President Joe Biden is proposing big investments in education, for little ‘uns and big ‘uns. In his speech to Congress Wednesday, the President said we need to expand our support for education from K-12 schooling to at least a couple years before and a couple years after K-12:
When this nation made 12 years of public education universal in the last century, it made us the best educated, best prepared nation in the world. It is, I believe, the reason that has propelled us to where we are in the 21st century. But the world has caught up or is catching up. They are not waiting. I will say parenthetically, if we were sitting down, we are going to decide what we do in terms of government providing for education. I wonder whether we would think as we did in the 20th century that 12 years is enough in the 21st century. I doubt it. 12 years is no longer enough today. To compete with the rest of the world and that when he first century.
That is why my American Families Plan guarantees for additional years of public education starting as early as we can. Great universities in this country are conducting studies of the last 10 years and it shows that adding two years of universal, high-quality preschool for every three and four-year-old matter what background they come from puts them in a position to be able to compete all the way through 12 years. It increases exponentially their prospects of graduating and going on beyond graduation. Research shows when a young child goes to school, not daycare, they are far more likely to graduate from high school. And go to college. Or something after high school. When you add two years of free community college on top of that, you begin to change the dynamic.
We can do that. We will increase Pell grants and invest in historically black colleges and universities, minority institutions. The reason is they don’t have the endowments, but the students are just as capable of learning about cybersecurity, just as capable of learning about metallurgy, all of the things going on to provide jobs in the future [President Joe Biden, address to Congress, as transcribed by Politico, 2021.04.28].
South Dakota has resisted universal preschool because that’s socialism. Maybe we’ll get over our aversion to such socialism if we can get Uncle Joe to foot the bill.
But if Congress does what 25 states have already done funds community college, we’ll miss out on that funding due to another of our South Dakota idiosyncrasies: no community colleges!
…according to Janelle Toman, Director of Communications for the Board of Regents, South Dakota has no state community college system. When asked why this is the case, Toman said it has to do with the fact that the state already has two-year technical institutions, run by the South Dakota Board of Technical Education, as well as six state universities.
…A report compiled in 2014 for the Nevada Legislative Committee to Conduct an Interim Study Concerning Community Colleges shows that most states have some form of state community college system, be it governed by the state or simply acting in coordination with it [Jacob Newton, “Biden’s Proposal Would Provide 2 Years of Free Community College, But Not in South Dakota,” KELO-TV, 2021.04.29].
President Biden’s plan will send beaucoup bucks to our tribal college, but our Regental and votech-al institutions will miss out. Quick! Pass the President’s American Families Plan, then call a Special Session to convert Springfield from a prison back into a college, and call it a community college so we can participate in President Biden’s push for a better 21st education system!
4/30/2021
Sometimes we take years to reverse
damage done by past leaders. Yes, turn Springfield back into a school.
Janet Evans
Ahh yes, I was at one of the colleges last theater performances back in the day. At least they named the prison after a guy from Highmore. They could keep the name right?
By the way Cory, I can’t sign directly in to the Dakota Free Press. Have I been a bad boy?
I’m back to being a good boy, my web site interfered, I’m sure it had nothing to do with the sculpture.
There might have been a problem with Word Press and I inquired last evening since I kept getting error on database connectioin all day yesterday and until just recently.
I had the same problem. I was wondering if the Gov was taking preemptive action!
Yes, I got an error message, too, until just now. But as for community colleges: I was in high school when a community college was established there, largely to serve veterans on the G.I. Bill. It was in the high school and some other locations and classes were scheduled in with high school classes with the community college pretty much taking over the building in the late afternoon and evenings. Initially, the faculty was high school teachers with graduate degrees. When a new high school was built, the community college took over the vacated building. Eventually, the college built its own campus, and added another campus as it expanded its services to a 9-county area. It schedules classes throughout the area to be as conveniently accessible as possible.
The original community college idea was to offer affordable classes within the local communities. That’s what NSU’s Associate degree was intended to fulfill. Centering a community college in Springfield could be a way to administer a program which could serve the local communities through an extension system. When I was first at NSU we offered extension classes in the remote communities through such a system,
Many/most SD universities offer Associates’/2-year degrees (so do some of the vo-tech campuses). The Board of Regents should be making the case that these degree programs provide a community college-equivalent program and thus qualify for the same federal tuition support as stand-alone community colleges in other states.
As an example, here’s a link to the Associate’s degree programs offered at Northern. https://www.northern.edu/programs/undergraduate/associate-degrees
Off topic I am glad to see this back running. I thought Mr. H had enough of me!
From The “I Love New Things” department:
Public education won’t be twelve years, anymore.
Public education will be fourteen years, now.
testing
Glad to see the site back online .. more voices good. Fewer voices bad. Ideas need a big pool ..