Saturday, November 27, 2004

OWNERSHIP OF EDUCATION NEEDED TOO

Since his re-election, President Bush has spoken a number of times about domestic reforms designed to create an "Ownership Society." Among the best known of those proposed reforms are personal Social Security accounts and health savings accounts that would give individuals, rather than government, control over their financial futures and health care. Both of those initiatives are essential reforms, and an Ownership Society itself is desperately needed. But there is a third component that should be included in this agenda: education.

If an Ownership Society means anything, it should mean giving parents control over their children's education. When children are assigned by bureaucrats to a government school, as they are today, parents lose that control, and the government in effect robs parents of their rights and authority.

Unfortunately, President Bush's signature education legislation, the No Child Left Behind Act, has had the effect of concentrating control over children's education in the worst of all places: Washington, D.C. Under that law, not only are most children still forced to go to government schools, but local and state governments -- the levels of government closest to parents -- have been stripped of control over everything from curricula to teacher qualifications, with that power now resting with the federal government. Federal officials now dictate that all public school children must take reading and math tests in third through eighth grade, as well as once in high school, and that children must be taught from a federally approved, "scientifically based," curriculum......

Another indication of Bush's move away from an educational Ownership Society is his nomination of Margaret Spellings to be the next U.S. secretary of education. Little is known about Ms. Spellings other than that she has been a Bush aide for many years and was in large part the architect of No Child Left Behind. That suggests strongly that she will work vigorously to carry out the president's plan to extend No Child Left Behind to high schools. Perhaps even more troubling are early media indications that she opposes, or at least lacks enthusiasm for, reforms designed to truly empower parents, such as school choice. As reported by the New York Post, Spellings is "no champion of school vouchers."

More here




AMERICA NOW HAS TO IMPORT THE EDUCATED MINDS IT NEEDS

"These days, it's not always easy to talk about the benefits of immigration. Especially since 9/11, many Americans worry about borders and security. These are legitimate concerns. But surely a nation as great as America has the wit and resources to distinguish between those who come here to destroy the American Dream--and the many millions more who come to live it.

The evidence of the contributions these immigrants make to our society is all around us--especially in the critical area of education. Adam Smith (another Scotsman) knew that without a decent system of education, a modern capitalist society was committing suicide. Well, our modern public school systems simply are not producing the talent the American economy needs to compete in the future. And it often seems that it is our immigrants who are holding the whole thing up.

In a study on high school students released this past summer, the National Foundation for American Policy found 60% of the top science students, and 65% of the top math students, are children of immigrants. The same study found that seven of the top award winners at the 2004 Intel Science Talent Search were immigrants or children of immigrants. This correlates with other findings that more than half of engineers--and 45% of math and computer scientists--with Ph.D.s now working in the U.S. are foreign born.

It's not just the statistics. You see it at our most elite college and university campuses, where Asian immigrants or their children are disproportionately represented. And a recent study of 28 prestigious American universities by researchers from Princeton and the University of Pennsylvania found something startling: that 41% of the black students attending these schools described themselves as either immigrants or children of immigrants.

The point is that by almost any measure of educational excellence you choose, if you're in America you're going to find immigrants or their children at the top. I don't just mean engineers and scientists and technicians. In my book, anyone who comes here and gives an honest day's work for an honest day's pay is not only putting himself closer to the American Dream, he's helping the rest of us get there too."

Some home truths from Rupert Murdoch, no less




TRUANCY

Truancy is a much neglected topic in the sociology of knowledge. It is mistakenly treated as irrational, even criminal. It is correctly linked with children's learning deficits. These usually arise, however, not from home, but from faulty curriculum and pedagogy.

People think truants hate school. They rarely do, though they often dislike particular subjects and certain sarcastic or rude teachers. My research in Britain and Bruce Cooper's in the US have revealed the huge scale of the phenomenon. In some secondary schools half the children truant regularly.

The American and British establishments blatantly gloss over the problem, along with all those educational difficulties originating in the school itself, echoing the way the old Communists concealed the truth about Communism. The American elite are even more defensive than their British counterparts. This is a disastrous mistake.

Truancy data constitute incomparably rich policy material. We already know that semi-literates truant because they cannot do the work, and that clever children do so because they find the work derisory. We know that a large minority hates games and PE. We know foreign languages are very badly done in both countries. We know that wrong methods of teaching reading have been practiced for 150 years in America, and in Britain for almost a century.

In both countries mathematics teaching is appalling. In both systems political correctness has raged through the curriculum, destroying the authority of the teachers. These indefensible school practices cause truancy and do, indeed, compound the effects of bad homes. Were it not for these poor practices, schools might combat unsatisfactory home life. Sad to say, huge vested interests stand in the way of the requisite reforms. And the related questions of compulsory education and home schooling have not even been brought into the truancy debate.

(Post lifted from the Adam Smith blog)

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

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