It gets really old! I keep hearing how students in the US continually score lower that students in many other countries in the world. While this is true, there is a HUGE context to this headline.
In MANY other countries, students are 'Tracked'. This doesn't mean that someone is following them with a bloodhound. What it does mean is that early in their school career (generally late elementary school or middle school) they are placed in a track based on their apptitude and interest. Their education path is then determined based on the track they are on.
The students that are on 'non-academic' tracks are generally not included in the same testing pool. The result is that we are comparing every student in the US to only academic minded students in other contries. It's not an apples to apples comparison.
Tracking is NOT a bad thing. I remember when I was in elementary school we were told that in other countries students were told what they would do and that they had no choice or say. I think this description has unfortunately been placed on the idea of Tracking.
Read the extended post for more thoughts on tracking.
So I see the recent McCain propoganda Ad that talks about Barack not having executive experience and how the next President needs to have that experience to deal with the first crisis they will face, the economy.
It occurs to me that our current President was governor of Texas for 8 years and has been President for nearly 8 years. That is 15-16 years of executive experience and he is clearly unable to handle this crisis (and many others). This leads me to assert that perhaps simply having executive experience has no bearing on how well someone can handle a crisis.
IF we want to ignore that and actually make the HUGE assumption that it makes a difference, how much executive experience does McCain have? The only thing I've been able to find online that MIGHT be construed as executive is that he was the leader of his flight wing.
This is a tired argument with no real merit. Let's talk about real issues and not red herrings.
