Actually the charter school thing is interesting. the main reason charter schools lag on a whole is that the majority of them are for “problem students” and as such they have overall poorer scores than a standard school, from which most of their students have been shown the door. the charter schools for standard students and the ones for exceptional students both habitually come in better that the standard public school but they are in the minority currently and so the OVERALL AVERAGE is abysmal.

A couple of points to note – if we go to a year-round school year we need to improve the availability of affordable daycare for working families. I also think a bias exists towards 4 year college as the best educational route. Make no mistake – we need lots of people with degrees to fuel forward motion, but we need trade and vocational education just as badly in our nation right now. We lack the folks to execute all that infrastructure work we just funded.

My point is we need to value that education as well. Everyone’s education makes a contribution to the success of the nation.

Errr, wait a goddamned minute. No Child Left Behind, the worst atrocity that’s been visited on American education in my lifetime? No Child Left Untested, the hellspawn of the “Texas Miracle”? The single biggest reason why we abandoned critical thinking and problem solving in the first place? Because the cure for the plague is more plague?

Say it ain’t say, O. The endless onslaught of homework combined with standardized testing is killing whatever interest my seventh-grade son has in learning. Despite being learning delayed, he’s an excellent reader, but won’t read on his free time (what little there is of it). Worse, he’s lost whatever inclination he might have had to pursue the numerous subjects that pique his interest.

What people who adhere to this kind of rote program also fail to realize is the stress it places on the kid and the whole household. We spend so much time not only trying to help him study but keep his spirits and motivation up.

The total time off from school is not, imo, the problem. That time could be broken into multiple chunks and distributed throughout the year.

But i’m with ya, Sam, i spend a lot of time wondering how much of what i hear is rhetoric, and where/when/for what Mr. Obama is willing to go to the mat.

I also wonder how we can improve education without addressing the fundamental issue of making education valued throughout society. And i mean truly valued, not just wanting to see improved test scores. Critical thinking, problem solving, et. al. need to be held in high esteem throughout society if they are to be instilled in students, but how can that be without instilling those ways in students?