The Houston Chronicle must think its weekend front-page scoop is new news. The story is all about how Texas taxpayers will spend $200 MILLION dollars to educate high school graduates in remedial college courses before they can begin their, ahem, college careers.
Let me repeat: Texas taxpayers will spend TWO HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS to re-educate high school graduates so that they can actually start taking college courses.
It begs the question, doesn't it? You know, the one that goes, "WTF do the public schools in this state do with their students for TWELVE years prior to graduation?"
Anyone reading and researching trends in public ed. over the past few years -- or anyone who read my previous 'blog post about the story from the Dallas Morning News addressing the same topic -- knows that what the Chronicle calls higher education's "dirty little secret" is really and truly public education's dirty little secret.
Kids are supposed to graduate from public school with enough knowledge to be ready for college. The fact that the colleges end up with poorly-taught freshmen is not really the colleges' fault, is it?
Schools have TWELVE years to get students ready for higher math, advanced level reading and writing. If they won't do it or can't do it, they need to say so and quit hiding behind the same old woe-is-us-we-need-more-money whine.
Oh, and they need to leave homeschoolers the heck alone. Until you get the beam out of your own eye, don't tell me anything about the speck in mine much less try to remove it.
My tax dollars do not pay for my children's education. And now, according to the Houston Chronicle, it seems they don't pay for anyone else's children to learn, either.
TWO HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS.
And did I mention that a staggering percentage of the remedial college kids never go on to actually earn a degree?
TWO HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS . . .
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