And the ongoing assault on public education will continue. [View all]

[MadHound]

Rather than admitting the failure that initiatives such as NCLB and RTTT have become, Obama announced last night that he is going to be doubling down on the assault on public education.

"And four years ago, we started Race to the Top — a competition that convinced almost every state to develop smarter curricula and higher standards, all for about 1 percent of what we spend on education each year. Tonight, I’m announcing a new challenge to redesign America’s high schools so they better equip graduates for the demands of a high-tech economy. And we’ll reward schools that develop new partnerships with colleges and employers, and create classes that focus on science, technology, engineering and math — the skills today’s employers are looking for to fill the jobs that are there right now and will be there in the future."

First of all, RTTT hasn't "convinced almost every state to develop smarter curricula and higher standards," it has forced virtually each and every teacher to teach to those damn tests, to one degree or another. Comm arts has become nothing more that year long test prep, math and science, the same. Social studies is, sadly, being ignored. I look at the curriculum currently being taught in schools, compare it to what I grew up with nearly forty years ago, and realize that it is seriously lacking.

AP classes today are now what the regular curriculum was when I was in school. There is so much that is not being taught to today's students because if it isn't on the test, it isn't being taught.

This is borne out by the fact that colleges are facing a crisis with their incoming freshmen. More and more are showing up at college unequipped to perform at even the most basic of college level. Remedial classes are expanding, meaning that incoming freshmen have to spend a year or more simply getting up to college speed. With RTTT and other such programs, we have dumbed down almost an entire generation.

But now that madness is going to doubled down on. Now the president wants to partner big business with public schools, essentially making a lot of schools into company schools, teaching no more than what is needed to work in menial jobs. Public education is being transformed into an extended job training program, and away from a true, comprehensive education.

For years now, the emphasis, and money, has been on math and science, and it is going to continue down that path. A true shame, because a lot of kids simply aren't cut out for careers in math and science. They are history buffs, or english freaks, kids who want to write, or investigate the past, not deal with equations and such. It is a joy to watch an entire class of sixth graders embrace things like Shakespeare's Hamlet, or historical research. These kids are finding opportunities to experience such joy ever more scarce, and apparently they will become scarcer in the future.

When will we wake up to the madness that we're creating? When will we look at high school grads and realize that we've done them a huge disservice? These are the people who are supposed to inherit and run the world when we're old and unable, and with this ongoing destruction of public education, they simply won't have the tools. If we continue down this path of destruction, by the time we realize that we've made a mistake, it will be too late, generations of adults simply won't have the tools needed to help them reach their full potential.

Are there problems with education, certainly. But the "solutions" that have been applied by this and the previous administration have simply made things worse. It is time to come up with real solutions to those problems, not competitions for federal money. Otherwise, we're all going to lose, now and in the future.