This is the best list he can come up with?

by David Safier
Harold Levy, who used to be chancellor of NY City Schools, has come up with a list of Five Ways to Fix America’s Schools. He could've done much better. I'm not sure how he decided these are the most pressing issues we need to address. Only the first is interesting, but at best, it's a bad idea that can be tweaked into a good idea.

Here are the five ideas:

1. Raise the age of compulsory education to 19, to include one year of college.
2. Use high-pressure sales tactics to curb truancy.
3. Advertise creatively and aggressively to encourage college enrollment.
4. Unseal college accreditation reports so that the Department of Education can take over the business of ranking colleges and universities.
5. Produce more qualified college applicants by improving K-12 schools.

The first suggestion is just plain out of touch. To require students to go to another year of school when some of them have been hanging on by their fingernails for their last few years would do more harm than good.

But how about this? Let's offer free public education, K-13, or even K-14, without an age expiration date. The first two years at a public college or university would be free, whether you begin at age 17, 18 or 80. I've had students who couldn't wait to leave school but went to college a few years later and got far more out of it than they would have when they were younger. If more people were encouraged to continue their educations at any time in their lives, it would benefit them and probably the rest of us as well.

His other ideas are anywhere from banal to acceptable. These are the 5 best ways to can fix education? I hope he's not being considered for any high level education commissions.