Contributors

Monday, December 03, 2012

Heed His Warning

It's easy after the last election for Democrats to feel confident. The president only dropped two states from 2008. Gains were seen in both the House and Senate (netting 8 seats in the former and 2 in the latter). The GOP hasn't gotten above 300 electoral votes since 1988 with the Democrats winning 4 of the last 6 presidential elections.

And, as the absentee ballots are counted, we see that the president got 65.3 million votes so his lower totals than 2008 weren't as low as originally thought (Mitt Romney is now at 60.7 so he did get 1 million more votes than McCain in 2008).

But, as Rahm Emanuel notes in this piece, we can't rest on our laurels.

We cannot expect Republicans to cede the economic argument so readily, or to fall so far short on campaign mechanics, the next time around. So, instead of resting on false assurances of underlying demographic advantages, the Democratic Party must follow through on our No. 1 priority, which the president set when he took office and reemphasized throughout this campaign: It is time to come home and rebuild America.

Right. This is no time for end zone dances. We have to deliver.  What's a key way we do that?

If we want to build a future in which the middle class can succeed, we must continue the push for reform that the president began with Race to the Top, bringing responsibility and accountability to our teachers and principals. 

Honestly, it starts with education and that means high stakes testing for every subject across the board, especially social studies. Many on the Right take the view that Democrats coddle those in the education system. Clearly, they have not read the fact sheet on Race to the Top. If they did, they would see that the president and many of his supporters (including me) wholeheartedly support this endeavor.

If the students that are in school now receive a higher quality education, they are going to be a very strong backbone of this country in the next decade. Take some time to look through the fact sheet listed above and see how these changes have to made to our education system in order for our economy to improve.

For the Democrats, this should be one of the main policies to vigorously pursue in the president's second term. This is one of a few key policies that is going to help win election after election. 

3 comments:

blk said...

I'm not sure that emphasizing high-stakes testing is the right thing to do. If you mean making kids answer multiple choice questions that they've had drilled into their heads by teachers whose salaries depend on them passing tests that contain information they'll never use again in their lives, I disagree.

Real life is not multiple choice. It presents problems that you have to find new solutions to, and not always pick from a menu someone else figured out. Having quick access to knowledge is important, but most of the time the exact details are unimportant -- as long as you've got the basic drift right, you can always look up the dates on your smart phone in 30 seconds.

The most important thing you need to know is that that information exists, and the context of that information. For example, for your WWII history you need to know that Hitler cut a deal with Stalin, Hitler invaded Poland, then Hitler stabbed Stalin in the back and got himself stuck in a two-front war that ultimately spelled his doom.

You don't need to know the exact dates any of that happened, or the name of Germany's ambassador, or how many days Stalingrad was under siege. Such details are nice to know, but in this day and age emphasizing details over substance is the wrong approach.

Multiple-choice tests reward memorization and encourage cheating. We need testing paradigms that test analytical and problem solving abilities.

I know it's a lot harder to write tests that work that way, but that's why educators get paid the big bucks...

Juris Imprudent said...

But, as Rahm Emanuel notes in this piece, we can't rest on our laurels.

Oops, that was a little more forthright than usual.

Juris Imprudent said...

So tell me something M - California spends more now per student (and inflation adjusted) than 30 years ago, yet achievement is nowhere near what it was then. Obviously money is not the problem - what is?

[Granted, your abysmal skills in mathematics may be a handicap in answering this. Take a shot anyway, whaddya say?]

Just as a note, Utah has the lowest per pupil expenditure and Wash DC has the highest. Guess which one has the higher HS graduation rate.