I stayed up last night to watch John Stossel’s 20/20 report on the state of education in America. Nobody who is familiar with what is really going on in education would be surprised by the evidence unveiled —- failing schools, apathetic teachers more concerned with perserving their jobs that promoting excellence, a union more concerned with preserving its own power than weeding out truly bad teachers, and, worst of all, students who just aren’t learning.
There were several truly pathetic, disturbing stories told during last nights broadcast, but the one that was just inexcusable to me was the story of a 17 year old inner city high school student. Despite the fact that he had been promoted year after year, this kid barely had the reading skills of a first grader, and the school system he was didn’t seem to care about the fact that he was about to graduate with even being able to read a children’s book. They took this boy to a local Sylvan Learning Center for a remedial reading class, and within six weeks, he was doing something that 11 years of public education had left him unable to do —- reading. If that alone isn’t an indictment of the failure that our education system has become, I don’t know what is.
So, what’s the solution ? There are many things that could be done. Allow parents to choose the school their children go to, even if it happens to be a public school. Force schools to compete with each other so that the product they are supposed to produce, educated children, actually improves. As last night’s report showed, it works in many parts of Europe and there’s no reason it couldn’t work here. It would also help if the stranglehold that the teacher’s unions have over the profession were reduced —– the most disgusting story last night was the story of a teacher in New York who had been convicted of inappropriate sexual contact with a student three years ago who still has not been fired and continues to receive his salary from the city. Why is he still there ? Its all thanks to a union contract that makes it impossible to fire teachers.
The subject of America’s failing education system is something that makes the headlines on a regular basis. Every ten years or so, a Presidential commission releases a report detailing how bad things are. In reality, though, nothing is ever done to address the root causes of the failure. Until that is done, America’s schools continue to deserve to get a failing grade.
Technorati Tags: school choice, Education, vouchers, Public Education
