From an educational speech by Obama, almost a year ago today:

OBAMA: “But that’s not the leadership we’ve been getting from Washington. For decades, folks in Washington have been stuck in the same tired debates over education that have crippled our progress and left schools and parents to fend for themselves. It’s been Democrat versus Republican, vouchers versus the status quo, more money versus more reform. There’s partisanship and there’s bickering, but there’s no understanding that both sides have good ideas that we’ll need to implement if we hope to make the changes our children need. And we’ve fallen further and further behind as a result.”

Oh, I could have quoted from the whole speech, but this paragraph alone is enough. Where to begin?

1) Educational policy coming from Washington is part of the problem. Education worked when it was local; every time a layer of bureacracy has been added, it gets worse. Districts, states, federal, everything conspires to politicize what used to work for us in the country... and, I hate to say it, the Teachers' Unions have only aggravated the problem (unlike others, I can't lay the blame on them).

2) This line just did it for me: "It’s been Democrat versus Republican, vouchers versus the status quo, more money versus more reform."

a) Firstly, get the order right.

Democrat vs. Republican
Status Quo vs. Vouchers
More Money vs, More Reform

Democrats are NOT the party of school vouchers.

b) Obama unwittingly makes my point for me, by saying that more money does NOT equal more reform. At the very least they aren't synonyms; at the worst, they're opposites.


Does anybody understand that the schools are broken, like everything else government-run is broken, because it's the government? Vouchers = control of tax money = an issue directly connected to government!!!

Here's a meme for you:

Universal Health Care is where the government controls your tax money to provide the medical care they deem appropriate.

The Educational System is where the government controls your tax money to provide the primary education they deem appropriate.

With medicine WE want to control the medicine we get (via private companies, private insurance, etc). With education, we should (and are) striving for the EXACT SAME THING: controling or education via controlling the money the government takes from us to provide it. Vouchers are a way of us taking some of that control back; why do you think the government, and the teachers who are beholden to the teachers' unions, are so opposed to them?

Take it a step further. Look at how little education our kids get these days, even as spending hits record highs. As we pander to the unions and prop up a government-run system of education, are we not seeing RATIONING of education itself? Larger classrooms, less challenging content, less for the exceptional students, less vocational instruction for those who are not destined for college...

Why is it that in many classrooms, 'honors' and 'gifted' more often than not means 'more' homework, not 'harder' or 'better' homework? Only when you get to classes like AP classes, where objective testing and private markets still apply, do you get a class and a standard that still means something.

The parallels between universal health care and our current school system are eerie. The failure of one can predict the failure of the other, for I would argue that inasmuch as the education system is government-run, it is a government failure. Take the government out of the equation, and I guarantee things would improve.