Only 3.5% of Arizona high school kids can pass the US citizenship test according to a new study by the Goldwater Institute. This is compared to the 92.4% first-try pass rate by new immigrants. Those who support stealing our money in order to run public schools need to see what actually goes on there (hint: it's not learning). Then they need to watch John Stossel's "Still Stupid in America."
My solution? In order of the most urgent actions: 1) abolish teacher's union legislation at the State and Federal levels 2) abolish the Department of Education 3) abolish educational department bureaucracies at the State level 4) abolish public schools altogether or at least return the choice back to the local communities. These four steps would guarantee lower cost and higher quality schooling.
6 comments:
I have another suggestion to add to your list. Make the parents responsible for their child's education. I speak as a teacher, the students who can pass that test are the ones who have parents that keep tabs on their child's learning and not just expecting the school to perform a miracle.
I bet those who fail have parents who drop them off and expect the child to learn and ask nothing of the child's homework or grades during the evening or next morning.
You can blame the teachers all you want...that is the easy road to take, but place some of the blame where it belongs...on the kids and parents.
IMHO!
Good point. I would not want to excuse anyone from being responsible for their own actions. Of course, how do you "make" the parent or the child more responsible? As a libertarian, I do not ever think that it is okay to use force against someone who has not threatened me in any way.
I guess I do address your point in a round-about way without calling for the use of force (gov't mandates). If the system is allowed to be competitive and parents have to pay for education, I would imagine they would care a lot more about what is going on in the classroom.
You can look at it this way - Under the current system, the responsibility for education is placed on the government. They operate and pay for the schooling and not surprisingly they do a terrible job. If you remove the government from the picture, then by necessity, the responsibility goes to teachers, parents, and kids. I think we might both agree that this arrangement would be more ideal.
Also, I have nothing against teachers or at least good teachers. My complaints are with the managers (gov't) who force taxpayers to hire crappy teachers who are impossible to fire, and operate schools that are more like daycare or jail than an actual place of learning.
I have never understood why people think the government runs the schools! Yes, they provide standards etc, but they never have once determined what I teach in my classroom. That has always been up to me and not the government.
I don't think the schools do a terrible job, I tend to think that the parents and students to the poor job.
Seems to me that those who complain about the "government schools" just want another thing to complain about the government on.
I do not understand how you can reason that the schools are not run by government. Who else runs public schools if not gov't? Government pays for everything, they manage where the schools are built, which kids get assigned to what schools, what curriculum should be taught, how many teachers to employ, what books, computers, and other supplies to buy, what standardized tests must be taken, etc. How do they not run the schools?
I understand you have some freedom on what is taught but that freedom is granted to you by the school managers (government). And I have to point out that you yourself are a government employee so it is a little odd to argue that you, rather than gov't, run the schools when you yourself are an employee of that gov't.
Also, you place all the blame on parents and kids rather than schools. Only government services are able to blame the customers and get away with it. If a private school blamed terrible academic performance on the parents and kids, they would quickly go out of business.
Things must be run differently in Virginia than here in Illinois...I know there is less corruption in Va. than Il. but I really don't thing the government runs the school. Sure there is funding that we recieve, but our schools are funded by the tax payers. My district just built a new school to replace one damaged by a tornado back in 2003 and the government had nothing to do with where it was built. Actually, the vote came down to the citizens of the county and they changed their minds twice.
Our students are not assigned as school, they attend the one in terms of the school district they live in and they are free to pay the out-of-district tuition to go somewhere else and/or move...the government is not stopping them.
I chose the book that I teach out of and I include many various orginal and secondary sources as any good teacher should. I am guided by the Illinois State Standards, but it is really a guide not a mandate. Sure we take some standardized test...the Prairie State Achievement Exam and the ACT...and we use the results as tools.
Yes, I am a state employee to say the least, but my pay sucks for the amount of training and education I have.
Just my humble opinion.
Regards,
Corey aka Billy Yank
Governments run the schools and many parents know and fear this enough to educate their children privately.
That can happen either as a home-based arrangement (homeschooling) or as a co-op arrangement among parents or families (private/parochial schools). Either way, the effort is an attempt at running from government control over their children's minds.
Why shouldn't everyone do the same? It would abolish public schools, just as this group is attempting to do in California.
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