Everyone is focused on the cost of higher education. Few focus on one of the biggest drivers of that cost.
Despite the enormous amounts of money spent on K-12 public education, most of the students are not ready for higher education when they graduate.
Educators should acknowledge an embarrassing fact: 70 percent of students entering college need remediation in one or more subjects. It costs time and money, and may be a reason college takes six years for many students, rather than four.
On one level, remediation refers to helping a student get up to speed in any subject where he is lacking.
But at the fundamental level in reading, writing and math the formal name for it is developmental education.The National Association for Developmental Education (NADE) is the largest group of teachers in the field. (My wife is the president of NADE.)
There is a tussle in the field right now because, in NADE's view, some reformers are mistakenly advocating policies that could leave out key parts of the student population.
Legislators are looking at proposed changes in remediation policy. They should examine all sides, not just the agenda of organizations funded by Bill Gates.
That aside, the critical question is why remediation is needed at all. After 13 years of schooling, shouldn't a student be ready for college?
There is also a big push for mandatory pre-school.
That means, essentially, yanking kids out of the crib and sending them off for whatever public schools want to instill in their heads. That is not what many parents want, which is why the program now is voluntary.
Those behind this push tut-tut that it is all settled science. (Like global warming?) Pre-school is good for the tots. Really?
Head Start, a remnant of the Great Society, is the pre-eminent pre-school program and it is a failure.
With the federal government now trying to be everything to everybody, at any cost, junk is going to be pushed down to the states if liberals have their way.
If you can't get ready for college in 13 years, will adding another year help or hurt?
Education reforms that include standards, accountability and choice are working. Parents need to get behind them and fight those who are devoted to the status quo, which is schools run for the benefit of adults, not children.
The latest evidence of progress is that dropout factories public schools that have far fewer students in the 12th grade than in the ninth grade are being reduced in Florida.
Even those who do graduate are unlikely to be ready for college, however, unless learning improves.
Yes, some can't or won't learn and what to do with them is a quandary. But that doesn't excuse the overall problem.
Keep them in school, keep them interested and teach them what they need to know. If that is done, there won't be a need for an argument about what kind of developmental education is best. It won't be needed.
Lloyd Brown was in the newspaper business nearly 50 years, beginning as a copy boy and retiring as editorial page editor of the Florida Times-Union in Jacksonville. After retirement he served as speech writer for Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.
