The NYT Alerts Us: It Is Now Time to Change Education Programs, Again, Etc. ad nauseum. Tax Hike Alert!

Some of us are observant enough to savor the delirious glee of  modern social transformations as we live our lives. At the supermarket, for instance, I have been obediently grabbing up the slick tabloids that promise me: [1] the very latest cure for cancer, [2] how to look like a movie star by eating special foods (or not eating special foods), [3] what Oprah’s current weight might be and [4] ways to make yourself rich by doing essentially nothing except to simply buy a book and follow ten easy rules. These seductive options float by the checkout counter like tropical fish in a huge tank of LSD laced gin. We have theoretically solved every possible social problem, weekly, for the last five or ten decades. Our social reserves of sound advice overflow with paper and froth. You cannot take out the trash to tank up your SUV and not bump into into a cluster of noisy experts who can solve all of your problems.

But, the New York Times, the great bulwark against social injustice has now advocated that we need to metamorphose our high school system into a college preparatory machine. Everybody needs a sheepskin. Having been working, studying or doing research or collaborating in scientific studies with universities for decades, I must say that I have never witnessed a year go by that the final solution to education was at hand if only taxes were raised and the delicate task of educating our kids was handed over to the far left-wing teachers unions or their political lackeys.  I also noticed that students who did their studies in high school and worked hard in college were, strangely, successful. So, how can this new synthesis happen?

Every year we hear of the frightful plight of urban children who are ‘disadvantaged’ for host of reasons and a ‘fundamental change in the system’ was urgent. This time, we need to have everybody get a college degree! Not so long ago, the New York Times, aka the Walter Duranty Paper has advocated some changes in education.[1] They noted that local and national tests showed a troublesome disparity.[2]

“In nearly all of the states studied, students did noticeably worse on federal tests than on state tests. In Oklahoma, the gap in scores was a shocking 60 percentage points in math and 51 percentage points in reading. In Texas, that gap was 52 percentage points in math and 56 points in reading. The state that came closest to the federal standard was Massachusetts, where there was a modest 1 percent gap in math and 10 percent gap in reading.”[3]

“Advocates of the mediocre status quo will oppose any requirement for a national test . [4]

So, we need mandatory and intensive national testing standards and tests? But, standardized tests show the expected bell curve distribution of cognitive skills! What do they mean?

Now, we read that

“Those efforts, and others across the country, reflect a growing sense of urgency among educators that the primary goal of many large high schools serving low-income and urban populations — to move students toward graduation — is no longer enough. Now, educators say, even as they struggle to lift dismal high school graduation rates, they must also prepare the students for college, or some form of post-secondary school training, with the skills to succeed.” [5]

Can we ask, at this propitious juncture, why the schools cannot get their students past the high school graduation goal post before they swamp colleges with their problems? The squabble that the college system in this country cannot train successful high school graduates has not been made in this article, yet. So, now the ‘educators’ want to broaden their massive education system to encompass the collegiate system? Is this like the Dog in the Manger? Didn’t we learn that many of the problems of education are inextricably connected with IQ? [6]  Do national standardized test scores correlate with IQ? If not, then what are they testing for. The NYT and others are always bewildered that mathematics requires half of all persons tested be below the median or somewhere near the mean? What do you do with the lower half? California, headed for social, mental , education and financial oblivion has advocated that we do not test as this depresses some students and is ‘unfair.’ I cannot understand, given the aforementioned fluff, why high schools don’t just issue college diplomas to entering freshpersons[7] and get it over with. That would be more cost effective.

When I went to UCLA in 1963 the law said that if I was a state citizen and was 18 years of age, or more, that the University of California must admit me. I could then take my chances with others. About 40% of the freshman [freshpersons now] class flunked out and the four year graduation rate for all students was about 15%, or less. Everybody had a chance in that system. Your chances were directly proportional to IQ. Dummies could harvest lettuce or chop cotton.

This break in the Bell Curve, aka IQ Curve,  is the cause of  the Education Gap[8] Those above the median of IQ =100 do not seem to have an educational problem. Those with IQ exceeding 130 can become doctors, lawyers or CEOs or whatever they want. Those with IQ levels below 75 are probably not suited for work as brain surgeons or physicists, but can become wonderful politicians. That, we can prove.

“Some think test scores are unimportant. But studies clearly demonstrate that students [whatever their color ] who have equal skills and knowledge, as measured by reliable tests, will have roughly equal earnings later in life.”[9]

We can transliterate “equal skills and knowledge” as IQ. IQ =IQ! Wow!

So, if graduation depends on IQ and some students are not graduating because they have poor test scores [read low IQ in many cases], then how will ‘preparing’ them for college change the outcome?? Apparently, the college system will have two choices: you can admit students who cannot pass simple entrance exams or you can admit students who cannot pass simple entrance exams that have had expensive and ineffective training paid for by the new proposed tax increases. Only a liberal could advocate such a selection.

Cui bono? Well, the folks who depend on tax revenues for their income. They do. Those who chuck chum into the system get money and benefits no matter what happens to the students. Grunt and grab.

In a recent book, the Rand Corporation gives the problem and the obvious solution:

“How much would it cost and what would the benefits be if blacks and Hispanics graduated from high school, went to college, and graduated from college at the same rate as non-Hispanic whites? The answer to this important question for the future of the nation is explored in this report. The costs of education would be high, increasing by about 20 percent in California[10] and 10 percent in the rest of the nation. But the benefits, in the form of savings in public health and welfare expenditures and increased tax revenues from higher incomes, would be even higher.”[11]

Here, we can be assured that dumping more and more money into education will ‘pay for itself’ in the stale jargon of the tax whores. As if California, now going broke[12], could tolerate an astronomical 20% increase in education! Why not for so-called educators in the Golden State? They can just beg the feds for bailout monies.

I was wondering if I have ever seen the instant and ultimate solution to education, which appears monthly in various papers and think tanks, to be based on anything other than tax hikes. I don’t think so. As the dog returns to its vomit………

What would be the cost of restructuring the high school systems in urban areas with their high crime rates, sloth, drug addiction and worse? Oh!! Just more taxes. So, they can just raise city taxes?? No! They cannot pay. Tax the rich!

The natural human attributes mandate that individual species do not have equal cognitive skills with respect to race and economic factors and that many cannot compete in our society. This salient fact is ignored here. No matter what they ballyhoo, half of all students will be below average and many of those whose academic lives are complicated by drugs, sloth, alcoholism, crime, sodomy, offspring at a tender age, and worse, will remain in the lower half. And what have the social scientists done about the enumerated social ills? Oh! They can cure drug addiction! They can rehabilitate criminals. They can educate imbeciles! They can cure drunks and sexual predators. Sure. Raise taxes!

Perhaps the lefties can hike the IQ levels with their new educational programs!! Why not? Lysenko[13] did something like that with wheat, at least in a political sense. Why don’t we just double taxes and see how wonderful this can be? According to the Rand book[14], this is an ‘investment’ and will increase lifestyles and enhance tax revenues.

That is so wonderful. I am thrilled by the notion of an effective tax hike. I am. This is like buying lottery tickets! As a society we cannot lose!

RAISE TAXES AND SOLVE THE EDUCATION PROBLEMS!

rycK