A fight to finance the future

Bill Gates is financing his future work force, so why isn't our nation?

Last Saturday, the Microsoft chairman blasted our nation's high schools as obsolete and incompetent and promised $15 million to states willing to make immediate improvements.

"When I compare our high schools with what I see when I'm traveling abroad," Gates said, "I am terrified for our work force of tomorrow."

The promise of $15 million is in addition to the $733 million the Gates Foundation has invested in more than 1,500 high schools over the last five years. Gates justifies his philanthropy on both economic and moral grounds, citing that high school is the point at which children's paths diverge.

"Some go on to lives of accomplishment and privilege. Others to lives of frustration, joblessness and jail," he said.

Ironically, Gates' announcement comes off a dark week for U.S. education policy. After a yearlong study of President Bush's No Child Left Behind Act -- which has haphazardly attempted to close the gap in achievement between white and minority students by emphasizing standardized testing -- a bipartisan committee of lawmakers concluded that the legislation is highly flawed, convoluted and unconstitutional.

Such findings are not surprising for unfunded mandate masquerading as law, which supports the Washington Assessment of Student Learning.

While deficits continue to expand and economic forecasts appear cloudy, our nation isn't helping its fiscal solvency by neglecting to invest in our future work force. If the Bush administration really wanted sweeping education reform, it would set realistic standards and finance them.

We applaud Gates for his generosity and foresight, but financing national U.S. high schools is simply not his job.

What no one is willing to ask, however, is whether or not we should be bailing out other countries when it is our nation's children that need to be saved.