The Debt

The Debt

Even though Republicans got most of what they wanted in the debt-ceiling deal, including a long-term deficit reduction plan, the debt is not going away, either as a problem or a talking point. And it's true: the debt is a big problem. A mammoth one, in fact. However, if the House and Senate let the debt become the biggest issue of this and next term, they will be throwing away any tentative, stumbling progress the US economy has made and will send a message to the more than nine percent of Americans who are unemployed that they do not matter.
After all, the debt is a long-term problem; it has been around for decades and will be around for decades. Any serious solution to the deficit will be a big one and will involve years worth of budget-reassessment and will probably include cuts into the big three: Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security as well as gigantic, damaging cuts into non-defense discretionary spending.
Now, though, is the worst time to make damaging cuts into non-defense discretionary spending, which includes education, infrastructure, job creation, and many other crucial government programs that are both the base of the US job creating ability and its "win the future" programs that make up most of President Obama's docket. These programs have already been cut to the bone through the debt-ceiling deal as well as from other budget cuts that were passed in this Congress, and cutting them any more would be devastating. There are school districts in America that will start up school in September with its students going to only four days of classes, and American students need to be in school more days, not less. Rabid debt-cutters always remind the US public that the deficit is putting a burdon on America's children, which is, generally, true. But that is not as big as a burden for American children as the one of school budget cuts. American children are mis- and under-prepared for a world economy, less educated then their foreign peers, and barely reaching standards that are dwarfed by those of Europe and Asia.
And then there is the matter of unemployment, the real problem in America, not the debt or budget deficits. When over nine percent of job-seeking Americans are unemployed, it is the responsibility of Congress to invest in job-creating measures. And it's not that hard; Congress has the power to fund desperately-needed projects for infrastructure or research or scientific development and to re-saturate the budgets of school districts. That's how jobs are created by the government. Some argue that it should be businesses creating jobs in America. Well, that's fine; they can. But in order for businesses to have any kind of incentive to move their job-creating factories and other means of production (after all, America is supposed to be a production-based economy) back to the US, Congress has to impose taxes on goods created out of the United States, even if the companies that make those goods are based in America. Otherwise, the jobs that left America will not return and nine-percent unemployment will become the norm while blooming overseas markets capitalise on low minimum wages and workers rights to attract the companies that once fueled US employment.
These are the important economic issues in America; these are the ones that need the imminent attention of Congress. While the debt is a problem and does require a long-term conversation on how to reduce it, the paramount issue is the jobs crisis America is facing and the elimination of non-defense discretionary spending that could have helped America "win the future."

Read more »

Education Thoughts

Education Thoughts

The State of the Union is generally seen as the most important speech a president makes each year. And this year, amid a faltering economy, an increasingly polarized political climate and in the post-event storm following the shooting in Arizona, President Obama delivered a speech that appealed to America for a renewed sense of respect for education.
In the speech, Obama had an urgent message for America’s students: become teachers. Get educated, he said, and then pass it on to other American children. Help renew a sense of reverence toward teachers. Respect the institution of public education. This generation has to compete with students in Asia who have been selected to receive a world-class education and with European students whose education values math and science more so than its American equivalent, Obama reminded the country, so help them do it.
President Obama is right. Simply put, America cannot compete on a global scale with countries that treat teaching as a widely respected career and pour funding into education. How can American schools expect to retain excellent teachers if they do not approach teaching as the most important career in terms of ensuring American excellence?
Some people worry that America’s days as the world’s superpower are dwindling. America’s great contribution to the world is its support of innovation. The best and perhaps the only way for America to sustain innovation continually is to further education. Unfortunately, some voices in politics continue to undermine this path to a renewed place for America.
Some of the more popular political figures in America got to where they did by being patently anti-intellectual. Take Christine O’Donnell in Delaware, who continually denied even the most basic of recent scientific research. Some Democratic politicians, Obama included, have been accused of being Ivy-league educated or being overly intellectual by conservative radio and television personalities. Suddenly, being smart and well educated is a bad thing in politics.
And attitudes like these undermine the very way that America can, as Obama called it, "win the future." American innovation cannot prosper and future American pioneers cannot succeed in economics, management, entrepreneurship or even simple world leadership without strong educations. Strong educations are impossible without a new sense of respect in America for teaching and a new place in the national budget for it.

