Tuition-free college is not the answer
In the same edition of The Bee, there is a story about touting tuition-free college and an editorial about how California’s education dashboard fails the test. That is a contradiction in terms. The improvement in education does not rest on free education or more technology or more core curricula.
We need to address the problem, not the symptoms. It is a cliche but true. We all know what it means to do the same thing over and over again and expect different results. To offer tuition-free college to historically low-performing high school graduates who will require remedial instruction when they enter college is, for lack of a better word, ludicrous.
Decade after decade, education has been tweaked to the point where standards are low, the number of graduates high but the quality of graduate low, and the school culture has been lost.
Offers to the Fresno Unified School District school board and superintendent with alternative ideas to improve the situation go disregarded. They recently received an offer to sit down and discuss a model for returning the school culture to campuses. Ask them.
Javier Aguirre, Fresno
This story was originally published March 24, 2017 at 5:36 PM with the headline "Tuition-free college is not the answer."