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Schools in America are failing. Liberals, beholden to the teachers unions, have entrenched themselves in a position of defending a failed system. They make the same lame excuses year after year, and they've been doing it for decades.
There are two main interests fighting against real education reform. There are the educrats, philosophically opposed to "testing" because the "pressure" is too much for children. "Educrats care if children feel good about reading. Educators care if children can read."[1]
Educrats have been around as long as education has been around. Every decade or so they recycle the same failed ideas and come up with gradeless or testless classes or some other such nonsense. Naive but insidious, these people atleast believe they are doing what is best for children.
The second group fighting against reform is the entrenched bureaucracy desperately trying to hold on to its power. The prime culprit of this group, the National Education Association (NEA) fights vehemently against any qualifications standards for their members, ensuring a system capable of mediocrity at its best. Their power structure is made up of career bureaucrats more interested in Washington politics and maintaining their power than education.
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The short answer, everything. High school educators often state their goal is to prepare children for college. They have utterly failed at that task.
The report, based on scores of the 2005 high school graduates who took the exam, some 1.2 million students in all, also found that fewer than one in four met the college-readiness benchmarks in all four subjects tested: reading comprehension, English, math and science.[2]
And this is a test taken by those who intend to go to college. If all students were included - those that take the tests are more likely to be the higher performing students, as they are the group most likely wanting to go to college - the outlook would be much worse.
Under the category "New-New Math" children are not taught to memorize multiplication tables. Those who promote the new teaching method believe memorization is bad. Instead, they say, children should be led to "discover multiplication." Students, they say, learn to multiply over several years by "thinking about math" and will therefore retain it longer.
Educrats don't seem too alarmed that many children may never learn basic math structure through this random approach to an exact science. But there seems to be no shortage of programs that teach children nothing.[3]
John Stossel has been vigilant in exposing the failing education system and a staunch advocate of breaking up the government monopoly on education.
I talked with 18-year-old Dorian Cain in South Carolina, who was still struggling to read a single sentence in a first-grade level book when I met him. Although his public schools had spent nearly $100,000 on him over 12 years, he still couldn't read.
So "20/20" sent Dorian to a private learning center, Sylvan, to see if teachers there could teach Dorian to read when the South Carolina public schools failed to.
Using computers and workbooks, Dorian's reading went up two grade levels — after just 72 hours of instruction.
His mother, Gena Cain, is thrilled with Dorian's progress but disappointed with his public schools. "With Sylvan, it's a huge improvement. And they're doing what they're supposed to do. They're on point. But I can't say the same for the public schools," she said.[4]
A 2005 government hearing on education reform highlighted some shocking statistics on the state of education in America.
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First, I'd like to explain what is not a solution. Spending more money will not solve our educational problems. We score worse than countries that spend far less per student than we do. In fact, the U.S. ranked near the top in spending on primary and secondary education.[6] And yet, in 2003 the U.S. ranked 6th lowest in mathematics.[7] In addition, both the average class size and student to teacher ratio in the U.S. are approximately equal to the international average.[8] Yet our performance is well below average.
The District of Columbia spends far more money per student in its public elementary and secondary schools each year than the tuition costs at many private elementary schools, or even college-preparatory secondary schools. Yet, District 8th-graders ranked dead last in 2005 in national reading and math tests.
D.C.'s public elementary and secondary schools spent a total of $16,334 per student in the 2002-2003 school year, according to a Department of Education study. That compares to the $10,520 tuition at St. John's College High School, a District Catholic school that sends almost all its graduates to four-year colleges.
Last year, however, only 12% of 8th-graders in the District's public schools scored at grade-level proficiency or better in reading in the federal National Assessment of Educational Progress tests that were administered in the District and all 50 states. Only 7% of the District's public-school 8th-graders scored grade-level proficiency or better in math.[9]
The problem is not funding; it's not class size or any of the other common excuses. The problem is systemic to the model we use. Simply put, schools simply have no reason to perform. No doubt there are many excellent educators who want to provide the best education possible for it's own sake, but history has shown that is simply not adequate, there must be serious repercussions for failure in order to inspire innovation and efficiency. One would think the United States of all countries would understand this basic economic principle, but when it comes to education such understanding has been sorely lacking.
