Posted on 09/09/2008 5:40:52 PM PDT by bamahead
Senator Obama launched a major education counter-offensive today, in a speech laying out his vision for the future of American schooling. Calling for a renewal of the public school system to “meet the challenges of a new time,” Obama held up the National Defense Education Act of 1958 as a model for what he has in mind. He told the Dayton, Ohio crowd that “Eisenhower doubled federal investment in education after the Soviets beat us to space. That’s the kind of leadership we must show today.”
The trouble is, the NDEA was an expensive failure. Congress’ goal was to improve achievement in math and science following the Soviet Union’s launch of the Satellite Sputnik. There are no nationally representative science results from the time, but high school mathematics performance actually fell in the eight years following passage of the law, according to national norm studies conducted by the College Board, which administers the SAT and PSAT (see figure below). By 1983, math scores had still not returned to the level they had been at before the NDEA was passed.
Math Scores, National Norm PSAT Studies
(11th graders), 1955 to 1983
(Source: College Board data reported in Charles Murray and Richard J. Herrnstein,
“What’s Really Behind the SAT-Score Decline,” Public Interest, no. 106 (Winter 1992): 32-56.)
Either the Senator’s advisors were unaware of the NDEA’s disappointing results, or they offered it as a model despite them. Neither scenario inspires confidence in the future of federal education policy under an Obama presidency.
(Excerpt) Read more at cato-at-liberty.org ...
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As he sends his kids to private school...
Sigh.......results don’t matter......leadership and vision does. That it ends up sticking a few dollars in a few helpful pockets does too!
Talk about real lipstick on a real pig....
He wants to do for America’s schools what ahe did for Chicago with Ayers on the Annenberg project — spend lots of money and get no results.
Know someone who is an adjunct professor at a private college in Chicago. He is teaching three classes of remedial English and when I asked how many there were, he said 53 different classes teaching remedial English. That is the Chicago school system that Obama promised to fix with Ayers.
Bravo Sierra is my name for anything Obama has to say. He will never turn on teacher’s unions and for anyone that thinks he will, I have swampland for sale in AZ!
The main purpose of the government schools is as a jobs program for middle class workers who ( on average) at the least able on their college campuses.
The second purpose of the government of the schools is to train up little Marxists who will grow up to vote for Democrats.
The answer to every problem...throw money at it.
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