Is 2025 a new non-woke era.(vanity)

myself | 12/31/24 | Dallasbiff

[Freee-dame]

The left behaves like a ratchet. They never give anything up, but, like you say, they wait in the shadows until they can move forward again with their agenda. Republicans, on the other hand, given in all the time to what the left wants. I hope things will be different for the next few years.

[sphinx]

We need to reclaim the institutions or, alternatively, destroy the power of leftist institutions to act as gatekeepers and commissars.

This has different implications in different sectors. At the top of my institutional reform list would be to voucher the schools. 100 percent. Give the parents a check that would be deposited in an educational savings account, and let the parents sort it out.

Strong public schools would thrive. Bad public schools — bad for a wide range of familiar reasons — would see a mass exodus as alternative models were developed.

Let people vote with their feet. I’ll live with the consequences.

The challenge at that point would be to keep the left from smuggling its agenda into schools of choice via curriculum development, credentialing, teacher training programs, etc.

There would have to be some form of objective accountability to prevent outright frauds and con men from taking the money and running — and this would include irresponsible parents who choose to “home school” but stick their kids in front of a tv all day while they spend the money on themselves.

The only form of accountability that would be sustainable in the long run would be demonstrated mastery of core academic subjects — reading, writing, math — with the same standards applying to all modes of instruction without exception: public schools, parochial and secular private schools, home schooling in its various forms. Any school in which students don’t meet the basic threshold would lose funding eligibility. Period.

[Freee-dame]

You make very good points. As recently as the 1970s, seventh graders in public schools in Maryland took two standardized tests. One was the Iowa Test of basic Skills, an achievement test. The second was the cognitive abilities test (CAT), a type of IQ rest.

They were very useful in understanding many things about a child’s academic progress. Students who were super hard workers often did relatively better on the ITBS. On the other hand, students who were lackluster about schoolwork often did relatively better on the CAT. Most scored similarly on the two tests, each of which had several categories. They were math, verbal and nonverbal IIRC.

In some European countries, at least back in the 90s, the money followed the student. That is exactly how it should be in the USA.