"Less than 24 hours after Ahmed Mohamed met President Obama, his family decided it’s time to leave America for good."

"The 14-year-old Texas boy who was arrested for bringing to school a homemade clock that authorities said resembled a bomb will soon be living in Qatar." They're leaving next week.

According to the article, in The Washington Post, he family weighed various offers relating to the boy's education and career path, and Qatar's Young Innovators Program in the Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development seemed best. And they liked Doha. Ahmed said praised it as "so modern," with "many amazing schools... many of them campuses of famous American universities." And his sister said: "Qatar is in the Arab world, but it also feels like Texas. It’s like Texas in Qatar."

One of the most-liked comments over there at WaPo is: "Qatar 'feels like Texas' because both are God-forsaken desert hellholes with obscenely rich oil barons and religious fundamentalists out the wazoo. You couldn't pay me enough to live in either." Another is: "'Young innovator'? He took the housing off of clock and put it in a box. A toddler could do this. WaPo, your political correctness blinds you!"

"The Genius of Obama's Two-Year College Proposal/The plan's potential to promote socioeconomic and racial integration is critical to advancing higher education."

Richard Kahlenberg in The Atlantic:

While some argue that free tuition for upper- and middle-class students is a waste of resources, in fact it is in everyone’s interest to ensure that community colleges are socioeconomically integrated.... [W]ealthy students outnumber poor students at the most selective four-year colleges by 14 to one, while community colleges educate twice as many low-income students as high-income students....

[T]he growing number of low-income and working-class students in community colleges has been associated with reduced educational expectations and a less-rigorous curriculum.... As economic segregation rises in community colleges, students are less likely to be surrounded by well-prepared middle-class classmates who model academic success.

The Obama proposal could begin an important process of reversing the negative effects of socioeconomic segregation in higher education... [L]et’s see whether expanding universal public education to the two-year sector will, in the end, begin to reduce higher education’s economic divide and strengthen community colleges to become the engines of social mobility they were designed to be.

"What I did NOT expect is that THE MAN HIMSELF would write me an apology. So now I’m totally guilty about wasting his time."

Says the art historian, who criticized President Obama for disrespecting art historians and prompted him to hand-write her an apology letter:

"Do we really think it is fair to predetermine children’s chances for success in life based on what ZIP code they live in?"

"Doesn’t every child deserve as close to the same chance to develop her or his abilities as any other child?"

Universally available prekindergarten is not only the right thing to do, but the smart thing to do. Raising lifetime wages (and thereby tax revenues) and reducing the likelihood that children will drop out of school, get involved in crime, and become a burden on the justice system more than make up for the costs of early childhood education."

Other countries have realized this. China reportedly has set a goal of giving 70 percent of all children three years of prekindergarten education — far ahead of the modest one year proposed by President Obama — by the year 2020.

China is so far ahead of us... in setting goals. Come on, everybody, let's gets some more aggressive and expansive goals. Surprisingly, it's absolutely free, having goals. And in these goals, children stay in school, crime plummets, and taxes soar!

Some people criticize Obama for "moving the goal posts" about this or that, but look over there. It's the Chinese. They've got amazing goals. Okay, now you can look at Obama's goals. So modest!

ADDED: The quote in the post title is the most specious rhetoric I've seen in a long time. Who is doing the "predetermining"? We're supposed to feel that doing nothing is doing something, that our inaction is deliberate and wrongful.

"Let’s have universal protests about the stupidity of school instead of universal pre-K."

"Let’s enable lower-income kids to have the benefit of being told their time is too precious to sit in school all day."

"President Obama once said he wants everybody in America to go to college. What a snob."

"You're good, decent men and women who go out and work hard every day and put their skills to tests that aren't taught by some liberal college professor."

That's something Rick Santorum said on Saturday. On Sunday, George Stephanopoulos asked him: "Now getting to college has been part of the American dream for generations, Senator. Why does articulating an aspiration make the president a snob?"

Santorum observes that "there are lot of people in this country that have no desire or no aspiration to go to college, because they have a different set of skills and desires and dreams that don't include college."

