It is one thing to save states’ budgets from collapse, and helping them to retain teachers. It is quite another matter when you throw a $4.35 Billion into improving educational system. The problem is not with the amount invested, but with the fact that there are no new ideas this money intends to support.
We have an ailing system, but the diagnosis is in question. Obama’s administration believes it can be reformed by “toughening academic standards, recruiting and retaining effective teachers, turning around failing schools and tracking the performance of students and teachers.” In my view, the malady is bigger than that. We have a system which pays teachers to teach, and does not pay students to learn. The system is economically bankrupt, and we’re bailing out just like the banks. It cannot be improved, but has to be replaced with something else.
When one deals with a deeply ailing institution, propping it up with more funds may just prolong the agony, and still not prevent it from dying. I am not trying to be contrarian like some bloggers tend to be, but I just really fail to see how these four provisions will make a huge difference. We’ve tried all of these before, without much success. Now, Obama seems to believe we did not try hard enough or did not provide enough funds to these efforts. But even with that, if any of these four solutions had a great promise, we would have seen some indications of it. Where is the evidence? How can we spend, ultimately up to $10 Billion without some strong evidence that this is going to work?
Just one illustration: in his speech, Obama mentions "a staggering 75 percent of our nation's minority dropouts." How any of the stuff he proposes is going to make any difference to those kids? We raise standards, and get better teachers – and the dropout rate decreases? You’ve got to be in denial to even imply that. There is a large portion of high school aged youth that hate school, despise its mindless rules and daily humiliations, its boredom, and, most importantly, see no point in going there. Unless we actually start paying cash for learning, nothing will work for them.
I am not sure where we are racing. It looks more like trying the same thing again in hopes it might actually work this time.
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I've written an article along the same lines: scottrogers.us
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