NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF: Obama and Our Schools

[babylonsister]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/13/opinion/13kristof.html?_r=1&ref=opinion&oref=slogin

Obama and Our Schools

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Published: November 12, 2008


President-elect Barack Obama and his aides are sending signals that education may be on the back burner at the beginning of the new administration. He ranked it fifth among his priorities, and if it is being downplayed, that’s a mistake.

We can’t meaningfully address poverty or grow the economy as long as urban schools are failing. Mr. Obama talks boldly about starting new high-tech green industries, but where will the workers come from unless students reliably learn science and math?

The United States is the only country in the industrialized world where children are less likely to graduate from high school than their parents were, according to a new study by the Education Trust, an advocacy group based in Washington.

The most effective anti-poverty program we could devise for the long run would have less to do with income redistribution than with ensuring that poor kids get a first-rate education, from preschool on. One recent study found that if American students did as well as those in several Asian countries in math and science, our economy would grow 20 percent faster.

snip//

No family underscores the power of education more than Mr. Obama’s. His father began as a goat-herd in a remote village in Kenya, but his studies carried him to the University of Hawaii. And Mr. Obama himself has ridden the education escalator to the White House.

So Mr. Obama, let’s give others the chance to board the escalator that you and your father enjoyed. Let’s pick up where we left off in the 1970s and mount a national campaign to make high-school graduation truly universal, and to make a college education routine.

[glowing]

1. I don't see Obama falling behind on education.. I think he understands, education

is the only reason he's able to be where he is today or his wife is... I think with his first donation of campaign equipment to schools is just one of the indications on his dedication to education... He understands competition globally.

AND what about the 8 yrs of squandered mis-direction? How many children have or are currently being instructed under the current guidelines and falling behind? A wasted generation of bumbling idiots?