So Rob Portman voted to confirm Betsy DeVos

[Dill]

(02-09-2017, 05:01 PM)bfine32 Wrote: Of course we can make stats reflect whatever we desire. I can point to how much we spend on average per student based on the rest of the world and the bang we are getting for our buck. If the two of you want to say the education system has been overall sucessful and the best way to determine who should head the program is to compare his or her resume to his or her predesessors; that's your opinion and who am I to say it is wrong.

I could raise the High School graduation rate, increase our performance results on internal tests, and get more kids enrolled in college overnight; however, this does nothing if the rest of the world is getting smarter around us.

I don't think Pat and Benton made up stats they "desired." They just know where to find the relevant stats and how to read and assess them.  And the fact that we spend more than other countries hardly means our children are therefore receiving a bad education which could not get any worse.

If the US education performance were on par with Afghanistan, Chad or South Sudan, then a change agent with no professional qualifications might do no harm. 

But if we are performing JUST UNDER countries like Germany, Japan and Finland, still above the average of 1st-world industrialized countries, then your unprofessional, unqualified, and inexperienced change agent could start us on a downward trend towards Chad.

In places where "the rest of the world is getting smarter," it is not because change agents with no professional qualifications have been brought in to "shake things up." It is because professionals are in charge of educational policy, able to set long term goals and fund their achievement.

In places where the world is NOT getting smarter, like Afghanistan, that is because political offices go to people who buy them, to donors and lobbyists.

Why do you support this third-world model for the world's leading economy and superpower, with the world's best universities?