Gettin' It Done - 38 & 37

I truly hate the Performance Test model for improving schools.  Teachers and Administrators are actually pretty smart people, and it doesn't take a long time before they figure out the game.  I'm not saying they're all just a buncha short-cutters and cheats, I'm saying they know that about the only thing that gets improved in any big way is the balance sheets of companies that suddenly pop up to peddle Assessment Software and their new-found "expertise" as Education Consultants - the teachers and admins figure out how to do what they need to do to keep the doors open, and how to make it look like they're toeing the line as prescribed by power-drunk law-makers and self-designated "experts" who have practically no fuckin' clue how any given school actually works.

And here's the kicker:  You don't fix the schools until you fix the neighborhoods - maybe we could concentrate on that for a minute or two, eh?

37. Crafting Next-Generation School Tests: Devoted $330 million in stimulus money to pay two consortia of states and universities to create competing versions of new K-12 student performance tests based on latest psychometric research. New tests could transform the learning environment in vast majority of public school classrooms beginning in 2014.

And speaking of schooling, this one I can get behind in a pretty big way.  "Higher" education is becoming (if it isn't already) the new High School.  Since there are practically no jobs in the traditional sectors where lots of non-college-track kids could catch on, you don't get any job that doesn't require Spatula Skills if you don't have at least a coupla years beyond K-12.  By trying to do something about the Loan Sharks, Obama is trying to make it a little harder to chain these kids to a lifetime of servitude just so a few bankers' kids get new Mustangs for graduation.

38. Cracked Down on Bad For-Profit Colleges: In effort to fight predatory practices of some for-profit colleges, Department of Education issued “gainful employment” regulations in 2011 cutting off commercially focused schools from federal student aid funding if more than 35 percent of former students aren’t paying off their loans and/or if the average former student spends more than 12 percent of his or her total earnings servicing student loans.