The solution to our failure in education is so simple it's amazing it hasn't gained serious traction (not that surprising when you consider the special interests with self-interested reasons to oppose progress). Give the people the same power in education that they have with any other good or service they desire. Specifically, give them the power to choose their provider. Competition will ensure quality education when schools with failing models lose students as higher performing schools gain them. The necessity of performing in order to stay in business will weed out those educational models that have already been shown time and time again not to work but keep coming back because educrats have little to no requirements attached to their funding. End the government monopoly on education and embrace the free market principles that have made this country prosperous.
This isn't as radical a change as it sounds, and it isn't a complete seperation of goverment and education. Instead, it's a seperation of government and schools. Instead of the current system, attach a dollar amount to each student (the current average student expenditure is about $12k) that then goes to whatever school the students parents choose to send them to. Instead of dictating attendance by residence, parents can choose schools based on performance. This simple economic empowerment will ensure that successful education models persist while failing ones are finally allowed to die.
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Not only are many educrats refusing to teach basic skills and the foundation children need before they can apply those skills, they are using their position of power to advance extremist causes that they failed to advance at the ballot box. Because they cannot achieve their radical agenda through legislation, the left has hijacked the educational system so they can brainwash our children!
So while schools may not be succeeding in teaching children how to read, write or do basic math, they are spending plenty of time making sure kids get as much liberal indoctrination as possible.
Let's start off with a few quotations, then a question. In reference to the president's State of the Union: "Sounds a lot like the things Adolf Hitler used to say." "Bush is threatening the whole planet." "[The] U.S. wants to keep the world divided." Then the speaker asks, "Who is probably the most violent nation on the planet?" and shouts "The United States!"
What's the source of these statements? Were they made in the heat of a political campaign? Was it a yet-to-be captured leader of al Qaeda? Was it French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin? Any "yes" answer would miss the true source by a mile. All of those statements were made by Mr. Jay Bennish, a teacher at Overland High School in Aurora, Colo.
During this class session, Mr. Bennish peppered his 10th-grade geography class with other statements like: The U.S. has engaged in "7,000 terrorist attacks against Cuba." In his discussion of capitalism, he told his students, "Capitalism is at odds with humanity, at odds with caring and compassion and at odds with human rights."[10]
With geography teachers like this, it's no wonder American students are considerably behind the rest of the world in understanding geography. This problem goes a lot further than just rogue teachers, however. Misguided legislatures are using classrooms to promote their social ideologies.
This month the Senate passed by a 22-15 vote SB1437, sponsored by Sen. Sheila Kuehl, D-Santa Monica, that would require that California textbooks contain "age appropriate" information about the contributions of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people in California and American history.
. . .What bothers me the most is the left's -- be it noted, all those who voted for the bill were Democrats -- apparent scorn for knowledge as a jewel in and of itself. This bill threatens to rewrite history as gay advocates want it to have been, not as it really happened.
SB1437 highlights the intolerance of the gay lobby. Kuehl may think she is pushing tolerance, when in fact she is forcing her ideology onto other people's children -- whether they like it or not. [11]
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[1]Debra J. Saunders, "What Is an Educrat?" San Francisco Chronicle, January 4, 1998.
[2]Tamar Lewin, "Many Going to College Are Not Ready, Report Says," The New York Times, August 17, 2005.
[3]Tom DeWeese, "The Continuing Saga of Failed Federal Education Policy" American Policy Center.
[4]John Stossel, "Stupid in America" ABC News, Jan. 13, 2006.
[5]United States. Cong. House. Committee on Education and the Workforce, Subcommittee on Education Reform. How the Private Sector is Helping States and Communities Improve High Schools. Hearing, June 28, 2005. 109th Cong., 1st sess.
[6]Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Indicator B1: Educational expenditure per student. 2006.
[7]Program for International Student Assessment Table 2. Average combined mathematics literacy scores and sbscale scores of 15-year-old student, by country: 2003. 2006.
[8]Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Indicator D2: Class size and ratio of students to teaching staff. 2006.
[9]"D.C.'s Distinction: $16,344 Per Student, But Only 12% Read Proficiently" Human Events Online, March 23, 2006.
[10]Walter E. Williams, "Indoctrination of Our Youth". February 22, 2006.
[11]Debra J. Saunders, "One for the textbooks" San Francisco Chronicle, May 21, 2006.
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All pages a work-in-progress and are subject to change at any time. New information and, if needed, corrections are routinely added.