Rich Noyes catches John Kerry pulling education figures out of his, er, um, nose:
Massachusetts Senator John Kerry must be thinking our fortunate he was that there were no real journalists in the room -- just perky Katie Couric -- when he appeared on NBC’s Today to complain about President Bush’s State of the Union address. As NewsBusters’ Mark Finkelstein noted earlier, Couric did ask a couple of pointed questions, at one point asking Kerry if there “was there anything you appreciated or liked hearing” in Bush’s speech.But when Kerry started inventing statistics in his rant against the President’s education policies, preposterously claiming at one point that “53 percent of our children are not graduation from high school,” (in fact, 73.9 percent of incoming freshmen graduate from high school, according to the most recent Department of Education tally) Couric never even blinked -- not even when Kerry haughtily accused Bush of not presenting “the real state of the Union.”
This exchange is particularly silly:
Couric interjected: “He said he wanted to train 70,000 additional teachers in math and science.”Kerry sarcastically shot back: “And that’s terrific, Katie but 53 percent of our children are not graduating from high school. Kids don’t have after-school programs. Only nine percent of the people eligible in America will be able to get Pell grants this year and for the fifth year in a row they’re not gonna raise the amount of money to help kids who have a 57 percent increase in, in their cost of education to be able to pay for it.”
And putting more math and science teachers in the system will hurt the graduation rate, how? And according to this source, at least 33% of undergraduates receive Pell grant funds, and the proposed scholarships for math and science majors is meant to supplement the Pell funding.
And a 57% increase? Is he kidding? Or is he just nearsighted enough to miss a decimal place, as this report showed that this year's total fees at four-year private nonprofit institutions were up 5.7%?
Posted by kswygert at February 1, 2006 11:44 AM