Excellent column pointing out (again) how educationally stuck in a perceptual rut and so absurdly stupid the USA is:
Back in the 70’s California had a movement to put proven visionary entrepreneurs together with Junior College planners to attempt to match future needs to current curricula planning and invenstment. It paid off big time in “Silicon Valley” and “Silicon Beach”. Then politics changed back to stupid.
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Blockquote
“Traditional Family Values”, “no child left behind”, and “must unburden the “JCs”” Relative reduction in educaton funding, with the NCLB, that threatened to withhold Federal education funding to districts whose students did not score well on tests, lead to the dropping of anything that was not on the test, like vocational classes. Meanwhile, initiatives to actually prepare high school students for college level work, like “common core”, are vilified as some “big gummit conspiracy”. But Louisiana has the 10 Commandments posted in every classroom, so nothing else matters, right?
Steve
The problem is that to many people want to spend money on superfluous projects that make them feel good. What we need is a more focused discussion on where the money should go. We can’t just spend money because we are going to run out of it eventually. If we focus on sending people to trade schools, they can come right out and get a job. We won’t even have to pay for their loans if we allow the Unions to run the trade schools. After all they are begging for workers. But instead the United States is going to fight back and forth over trivial pursuits that both sides like to fight about instead of solving problems.
Andy
Thing is, many of the “trade schools” are run by for-profit companies, and are dependent on student loans to make their high prices 'affordable". To add to the mess, some of the trade schools are frauds, like ITT.
Having trade unions run trade schools isn’t going to happen in wide swaths of Shiny-land. To a large part of the population, they would rather have their kids taught “wokie” stuff, then let them be subjected to “union indoctrination”.
Steve
There are those Steve but in Nevada we have community colleges and unions that do run trade schools. The Carpenters have one of the biggest trade schools around. IBEW tried to start a trade school but were undermined by the business’s. But imagine if the government paid them to start a school instead of paying for failed school loans. The idea that we can do both is ludicrous. This country needs to get going if we are going to get the infrastructure built that needs to be built in the years ahead.
Andy
Government paying labor unions, rather than “JCs”? (on the wire today, AT&T CEO says the government should tax the large tech firms, and use the money to subsidize companies like AT&T) Don"t think that is going to fly in large swaths of Shiny-land.
How about this: states fund higher education to the degree they did 50 years ago, so you, realistically, can earn enough at a part time job to pay direct college expenses, and graduate debt-free?
Travel in Michigan, during the previous Gov’s regime, and you would see where infrastructure ranked, vs tax cuts for “JCs”. The City of Flint sending it’s residents water that was unfit to drink was only the most widely reported case of infrastructure taking a back seat.
Steve
I am all for free state college if certain requirements are met. In Nevada we have the millennium scholarship. I don’t know the exact requirements but I seem to remember that you had to have a B average and then keep a C average in College. It pays the tuition of students. Seems reasonable to me.
Andy
Michigan used to have a merit based scholarship program, but it only paid $4000/year, for two years. But even that is gone now. The (L&Ses) stopped funding it…I would suspect so the money could be given to the “JCs” instead.
Private donors funded the Kalamazoo Promise, which provides scholarships for Michigan universities, based on how many years the student was in the Kalamazoo Public School system. The state has expanded such “promise” programs to other cities, all privately funded, because the (L&Ses) have things they regard as more important, to use the state’s money for.