Education

While people are justifiably praising President Obama for his string of victories during the lame-duck session of Congress, there were several items left undone by his administration during its first two years that sorely need addressing during the remainder of his first term. Chief among this is improving the state of public education in this country.

It has been widely reported that test scores of U.S. students in reading, math and science lag badly behind many other industrial nations. We used to be No. 1 — now we are often not even in the top 10. In fact, according to the 2009 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), 15-year-old U.S. students ranked 14th in reading, 17th in science and 25th in math among 34 countries.

Suppose we here in the Northeast, citing the foibles and earthy prejudices of the gnarly red-clay heartlanders, decided not to send ours to Congress or the Supreme Court or any court until they became more refined, like us. Congress might then consist of senators exclusively from Baylor and Southern Methodist and the Supreme Court of justices from Liberty University and the Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary.

That is what we have done with the refusal to allow ROTC to recruit on Ivy League campuses. To become an American military officer, you would have to go to another college. Without a doubt, it has influenced foreign policy, including our current missions in Iraq and Afghanistan. But we in Boston suffer the most. Gone is the memory of Joshua Chamberlain, and although the tourist bus makes its first stop on Boston Common at the monument to the historic Black Civil War Regiment, Robert Gould Shaw, who died and was laid to rest with his men, is likewise lost to our collective memory. Barney Frank, Bart Simpson, Bob Dylan: This is what we are today. This is what we have become since the Vietnam period.

On Pearl Harbor Day 2010, America was hit with a bombshell.

Some say it rivals Sputnik, the 1957 Soviet satellite launch, in its alarming message about American education. Across the world, in 65 countries, 15-year-olds were administered a standardized test (PISA, or Program for International Student Assessment) measuring knowledge of reading, science and math. The winners in all three categories were students in Shanghai taking the test for the first time. Americans scored what can charitably be called in the range of average.

(See here for a chart ranking performance — Shanghai, as noted, at the top and Kyrgyzstan at the bottom). Korea — that would be South Korea — also did very well; we might try to figure out how to learn its secrets of success when the trade deal with that country wends its way through a fractious Congress.)

Liberals are quick to decry legacy admissions to universities (where the children of alumni — usually big-time donor alumni — are granted admission), silver-spoon heirs who take over their fathers’ companies, nepotism in the workplace — all on the grounds that what should matter most in all of these scenarios is merit, not connections, family trees and contributions to university coffers. Underlying all of this is the assumption that, were it not for these crucial connections, the people who benefit from them would never otherwise have been considered. In other words, liberals stereotype all such beneficiaries as unqualified but for daddy’s grace.

These are interesting times for education reform in America today. A lot of politicians on both sides of the aisle are calling for it, but no one seems to know what “reform” really looks like.

The issue reached new levels of salience just a few weeks ago when “Waiting for Superman” — the new Davis Guggenheim documentary following five students and their futures in charter schools — opened to nationwide critical acclaim.  Read more...

So the NAACP, La Raza and the teachers unions are organizing a march on the Mall next month.

Does anybody else see the terrible irony here?

Ben Jealous, the head of the NAACP, loves to point to the possible racists among the Tea Party. Jealous is zealous in his pursuit of Tea Party racists.

A conservative student organization attending Palm Beach State College in Florida was recently denied the right to form due to rhetoric criticizing President Obama’s economic policy. The student police, who quickly kicked the group from a recruitment event, handled the situation eerily similar to Hitler’s secret police.

Daniel Diaz and Eddie Shaffer, state members of Young Americans for Freedom — the group victimized — were kicked off campus after college administrator Ms. Ford-Morris was appalled by the material they presented; material published by the Heritage Foundation.

It’s great to see that California, known for their uncontrollable government spending and large deficit, has the money to spend $578 million on a school just a year after they asked the government to bail them out. The school is the costliest in the nation and will be located in Los Angeles.

Three teachers helped spark something in me that made my education worth something.

I wasn’t a very studious student in grade school or high school. I didn’t have much in the way of study habits. But I got lucky because I had three teachers — one in grade school, one in middle school and one in high school — who helped me become very interested in the one subject that would help me get a decent-paying job once I left college.

Anyone who tells you that public schools are public because anyone can go to any school is lying.

You can only go to the schools where you can afford to live in the neighborhood; the school quality is part of the expense of that house.

In effect, our public school system remains separate and unequal.

Bottom line: The public school system is failing its students — particularly those of color.