable solution to the education problem, I certainly think that NCLB was not it. On the flip side though the Dems don’t really have a great track record themselves. I love your intellectual dishonesty too in saying how GHWB and GWB appointed their “buddy buddy” and completely ignore Clinton appointing Richard Riley (his former transition group staffer) who was no more qualified to be head of DOE than Lamar Alexander and probably less so than Rod Paige (I’ll concede Spellings was not a good choice).
I don’t know that privatization is the answer in every circumstance, but what companies like Edison Schools have done in several school districts is promising and is worth looking at. Your argument that b/c a bunch of wall street traders did some shady deals with MSBs means we can’t trust a private education company is so ridiculous it doesn’t really merit a response. Please give some evidence of a correlation between mismanagement in securitization and education or just go ahead and admit that you’re another paranoid lib who doesn’t understand what a free market actually is or how it works. As the oh so eloquent P.J. O’Rourke says in his forthcoming column in The Weekly Standard:
“What will destroy our country and us is not the financial crisis but the fact that liberals think the free market is some kind of sect or cult, which conservatives have asked Americans to take on faith. That’s not what the free market is. The free market is just a measurement, a device to tell us what people are willing to pay for any given thing at any given moment. The free market is a bathroom scale. You may hate what you see when you step on the scale. “Jeeze, 230 pounds!” But you can’t pass a law making yourself weigh 185. Liberals think you can. And voters–all the voters, right up to the tippy-top corner office of Goldman Sachs–think so too.”
(This column by the way is mandatory reading for any of you reform minded Republicans out there http://www.weeklystandard.com/Utilities/printer_preview.asp?idArticle=15791&R=13CD722B2E)
“The Fed should set high standards”
Ha! Grand comedy….may I remind the good people who read this that when Katrina devastated several parts of our country the United States Post Office found it necessary to STOP all interaction with such regions for six months, yet FedEx continued normal (as in, yes, even next day service) to ….wait for it….ALL Katrina-affected parts
Why? Because they are a PRIVATE entity
Or how about Visa, Mastercard and AmEx, in the course of their histories how many serious, uncorrected fumbles with card numbers have they had? How many dead people or unqualified people have held their credit card numbers? I’ll give you hint, rhymes with “hero”…..yes, zero! Yet, the Federal government can’t even manage Social Security Numbers, each year thousands of dollars are wasted mismanaging SS benefits, several illegals carry in confidence dead people’s numbers, and SS itself has admitted when women get married and change their names….it creates huge difficulties and set backs to its systems.
For all the Liberals, don’t worry never did I suggested (or anyone really) that public education should be privatized, but please don’t act like “privatizing” it’s the powerful corrective force to the disease that is government-runned-anything
Vouchers are not privatizing…its simply the most creative way of applying free market solutions to education
FREE MARKET SOLUTIONS are ALWAYS the answer! (as in nooo to bailouts, embrace failure, deal with short term hardship for the better and best of the long term….that might be a huge issue for most liberals, but most things are in general for the mental disorder that is liberalism)
I can’t resist. Ya’ll take a look at this snippet of a British comedy on YouTube. It deals with education and I dare say you’ll find it quite amusing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLDb2V86Ei0
Steven, maybe you can post that video here.
Good Post,
Are you familiar with a document called The Constitution of the United States?
Our education problems started in 1965 with the establishment of the Department of Education.
Education is NOT one of the enumerated powers given to the Federal Government by the Constitution, therefore according to the tenth amendment it is rightfully the responsibility of each of the various states.
If you want to reform education, give it back to state and local control.
Illinois Conservative Beacon
Abolishing or severely downsizing the Department of Education is a fairly reasonable proposal as far as policy terms go - but it SOUNDS so bad to the public that there is no way it would ever happen.
You’d have to do it quietly - pull money from the Dept. of Education and put it back into education somewhere else.
I have no problems with vouchers, but I did not see that as the foremost solution being given by Republicans for education.
Someone has to set a high standard for education. I know that several states can’t be trusted to do it for themselves - look at Florida, who tried to leave the standards up to the state officials and school boards. And they are the second worst state in the Union as far as education goes - both public and private.
I wouldn’t mind honestly if we got rid of the Department of Education, but then you have to create some system of measurement for education standards that doesn’t rely on purely a monetary measure. Some people have no idea what makes a good education, or how to compare the education they are getting from their children to other countries who are vying for the same resources and same jobs (outsourcing). So they may not know to stop paying for that poor education their children are getting or continue to object their children to it until it’s too late. And you’d have to have it in place and working before you yank the rug out.
I also agree that NCLB is a horrible education program. And I didn’t include Bill Clinton in my original statements because we’re not talking about Democrats - we’re talking about Republicans and their problems. I have no exceptional love for Bill Clinton or some of his bone-headed moves either.
I admire a lot of the First Ladies of our Presidents (like Nancy Reagan and Barbara Bush) who try to champion the basis for good education - literacy, math, science, etc.
