Please read the TOS and Read and Heed. No Hot Links allowed. Hit the contact us button at the bottom of the page to get permisssion.

Mainedawg
Moderator

November 13, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
Obama and Our Schools
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

President-elect Barack Obama and his aides are sending signals that education may be on the back burner at the beginning of the new administration. He ranked it fifth among his priorities, and if it is being downplayed, that’s a mistake.

We can’t meaningfully address poverty or grow the economy as long as urban schools are failing. Mr. Obama talks boldly about starting new high-tech green industries, but where will the workers come from unless students reliably learn science and math?

The United States is the only country in the industrialized world where children are less likely to graduate from high school than their parents were, according to a new study by the Education Trust, an advocacy group based in Washington.

The most effective anti-poverty program we could devise for the long run would have less to do with income redistribution than with ensuring that poor kids get a first-rate education, from preschool on. One recent study found that if American students did as well as those in several Asian countries in math and science, our economy would grow 20 percent faster.

So let’s break for a quiz: Quick, what’s the source of America’s greatness?

Is it a tradition of market-friendly capitalism? The diligence of its people? The cornucopia of natural resources? Great presidents?

No, a fair amount of evidence suggests that the crucial factor is our school system — which, for most of our history, was the best in the world but has foundered over the last few decades. The message for Mr. Obama is that improving schools must be on the front burner.

One of the most important books of the year is “The Race Between Education and Technology,” by two Harvard economists, Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz. They argue that the distinguishing feature of America for most of our history has been our global lead in education.

By the mid-1800s, most American states provided a free grade-school education to the vast majority of white children. In contrast, only 2 percent of British 14-year-olds were enrolled in school in 1870.

At the beginning of the 1900s, Americans embraced high schools, and by the 1930s, a majority of American children attended high school. In contrast, as late as 1957, only 9 percent of British 17-year-olds were enrolled in school.

Then the United States — with help from President Franklin Roosevelt — pushed for mass education at the college level, and by 1970, half of American students were attending a university, at least briefly. We were far ahead of the rest of the world.

Professors Goldin and Katz crunch the data and conclude that America’s edge in mass education was the crucial competitive advantage that allowed the United States to build wealth while reducing income inequality. For most of the 20th century, America prospered at the same time that the gap between the rich and poor diminished.

Then in the 1970s, the United States education system began to stagnate, with high-school graduation rates stuck at about three-quarters of all students. Probably as a result, income inequality increased again.

Meanwhile, the rest of the world invested heavily in education and caught up with, and in some cases surpassed, us. As Fareed Zakaria notes in his terrific book, “The Post-American World,” the problem with American education is not the good schools. White suburban schools still offer an excellent education, comparable to those in Singapore, which may have the best education system in the world.

Rather, the central problem is our bad schools. “Lots of kids are being left behind,” Professor Goldin said, adding: “Investing in human capital is still a very good deal. Returns are very high.”

There’s still a vigorous debate about how to improve education, but recent empirical research is giving us a much better sense of what works. A study by the Hamilton Project, a public policy group at the Brookings Institution, outlines several steps to boost weak schools: end rigid requirements for teacher certification that impede hiring, make tenure more difficult to get so that ineffective teachers can be weeded out after three years on the job and award hefty bonuses to good teachers willing to teach in low-income areas. If we want outstanding, inspiring teachers in difficult classrooms, we’re going to have to pay much more — and it would be a bargain.

No family underscores the power of education more than Mr. Obama’s. His father began as a goat-herd in a remote village in Kenya, but his studies carried him to the University of Hawaii. And Mr. Obama himself has ridden the education escalator to the White House.

So Mr. Obama, let’s give others the chance to board the escalator that you and your father enjoyed. Let’s pick up where we left off in the 1970s and mount a national campaign to make high-school graduation truly universal, and to make a college education routine.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: mainedawg,

John, military.com says that outside HOT LINKS are a big "NO-NO!"

...Yeah-but,,, since it is a link to the N.Y. Slimes--- They'll probably approve of it.

...Oh, BTW--- When I read the Thread title I was picturing B.H.O. wearing a dirty night-shirt sitting in a Madras in Pak-land reciting some words in arabic...