Read more »

PISA

PISA

The Race to Nowhere, a film that has resonated so well with American parents, caused so much contention that the New York Times recently hosted an online debate with a spew of academics about the validity of the movie’s argument. Both the movie and the debate follow the same basic premise, one that high school students probably contemplate themselves on those longest working nights: do American high school students get pushed too hard to be the best- if so, how can this be mitigated?
Yes, says psychologist Harris Cooper, in his article submitted for the debate. Too much homework is, well, too much. And while the other five intellectual contributors look at different aspects of the problem, they all are in general agreement with Cooper. That is, no one is contesting the idea the high school students are overworked.
But the comments on the series tell a different story, which is best framed by a reader going by ‘Russell Long’.
“I appreciate [the author’s] views, but am also concerned about the fact that the United States has fallen far behind other nations in global literacy, math and science scores,” he said. “The Times recently reported that the US is 26th in the new PISA scoring, with scores of countries better preparing their kids to compete in the global economy. How do we reduce the educational burdens upon our kids while also improving our languishing performance?”
And therein lies the problem. On the recent international testing, the US scores are an average of just over 90 points below the scores from Shanghai on a 600 point scale. Clearly, the Shanghai numbers are not representative of all of China or even necessarily the average for the city, but they are still astonishing.
Few high-achieving high school students would disagree that they are overworked, and, in all likelihood, they probably are. American society has an overwhelming obsession with being the best, and this focus bleeds into students’ already mounting stress. So the problem is not that top students are not working hard enough, it is that low achieving students are not getting the help they need.
American schools have too many failing students who get lost in the shuffle. Some of them just need a little extra attention, some have serious learning problems. But no matter what the solution is, it is the responsibility of the schools to help them to their best ability.
Reducing the stress of overworked, top-achieving students is a noble task. The student-stress reduction plans- reduce homework, strengthen homeschooling programs, etc- proposed by the New York Times contributors will certainly help. But the more pressing issue is that of American under-achievement. When all American students are achieving at a consistent level (and not on standardized tests like the ‘No Child Left Behind’ system, as it has been proven that teaching to the test actually lowers student learning and knowledge retention), only then will American world standing will improve. It cannot be improved, as the Times commentators seem to think, by forcing a small group of top students to work harder and harder.

Read more »

Some Light Summer Reading for Our Students

Some Light Summer Reading for Our Students

By Senior Correspondent Devon Maloney 
Boy soldiers, violent civil wars, crushing poverty, absent mothers, alcoholic fathers, galloping consumption, destroyed childhoods and young hardened killers are not what many consider ideal summer reading subjects for most teens laying on the beach.
Angela’s Ashes, the memoirs of Frank McCourt, set the mood for the rest of the book about his darkly dysfunctional family and his “miserable” upbringing with the opening lines, “[w]hen I look back at my childhood I wonder how I survived at all.”
Similarly heart wrenching was A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah, the memoir of a boy soldier fighting in the bloody civil war of Sierra Lèon in the late 90s. A Long Way Gone becomes a frightening look into the teen years of Ishmael who turns from a simple, happy rural school boy into a numb killer with the help of constant drugs that erased all of his ethics and human morals.

What do both of these sad stories have in common? They were mandatory summer reading assignments this year for rising freshman and sophomores in Fairfax County Public Schools.
However, this theme of ‘not-so-happily-ever-afters’ doesn’t just apply to what is assigned for summer reading by English teachers. During my recently completed freshman year we read the tragic Shakespeare drama of Romeo and Juliet, John Steinbeck’s un-uplifting novel Of Mice and Men, and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel’s Night.
What are our teachers trying to tell us? Are they saying life is “nasty, brutish, and short” as misanthropic philosopher Thomas Hobbes once said on the human condition?
Don’t get me wrong, I understand the position teachers might be taking in trying to tell their students that life isn’t all Northern Virginian bliss with strip malls and full refrigerators if they can, but is it impossible to have good, insightful, deep piece of literature that gives one a happy view of the world?
While I enjoyed and learned a lot from the book’s I’ve been assigned over the years in school, is it too naïve of me to ask for a lighter piece of literature? I’m hardly asking for teen novels about undead heart throbs or, worse yet, a Chicken Soup for the Teen Soul equivalent.
For example, Three Cups of Tea is a real life story that gives one an insight into modern day issues like the crisis in the Middle East and still leaving the reading with the feeling that there is good in the world while raising insightful questions, representing literary elements, and presenting easily discussable topics for a class room.
“The happy childhood is hardly worth your while,” McCourt said. Please teachers, don’t leave us to believe that unhappy books are the only literature that is worth our while.