And to sort of lay out there that somehow this... should be everybody's goal, I think, devalues the tremendous work that people who, frankly, don't go to college and don't want to go to college because they have a lot of other talents and skills that, frankly, college, you know, four-year colleges may not be able to assist them.

Stephanopoulos reminds him that he said on Glenn Beck's show that "Obama wants to send every kid to college, because they are indoctrination mills. What did that mean?" Santorum says everybody knows that "how liberal our colleges and universities are and how many children in fact are." Conservatives are "singled out" and "ridiculed." He said that he "personally... was docked for my conservative views."

(I genuinely wondered what he meant by saying he was docked, looked it up on line, and ended up in the Urban Dictionary. What a distraction! Anyway, I think he means "docked" in the sense of deprived of some benefits. But, in light of recent discussions of Satan, it might mean he had his tail removed or shortened.)

Santorum continues, going on about the "real problems at our college campuses with political correctness" and "politically correct left doctrine." Then he says he wants to "to make sure that conservative and more mainstream, common-sense conservative and principles that have made this country great are reflected in our college courses and with college professors." I wonder how a President might go about making sure of something like that? I would think that one of the conservative principles that made America great is the President sticking to the proper work of the President.

2 things stand out to me here:

1. Obama is the university professor, promoting the product/process that lifted him up and that he bestowed on others. His vanity/self-esteem are all wrapped up in the ideology of education. But Santorum's self-image is that of the student. He was oppressed and bullied. He still feels angry and ripped off. Which attitude resonates more with the American people today? That is, do Americans identify with the professor or the student?

2. The important thing, in my view, is that every young person in America — regardless of their cultural and economic background — needs to see clearly that they can get a higher education — that they belong there if they choose to go there — and that they have a choice that should be based on what will work out well for them. They should to go to college for a good reason, and one particularly good reason is to study science and engineering. If they are going to study in some softer, less career-oriented area, the mushy notion that everybody ought to go to college is not enough, even if the President of the United States tells them it is.

Who gets to take advantage of Obama's new changes to the student loan program?

Not as many as you might think. The new rules only apply to federal loans, not loans from private banks, and...

This new income-based plan is not available to people who graduated in 2011 or earlier and have no plans to take out any new federal loans. Instead, you must have at least one federal loan from no earlier than 2008 and also take out one more in 2012 or later to qualify.

If you're already in default, you're ineligible.

"Until the teachers' unions were broken, there was almost no hope for education reform."

Steve Jobs told Barack Obama, when they met in the fall of 2010.

Jobs proposed allowing principals to hire and fire teachers based on merit, that schools stay open until 6 p.m. and that they be open 11 months a year.

"Bloggers Challenge President on Standardized Testing."

The NYT reports:

Mr. Obama criticized “high-stakes” tests last week at a town-hall-style meeting, contrasting them with less-pressured tests his daughters took in their Washington private school....

Anthony Cody, a teacher in Oakland, Calif., who writes a blog for Education Week, suggested that the president was disavowing the policies of his education secretary, Arne Duncan, which include expanding student testing to evaluate teachers and developing new tests to be given several times a year to measure student progress.

“All these changes RAISE the stakes on the tests, for teachers and for schools,” Mr. Cody wrote in a blog post, following an earlier post titled “If only the Department of Education could hear this guy Obama, boy, they would have to rethink their approach!”

... [A]nother blogger, Deborah Meier, a senior scholar at New York University’s education school, [wrote] “In reality the government is paying people to invent more bubble tests”...

The NYT makes an article about bloggers making an issue out of something the mainstream press had ignored, and the article only contains one link to one of the blogs it has mined for material.

Meanwhile, the article is festooned with links — on words like "Malia" and "Sasha" — that go to a NYT page full of links to other NYT articles about on that topic. It looks like they don't understand how people read on the web, or more likely, that they are trying to manipulate us into random poking around inside the NYT, upping their page-view count for their own purposes. To be fair, the one blog post they link to collects the links to the various blogs they've talked about in the article. Oddly, that blog post links back to the NYT article that linked to it.

Ah, no. I see! They just link to Anthony Cody's blog, and not the 2 posts that their hyperlinked text refers to. The top post is a new post about the NYT article, and it provides all the links that were missing in the NYT article. Ugh! NYT, get your linking right! If you're talking about blog posts, link to each specific blog post. And get rid of those idiot links on words that go to your own search pages!

