Beating a retreat

0 Comments | Gazette, The (Colorado Springs), Aug 16, 2007

What's the point of setting higher education standards if the Powers That Be simply water them down when students don't make the grade? Short answer: It amounts to a meaningless gesture. Long answer: It shows that the education establishment is more interested in pushing students through the system, and collecting tuition, than in upholding higher standards.

"The Colorado Commission on Higher Education on Monday voted unanimously to temporarily back away from (college admission) requirements that include four years of English and three years of algebra or higher math," The Associated Press reported Wednesday. "Up to 20 percent of incoming college students failed to meet the standards."

Students with certain grade-point averages or standardized test scores will get a pass on meeting the requirements, beginning in 2008. It's supposedly a "temporary" waiver, according to the story. But unless something suddenly forces greater compliance with the standards, the exception will become the rule.

What might prompt such a change? A flurry of rejection letters to students who don't meet the standards. This might be a blow to their fragile self-esteem, and draw fire from angry parents -- which is why the commission changed the rules. But rejection letters would undoubtedly improve future compliance rates, if we intend to get serious about upholding these benchmarks.

An inadequate K-12 education and the stricter entrance requirements mean an alarmingly high percentage of incoming college freshmen need remedial work before they can handle college-level courses. And that is an added burden for schools, parents and for the taxpayers who subsidize the system. But rather than hold the line on the entrance requirements and force students to do their remedial work before admittance -- at a community college, for instance -- the commission caved in.

"We felt like we needed some flexibility to avoid a train wreck," explained Julie Carnahan, chief academic officer for the commission.

By "train wreck," we assume Carnahan means the uproar that might occur if colleges and universities actually rejected the 20 percent of applicants who don't meet the standards. But what's wrong with that? Maybe if more applicants are rejected, and word gets around, aspiring collegians will get the message that these standards aren't set in Jell-O, but concrete.

More "train wrecks" are exactly what public education needs if we're going to shake it out of complacency and raise the bar for educators and students.

Exit Karl Rove

Can President Bush get by without a brain -- or at least the man some refer to as "Bush's brain"? Karl Rove's resignation from the White House will test the proposition. We don't expect any major course changes as a result of the departure. Rove is always a phone call away, after all, and the ultimate responsibility for what's gone right or wrong with this administration rests with the president.

Rove walked out of the White House under his own power -- not in manacles and accompanied by FBI agents, as his most obsessed foes hoped. Democrats portray Rove, along with Vice President Dick Cheney, as the evil puppet masters behind the presidency. But we disliked Rove for another reason -- the administration's almost complete betrayal of the limited-government principles that helped build the GOP into a majority party.

For all his electioneering genius -- he did manage to get Bush elected twice -- Rove's policy-making acumen was stunted and narrow. The abandonment of core Republican principles -- and the neglect of fiscal conservatives and libertarians, while pandering to social and religious conservatives -- cost the party politically.

They say Rove's a conservative. One would never know it by looking at the administration's track record. Fiscal restraint was thrown to the wind during this administration. Medicare was greatly expanded, as was federal involvement in education. The president preached free trade, but sometimes acted as a protectionist.

A president who ran for office as a skeptic of nation-building became a nation-builder. There's been no serious attempt at a regulatory rollback. Congress went on a pork barrel binge, as the president refused to veto a single spending bill (saving his first veto, in characteristic fashion, for a stem cell funding bill).

The GOP was once known for fighting for lower taxes, fiscal restraint, regulatory reform and modest government, not just against stem cell research and abortion. Rove narrowed its focus, with unfortunate results.

Tax cuts were passed, it's true. And some strict constructionists were appointed to the federal bench. That's good. But the president's push for Social Security reform was half-hearted. Bush seemed onto something promising when he began talking about the "ownership society," but the concept faded away when the teleprompter was turned off.

From our perspective, this administration has been a major disappointment. Blame it on Rove, the puppet master, if you choose. But the responsibility rests with Bush himself -- if one assumes, as we do, that he has a brain of his own. We thought the Rick McKee editorial cartoon that ran Wednesday was spot on, in which Rove -- who has been dubbed "The Architect" by Bush and others -- is walking out the door of a smoldering ruin of a White House.