Fw: [eddra] C-Span Program

["Monty Neill" <monty@fairtest.org>]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: mbsolomon@aol.com 
To: eddra@yahoogroups.com 
Sent: Wednesday, July 02, 2008 2:11 PM
Subject: [eddra] C-Span Program



In case you missed it, C-Span aired a 4-hour program on the Economic Implications of the Crisis in American Education 

Notice that the title tells you that it was not intended to be an analytical discussion, but instead to try to explain why American education is broken.

Unbelievably, they chose Bill Bennett, the great educational bloviator and Eric Hanushek, the thin-air economist to help bash public education.

You can watch the entire 4 hours below, but I want to simply, quickly, point out how inane some of this stuff is.  Hanushek, for example thinks that if there is a correlation between two variables, it proves cause and effect---and he gets to choose which variable is the cause and which is the effect.  He offered the vacuous  proposition  that if the U.S. schools could improve test scores by a small amount, it would raise the gross national product such that it would pay for all of education in America  (at 2:20).  He further told his audience that if the schools could get rid of the worst 10% (as I recall) of teachers, U.S. students would be near the top in international tests.

Of course, Bill Bennett gives rise to projectile vomiting, so you should skip his blathering from 1:31 to 2:05.  The bright light of the entire show was Helen Ladd from Duke University who brought some light into a reasonably dark day.

The program can be seen at:

rtsp://video1.c-span.org/15days/e062708_education.rm





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