2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: Tell me three things Hillary will do as president to improve my life as a PERSON that Bernie has not [View all]BainsBane
(53,012 posts)Firstly, I cut nothing out. I excerpted only one paragraph, and it was on early childhood ed, not even K-12. I provided links for everyone to read, as you just did.
The European model of taxpayer funded education depends on testing. Placement in college is determined by scores on national tests. Everyone doesn't go because everyone can't go. Societies must allocate resources. If that is the model you want, it requires testing. Socialist planned economies do the same thing. They determine access to university by testing. Bernie isn't being straight with voters about what is involved in federally subsidized education. No country sends every person to university. Not only it is cost prohibitive, there is no social need for everyone to have a four-year degree. Society needs plumbers, electricians, other skilled trades that depend on technical training. I suppose by failing to address inequality in K-12, he could be dealing with some of that that by keeping the poor in schools that don't prepare them for college. However, even the upper-middle class most helped by his plan can't get into college without testing. All systems have trade offs. Utopia doesn't exist. There has to be a way to allocate resources. Pretending otherwise is absurd.
I don't know all the intricacies of debates concerning K-12 reforms, but Clinton does have the support of the teachers unions. They wouldn't be supporting her if they felt her plan damaged them. In my view, testing itself is not so much the problem as the quality of the tests.