Read more »

Petty Disagreements

Petty Disagreements

By Senior Correspondent Devon Maloney

The recent high profile case of a bulling victim committing suicide has left us in the wake of a media tidal wave about increased violence in teen girls. Nine adolescents were charged with driving their new classmate, Phoebe Prince, in Massachusetts’ Hadley High School to hang herself because of cyber bulling over the Internet.
Another incident in 2008 left the media to raise questions about whether violence between adolescence girls is on the rise. Four girls (along with two boys as lookouts) beat up a 16-year-old cheerleader, Tori Lindsay, for the sole purpose of putting the fight on the Internet.
But regardless all the hype in the media about the Internet being a new battlefield for teens to become more violent and more vicious than ever before, a recent Op/Ed piece in the New York Times explained that, despite the rise of the Internet, girl violence has been falling.
Titled the “Myth of Mean Girls”, the April 1 article was co-authored by a Mike Males, a top researcher at the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice. Males and his co-author, Chesney Lind, looked at all angles of teen violence, including studying the FBI’s records on girls’ arrest rates in the past 15 years. They found “violent offenses fell by 32 percent, including declines of 27 percent for aggravated assault, 43 percent for robbery and 63 percent for murder.”
Those dramatically lower rates show that a few well-hyped and very isolated incidents in the news may not really show the real trend of a problem. We teens, as reckless and immature as we many seem, are really not nearly as bad as many adults may think. Males and Lind’s article was right in saying it was wrong that our “news media and myriad experts” were a bit overzealous and “eager to sensationalize every ‘crisis’ among young people.”
For me, while I can’t compare what is happening with teens today to teen life in the 70s, 80s, and 90s without Internet access, I can say the media seems to be over exaggerating the relevance of facts and figures that “prove” a whole range of new teen dilemmas. As awful as the stories above and the many other incidents of bulling that didn’t make into the blogosphere are, the general trend seems to show that the levels of teen violence and bulling are improving.
"It does not matter whether the rates have fluctuated up or down and what the media wants to say about it,” sophomore Palak Bhandari, said. “What really matters is that these antics are stopped once and for all."
__
This piece was originally published in the Vienna Connection.

Read more »

Friday Feature: Bullying

Friday Feature: Bullying

How would you feel if you spent six hours of every day in an environment where you could not be yourself, for fear of peer retaliation, an environment where slurs about your sexuality were commonplace, a place where a term for what you identify with was used as a synonym for 'stupid'? Gay students across America feel complete isolation at school every day of their lives. From verbal slurs to threats, these youths are faced by peers who cannot, evidently, control their hate.
Not too long ago, it was other minorities facing such abhorrent discrimination. However, in the cases of African-Americans, Native Americans, and other groups, we seemed to have moved past our former prejudices, generally, and accepted that people are people no matter what they look like or where they come from. A person's a person, no matter how different. And yet, in 2010, we still cannot come to terms with the fact that some people are different from others, that its these differences that make us special and bring us together, not pull us apart. We are unable to accept that 'different' doesn't mean bad, or abnormal. Different just means different, the same way that each and every person on Earth is different from each other. Most importantly, beyond accepting differences or reveling in them, is the idea that, even if you cannot accept that someone is not the same as you are, that it is not appropriate to normalize slurs against them. Still, this is what is happening with gay youths. Incredibly offensive uses of gay slurs are mainstream in middle and high schools, and as young as elementary school, students hear these insults at home and at school.
Just like it would not be right to say that gay students could not participate in school activities, it is not right to bar them from a safe, mentally healthy education. However, by using these discriminatory terms, their peers are doing just that.
Maybe students don't realize how their words affect others. Maybe they truly are prejudiced; maybe they are just ignorant. Regardless of the reason, it is not appropriate for bias against gay people to become normal in schools. Stories about violence against gay teens are not rare. This violence doesn't spring out of a healthy environment. Violence does not occur where student conversation is civil. Violence occurs when slurs are used at homes, which manifests into insults and threats at school. This can mutate into the sort of extreme, irrational hate that causes violence. So while students may think their language is innocent, they do not realize what can be caused.

Read more »

Banning

Banning

For years, Alabaman Laura Mallory campaigned against the wildly successful ‘Harry Potter’ books, claiming them to be “dangerous and deceptive” and blaming them for “mainstreaming witchcraft [for children]”. Mallory challenged the books’ placement in school libraries and appealed multiple times in effort to have the ‘Potter’ series banned from her local schools. Mallory no longer had any children in public schools by the time she was making her most recent appeals, and she never read the series.

