Left Behind, Way Behind (text response)

                In this article Bob Herbert clearly states how children are not getting the education they need and not even making it through high school in an era in which a four-year college degree is becoming a prerequisite for achieving or maintaining a middle-class lifestyle. He believes that this is a sounding alarm about a critical problem that is not getting clearly enough attention.

                Bob grabs our attention by pulling us in with a statement, “First the Bad News.” Of course that’s going to grab our attention because we all are noisy and want to know what’s so bad. He then proceeds to go on and talk about the even worse news. He does this by giving some pretty startling statistics about American kids and how they rank out of the 29 nations. We ranked 24^th out of the 29 nations in math literacy and the same for problem-solving abilities. The Center for American Progress and the Institute for Americas Future states that there is an urgent new commitment to public education, much stronger than the No Child Left behind law, and must be made if that slide is to be reversed.

                Bob also points out the fact that the kids who need the most help are poor children from inner cities and rural areas. He proves this point by taking a passage from education task force established by the center and institute and presenting it in his article. Not only do the poor kids need help though, but the well-off do too. They found that only 41% of nonpoor fourth graders can read proficiently. He also goes on to add how Snoop Dogg and Paris Hilton are poor role models for students and instead kids should be looking up to the kids who are in the college labs, libraries, and lecture halls for long hours and remain afloat in our high competition society.

                Not only does Bob make a strong argument but he also gives us some recommendations on how we can make our children’s education better. One of which should be that the time children spend in school should be substantially increased by lengthening the school day and in some cases the school year. He also suggests an effort to be made to connect schools in low-income areas more closely with surrounding communities. A final recommendation presented is to get highly qualified teachers into the class rooms.

                After reading the article I think that Bob made a very good and strong argument by presenting us with statistics so that we know how bad our children’s education really is and then going on and giving recommendations on how to resolve this issue so that our kids can too survive this ongoing struggle to make it in the workforce. He provided a thesis and claim and then backed it up with support and evidence. He also adressed a wide range of audience including every parent thorughout the U.S.  and this works because it raises awareness that we as parents maybe are not sending our children to the best schools. We all want our kids to have the best education they can get for them to be successful in life.