US Education - Wake Up!

If your school board or the state school administration is still murmuring into its collective navel about how much to expose our kids to sex ed or which 'version' of the Civil War to teach or which books need banned....better walk right up to them and slap them....HARD!

While Michelle Rhea and other US reformers of education have part of the equation right, it is not the whole story.  If you don't know who Michelle Rhea is, here is a well-done PBS Frontline piece on her and her reform efforts:

The first thing about Tom Friedman that got my interest and attention is his early (before almost everyone else) realization that the world is flat after all in some very important ways. This recent column talks about how progressive school districts and teachers can make a difference by acknowledging this fact and comparing themselves to the world education systems at large.  It is no credit to US education (or to those who blame environment for everything) that middle class US students are pretty resoundingly whipped in all categories by the Shanghai, China lower income students. 

It is possible to do better -- but US educators and the public in general have to give up this inane, outdated idea of local control of everything.  The countries that are whipping our _ss educationally all share one common trait -- they have a centralized set of educational standards and criteria that must be met everywhere, partly for world competitive reasons, but also to insure that you don't have a bunch of little fiefdoms running off in different directions creating their own little islands of incompetence.