John Edwards' "College for Everyone" Plan and "Chalk"

The Democratic Presidential candidate wants the taxpayers to shell out for his plan that "would pay for one year of public-college tuition, fees, and books for any student who is willing to work hard and stay out of trouble."

In Los Angeles County, harbinger of America's demographic future, only about 1 student out of 6, public or private, scores at least 1000 on the SAT (500 per test segment), and that's under the easier post-1995 scoring system (1000 now is the equivalent of an old school 890). In the LAUSD, only 1 of 12 scores 1000.

The farther below 1000 you score, the more likely is it that you have something better to do with your life than dither around in college for a few years before giving up. But no politician ever talks about the opportunity cost of subsidizing students who aren't college material to waste their time in colleges.

Meanwhile, the little indie film "Chalk," a sympathetic mockumentary about high school teachers made by two Austin teachers, takes a less messianic view of education. Here are excerpts from my upcoming American Conservative review:

Hollywood screenwriters routinely regale us with uplifting tales, such as last winter's Hilary Swank drama "Freedom Writers," of teachers who rebel against what President Bush denounced as "the soft bigotry of low expectations" and inspire their impoverished students to prodigious accomplishments. In this gentle but unromanticized movie, however, the teachers view the students as similar to the constantly malfunctioning office photocopier: just another frustration of the job...

As good as "Chalk" is, American public schooling still awaits its own well-deserved Catch-22. Consider the madness of the federal No Child Left Behind act that mandates "that all children should reach a proficient level of academic achievement by 2014," a goal that can be reached only by palpable fraud. In 2002, 67 percent of all students scored below proficiency on the federal government's NAEP exam. After three years of NCLB, the 2005 test found that 69 percent were too low.

Education's overwhelming reality is that, unlike in Garrison Keillor's Lake Wobegon where all the children are above average, in America half the students are below average in intelligence. Yet, because equality of outcome, not doing the best we can with what we have, is the goal, public education is dominated by fantasy and frenzied faddishness -- This new vogue must be the magic bullet that will turn us into Lake Wobegon H.S.! -- alternating manic-depressively -- Eh, what's the use of even trying? -- with the lassitude of despair.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer