Posted on 06/12/2014 1:15:19 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
In education circles, universal preschool is hot. But it’s only half the answer. If we really want to raise a generation of employable kids, we need universal 13th and 14th grades too.
As taxpayers, we’ve decided to subsidize the education of every American child between the ages of 5 and 18. But current education funding structures reflect a bygone industrial age, when a high school diploma met or in some cases exceeded the needs of the local and national economies. Now, neither preschool nor college is a luxury, and families shouldn’t have to pay for the schooling that keeps society running.
Creating grades 13 and 14 would reduce student debt significantly, while also providing kids without college degrees a viable path to work. And it would offer students who need remedial courses a chance to catch up. Right now, those kids often pay out-of-pocket for classes that don’t count toward their degree.
Such a program wouldn’t be cheap. But the government already pays for 13th and 14th grade, in the form of hodgepodge student loans.
Instead, all students should receive a voucher they can use for middle colleges, community colleges, or four-year degree programs. State and federal governments should also begin to negotiate the amount of grants and loans given to colleges and universities to prevent tuition inflation....
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
This is the equivalent to going to a bad restaurant and deciding, "You know what this place needs? Bigger portions!"
We actually need fewer college graduates with four year liberal arts degrees from third tier colleges and universities and more skilled tradespeople with technical training.
I was recently talking to the owner of a local heating and cooling business who employs over 50 people. He said finding knowledgable and skilled young people to work as technicians and installers in his business is impossible at decent middle class wages.
Local community colleges have shifted their focus from providing solid technical and trades instruction to providing liberal arts education for students who stay at home for a two year associates degree and then transfer to a lower tier state university. If they get their four year degree in diversity studies or psychology they can’t find a job. Meanwhile, had they spent two years receiving training in a skill (plumbing, HVAC, electrical), and two years in an apprenticeship, they would be earning over $20 per hour and have a skill they could eventually leverage into their own independent business.
Progressives continually call for us to emulate European nations. They ignore the excellent trades and technical training programs in Europe for non college graduates. Imagine if instead of forgiving loans for $60,000 per year tuition at 4 year colleges we spent the money upgrading our 2 year schools and training highly skilled mechanics, electricians, cabinet makers, HVAC repair people, and plumbers for far less money. We’d have more people working and fewer unemployed youth at a much lower cost.
What might be useful would be for the smarter kids to be put in a program at their local community college starting in 11th grade, where they would attend rigorous college-level courses for 2-3 years, to get a taste of what it's like.
But that would be quickly sabotaged, and then cancelled as being "racist".
What's really needed is to raise teacher standards, so that being an education major is no longer where the people with the lowest SAT scores go. At the LEAST, a teacher should score in the 70th percentile in the SAT subject tests for English, history, math, and one science before being accepted into an education major program. I would prefer 80th percentile.
Hell, we have 13th and 14th grades already. They are called Community Colleges, and they are the REMEDIAL CLASSES. Go look at a course schedule these days and see the HUGE NUMBER OF SECTIONS they have available...half their students are in them now. None should be.
But DO NOT CHANGE IT. The colleges are MUCH BETTER than any high school is capable of - they have NO TENURE (at least for the vast majority of instructors), they have NO UNIONS, and they have virtually NO WASHINGTON CONTROL. They regulate themselves and do what’s needed to ACTUALLY TEACH students.
freshman year of college IS 13th grade, with beer and....
At this point, I'm done with the article. Since it's TAX money that would fund this monstrosity, it WILL be families that pay for it, regardless.
Do liberals really believe that Washington is some kind of "magic money box", where money just appears out of thin air?
Yep, the greatest thing we could do for education in this country is to replace diplomas with certifications. If I can walk in and pass the Bar exam, I should be able to practice law, regardless of whether I went to law school. Ditto for an engineering PE.
Employers could then weigh how much value they wanted to attach to a diploma and individuals could weigh how much value the education they were receiving really was to achieving the required credentials, e.g. perhaps reading and studying 6hrs a night on my own (or via the Internet) while working, is a better option than spending $40k a year.
The natural result would be an active apprentice system.
How about this: Eight grades where they don’t get advanced unless they really do know what they are supposed to, two years of vocational training, and then put them to work.
Exactly. Garbage argument, garbage article, but to be expect from the Washington Compost.
No, we just need schools to for-crying-out-loud educate the kids to some sort of decent standard.
It’s NOT rocket science.
13th grade? It’s called the military.
No, we don’t need MORE grades, we need to stop foisting nonessential crap off as ‘education’.
spare the rod, spoil the child
Good old fashioned ass whoopings would solve most education problems.
By abandoning discipline the kids take the lazy way out and simply refuse to learn.
Obama is currently sparing the international rod and the same thing is already happening to US interests
We need a functioning school system that focuses on actual education.
We do not need to expand the current indoctrination system to consume more of a young person’s time (and taxpayer dollars).
“They want every child to go on and get at least a 4 year degree for some reason.”
Because an utterly worthless BA/BS/MA/MS/PhD in Women’s Gender, Racial Disparities or Basket Weaving is just so much better. Heh.
More grades, more teachers, more union members.
Grow the monster that is the Dept of Education.
Yes, the other kind of Indians.
Instead of adding grade 13, why not make sure students learn what they need to know in the first 12 grades?
“Progressives continually call for us to emulate European nations. They ignore the excellent trades and technical training programs in Europe for non college graduates”
And those going to college have to qualify for the major they want. My cousin in Italy wanted to major in math, but couldn’t pass the exams. She ended up studying psychology.
“What’s really needed is to raise teacher standards, so that being an education major is no longer where the people with the lowest SAT scores go. At the LEAST, a teacher should score in the 70th percentile in the SAT subject tests for English, history, math, and one science before being accepted into an education major program. I would prefer 80th percentile.”
It is actually worse than education majors having one of the lowest SAT scores. When I was taking the math, chemistry, and physics tests to be credentialed, I ran into numerous PE and other such teachers taking one of those tests for the 4th or 5th time. After passing, they get to teach those subjects. The tests were not above a 12th grade level. Sad. And here in CA, they offer dummy math degrees only good for being a teacher. Soon to be teachers can’t even pass a real math curriculum.
A friend of mine with a masters in a real math degree got laid off from teaching - because she didn’t coach anything.
Their priorities are so backwards!
This creates an incentive for the unions to get rid of the best qualified teachers, ensure that real learning does not take place, and use that as an excuse to demand more funding.
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