Although I have lately found TV to be about as useful as a flat spare tire, I did try to catch some of the Governor's conference on C-Span yesterday and earlier this afternoon. They met and discussed education, with potential Presidential candidate Mark Warner of Virginia presiding over part of the discussion.
Generally, this would keep my interest, combining my profession (education) and my passion (politics), and the flavor was long term (which is what I think is most important). Unfortunately, I have pretty much run out of patience with blue ribbon panels and white guys in suits sitting around at a table. I have also found Presidential summits- especially featuring our current nitwit to be yawn fests.
Anyway, I watched the dog and pony show yesterday for about 30 minutes, and wasn't very impressed with Warner (at least yesterday). After I turned it off, at some point Bill gates appeared and was critical of the state of US education today. From the article I read in the Seattle Times, it sounds like he made some worthy points.
Gates:
"When I compare our high schools to what I see when I'm traveling abroad, I am terrified for our work force of tomorrow," he said.
"The key problem is political will," he said, discussing resistance to change. He said it was "morally wrong" to offer more advanced levels of coursework to high-income students compared with that offered many minority and low-income scholars. And he trumpeted the goal of preparing every high-school student for either two- or four-year college programs.
"In 2001, India graduated almost a million more students from college than the United States did; China graduates twice as many students with bachelor's degrees as the United States, and they have six times as many graduates majoring in engineering."
Gates said that he wants to emphasize the "three R's -- rigor, relevance and relationships." By that, he means stronger curricula (rigor), better preparation for work and higher education (relevance), and a school structure where students have more support from teachers and counselors (relationships).
In discussing standards and achievement measurements, Gates called on community leaders to demand openness from their school districts. Localities need to know the percentages of students dropping out, graduating, going to college, he said, "and we need this data broken down by race and income."
Japan certainly has an edge on us when it comes to math and science, and South Korea offers competitive exams for the best colleges, but they are also a mono-racial culture, no carrying the same prejudicial baggage as the USA. There's no question the allocation of funds that go to inner-city areas has been drained for decades, and George Bush does every thing he can to undermine the integrity of public schools by touting his voucher ideas. Education is a political football for him. He's off base when he talks about India and China. The Chinese classroom is crowded to the point that they often have 50 students to a class- not exactly the place a teacher can do anything productive. Generally, you need 12 to 20 people to function well. Both Indian and Chinese rural areas are deprived of high tech learning.
As for opening up high schools to change, that's a pretty good idea. I look forward to seeing the task undertaken January 22, 2009.
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