Federal Spending on Children Declines as Share of Budget: Old People Rule
Last updated: Thursday - July 10, 2008
David Berliner is a better watchdog of facts about education and children than anyone I know. He sends along these facts recently published by the Urban Institute that analyzes how federal spending impacts children:

"From 1960 to 2007 federal spending on children rose from just 1.9 to 2.6 percent of GDP. Spending on the big three entitlement programs—non-child portions of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid—nearly quadrupled from 2.0 to 7.9 percent of GDP. ... Even while spending on children’s health programs grew 2.2 percentage points faster than GDP between 2006 and 2007, spending on education declined by 4.4 percentage points relative to growth in the economy. ... Absent policy changes, children’s spending will continue to be squeezed in the next decade. ... If current spending and revenue policies continue, children’s share of domestic federal spending will decline from 16.2 percent in 2007 to 13.8 percent by 2018. ... As a slice of GDP, children’s spending will decline from 2.6 percent in 2007 to 2.2 percent in 2018, while Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid will rise from 7.9 to 9.6 percent."

The needs and wants of an aging US population will continue to dominate politics and government spending in a society that is increasingly a hostile environment for children.

What Are We Preparing Young People For? Technology and Work
Last updated: Saturday - June 28, 2008
I have argued elsewhere and repeatedly that one of the great tragedies of the accountability-standards-high-stakes-testing movement is that the movement grows out of a benighted concept of what education can be—not education for the development of individual talents and life-long, worthwhile interests, but education for competition in a high tech, globalized economic race. And so math and science courses are crammed down students' throats for the sake of the American economy. But few question whether the supposed high tech jobs these students are supposedly being prepared for will materialize and if they do whether the courses will prepare them. When Bill Gates, the richest (or second or third richest) person in the world, says the schools need to concentrate on preparing students for the high tech economy, few will question his authority, even if his riches owe more to his victories in court than his prescience.

So along comes a fresh report from the Center for the Study of Jobs & Education in Wisconsin and United States, which in the past and in this new report refuses to bow to conventional wisdom.

Wisconsin Projections of Employment 2006 to 2016: Education and Training

By Dennis W. Redovich June 2008

The great numbers of high paying jobs of the future that are claimed to require college graduation and high academic skills for all high school students are a hoax. The majority of the jobs of the future in Wisconsin and the United States are low or average paying jobs that require short term or moderate-term on the job training and do not require high-level academic skills in any academic areas, particularly in higher mathematics. Technology makes jobs simpler not more difficult and makes workers more productive. The great majority of the jobs of the future are the same jobs of the 20th Century with new technological tools making these jobs easier to do. The jobs of the future in Wisconsin in 2016 are essentially the same jobs in existence in 2006. A majority of jobs in 2016, about 52%, are projected to require short term on the job training or experience (less than a month) or moderate length on the job training, experience or education (one to twelve months).

Dennis Redovich
Center for the Study of Jobs & Education in Wisconsin and United States


George Washington on America Now
Last updated: Sunday - June 22, 2008
I have argued in "Fertilizers, Pills & Magnetic Strips" that underlying so many major policy debates in public education today are two powerful influences: racial prejudice and personal avarice. Recently I discovered in the writings of George Washington an observation on the American prospect at the beginnings of the Union that--reinterpreted perhaps--seems an apt comment on contemporary circumstances.

George Washington in a letter to John Hancock, written on 11 June 1783:

"There are four things, which I humbly conceive are essential to the well being, I may even venture to say, to the existence of the United States, as an Independent Power: ... 4thly The prevalence of that pacific and friendly disposition among the People of the United States, which will induce them to forgit their local prejudices and policies, to make those mutual concessions which are requisite to the general prosperity, and in some instances, to sacrafice their individual advantages to the interest of the Community."

A. G. Rud comments:

The enormous resources that Americans exploited in the early Republic later led to a Jacksonian individualism that overcame this Washingtonian communitarianism. We are living the results now as you document in "Fertilizers, Pills & Magnetic Strips." How can we move toward putting aside for or even aiming individual advantage to the common good? That is the question of the century, much as the problem of the color line was of the last century.


The Homeschool-Virtual School Alliance
Last updated: Monday - June 16, 2008
Mark Fetler observes:

The last few minutes of the podcast featured a brief discussion about the nexus between home-schooling and virtual schools, particularly in California. Companies that sell on-line classes independent of the public system, and the on-line charter school vendors, are marketing themselves with some success to home-school parents. When the student turns 16 he/she may take the California High School Proficiency Exam (CHSPE), that provides the legal equivalent to a diploma. Oddly enough, home-schooling in California is technically illegal, unless the child is taught by a certificated teacher. The state\'s lawyers have several times attempted to enforce this requirement, but have always been soundly thrashed and forced to retreat by the home-school lobby. Several years ago, when it appeared that the CSHPE might have a stake driven through its heart (notwithstanding its mandate), the home-school lobby again rose up and prevailed.



Reactions to Podcast
Last updated: Wednesday - June 11, 2008
From A G Rud at Purdue UNiversity:
"Comment: I listened with interest to this broadcast, as I recall Barry Lynn from a Frontline video about the Cleveland voucher case (~2000) I have shown to my undergraduate class in the past. I was disappointed that Lynn did not bring out the rationale behind the title of the book in more detail. Still, there were several points in the interview that commanded attention, especially the new AZ law that allows kids to pass a high-stakes, narrow test and graduate from HS early, thus saving the state money. The link between virtual, home, and charter schools at the end was also helpful to understand our situation. I wonder if we need some sort of cataclysm to awaken us, maybe total enviromental degradation?"

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