Tag Archives: government

National Security and Education

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We don’t have enough concerns for our future.  Now a couple of items point out yet another.

The Council for Foreign Relations commissioned a report by an Independent Task Force which was co-chaired by chaired by Joel I. Klein, former head of New York City public schools, and Condoleezza Rice, former US National Security Advisor and Secretary of State.  The report laid out in so many words the failure of our K-12 education system, and the costs to our nation’s ability to survive if we don’t correct these failures.

A member of the task force, ex-Secretary of Education, Margaret Spellings, has one summary:

We don’t have nearly enough people who are capable in the STEM fields: science, technology, engineering and math.  When we think about the modern world of defense, the fact that we don’t have people who are capable to do this work is scary.

And

We don’t have people who know and understand foreign languages and other cultures….

The report itself summarized those concerns and put them in the context of five key aspects to the US’ competitiveness, and by extension, our survival as an independent nation:

Educational failure puts the United States’ future economic prosperity, global position, and physical safety at risk

These, according to the report, consist of economic growth and competitiveness, US physical safety, Intellectual property, US global awareness. and US unity and cohesion.

Moreover, funding isn’t the issue, actual performance is:

[While] the United States invests more in K-12 public education than many other developed countries, its students are ill prepared to compete with their global peers.

The failures, the report says, include these:

  • More than 25 percent of students fail to graduate from high school in four years; for African-American and Hispanic students, this number is approaching 40 percent.
  • In civics, only a quarter of U.S. students are proficient or better on the National Assessment of Educational Progress.
  • Although the United States is a nation of immigrants, roughly eight in ten Americans speak only English and a decreasing number of schools are teaching foreign languages.
  • A recent report by ACT, the not-for-profit testing organization, found that only 22 percent of U.S. high school students met “college ready” standards in all of their core subjects; these figures are even lower for African-American and Hispanic students.
  • The College Board reported that even among college-bound seniors, only 43 percent met college-ready standards, meaning that more college students need to take remedial courses.

For a nation of immigrants, and a nation whose demography requires a large and steady influx of immigrants, these are especially damaging.  How can we expect to remain the nation we have been, retain the cultural imperatives that made us so great, if we can no longer recognize who we are, or teach these to our newcomers—whether newborn or new immigrants?  How can we expect to remain the nation we have been, retain the cultural imperatives that made us so great, if we can no longer recognize where we came from, or identify where we want, as a nation, to go?

Klein added, and this is especially a propos that lack of a civics education, as well as our economic and defense technology competitiveness,

A massively undereducated country is not going to be competitive. It’s not going to be cohesive.

The Task Force offered three high-level policy recommendations:

  • Implement educational expectations and assessments in subjects vital to protecting national security.  Science, technology, and foreign languages are essential—as are creative problem-solving skills and civic awareness.
  • Make structural changes to provide students with good choices.  States and districts should stop locking disadvantaged students into failing schools without any options….  Enhanced choice and competition, in an environment of equitable resource allocation, will fuel the innovation necessary to transform results.
  • Launch a “national security readiness audit” to hold schools and policymakers accountable for results and to raise public awareness.  At the heart of this recommendation is the creation of more meaningful assessments and simulations of student learning and, then, a coordinated, national effort to create targets and repercussions….

The full report, U.S. Education Reform and National Security, is here:

As always, the devil is in the details.  These standards, this accountability, must be strict, rigorous, and followed with prompt reassignment or termination of those teachers or administrators who do not deliver.  The STEM courses not only should be taught at all grades, they should be supplemented at all grades with courses in American history, American civics, and the history of civilization.

And the standards and accountability must be applied to the students, also.  Those who do not perform must be held back until they do measure up.  And that, in addition to enabling our nation’s continued success, is the true path to Johnny’s self-esteem.

Jobs

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The March Jobs report said there were 120,000 nonfarm jobs added in March, compared to economists’ expectations of 200,000 jobs and some 267,000, 275,000, and 240,000 added in December, January, and February, respectively.  The report also said that the population of folks actively looking for work—the denominator in the headline unemployment rate—shrank by 161,000 to 63.8% American adults as yet more people gave up on our suppressed economy and stopped looking for work.  This participation rate has fallen steadily for the last three years, from its nearby high of 65.8% in January 2009.

The long-term unemployed (jobless for 27 weeks and over) remained at 42.5% of the total unemployed.

Meanwhile, initial jobless claims increased by 13,000 to a seasonally adjusted 380,000 in the week ended April 7.  This also is the largest jump in a year.

Keep in mind that one month does not make a trend.

But.  Our economic recovery is in full bloom, all right.

Lobbying with a Red Herring

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The Associated Press is joining the lobbying of the Supreme Court over the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, and its effort is either cynical or ignorant, depending on their motive for their chosen focus:

During the recent oral arguments some of the justices and the lawyers appearing before them seemed to be under the impression that the law does not allow most consumers to buy low-cost, stripped-down insurance to satisfy its controversial coverage requirement.

The AP presents this as a “possible misunderstanding” the “could cloud” the Court’s deliberations.

Of course, cost is only a peripheral issue, arising primarily from Justice Antonin Scalia’s discussion of the subsidy a young, healthy American (who does not need health insurance—and who used to be able to make that decision for himself) must pay, through forced purchase of unneeded/undesired health insurance, so that others, claiming the need, can afford to get health insurance.

The question before the Court—as all the players understood, making their arguments concerning the constitutionality of PPACA’s Individual Mandate, and by extension of the PPACA itself, as they did—is the question of individual liberties and the degree to which Government can, under our Constitution, limit our liberty for our own good.

Cost isn’t the issue—freedom and government control over an individual’s decisions is.

Another View from the Left

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From Spiegel International Online comes this description of the Republican presidential candidates in an article about Senator Rick Santorum’s decision to end his “Ludicrous Race:”

It was a circus, one in which—for long stretches—the clowns took center stage. The candidates lost their way in an extended debate on abortion and contraception; climate change was anything for them except manmade; they threatened to unceremoniously throw millions of illegal immigrants out of the country; they competed for who could promise the lowest taxes and the deepest social welfare cuts; and they pledged to shut down government ministries. And when it came to foreign policy, they repeatedly showed that they didn’t have a clue.

And this is the political Europe President Obama wishes so desperately to emulate.  These are the misunderstandings of the purpose of government, the misunderstandings of issues, and the distortions of positions the Obama insists are…gospel.

Hmm….

You Didn’t Hear It Here First

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Although I have written something similar before.

Freedom of speech is on no use to a man who has nothing to say, and freedom of worship is of no use to a man who has lost his God.

And

We cannot read the history of our rise and development as a nation without reckoning with the place the Bible has occupied in shaping the advances of our Republic.

And

The lessons of history, confirmed by the evidence immediately before me, show conclusively that continued dependence upon relief induces a spiritual disintegration fundamentally destructive to the national fiber. To dole our relief in this way is to administer a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit. It is inimical to the dictates of a sound policy. It is in violation of the traditions of America.

And on Social Security, as it was drafted originally (and ultimately as passed and evolved; although the remark was made of the draft):

This is the same old dole under another name.  It is almost dishonest to build up an accumulated deficit for the Congress of the United States to meet in 1980.  We can’t do that.  We can’t sell the United States short in 1980 any more than in 1935.

Who said this stuff?  A man not known for his modern conservatism: Franklin Roosevelt.

The catalog of Roosevelt’s economic and regulatory failures is long, but there also is much that the present administration could have listened to and thereby avoided the damage done by its own economic and regulatory failures—as could FDR, had he listened to himself.

 

h/t to Power Line