Ok Nick what's the problem? Your supposed to be supporting your questionable President-Elect and supporting his programs. Why are you getting on his back about education? I have a better idea for you and your paper that leans so left it's in danger of falling on the other bldg.s in the area. Why don't you report on the Montagnards in Vietnam that are being tortured, killed and relocated for the benefit of the Vietnamese Govt. Who wants their land to grow coffee. That might upset the communists though and you might not be able to travel in the region for a while. I'll bet you know what I'm referring to since your the NYT expert on Asia. Now that would be a story wouldn't it but I doubt you or your paper would touch it with a red ten foot pole.
I scanned your summary for the article and I feel you have no clue as to what's going on in schools regardless of their racial make-up or location in relation to any city. Successful schools have parents that are involved in the education process. Most of the schools in inner cities have a different breed of parent that don't seem to be as involved in the process. Schools in the suburbs don't fare any better than the ones that have a large African-American population where the parents get involved. Maybe if you suggest in your column that the parents in your paper's "area of influence" get more involved in their children's education. Volunteerism, is it dead in the cities or are the locals just lazy?

This message has been edited. Last edited by: sargeant_green,

Could it just be me or did Tricky Nicky of the New York Times just do a "drive by"?

Hey Nick posting on MDC and not responding is just as low as "SPAMMING". Oops I guess you did SPAM us, I forgot about the "hot Link".

We all know that there is an abysmal failure pretty much across the board in America in today's education; examples are both prolific and continuous. Parents are not being QUALITY parents. Discipline is now a bad word, acording to our own hands-wringing government. Don't you DARE attempt to discipline your kids...CPS will TAKE the kids away and harshly punish the parents forevermore in any and every way the liberal courts will demand and allow them. Teachers CANNOT discipline their unruly students, and basic order conducive to a good learning environmentis difficult to maintain when the teachers' hands are tied by strict local school board and government policies of nonintervention and political correctness. All the students suffer, and the only 'education' they get is in how to manipulate a society and a very 'broken' system. This is the reality. Drugs and a 'do-nothing' attitute get more of a 'green light' while maintaining effective school/classroom discipline, and holding parents much more accountable as partners in the education and rearing of their children does not happen nearly as much anymore. Kids today are less and less held accountable for their own actions, at home or in school, as well as in society, until it's too late. They dress in very ill-fitting clothes, goof off in class, fail to learn to read, write and speak properly, and many have nasty, unhealthy and disrespectful, antisocial physical and psychological manifestations representative of their 'misfit' mentality; then, they wonder why they can't get decent jobs when they are let loose in society. The growing number of college grads with major Degrees who cannot speak or write proper English is a serious problem, and growing. We have abundant liberal, Socialistic college professors who will gladly indoctrinate these young minds, and the liberal government then REWARDS these 'change agents' with cushy, unaccountable and untouchable "tenure" instead of punishing and terminating them for so recklessly poisoning their student's minds, and ultimately compromising our nation's future. The rest of the world laughs at America...only here do people purposely buy and wear clothes that they could never hope to grow into...some walk with an unbalanced, awkward, forced gait as an odd 'social statement' based on their own insecurities. They use signs and overt gestures that are not accepted by society in general, and the world laughs openly at our mixed up, messed up society. Where are the disciplined, cultured, genteel, civilized, respectable and respectful, eloquent, aware, well-spoken, well-educated children who are to step up to the plate and take the helm of our future? Asia and India are turning them out in droves. Other countries are becoming the ones the world looks to for its leaders, and we, the U.S, will be left far behind in the dust, struggling with more and more prolific and endemic problems of our own creation, because we FAILED TO ACT when we had the opportunity. We don't demand full personal or societal accountability, and now, the chickens are all coming home to roost. The price we will pay for this will be high...very, very high, in the end. The responsibility for our future is shared by everyone, and the price for our failure to be responsible will be borne by everyone as well. Our increasingly leftist, socialist, liberal policies, rampant political correctness and a serious lack of resolve are emerging opportunities for other savvy and disciplined nations to seize and run with, and they already ARE doing so. We will become a "once-were" and a "has been" nation. No one else in the world will care, either...they'll be MORE than happy to take the center stage of the world in our place. Wake up, People! Face the music!

Rusty, that was right on. Awesome!

Obama at least has some ideas of how to address the problem. Something other than p i s s i n g and moaning, that is.

So are you Nick representing yourself as John?
Or are you John representing yourself as Nick?

Your initial post that was "adjusted" made it look like you were the writer. So are you John Green or Nick Kristof? Just me being curious.