Worst Educational Idea?

The cover article of the Parade Magazine caught my attention yesterday. This does not usually happen. I am not a big Parade reader, but the story was about rebuilding our schools. Here is the article:

Rebuilding America's Schools

After reading the article, I was sort of wobbly. I could not imagine somebody advocating the argument that was made. With state's facing fiscal collapse, with education under-performing, with costs skyrocketing, Barry Yeoman's answer is build nice new public school buildings so that we can feel better about our schools and kids will learn better in places that they feel good about. This might be true. The arguments are mostly anecdotal and the data shockingly incomplete (i.e., are their places where boatloads of money on facilities and education has not improved? I am betting so, but none are mentioned).

I am guessing that they might be a push in the fall election. The marketing verbiage will be something like "Let's invest in our public school infrastructure!" Problem is that the money for the investment does not exist...and, even if it did, it would be unwise to spend it in this way. We need to rethink how we do education and healthcare. These are critical national issues. If we just throw money at this problem, we will put a band-aid on a patient that needs surgery. Let's hope that people were distracted by the Olympics yesterday.