The myopia of David Brooks

The smirking elitist and purely pathethic progrnosticator of all things political, David Brooks, has enlightened the world with his view about college education and why the Democrats are so wrong about why so few students actually graduate from college.

Brooks argues in today's New York Times that students are quiting higher education basically because they never learned the requisite skills. You see, finances had nothing to do with why so many people never graduate college

IMO what Brooks omits from his piece is any context as to why college is so unaffordable. What's more, even if one accepts completely his swipe at Democrats and teachers as accurate, it makes it seem as if money is never an obstacle for higher education.

I was lucky enough to have not needed to take out any student loans. My parents put aside money for their three children and put off vacations, new cars, etc. when the money was tight and that investment grew (of course interest rates were over 10%) and there was enough money to pay for school.  

Back in the days before Reagan/Gingrich killed student loans and made those eligible vying for less money with more restrictions, nearly everyone could get a student loan. Money markets were earning big interest rates and it was a sound financial strategy to take out a loan with a low interest rate while your money sat in the money market so it made college relatively affordable for any middle or lower income student.

My partner wasn't as lucky. Student loans were needed to complete her education and it ended up taking more than four years to do so because of money.  In fact, she said she should have gotten an RN from a two-year program instead of a university. She received no increase in pay for the extra two years of study and instead had a mountain of debt before she received her first paycheck as an RN.

Brooks seems confused about what a successful student is and how to define achievement. Because of the worthless law that is NCLB, success is simply raising the test scores of students. Cheating is rampant as the stakes are high if only a small percentage of students at a school fail the tests.

The tests also vary from state to state. Some states have made the tests easier to boost the passing rate. Almost all public schools spend their time teaching to the tests.

The time honored field trip is becoming obsolete. Schools find they have no time for frivilous learning at  museums or historical sites. Instead of well rounded students, we get robots.

Brooks would have you believe that teacher merit pay is a good idea. It is...in theory. The problem is that success is based on passing grades in the test scores. The problem is that    you could be friggin Mr. Chips and if students enter your classroom deficient in certain skills, the best you can do is play catch up.

Students today lack analytical reasoning skills because they now are forced to spend K-12 in some kind of infinite test prep class. Why don't we turn our schools over to Stanley Kaplan or the Princeton Review? Test taking is a skill, but it has little to do with actual learning.

The complete emphasis on rote teaching styles in our high schools and middle schools leaves the kids unprepared for college. Of course, Brooks wouldn't want you to blame his precious NCLB for the problem. As always with Republicans, it is those lazy teachers coddled by their Democratic enablers that are responsible for the brain drain.

I used to teach high school but left as my freedom to develop a fun and challenging lesson plan was hampered by the principal's insistence that we adhire to the rigid orthodoxy of test preparation.

The model of success Brooks mentions is the KIPP Academies, an amalgam of charter schools with the Nancy Reagan like platitude Knowledge is Power Program. Like any charter school, KIPP can pick and choose its students. Charter Schools are not required to take SPED students and can juke the stats by claiming higher achievement scores.

One of the perversions of NCLB is the subcohort. Each school has a number of these: ESL, SPED, etc. Say there are ten SPED students in SCHOOL A and nine of those students "pass" the state test. If your percentage of passes drops, a school can be labeled "failing" and get cut off from the federal funds it needs in the first place.

This is where NCLB really screws schools. The next year SCHOOL A has nine students in the SPED class and eight of them pass the exam.  What's the big deal? It is a big deal because SCHOOL A is now in danger of being labeled "failing because the SPED cohort passing percentage dropped.

The drop is slightly more than one percent (1.12%, from 90 to 88.88888 percent). The fear of failure is so great that the temptation exists for districts to shutter kids off to an entire school of underperformers and boast of raising test scores. This is basically what Bush's original Sec. of Education did when he was superintendent of schools for Houston.

IMO, NCLB and testing suck. Pure and simple. They deprive students of their constitutional (at least in my state) right to a thorough and efficient education and the tests discriminate against ESL, SPED and other groups of students.

My idea of school is not to turn it over into a test prep center run by private companies. That is what Brooks and his friends want.  They also want college to be unobtainable for most poor and middle class students not lucky enough to get academic or athletic scholarships.

The only path for a college education will be the current GI Bill which is woefully inadequate. Anyone in the military will tell you that recruiters overstated the benefits and at most there was enough money to pay for a two year college or a technical school.

Good one Brooks. Keep up the elitist attitude and you can talk about squash and polo with your pals at the country club while you are served by someone who had to drop out of college because they couldn't affiord it.