More specifically, Bill Ayers works as a professor at U of I in Chicago, where hes a Professor of Education, (as-in he researches how to effectively teach students). Obama was a Professor at the Law School at U of I Chicago. They also lived in the same neighborhood. Ayers has worked to help shape Chicago's Public Education system, and is also on the board of some education reform and anti-poverty foundations.

The wikipedia page goes into good detail about their few direct connections, serving on similar education boards and the like:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Ayers#Obama-Ayers_Controversy


>> ^Fjnbk:
>> ^rottenseed:
well, what is his relationship?

Bill Ayers is an acquaintance of Obama who is an important character in Chicago liberal society. EVERYBODY there knows him, but that doesn't make them all terrorists.

You've just made the case for the libertarian platform of limited government. Libertarians defend that the government should be shrunk down to the bare essentials because politicians are completely incapable of making competent technical decisions.

I'm well aware. Ron Paul is not the voice of libertarians everywhere, nor are his conceptions of libertarian education reform what I support. I didn't say I believe the federal government should stay completely out of education, I said that it should stay out of deciding educational topics. When I said I didn't like the idea of handing things off to states, I think of Paul because he supports moving from federal to states' rights, and under states' rights as he would like to have them, decisions are handed off from local politics to local regionally-based politico-educational power-brokers (district school administrators and, as you mention yourself, school boards). I disagree, because those guys happen to be even dumber than presidents and mayors. I want to go lower than that, I want teachers and school administrators to make decisions on what's taught in our schools. Also, federal funding is a different issue than curricula decisions.

Also, the market has ways of regulating quality and correcting bad decisions. One is criticism from outsiders. If that fails, low standardized test scores, rejection letters from colleges and job applications will make parents get the message and demand better quality.

I'm on board for the market comparison. Currently, using the free-market as a model for education system development falls through when one evaluates the current US public educational system through that lens, because it is specifically not even close to a free market (yet). And, since federal budgets are used to help finance schools, it is essential that the federal government get on board when it comes to distributing such tax money in order to force improvement in schools. Unless of course, you happen to believe that states will create improvement at the same pace when pressure is put on them. A free-market system can apply at both the federal and state levels.

1. Until college, students must attend regional public schools with very few exceptions. They are thus not free to take their education elsewhere without paying up the wazzoo or going to private school. This is why school vouchers are so important to me, allowing students to choose which school to attend and thus send their allocated money to is key to moving back towards a free-market model.
2. Parental demand is a poor way of regulating schools when my first point is true. Unintelligent and uneducated parents will often be unable to tell a good school from a bad one, which is why:
3. Regular, unbiased, quantitative and qualitative feedback on the success or lack thereof of students is essential. Free-market models also generally rely on informed decision-making, something that can't be attributed to American parents on the whole either. Where do they get feedback from? College acceptances are only applicable to high schools, and even then the path of blame can't be traced solely to them, poor pre-K to secondary school education also fall into the mix for screwing students over. Standardized test scores are ok, but then again, this creates a need for unbiased tests that are representative of the body of knowledge a student is expected to command at his or her particular age and education level. I studied and gamed my way (legally and on my own) into perfect scores on standardized tests repeatedly throughout my education. This is part of why the current No Child Left Behind act is failing: the tests don't represent the knowledge of the student, and so when schools teach to the test or when the student prepares for the test, the student misses out completely on certain sections of his or her education, and also results can't be counted on to judge the quality of the school's or student's performance. In addition to which:
4. Quantitative feedback is impossible without the creation of nationalized feedback systems. No matter what form, there needs to be standardized measurements. Thus, tests can't be limited by state, nor can they be limited to a county or to a district. In order to create such test, we need to have...well, national organizations to keep them regulated.

The US has a few success examples in education that I can think of offhand to demonstrate the principles I'm arguing for above:
The first is private high schools of a specific kind: Andover, Exeter, Lawrenceville, etc.
The second is magnet public high schools: TJ in Virginia, Hunter College in NYC, Stuyvesant, etc.
The third is the higher-education system, both undergraduate and graduate: Harvard, MIT, U. Chicago, etc.

In the three examples I've given, free-market-based attendance and thus improvement is pretty demonstrable, yet federal funding is also used to support these schools based on their performance as indicated by the students' attendance and performance. In the private and magnet high school examples, students are comparable to the best students worldwide. At the higher-education system, students are on average better than those at the same level of education in other countries. Nationalized education reform plans can be improved a lot from those ideas and those examples.

Articles like this and many others about other facets of the Indian engine of development show that high exports, rapid urban development, technological progressive industries and outsourcing do not necessarily mean an improvement in the standard of living for all citizens. The same applies to China.

I found it baffling back in college when economists and my fellow students would talk in awe of the economic development of both of these nations, yes on paper they look wonderful as numerical figures however with regards to real tangible economic progress both nations have much more to achieve specifically improvement in basic infrastructure, welfare reforms for the poor, educational reform across the board focusing more on technocratic education not labour based drones and most of all actual re-investment of earned income back into developing the nation itself.

There is a reason most Chinese and Indians who are educated aboard choose to stay abroad instead of going back to their respective nations.

You know this left and right thing is fucking stupid. This world isn't black and white, you might be right wing on fiscal spending but left wing on education reform. This greater divide between the two parties is degrading american politics to the level of high school he said she said rubbish. You shouldn't simplify stances to being one direction or the other because your stances on a variety of topics will all be different. Labelling someone being one side or the other is generalization. Drawing lines between people only creates more problems. This was all created by the political process that has muddled and degraded the arguements to being attacks of being one side or the other. Of all people I thought the americans would not give in to it... what are we going to have a total collapse to the point someone like Joseph McCarthy comes along and ousts people for being unpatriotic? For asking questions about the actions of your leaders? For not, to quote O'Reilly "shutting up publically"?