Those Poor, Disenfranchised Democrats

I wouldn't want you to think that I don't see the other side of the coin; yes, there are a number of right-leaning think tanks in Washington funded by conservatives like John M. Olin, but there are also liberal ones. Case in point - check out this article about the Center for American Progress from the Washington Post. It helps the poor, disenfranchised Democratic Party. Ha ha.

The Center for American Progress (CAP) appears to be more of a PR group than anything else; however, as I scanned through their education proposals, this article caught my eye.

Fast Track to College: Increasing Postsecondary Success for All Students (pdf)

While the first half of the article is a lot of doom and gloom (reminiscent of Declining by Degrees), they have some interesting solutions, such as transforming the senior year of college into a "gap year" where students would work part time and prepare for school part time, perhaps using their experience to reflect and write some sort of senior thesis. This actually happens at the private school where I used to work in DC, and it seems to be a positive experience for most of the students.

The problem I see with this is the lack of a centralized school system. Should we federalize schools? Should it be like the post office? I don't know that this helps, since areas of our country differ so widely. Although it seems unfair that just because you live in an urban school district you have less access to good education than if you live in the suburbs, merely because of a "community schools" or "different culture" argument. I don't think that is the argument, really; I think no one makes an argument because we like to pretend everything is fine, there is no difference between urban and suburban schools.

I don't know. Check out the article. I'll add the CAP to my watch list for educational issues.