Gene Lyons on another education President

[mooseandsquirrel]

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So what's going on? Unfortunately, the president appears to have succumbed to the latest educational miracle cures: tougher standards, charter schools and merit pay for teachers, all touted by Republicans perennially eager to discipline the lower classes. In the actual world, none has been proved to work.

Everybody wants kids to do their best; imposing artificially high achievement standards, however, is like standing on that metaphorical beach commanding the tide. A while back, Los Angeles decided to require all high school graduates to pass algebra; the result was higher dropout rates. Period.

Charter schools are the latest version of the "talented and gifted" craze. (Years ago, I won an argument with my wife by challenging her to name a single white kid in our neighborhood who hadn't been declared a budding genius. A long moment passed. "Sometimes I hate you," she said.) That is, they're a sop to striving middle-class parents like the Obamas. I'd say that, like religious schools, some do well as long as they're able to cut highly motivated kids from the herd.

Alas, studies show that the bigger charter schools get, the smaller their advantages.

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http://moose-and-squirrel.com/gene/gene.html

[Life Long Dem]

1. Merit pay for quality teaching is in the right direction

Student loan debt remains to be ignored by President Obama, but that's another education related story.