If education is fifth on Obama’s list of priorities, it’s because those GOP cretins in the White House have saddled him with four more pressing problems, to wit:
1. An economy in recession
2. Two wars that we cannot win under present conditions
3. An energy crisis that threatens national security
4. Global warming and its effects
And there’s also the trifling matter of undoing all the sinister unconstitutional attacks on our freedoms such as wiretapping, Gitmo, rendition, etc etc.
Get over yourself. The GOP and its minions should be on its knees pleading for forgiveness right now, not trying to organize Obama’s agenda.
Sharkey
You left your four points unfinished so I took the liberty of finishing them for you.
1. “An economy in recession” - because socialist/democratic policies forced banks to issue mortgages to too many people unable to pay for them.
2. “Two wars that we cannot win under present conditions” - due to seven years of Democrat propaganda against America, and a military decimated by cuts in defense spending under Bill Clinton.
3. “An energy crisis that threatens national security” - because of years of Democrat refusal to allow for the development of our own resources.
4. “Global warming and its effects”- of longer growing seasons, more plentiful food supplies, less fuel consumption for heating, etc.
An additional comment on the wars: One is nearly won and the other is progressing as we write.
On global warming: Global warming is a religious doctrine of environmentalist fanatics, not a provable fact.
Don’t bother to thank me, I’m glad to help you out in furthering your education.
Sharky
Sorry I overlooked one of your statements.
“And there’s also the trifling matter of undoing all the sinister unconstitutional attacks on our freedoms such as wiretapping, Gitmo, rendition, etc etc.”
Evidently you are not familiar with the Constitution. May I suggest you at least read it before you start claiming something is unconstitutional.
Jerry,
I have reading to suggest for you: Hamdi, Hamden, and Boumediene. And while we’ll wait and see if the wiretapping program is unconstitutional, why would Congress legislate immunity for telecoms if they believed that the warrentless wiretapping wasn’t illegal?
Also, are you claiming that global warming is good for us? More food supplies? Less money on heating? Maybe we should create higher pollution vehicles so I won’t have to buy sweaters ever again.
Getting back to the issue of enumerated powers and education not being one of them: maybe. But super-literal interpretations of the Constitution end up wacky. The First Amendment only guarantees us free speech — does this mean that we don’t get free press? Does the President overstep his bounds when he does things that aren’t specifically mentioned in the Constitution? Are all agencies unconstitutional? Should we interpret the Constitution the same way we interpret a contract?
The fact that schools are churning out more dropouts than graduates makes perfect sense to me. If, that is, your goal is to create a more easily manipulated populace, one that is more reliant on what you tell them than what they can learn for themselves. Part of the problem, too, may be uninvolved parents who are unwilling to set high standards for their kids. If you let a child know what you expect of them, they will invariably meet or exceed your expectations. Teachers simply don’t have the same authority as a truly involved and active parent.
Ryan
Amusing comment. You too could profit from reading the Constitution.
First Amendment guarantees freedom of religion, speech AND Press.
President? Yes
Agencies? Most are unconstitutional
Contract? The Constitution IS a contract based on John Lock’s theory of social contract.
Love to pay poker with you if I could change the rules before each hand.
Jerry -
Okay, you have a few valid points, but you claim to be filling out the other half of Sharkey’s claims. So let me fill out the remainder of yours:
1. The liar loans and credit crisis are only one half of the problem. There’s also a problem that Bush actually addressed with some intelligence for once - we need a smarter economy and regulation, not more or less regulation. He has set the blame on his own party now as well.
2. Even with 1980’s levels of military forces, the problem is not MORE troops or guns or bombs. It’s also not as simple as producing a strategy to go in and win these wars. The only thing I agreed with Barack Obama with in this issue is that we did indeed split our focus too soon and too quickly, and then put too much focus on the wrong war. Iraq is a financial sinkhole who is kicking us out in 2011 anyway, and we can’t win a war of ideology when we don’t share the same ideologies and beliefs of the Iraqi people. Our Administration doesn’t even understand the differences between the religious and political entities in Iraq fully yet. It’s frustrating!
3. Which resources? Oil, coal and natural gas are finite resources that even drilling in the ANWAR will take 6 years to start producing and will only last less than 2 years with our present consumption. The future is not in oil or gas. What it is isn’t clear, but it isn’t in resources that other countries clearly have an advantage in.
4. Okay, your education of the effects of global warming is lacking, because it doesn’t essentially mean longer warm seasons. It does mean more erratic weather patterns that cause more serious weather conditions. It does mean that winters will be more severe. It means drought and interruptions in our fresh water cycles. It means an increase in sea water mass, which is water we can’t drink or use for farming yet.
You are somewhat correct in saying that the Democrats are to blame for our present problems. But then again, so are the Republicans who went along for the ride and didn’t do anything when they had the ability to do something.
Jerry,
You are right about the press. The question I meant to pose was this: does free speech encompass what I write down? Are blogs within free speech rights? A narrow textual interpretation says no.
Which agencies aren’t unconstitutional? Don’t they all have to rise and fall together?
