The effort to develop and mandate national academic standards is in full swing, according to this Washington Post article.
The identity of those developing the standards is classified, for now, supposedly to protect those individuals from public scrutiny. I tend t think that the government does far too much in secret and that transparency in government is a good thing, so I disagree with this decision.
I do hope that those involved in developing and reviewing the standards are actual experts in their given fields, not just educators.
2 responses so far ↓
Citizen Tom // June 3, 2009 at 8:56 pm |
I wish people would stop and think about the lunacy of letting politicians run our educational system. With good reason, politicians are the least trusted people in the country. Why would anybody trust them to educate their children?
For some reason people do not associate government and education. It is dumb, but they don’t. For reason people don’t think of the members of the School Board as politicians, yet politicians they are. In fact, our elected School Board spends over a billion dollars a year. What it cannot do is raise or lower our taxes. With strings attached, the School Board gets its money from the county, the state, and the Federal Government. Hence we have four levels of government involved and one big mess.
What will national standards do? National Standards will allow Federal politicians to dictate what children learn and think. That is power, and that is what national standards are about.
National standards have nothing whatsoever to do with what is good for children. If the good of children was the goal, we would have school choice and competition. As parents saw what works, we would not need government to dictate standards. Instead, we would see the development of de facto standards, and those standard would be driven by the choices of the people who care for children the most, their parents.
jackie4678 // June 9, 2009 at 8:51 am |
http://jaypgreene.com/2009/06/09/the-national-standards-sausage-making/