Book banning is not a material issue- it is one of free speech. It doesn’t matter how anti-religious or vulgar or inappropriate you personally find the material to be, or your parents find the material to be. If the book is against your religion, don’t read it. If you disagree vehemently with the opinions presented in the book to the point that you find the book offensive, don’t read it. If you feel that the book is inappropriate for a school setting, don’t read it, because that is not your call to make.

It is not okay for other people’s parents to implement their views on what is school-appropriate and what is not on students. This should be left up to the best judgment of the student, his or her parents, and the school library. Unless the text is factually incorrect material presented to students as truth, it is not the job of the parents to regulate books in school libraries and classrooms. Parents need to trust that teachers will not be having their second graders read ‘Huckleberry Finn’. Books that are educationally beneficial yet controversial, like ‘1984’, a commonly challenged novel by George Orwell that has the potential to offer students a new take on the Cold War, should not be removed from classrooms because parents are upset by its material.

Read more »

Educational Standards

Educational Standards

It is in America's best interests, in the long term, to fund American schools and promote excellency in in education. Students in American schools today are American leaders of tomorrow, and it is imperative that they are ready to inherit tomorrow's world.
However, the current 'No Child Left Behind' system is not the way to ensure the achievement of American students. No Child Left Behind targets generally low income schools unable to make the standards and sends out ultimatums when these schools cannot achieve. I attended a No Child Left Behind-failing school for a number of years, a school where many students not in the magnet program spoke English as a second language. Although the school was filled with excellent teachers and was run by a truly amazing principal, the school had no chance in the increasingly ridiculous system.

Simply forcing low performing schools to achieve is not the way to ensure a good education for all American students. Unique and individualized standards must be set for each struggling school based on past performance and future trajectory. These standards must be adjustable, and the policy ought to be written by current and former educators and administrators, not politicians.
Additionally, new funding must be allotted for American schools. In a time where most school districts are struggling, education funding must be further increased.
School districts are having to close early, cut programs, and lower teachers' salaries in order to get through the recession. Having poorly funded schools is, in the short term, to the disadvantage of the students, who lose teachers, days, and classes, and, in the long term, to the disadvantage of America.

Read more »

Quote 3/17/10

Quote 3/17/10

Arne Duncan

“We've been able to do things - for example, close schools for academic failure. It is hugely difficult, it's hugely controversial and it's absolutely the right thing to do. That simply does not happen in other cities, because of a lack of political will.”

Read more »

Quote 2/5/10

Quote 2/5/10

Janet Napolitano 

"If American schooling is inadequate now, just imagine how much more obsolete it will be when today's kindergarten students graduate from high school in just 12 years." 

Read more »

Arts in America's Schools

Arts in America's Schools

America's schools are facing a difficult dilemma: something must be cut. Some schools have already done away with elementary school music programs (including band and strings), others are cutting high school freshman sports. No matter what the decision is and where, someone's educational experience will be lessened, so what can go? 
Arts programs, including art, music, drama, chorus, strings, and band, seem to be the first to go in time of budget crisis. These classes aren't considered 'essential' like core classes (math, English, science, and history), or popular fundraisers for districts, like varsity sports. If elementary school music is cut, the first opportunity that students will have to learn an instrument will be seventh grade band or strings, and will never have the chance to take a general music class. Programs like elementary school music add so much to the learning environment, and not having them would be severely detrimental to children's self confidence, grades in 'core' classes, and social health. 
Arts programs provide unique outlets for creativity for young students, and allow students who cannot or do not take outside of school lessons in music to explore and expand upon his or her talents. The problem, then, is what does get cut in the place of the arts? PE could be downscaled, but America's high childhood obesity rate makes a very convincing argument to leave PE be. Sports could be cut on the high school level, but sports programs do assist students in developing their personal abilities. 
The truth is, there are no easy decisions. Budgets need to met and students need a fulfilling education experience. However, I believe it is imperative at all costs to save our school's arts programs. 

Read more »

Quote 1/13/10

Quote 1/13/10

Rachel Maddow

“Sometimes we choose to serve our country in uniform, in war.  Sometimes in elected office. And those are the ways of serving our country that I think we are trained to easily call heroic. It’s also a service to your country, I think, to teach poetry in the prisons, to be an incredibly dedicated student of dance, to fight for funding music and arts education in the schools.  A country without an expectation of minimal artistic literacy, without a basic structure by which the artists among us can be awakened and given the choice of following their talents and a way to get to be great at what they do, is a country that is not actually as great as it could be.  And a country without the capacity to nurture artistic greatness is not being a great country.   It is a service to our country, and sometimes it is heroic service to our country, to fight for the United States of America to have the capacity to nurture artistic greatness.”

Read more »