I agree with you on the Constitution functioning like a social contract, but should we really INTERPRET it like a contract? Is it a smart idea to narrowly and strictly interpret a government-founding document that lasts as long as our country does? Some things the founders were explicit about — the amount in controversy required to have a right to a jury, for example. But other stuff was left purposefully vague because they realized this document needed to be flexible to survive the test of time.
Mcclaud,
On item 3, that was the same argument against the Alaska oil pipeline in the early 70s. Look it up. It was only to last a decade or less because the oil would run out. Now that greater than 10o times the amount of predicted oil has been put through the pipeline with no end in site your argument falls flat on its face.
Item 4, I guess if you change the definition of global warming to suit the thought of the day that is fine. Just be honest about it and do not do it as some a false premises with no scientific backing. Be honest and say we want to tax people who produce and use energy then give that money to other people we think morally deserve the money more. The global warming laws have nothing to do with the environment. It is about government control. The US is the most efficient country in the world when it comes to energy usage. It is simple math, Divide % of WW GDP by % of WW energy used. America is the only county with a ratio of over 1.
REfrom will be resisted. The liberals have subsume the mission of education into that of “re-education”.
The system has devolved into a new front on the war for a free, strong Democratic society with the individual as the centerpiece into one in which the collective good is a higher priority. This is the end game of all unions and an education system so in the grips of a singular union can not be reformed.
“Privitization” is the only way that we will ever return to a system that promotes the true education of the individual. All of you that support “public” eductation do so at the peril of your own children.
Ryan
You bring up some interesting questions, so interesting in fact, that I plan to use them in my next post on one of my blogs.
As a parent of three high school students, one who will graduate in June, I have seen a lot of sides to this issue. I would argue that the issue goes way beyond funding and jurisdiction. Our nation faces an education crisis, and in a manner not unlike that of our current financial crisis, pretty much all those involved are responsible for fixing it.
My kids are going to a brand new school in Los Angeles; my daughter is in it’s first graduating class. Since their opening, their aspirations have fallen short due to a combined lack of money, qualified teachers, and outside involvement.
They do, however, have a pronounced LAPD presence; not a week has gone by since the school opened without at least a few drug or violence related arrests. It’s a general lack of focus, of interest, where nobody at home is instilling these kids with a drive to success. The faculty doesn’t help either. In most cases they appear to let the class control them; even when they’re lecturing, the kids get away with wearing their ipods.
This year, a lot of my kids’ teachers used up a great deal of class time on their political soapboxes, some even going so far as to give students an F for the day if they didn’t want to take part in the political conversation, or to reinforce ideas like “you’re a racist if you don’t vote for Obama”. Keep in mind that these kids are too young to vote, and many of these discussions prompted fights that the police had to break up.
Hey, all I’m saying is we need to attack these problems from all angles, not just focus on where the money goes. This problem goes way beyond schools, beyond government. It’s about values, about being thankful and not taking advantage…. and I’ll say it again…
America doesn’t need “change”… Americans need to change!
[...] See related: The frightening urgency for education reform [...]
How did this thread become about the constitutionality of Guantanamo, global warming and drilling in ANWR? :-\
Anyway, on the education issue. I humbly submit that, while complete return of education control to the states would be optimal, it simply isn’t feasible today. What we can impact today, however, is the size, scope, and philosophy of the Department of Education.
I have two words: mission creep. Why are we spending money on nutritional programs? Why are we spending money on specialty social science classes? I have absolutely nothing against restricting the sale of junk food and serving healthy lunches, but parents should be responsible for teaching their kids about healthy eating habits. We don’t need to teach middle schoolers pretty much anything about multiculturalism, we need to teach them basics: mathematics, grammar, science, and civics. We are falling behind internationally because we’ve lost sight of fundamentals.
We also need to regain the cultural value we used to place on academic achievement. That means getting away from the softheadedness of “equality,” “political correctness,” “tolerance,” etc. While each of these are virtues, they are poison in the classroom: achievement is squashed in the name of “equality,” intellectual diversity is sacrificed in the name of “political correctness,” and bad behavior and poor study habits are encouraged in the name of “tolerance”.
To quote one of my favorite movies of all time:
“Everybody’s special, Dash.”
“Which is another way of saying no one is.”
[...] don’t have too much to add, except that we live in the closest thing to a classless society, and I’d love to see more [...]
[...] The frightening urgency for education reform [...]
While our education system can always be improved, I don’t think the system is the main problem. I believe the problem is with the young people in the system. You will always have students who work hard and will graduate from high school and college. Most of them have parents who value an education. These parents make sure their kids are doing the work, learn the material, and mind the teachers. And then you have others that don’t. I think many young people today do not have good work ethics. They want the quick fix. School situations may be complicated with students who live in poverty and those that may not speak English very well, but I see schools bending over backwards to accommodate these students. I did not get free breakfasts or lunches when I was a student, and there were certainly no ESL classes available. When we lived in California, the schools sent home sheets of notebook paper for my kids to use for their homework. I was shocked at that.
It seems to me that the education leaders have bought into the notion that government can fix everything, if they just have more money to throw at the problem. It’s not the schools though, it’s our culture that needs the change.
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