Frame:Education
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Framing: Education
This page is for creating frames about education.
Framing Rounds Involving Education
Please list any rounds here. If you are the coordinator of the round, copy the round template from the Templates section, below, to this section and replace sections enclosed in braces to indicate the target close date and other information about the round. Add a reference to the diary that establishes the round where indicated.
Unfinished Pieces of Frames About Education
Please put unfinished text in sections here. Start with “Note 1” and number them successively.
Note 1
(This section is moved from the original Vision for America page.)
Fund education as an investment in America's human capital, as crucial to the next generation of American Economic growth and prosperity as was President. Eisenhower's capital investment in the Interstate system.
Primary Education
Any dKossack interested in these issues should read the works of Jonathan Kozol.
The federal government should insist on results, but encourage innovation and experimentation. The federal government should also provide subsidies for poor schools. A proposed three-part plan for radical education reform:
- 48 percent of federal education money should be given to schools with students whose household incomes are at least one standard deviation below the mean. (This is approximately the bottom 34% of schools.) No strings attached. Motivation to spend the money wisely would be provided by parts 2 and 3 of the plan.
- 48 percent of federal education money should be given, no strings attached, to schools whose student academic achievement is at least one standard deviation above the mean. (About the top 34% of schools.) The kicker: student achievement should be defined as improvement from the previous year. Schools with affluent, white populations may have the highest test scores, but will find it difficult to improve every year. Schools that figure out how to improve the performance of currently under-performing students would benefit most from this incentive funding. This incentive will most powerfully reward improving the performance of poor, minorities, immigrants -- in short, the Americans who most need better education.
- The remaining 4 percent of federal education money should be spent studying top-performing schools and educational methods in America and around the world, and disseminating the results. This can include sending teachers and principals on fellowships and internships to study high-performing schools or aid low-performing ones.
What criteria should be used to measure year-to-year improvement? Test scores should certainly be part of the answer, but perhaps not all of it. Can writing skills be measured on a mass scale? The SAT is currently attempting to do so, but its judging criteria are suspect. Perhaps the criteria should include proficiency on a musical instrument and student obesity rates, to encourage participation in band, orchestra, and PE.
Note: Under this plan, schools with average demographics and average performance would receive no federal funds. This would be controversial, to say the least. But the feds can't pay for everything -- paying for successful innovation and to help the poorest are the most important priorities.
A significant increase in the overall amount of federal education spending would be good, but perhaps not necessary.
Higher Education
The federal government should provide loans for 100% of tuition and fees to any student accepted to an accredited college, university, or trade school. The loan would be repaid over a predetermined period (say, 20 years), as a percentage of the graduate's income. Thus, if the graduate took a low-income public service job, or unexpectedly became unemployed due to health problems or a recession, the graduate would not be stuck with high loan payments. Conversely, if the graduate had an unexpectedly high income, his loan payments would be higher. To keep administration cheap and effective, loan payments would be collected by the Internal Revenue Service as part of the already-existing income tax process.
Templates
===Framing Round {sequence number}===
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{Target date to close the round}
Establishing Diary: {Put reference to the diary establishing the round here}[{copy of URL to diary} {title of diary}] by {author of diary}.
====Diaries commenting on framing this topic====
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