I know, I linked to the NYT. I did that because I'm honest about showing my own entry point. I wouldn't have read Cody's blog otherwise. From his top post:

The Obama campaign relied on the energy of millions of us, activated by a call to our hopes and dreams. We were exhausted by eight years of Bush, seven years of No Child Left Behind, and Obama promised a fresh start. We have not seen that fresh start in education. Instead we are seeing a deep entrenchment on the part of the Department of Education, finding ever more creative ways to pretend that making the tests more frequent will somehow make them benign. Those of us who are experiencing the effects of these policies are not deceived. We see how they are destroying schools, and stealing opportunities from children....

Last week, President Obama reminded us all why his election gave many of us so much hope. In 338 words he spoke of how he wanted his daughters, Sasha and Malia, to have their learning tested. He described a low-stakes, low pressure environment, with the results used not to punish them, their teachers or their school, but simply to find out what their strengths are, and where they might need extra support. He spoke of the need to avoid teaching to the test, and the value of engaging projects that would make students excited about learning. President Obama has made sure his daughters can learn this way. If only Department of Education policies would allow students in our public schools this same privilege!

How did Wisconsin do in the "Race to the Top" (Race for the Money) competition?

We were 26th out of 41. Why did we score so low?

... [T]he criticisms portray Wisconsin as a state fragmented in disagreements about how to improve education and lacking a sense of urgency — urgency that should have been highlighted by the state's recent dead-last ranking in reading among black fourth graders....

The state was downgraded in its first application because only about 10 percent of district-level union leaders signed on. The winning states both had more than 90 percent of union leaders on board. 

Is the Obama administration out to crush unions? Mickey Kaus doesn't think so.

"Hello, Madison!" says Barack Obama. "Good to be back in Madison.... Now, it's great to be back in Madison, great to be back in Wisconsin."

Barack Obama laid down the gigantic carbon footprint that is Air Force 1 to go to a middle school in the midwest to give a speech. Was it worth it? Are kids made more intelligent by the real-life appearance of the President? Surely, some must become more confused. What is the President's job?

I remember one time, back in the 1950s — when I was a Brownie — I was  taught how to make a hat out of artificial flowers and set up to demonstrate this minuscule skill at some sort of vast public exposition. The Governor showed up. "This is Governor Boggs," I was told. For some reason, he was very interested in how to make a crappy lady's hat out of cloth-and-wire flowers. I understood that the man was very important. And I understood that he cared about my hat-making. And that was what you call "Governor." It puzzled me for a long, long time.

So some kids in Madison got to witness the President in person. How edifying was it? He began with introduction and praise for various Democrats — "I want to first of all just say that Jim Doyle is not only one of the finest governors we have in the country, but is also a great friend, a great supporter; his entire family has been wonderful" —which was 100% not useful to kids. He continued:

You know, one year ago, Americans all across this country went to the polls and cast ballots for the future they wanted to see. (Applause.)

Gah. Campaigning.

Election Day was a day of hope...

Facing this reality, my administration had two fundamental obligations. The first was to rescue the economy from imminent collapse... We acted boldly and swiftly...

We've put a tax cut into the pockets of 95 percent of hardworking families. We created or saved over one million jobs...

This is campaign swill. At least it's showing kids what a President does. No flowered hats. No books about fuzzy animals. Just flat-out political speech.

... we've taken steps to unlock our frozen credit markets...

He's not taking any notice that he's talking to children. Here kids, look. This is a President. Wind him up and he talks President. I'm cutting a lot of generic stuff — puffery about his achievements and so forth. At some point, he gets to the topic of education:

The United States, a nation that has always led the way in innovation, is now being outpaced in math and science education. A handful of states have even gone in the wrong direction, lowering their standards at the very moment that they should be raising them. We used to rank number one in the number of college graduates and advanced degrees. That's not the case anymore. Meanwhile, African American and Latino students continue to lag behind their white classmates -- an achievement gap that will ultimately cost us hundreds of billions of dollars because that's our future workforce.

