82% of US Government Schools Failing
There are many reasons why America's students are falling behind those in other countries. A recent comparison showed that America ranked 25th in Math, 17th in Science, and 14th in reading. This is out of only 34 countries.
Obviously, this poses a number of extreme problems.
If our graduates are inferior to the greatly more populous China (and they are), then inevitably our economy will suffer. The world's economy is dependent on highly skilled jobs, and a nation that perpetually turns out c students is bound to fall behind no matter the lead it started with.
The problems grow larger because we live in a representative republic. These same c students are going to be electing our politicians. Since they are poorly educated, and were never really taught how to think critically, they are likely to pick charlatans that make impossible promises. You need look no further than Obama's inauguration for evidence of this.
As if the old status quo wasn't bad enough, the nations top education official, Arne Duncan, is warning that 82% of our country's schools are expected to fail in their educational mandates this year. Last year, only 37% failed.
Predictably, his answer is not to admit that government education doesn't work well. Instead, he wants to lower standards.
"No Child Left Behind is broken and we need to fix it now," Duncan says in prepared remarks for testimony before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce. "This law has created a thousand ways for schools to fail and very few ways to help them succeed. We should get out of the business of labeling schools as failures and create a new law that is fair and flexible, and focused on the schools and students most at risk."
Right, so if we just avoid labeling schools as failures, and remove any accountability, then our problem is solved right? Anyone that thinks so is clearly a product of a particularly dismal government run school. Avoiding labels and lowering standards doesn't fix problems it just evades them. America needs to face this problem head on, and any attempt to sweep it under the rug will just allow the problem to fester in the dark.
There is plenty blame for this shameful, and ruinous, state of affairs to spread around. The lion's share belongs to our government, but the nations parents are certainly at fault too. The government manages these institutions and so obviously the failure like directly at it's feet.
However, parents don't make the government's job any easier. When children show up to school with no motivation to learn, its terribly difficult to force them to. When parents aren't actively involved in supporting and monitoring their children's school work, the children quickly learn that it doesn't need to be a priority. When parents scream that their children are being discriminated against whenever they are disciplined, it partially explains why today's schools resemble nothing so much as giant prisons for our youth.
Ultimately, the fault lies with our nation's voters, because they certainly are not making the right choices at the voting booth. America's voters need to take their heads out of the sand, and realize that people like Arne Duncan will not get our schools back on track. Probably no man or agency can, so long as they are still run by the government.
We should fight for school vouchers as a stepping stone towards total educational privatization. The government has proven it simply isn't capable of educating our nation's students.
The reasons are as simple as they are inescapable. Our schools have no meaningful competition. Even if you send your kids to a private school, you still have to pay for public school. For that matter, even if you don't have kids you still have to pay for public school. Therefore, no matter how atrocious a school's performance is, they see increases in funding year after year. Thus, we end up in a situation were 82% of our nation's school will fail to meet their already low standards.
This is exactly counter to the way the free market works. The market would reward exceptional schools, and effective methods of education. It would destroy ones that failed.
The profit motive would force schools to run streamlined businesses without masses of do nothing administration collecting enormous salaries and sweetheart retirement plans. This would lower the cost of education while improving it's quality at the same time. In addition, it would place accountability where it belonged with the parents not with some distant bureaucrat.
Rational Public Radio is an Objectivist podcast and blog, a.k.a., the rallying center for reasoned warriors in the fight to gain and keep individual freedom.
Comments
Of course the ultimate goal is as this post suggests; abolish government 'indoctrination' education.
I especially appreciate the indoctrination aspect. How often do government paid teachers, in government run schools teach that government isn't always the solution.
How often do they call for their jobs to be eliminated because they are unconstitutiona l?
It's a gross conflict of interest.
"Arne Duncan, is warning that 82% of our countries schools are expected to fail in their educational mandates this year."
"countries?"
country's
"Even if you send your kids to a private school, you still have to pay for public school. For that matter, even if you don't have kids you still have to pay for public school"
Bottom line is that traditional public school has produced generations of skilled American workers. A purely for-profit private system, even with voucher support wouldn't work nearly as well (http://www.texastribune.org/texas-education/public-education/is-poverty-the-key-factor-in-student-outcomes/). The best option, if you feel national security is tied to the quality of our workforce, is to make public education work, and work for all Americans.
Final point, those jobs eaten up by "highly qualified" Chinese and Indian workers are starting to come back to us slovenly under educated Americans: http://www.businesspundit.com/outsourced-it-jobs-return-home-re-employment-in-2011/
Government run education cannot be made to work. The incentives for the administrators and teachers are all wrong. Only the profit motive can direct educators to do a better job for less money. Government programs naturally get more and more expensive, and are never held responsible for poor performance.
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