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The state of the American education system today is unacceptable. As many as one quarter of American students don�t finish high school. We've fallen to ninth place in the proportion of young people with college degrees. The quality of our math and science education lags behind many other nations.
For the sake of the next generation, and America's economic future, this has to change.
Providing our nation's students with a world-class education is a shared responsibility. We can't out-compete the rest of the world in the 21st century global economy unless we out-educate them. It's going to take all of us -- educators, parents, students, philanthropists, state and local leaders, and the federal government -- working together to prepare today�s students for the jobs of the 21st century.
That's why I want to hear from you. As President Obama's chief advisor on domestic policy, I focus much of my time on education reform. As part of the White House�s new Advise the Advisor program, I've posed a few key questions for parents, teachers and students to answer so we can get a sense of what�s working in your communities -- and what needs to change.
Take a minute to let me know what you think:
The good news is that we're making progress and seeing improvements around the country already, focusing on our own Three R's: responsibility, reform and results.
Take Miami Central High School, where the President and I traveled on Friday. Several years ago, Miami Central was struggling. Achievement was lagging at the school, and morale was down. Graduation rates hovered at just 36 percent. But the Miami Central community came together. They set high expectations, and they did the hard work to reform their school. They've turned around their performance -- academic achievement is improving, and graduation rates have improved by nearly 30 points. Miami Central is now well on its way toward providing college and career readiness for its students.
Today, we're visiting TechBoston Academy, a great example of private-sector, non-profit and higher-education partners working with communities to help prepare students with the knowledge and skills they'll need to succeed in college and careers. At TechBoston Academy sixth grade through twelfth grade students learn by using technology in their classrooms. Thanks to strong partners, TechBoston students have access to a 21st century curriculum, early enrollment in college classes, and an extended day program to provide enrichment and to deepen learning in core subjects.
These schools in Miami and Boston are just two examples of success. I'm looking for feedback from more all-star schools, as well as your strategies and challenges to reform our education system.
As I mentioned earlier, education reform is a shared responsibility for all of us, and it's one that we at the White House take very seriously.
Sincerely,
Melody Barnes Director of the Domestic Policy Council
P.S. If you're passionate about education issues we've set up a special email list focused on education that will offer more frequent updates on the topic moving forward:
"... many of our social problems come from failure to acknowledge that some individuals just aren't as smart as others. I submit that encouraging everyone to go to college is one example of a bad way to try to solve a social problem."
"To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle." - George Orwell
I, too, have to wonder how many kids our (sarcasm alert) NEW! Improved! State-of-the-Art!! educational system is utterly failing because we as a culture are simply disregarding the fact that not everyone is has destiny/desire for highly demanding cognitive tasks like advanced mathematics or critical analyses of great works of literature...
whatever happened to vocational/technical skill building in high schools?
The kids that were so (rightly) proud to excel in those areas and graduate with high school diplomas, ready to move into trades and apprenticeships, are the kids that NCLB has unquestionably left behind. In every possible way, we are failing those people by telling them in ways subtle and dramatic that their natural inclinations and abilities are useless.
While my child might be able to do mathematics and analyze Shakespeare well, I would definitely not bet on her to be able to help fix a leaky faucet... and I have a lot more day-to-day 'use' for the plumbers in the world than the analyzers of great dramatic works of the English language, let's just say... so why is ONE of those people worthy of praise and the other one told to "work harder" at "skills that matter?" Isn't this backwards?? Even if we COULD produce a society in which everyone is a lawyer, a mathematician, a linguist, or a physician.... who wants to live in that place?? I don't. Not unless there are still people to help me fix my car and my house.
By applying a universal (and too narrow) standard to all students, we are ignoring the rich diversity of abilities and natural talents of our children. BOTH ends of that spectrum realize with frustration how pointless that standard is for themselves. At the same time, we seem to be devolving into a culture of mediocrity so that "everyone" can meet the same measure of "success" and earn their gold star/USDA seal of approval.
I remember when I was school, they used to administer a career inventory to everyone in 10th grade. Everyone looked forward to this test.
It asked all kinds of questions like "True or false: I enjoy working with my hands; I like solving puzzles; I am shy; I am outgoing; I prefer to make my own work..." and "Rate your ability to do the following <long list> of things on a scale of 1 to 10." There were many, many questions like these.
The results came back with a long list of jobs for kids to think about; they read something like, "You are outgoing, like to work with your hands, and are good at solving puzzles. You might want to consider being..." Additionally, you also like being outdoors, so you might also want to look into..."
Everyone got a long list of things that might fit them. It was great. Everyone passed around their results and talked about the different jobs that some of us had never even heard of. It made for lots of conversation in the cafeteria at lunch.
I'm very sorry that these kinds of things have disappeared along with vo-tech programs in high schools.
I thought that was because of automation and technology was shrinking the need for gm mechanics world wide. What's next? People need to work to make money.
I want to say we should quit calling it "a new global market" and reducing the future of the human race to a business model, but that's just the young artist in me. The grown-up me admires the complexity of the global market and admits it may be valid to express humanity in the language of mathematics using currency because apparently that's pinnacle of the combined wisdom of the world. When I read about education "they" always say "it's so we can compete in a new global market". And to be fair a market isn't just the cash, it's the vendors and the widgets too. I think that means the market demand globally is for precision engineered machine made stuff and that means more robotics, less apprenticed labor.
Well it just can't be what it kind of looks like. Washington wouldn't have pulled out the old programs without having a good plan of what to put in it's place. Have they already began to design the new vo-tech classes for the new millenium and they just want to design a new sorting hat for the new job market? Or, don't they have a plan because They see the drastic global technological changes and they dont know what tomorrow's jobs look like?
