Comments on: Education Reform Starts Locally

By: Schools and accountability | The League of Ordinary Gentlemen

Schools and accountability | The League of Ordinary Gentlemen — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 19:35:53 +0000

[...] P.S. I agree with Freddie on this point as well – most American schools are doing just fine! Indeed, most Americans think their own school is doing just fine, even if they think [...]

By: Americans already have school choice - E.D. Kain - American Times - True/Slant

Americans already have school choice - E.D. Kain - American Times - True/Slant — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 21:06:01 +0000

[...] matter how you spin it, American education is and always will be a local issue. One-size-fits-all solutions mandated at the federal level will simply fail despite their [...]

By: Americans already have school choice | The League of Ordinary Gentlemen

Americans already have school choice | The League of Ordinary Gentlemen — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 21:05:42 +0000

[...] matter how you spin it, American education is and always will be a local issue. One-size-fits-all solutions mandated at the federal level will simply fail despite their [...]

By: The-Poet

The-Poet — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 08:02:18 +0000

I disagree. The US’s economic success hasn’t been due to localization but rather due to entirely different economic and political structures that incentivized people to innovate. That being said, education does need to be reformed. This blog (http://higher-ed-reform.blogspot.com/) has an interesting state-level implementation of how to fix several problems in our school systems.

By: Teach Your Children Well « Around The Sphere

Teach Your Children Well « Around The Sphere — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 13:19:10 +0000

[...] to certain reforms is precisely the wrong way to go about fixing our public schools. As E.D. says, all education is local, and foreclosing district- and state-level experimentation on the grounds that it may not work or [...]

By: fert

fert — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 01:07:07 +0000

I, too, believe in localized control of schooling and that NCLB hasn’t done much good. But I find a lot of the assumptions and premises this article is based on to be a little naive and misleading. Yes, the US has had a lot of patents and a lot of technological advances, but I bet if you discount the ones from foreign-born and -raised talents (to name the most famous of these folks: Einstein) you’d be less impressed with the US educational system. Also, after WWII, around half of all PhD’s awarded at US universities were to foreign-born students. All I’m saying is that this excellence in developing technologies/patents in the US may not primarily due to the excellence of primary education in the US. Secondly, all these polling numbers and questions regarding how people feel about their children’s education versus the educational system falls squarely into patterns that psychologists have been describing for decades. You’d get the same results if you asked people the same kinds of questions about their brand of tomato sauce versus all tomato sauces. So these kind of polls are pretty useless unless you’re in a psych class. And lastly, because I need to go rescue the rug from my dog’s full bladder, the fact that NCLB didn’t much change anything does not mean that federal policies don’t work. Doing so is not only a classical case of denying the antecedent but can easily fall into the category of “Bush tried to do good but screwed up because he dum.”

By: Van Jones: Black, Red, and Green « Prayer, News & Action

Van Jones: Black, Red, and Green « Prayer, News & Action — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 22:38:40 +0000

[...] Education Reform Starts Locally newmajority.com Education is local. Throughout the history of the United States, this has always been true. Local education has resulted in one of the strongest economies of all time, in a country that produces more patents than any other nation, and boasts six of the top ten universities in the world according to U.S. News. [...]

By: greg_barton

greg_barton — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 04:28:03 +0000

Nothing includes me, sinz. I am that which cannot be included. I don’t care to belong to any club that has members.

By: ltoro1

ltoro1 — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 03:48:12 +0000

There are already a lot of strings tied to federal grant funds. So much that a lot of state and local goverments as well as not for profits spend a lot of money hiring consultants to tell them what all of the strings are. I know this first hand from a prior job performing monitoring of grant funded programs.

Based on my experience, due to the size of the federal agencies as well as the complexity of managing billions in grant funds spread all over the country, I am not optimistic that we will get a decent return on investment by putting so much federal dollars int to education.

By: sinz54

sinz54 — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 14:34:07 +0000

greg_barton:

Almost alone on these political blogs, I always call the shots as I see ‘em.

I lean right of center. But on certain issues, I can reach out to the Left. Really I can.

But I’m willing to admit when liberals are right or do good things.
And I’m willing to admit when my fellow conservatives are wrong or do bad things.

Anybody who thinks that the issues of freedom vs. egalitarianism, or Federal control vs. local control, are easy questions and can be solved with a bumper-sticker slogan, hasn’t thought enough about those questions.

This includes you, by the way.