Real Educational Reform

The assault on teachers unions has historically driven educational reform in North America. The claim that our education system is failing due to bad teachers, bureaucratic public education etc. has led the move towards so called market reforms in education; merit pay and charter schools to name two favorite right wing bugaboos.

However the reality is that in North America public education is generalized unless you are destined to go to university. Graduating from High School gives you a generalized diploma, worth nothing to employers. If you qualify as a potential candidate for a university education you get put into that track. That high school diploma is not generalized, and allows you to enter university post secondary education, if you can afford it.

All other forms of post secondary education; college and trades education, which actually educate/train students for the world of work are not tracked. They are in Europe and Asia which is why they beat out our students. Its not a matter of knowing more math or science but of having access to educated embedded job learning, apprenticeship opportunities beginning in high school and transitioning to post-secondary technical schools.

What’s the problem? The fact that the U.S. is the only industrialized society that relies so heavily on its higher education system to help young people get from the end of compulsory schooling into the workforce with the knowledge and skills to be successful in today’s economy. Despite the fact that nearly all young people now say that they want to go to college and that increasing percentages of high school graduates are in fact enrolling in college, our college completion rate is stuck at about 40 percent. Many organizations are now focused on the challenge of how to increase our college completion rate and have set a very aggressive target of 55 percent by 2025.

But even if this very ambitious improvement goal were to be reached, what is our strategy for getting the other 45 percent of young people the skills and credentials they will need to get launched on a career path that can enable them to earn a family-supporting wage and lead a productive life? This is the big question our report raises, and that you barely acknowledge.

In our search for answers, we draw heavily on two recently published Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) studies that bring important international evidence and experience to bear on the problem we cite, but you never even acknowledge this major section of our report. We point out that throughout Northern Europe from the age of 16 between 40 and 70 percent of young people enroll in programs that combine classroom and workplace learning, have significant employer involvement, and prepare students for careers in a wide range of occupations, not just the traditional trades.

SEE

Obama Embraces Neo-Con Agenda

Obama Embraces Neo-Con Agenda

President Obama continues to embrace a conservative reformist agenda with his Monday fiscal summit and his speech to the congress last night. In particular in education he has embraced merit pay and he told congress his administration wishes to expand charter schools. This later move has been the child of the Cato institute in the U.S. and the Fraser Institute in Canada. It is the bugaboo of the neo-con revolution, market delivery of public education by private companies. Setting up competitive private schools in competition with public schools. It as been tried in Alberta and B.C. and has not delivered any greater success in student achievement than public schools. Where it has succceeded is due to a simple fact; smaller class sizes which results in more indidivdual student attention.
At his Monday joint summit meeting, proposals for education reform included merit pay, despite union opposition to this idea, While on the surface merit pay may appear a good idea, it is all in the details. Who decides what merits the pay increase? Is it test scores? Is it an evaluation by students and parents? If it is the former test scores do not reflect real cognitive learning, rather they reflect the limited ability of rote learning; memorising anwsers to test questions.
The Obama administration is embracing other neo-con ideas as well in the areas of health care and social security reform. They begin with the premise that some one is ripping off the system, and a review of health care rip offs was announced to congress by Obama. He also promised that younger American workers would be able to supplement their social security with a persoanl tax free retirement investment plan. Where have we heard this before? Why from the Bush and Clinton administrations of course.
Like Clinton before him, he is a classic liberal, and as I have pointed out here before, classic liberals are embraced by libertarians, radical republicans and liberals. That he is willing to embrace ideas of the neo-con era, shows he truly is bipartisan

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