New federal student loans "repayment plan"

[Seattle Husker]

NCLB created the trump card though. It tied those test scores to school funding. That's what turned the focus of schools into test taking factories. Other ancillary testing simply reinforced the idea that our schools are now entirely built around scoring highly on science and math tests. That's the source of the problem. We're cramming science and math down a subset of kids that will never need or use it with the assumption that if we don't have this high expectation then we are failing them. That assumption is proving false. We will never be a nation of 100% white collar workers. Underperforming kids are being left behind by the very law that was trying to help them because schools have reduced their "tech" options and to try to ensure they do well on these tests.

As a father of 2 current HS boys, I don't have a problem with high expectations. My sons will do fine. They would have done so without the tests. The kids that are falling by the wayside are those that can't and never will do well on standardized tests. They don't have the capacity. That may be blasphemous to say but it's true. You can tell you those kids are as early as 3rd grade. In fact, 3rd grade reading levels are a huge predictor of secondary education success. If a child is not at grade level by 3rd grade...they are statistically doomed. NCLB was supposed to correct that but in fact it did the opposite, IMHO.

 

[Mr. Deez]

MrD
That analogy surprised me. You are one I respect for making sensible cogent points.
Are you saying giving gov't loans to students is a accident?
Or are you saying the students who sign to take these loans on are accidents?
Perhaps you are saying the students who sign for these loans and then decide not to pay even when they can are the accidents.

What I'm saying is that in both situations the government has done something wrong to someone's detriment. Obviously, there are differences. The damage impacted by the AAFES truck is more immediate and direct to the person impacted. However, the damage impacted by the federal student loan program is just as real.

There is a difference between a large ongoing gov't program and one AFFES truck being involved in an accident.

Just one? The government pays out a ton of money every year to satisfy judgments and settle tort claims. Think about it. Government vehicles, aircraft, postal trucks, military vehicles (planes, tanks, trucks, etc.) cause accidents all over the world ranging from a truck scraping up the side of one's vehicle (which happened to me in the Azores three years ago) to a plane crashing into a populated area and destroying homes and killing people. Think about the sloppy medical work done at government hospitals all over the world that lead to medial malpractice lawsuits. Think about the environmental spills and damage the government does all over the world. Think about the lazy janitor at a government building who farts around instead of cleaning up spills that cause people to slip and fall. And of course, there's a colossal army of claims personnel in every agency and DOJ lawyers who handle the claims.

It's a huge expense to process, resolve, and/or fight all those claims, and it's totally voluntary. The government has sovereign immunity. It could tell every one of those people to screw off. It pays them anyway because it at least tries to pay for the damage it causes. Well, it has also caused a lot of damage with the student loan program.