Oops, I gave in and watched an old Star Trek the Next Generation episode the other day. I love memory lane. <3
There's nothing in the world wrong with being a plumber or an air-conditioner repairman. Work to live, don't live to work. Take care of your family. Isn't that who the soldiers and scholars are trying to serve? I vote for diversity as well.
Youth lives by personality, age lives by calculation. -- Aristotle on a calendar
I live in a fairly small population area with a University, which is not the most highly rated. Although I only took a few courses, my experience was surprising.
One of the courses I took was a 3rd year course typically taken by 4th year electrical engineering students. The marks for the course were based fifty percent each on two exams, one take home over the month of chrismas and the other an open book exam at the end. I had special approval to take the course with the other 25 students being 4th year electrical engineering students.
Of course, I procrastinated and did the take home exam two days before the end of the month. It was surprisingly easy with a few questions I could have answered in grade 12 physics and the rest being reasonably basic. The first question was interesting in the fact it was a very basic electrical circuit rearranged to look complicated.
So the results came in and I had made one minor mistake and lost a couple percentage points. I think out of disgust, the professor decided to let the class know the overall results. The second highest mark was 46% and the average was around 38%. I was the only one who got the first question right, which was a basic grade 12 question.
I realized after writing the final exam, the professor had simplified it to ensure all the students would have reasonable marks. One question was "Name 3 parts of a computer?". So keyboard, screen and power button would qualify as an answer. Apparently this professor had often been in hot water for making these supposedly overly complicated exams.
As one of my cousins teaches a basic electrical course at a community college, I told him the story and gave him the question. He typically teaches one of his courses to first year apprentice students who are take 6 weeks of training and the rest working as an apprentice. At the same time I was tutoring one of his air conditioning apprentice students, he decided to offer up the question from my former exam as class work to these students. Quite a few of them were able to answer the question.
I found this to be a little bit scary. Even scarier is the number of similar observations I have made in the workplace.
I, too, have to wonder how many kids our (sarcasm alert) NEW! Improved! State-of-the-Art!! educational system is utterly failing because we as a culture are simply disregarding the fact that not everyone is has destiny/desire for highly demanding cognitive tasks like advanced mathematics or critical analyses of great works of literature...
DH is a prime example of this. The man is extremely intelligent. He knows more about electronics, especially in motor vehicles, than I would ever want to know. He was "pushed" towards a liberal arts education and dropped out before graduating. Had he been pushed to a trade school or to an apprenticeship like IBEW has, he would've excelled beyond expectations. Sure, he was a great student in HS. Sure, he graduated with honors, but that still doesn't mean that a 4 year liberal arts college degree was what he needed.
So add him to the list that has skewed the numbers along the way because we, as a country, choose one track for everyone, regardless of levels of intelligence, passions, strengths and need.
I realized after writing the final exam, the professor had simplified it to ensure all the students would have reasonable marks. One question was "Name 3 parts of a computer?". So keyboard, screen and power button would qualify as an answer. Apparently this professor had often been in hot water for making these supposedly overly complicated exams.
Oh my.
Here's one from today's paper in San Francisco. I think it's pretty good evidence that even the colleges and universities (in this case Stanford!) know that not everyone is smart enough to go to college:
A drama class in Beginning Improvising and another in Social Dances of North America III were among dozens of classes on a closely guarded quarterly list distributed only to Stanford athletes to help them choose classes. The list, which has existed since at least 2001, was widely regarded by athletes as an easy class list. More than a quarter of the courses on the list did not fulfill university general education requirements.
The classes on the list were "always chock-full of athletes and very easy A's," said Kira Maker, a soccer player who used the list her freshman year.
Stanford has long mandated equal scholastic footing among all undergraduates, including athletes. The university's hard-line approach has rankled some coaches over the years who have watched talented recruits go elsewhere because they didn't measure up to Stanford's academic standards.
Very depressing. Note, also,that they've got rid of the list, not the courses.
Val, that reminded me of my DH's experience back in the early 1980's as a high school student and good athlete-- he was awarded a football scholarship to a well-respected SEC school with a competitive football program.
When he expressed a desire to major in "Chemistry or maybe physics, plus Business" he was told in no uncertain terms that this was NOT going to be possible if he intended to be a scholarship athlete. Business, they conceded, they would consider-- but preferred 'easier' courseloads than that. Certainly NOT a double major. Chemistry or physics? Unthinkable.
He instead went to a UC school sans scholarship, happily played baseball, and earned a double degree in Chem/physics. With honors.
I was often chastised by my college's dean that I needed to make more allowances for students that were ill prepared to learn the material in one of my courses. The problem? Apparently this course was the "weeder" class for another department's majors. I needed to lighten up so that they could graduate. Oddly enough, I felt that maybe THEY needed to change their requirements instead, since OUR majors didn't seem to have trouble with the course, and in fact, we were teaching it as recommended by ACS, and that doing so was pretty much "not optional" if we wanted to remain accredited by them.
I routinely taught general education courses that my daughter could have aced by the time she was nine. Granted, she isn't your average kid, but still. I'm still astonished that not all of the students in those courses earned A's. Not only that, I'm a little mortified that I was pressured into developing and teaching a course that had no business as anything but a GT workshop for middle schoolers, or a community ed course. But it was apparently held up as a "shining example" of what a general education course SHOULD be-- university wide.
The kids that were so (rightly) proud to excel in those areas and graduate with high school diplomas, ready to move into trades and apprenticeships, are the kids that NCLB 
Even if we COULD produce a society in which everyone is a lawyer, a mathematician, a linguist, or a physician.... 
