The Modern Independent

An Immutable Reality of America’s Education System

Posted by Ryan Dawkins

Huffington Post blogger, Elizabeth Bisbee Silber, wrote a fantastic piece, titled “Mind the Gap,” last month on the state of K-12 education in America.  Silber, who happens to be my boss’s niece,  notes the alarming gap and growing disparity between the demographic makeup or college admissions and graduation rates.

“While college admissions closely mirror American demographics in terms of race and socioeconomic status,” Silber notes that “the students who actually receive diplomas at the end of four years don't look much different from those of decades past.” That is, graduates are overwhelmingly white and middle-upper class.

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Social Mobility and Income Inequality Revisited

Posted by Ryan Dawkins

Last month, I wrote a post about social immobility in America. In it, I argued that the United States is not as socially mobile has most Americans believe because of stagnating wages; increasing income inequality, which has solidified class distinctions; the fact that the primary mechanism used to climb the economic ladder--a college education--has become more and more inaccessible for those who can't pay its hefty price tag; and the greatest economic down turn since the Great Depression.

I also noted that a growing body of literature suggests that the single greatest indicator of one’s future social and economic position in society is the position of his/her parents.  These realities, I argued, have effectively locked a large portion of the American population out of the American Dream.

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On No Child Left Behind and Education Reform

Posted by Ryan Dawkins

Matt Plavnick at the Colorado Progressive shrewdly discusses No Child Left Behind and the degree to which it is universally maligned now by both major parties in Washington and in school districts across the country.  In particular, he chastises Republican strategist, Patrick Ruffini, for arguing that the Bush administration effectively solved education at the national level with NCLB.  Plavnick writes:

The notion that there’s a perception, even a political perception, that education has been "solved" in this country, let alone by NCLB, leaves me completely bejabbered. Ruffini invokes education as the model from which Republicans might have mapped a plan to reach a more politically desirable set of circumstances surrounding health care while Bush was in office. That’s all fine and good, and perhaps Ruffini is on to something in his observation that good-faith Republican policy efforts peel away planks from the Democratic political platform. But invoking NCLB? Seriously?

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Prelude to Education Reform

Posted by Ryan Dawkins

After two years of closely watched negotiations, D.C. Public Schools and the Washington Teacher's Union reached a tentative agreement on a new teacher's contract. Indeed, the Washington Post reports that "The negotiations also had been viewed as a potentially precedent-setting showdown between unionized teachers and reform advocates, who regard them as an impediment to revamping the nation's schools.

It also pits two of the biggest names in the education community in the country: Michelle A. Rhee, the Chancellor of D.C. Schools, and Randi Weingarten, the President of the American Federation of Teachers.

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About Me

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I am a restaurant manager in Loveland, who has joined the cyber-world of blogging to not only serve as a refuge from the banality of everyday life, but also because I can't seem to find a job that utilizes my education or unique skill set. If you are reading this, please dear God give me a job! My work has been published in the Loveland Reporter Herald, the Fort Collins Coloradoan, and the Denver Post.

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