No Sector Left Behind

At least he has a clear agenda.

Yesterday, the President Obama called for a much needed overhaul in public education.  While the No Child Left Behind Act, sprung from an unlikely alliance between former President George W. Bush and the late Senator Kennedy, left behind much to be desired regarding the improvement of government education, President Obama's proposal is not so much of an overhaul as a deeper disintegration of the failing educational system.

The administration would replace the law’s pass-fail school grading system with one that would measure individual students’ academic growth and judge schools based not on test scores alone but also on indicators like pupil attendance, graduation rates and learning climate.

You read that right. Pupil attendance and “learning climate” are proposed to be part of evaluating school success. That seems pretty clear to me: show up and we’ll keep throwing taxpayer money at the guard-like activities directors (formerly known as teachers).

In addition, President Obama would replace the law’s requirement that every American child reach proficiency in reading and math, which administration officials have called utopian, with a new national target that could prove equally elusive: that all students should graduate from high school prepared for college and a career.

Clear as day. The President indicates that proficiency in reading and math is not related to, let alone necessary for, success in college or a career, and that social utilitarianism, not the ability to think critically, is the goal of education.  

Whatever you think about this Administration’s unprincipled mess of foggy social notions and utopian fiscal fantasies supporting its serious lack of moral, legal, and economic understanding of its proposals, you have to give them this: its clarity in doggedly pursuing to increase the role of government control over every aspect of our lives by any and every means possible is crystal clear.