Bob Herbert: Education's Collateral Damage

[Wetzelbill]

July 21, 2005
Education's Collateral Damage
By BOB HERBERT
Stop the presses! Within just a few days we've had a scandal involving a world-class presidential guru bumped off the front pages by a prime-time presidential announcement of a nominee to the Supreme Court.

No one would argue that these aren't big stories. But an issue that is even more important to the long-term future of the U.S. gets very short shrift from the media. In an era when a college education is virtually a prerequisite for maintaining a middle-class lifestyle, an extraordinary number of American teenagers continue to head toward adulthood without even a high school diploma.

This is not a sexy issue, and certainly not as titillating for journalists as the political witchcraft that Karl Rove has used to enchant George W. Bush. But consider the following from the book "Dropouts in America: Confronting the Graduation Rate Crisis," a collection of essays edited by Gary Orfield, a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education:

"Nationally, only about two-thirds of all students - and only half of all blacks, Latinos and Native Americans - who enter ninth grade graduate with regular diplomas four years later."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/21/opinion/21herbert.html

[getmeouttahere]

1. If a college education is necessary to maintain a middle class...

lifestyle, and BushCo slashes the pell grants, and the vast majority of outsourced jobs are of a middle class salary, where exactly does that leave us? If we can afford it, we get a degree but there are fewer and fewer of the better paying jobs.

And BushCo wants to tell us that CAFTA is a jobs program!

[Wetzelbill]

2. Bass ackward

isn't it? :)