Should you really stand in front of a big group of middle schoolers and brutally inform that that the minority kids are doing worse? What does that sound like to a kid? It's especially harsh since he's expressing concern not for the personal fulfillment of the individual but for the fact that it's costing some amorphous "us" a whole lot of money. Students matter not because they are human beings but because — as a group — they are "our future workforce." They aren't even workers. They are to be merged into a mass called The Workforce.

When I was a teenager, talk like that stirred rebellion in me. I'm trying to imagine how I would feel if I were not doing well in school and I were a member of a group the President stigmatized as lagging. I've got to assume I'd feel more rebellious.

Of course, these problems aren't new. We've heard about them for years....

Everything is new to kids! Why isn't he speaking to the kids?

He's got a big spending plan to tout. Of course, if there is to be federal involvement in education, it will need to draw on the spending power and it will necessarily require throwing out amounts of money that will be sufficient to tempt state and local government away from their independent educational policymaking.

... In the coming weeks, states will be able to compete for what we're calling a Race to the Top award. We're putting over $4 billion on the table -- $4 billion with a "b" -- one of the largest investments that the federal government has ever made in education reform. But we're not just handing it out to states because they want it. We're not just handing it out based on population. It's not just going through the usual political formulas. We're challenging states to compete for it....

The details of how to compete — how to impress federal officials that you've got the right ideas — are far beyond what children can understand. The children are really, therefore, just a backdrop for a speech to the country generally.

Now, before a state is even eligible to compete, they'll have to take an important first step. And this has caused some controversy in some places, but it shouldn't be controversial. Any state that has a so-called firewall law will have to remove them. Now, here's what a firewall law is: It basically says that you can't factor in the performance of students when you're evaluating teachers. That is not a good message in terms of accountability. So we said, if you've got one of those laws, if you want to compete for these grants you got to get rid of that law....

Wisconsin is a state that has that firewall law. We have it because we as a state want it. And we have excellent education here. But who wants to be excluded from a distribution of billions — that's billions with a "b" — of dollars in federal money? If we want to "race" for the money, we've got to tie teachers' salaries to student performance. The hypothetical rebellious student that I would become would be devilishly pleased to know that my refusal to jump through the government's educational hoops would cost my oppressor-teacher money.

There is much more to the speech, and some of the ideas are good. Yes, please support young people who want to become teachers, especially as they take on the work of educating disadvantaged children. There is an amazing section of the speech where he totally violates his daughter's privacy for the greater good:

So Malia came home the other day. She had gotten a 73 on her science test. Now, she's a 6th grader. There was a time a couple years ago when she came home with like an 80-something and she said, "I did pretty well." And I said, "No, no, no. That's" -- I said, "Our goal is" -- "Our goal is 90 percent and up." (Applause.)

Here is the interesting thing. She started internalizing that. So she came and she was depressed, "I got a 73." And I said, "Well, what happened?" "Well, the teacher -- the study guide didn't match up with what was on the test." "So what's your idea here?" "Well, I'm going to start -- I've got to read the whole chapter. I'm going to change how I study, how I approach it." So she came home yesterday, she was -- "I got a 95" -- right? -- so she's high-fiving. (Applause.)

But here's the point. She said -- she said, "I just like having knowledge." That's what she said. And what was happening was she had started wanting it more than us. Now, once you get to that point, our kids are on our [sic] way. But the only way they get to that point is if we're helping them get to that point.

It's hard to see just what it was that made Malia feel that she just liked "having knowledge." Was it the harsh slap of a bad grade? There's a long section of Obama's speech about testing. Is a lot of standardized testing good or bad? He dances all around that point and gathers some applause, but in the end, I think he's saying that we need the standardized tests and we will continue to require them — and hinge teachers' salaries to them. That's not going to end. That's going to be more powerfully incentivized.

And what can possibly inspire the valiant stepping up to the task of being a functioning component of The Workforce the love of knowledge? Is it billions — that's billions with a "b" — of dollars in tax money? Is it a President giving a speech with future components of The Workforce school kids in the background? It's a very great mystery. How does the government manipulate the great mass of young brain? Fortunately, it's a very great mystery.