“It makes no sense”: Debunking Obama’s SOTU on education

[Hannah Bell]

"It makes no sense” is perhaps President Obama’s favorite phrase, using it twice in his 2011 State of the Union speech... That is how I feel about the education section of his speech. It makes no sense.

President Obama wants to win the future by “out-innovate, out-educate, and out-build the rest of the world....he quality of our math and science education lags behind many other nations... America has fallen to ninth in the proportion of young people with a college degree...”

When he says that “the quality of our math and science education lags behind many other nations,” President Obama ignores the fact that American students performance on international tests have been pretty bad for a long time, and believe it or not, has got better in recent years. In the 1960s, America’s 8th graders ranked 11th out of 12 countries and 12th graders ranked 12 out of 12 countries on the First International Mathematic Study. America’s 12th graders’ average score ranked 14th out of 18 countries that participated in the First International Science Study...

Obama also said in his speech... "America still has the largest, most prosperous economy in the world. No workers — no workers are more productive than ours. No country has more successful companies, or grants more patents to inventors and entrepreneurs. We’re the home to the world’s best colleges and universities, where more students come to study than any place on Earth."

So who has made America “the largest, most prosperous economy in the world?” Who are these most productive workers? Where did the people who created the successful companies come from? And who are these inventors that received the most patents in the world? It has to be the same Americans who ranked bottom on the international tests. Those 12th graders with shameful bad math scores in the 1960s have been the primary work force in the US for the past 40 years. The equally poor performers on international tests in the 70s and 80s have been working for the past 30 years now...

http://zhaolearning.com/2011/01/30/%E2%80%9Cit-makes-no-sense%E2%80%9D-puzzling-over-obama%E2%80%99s-state-of-the-union-speech/

[Hardrada]

1. Consistency is not a virtue to a reader of pretty speeches.

[TheWraith]

3. And once again, resorting to recycled right-wing talking points. nt

[ThomCat]

2. This does a good job of showing just how fucked up

Obama's education policies have been.

It has been "No Child Left Behind" under new management. This is not good for any of us, for any of our children, or for our nation in the long run.

The only ones who benefit from this are the testing companies, the test prep companies, the consultants, and the people who own the charter schools that are coming out of this whole movement. :(

By the time we finally get leadership that is willing to throw away this ridiculous and harmful bullshit, how long will it take our national educational system to recover?

[JDPriestly]

4. In my opinion, Obama's education policy is mostly based on corruption.

He is taking the advice of very wealthy folks who could potentially give him lots of MONEY. That's what it is about. It isn't about keeping the best teachers or helping children learn.

[n2doc]

5. A very inconvenient truth

Aside from all the other issues about how we are comparing apples and oranges in these tests (selected groups vs. all students in others) This goes to show that standardized testing is piss poor at predicting things like creativity, motivation, innovation, etc. that really do matter in generating "future leaders"

[Poboy]

6. recommend