Wednesday, July 21, 2021

Public Schools Are Failing Our Nation

As someone who supports public schools and was a former public school teacher, it saddens me greatly to see public schools failing our nation.  The problem is that public schools run by left wing school boards, administrators, teachers and teacher unions no longer understand their mission, which should be to educate and not indoctrinate children with Socialist anti American ideology.  The United States spends more on public education than any other nation in the world, so this is not about money; yet academic results in many school districts are poor and way below world standards.  

Half the nation's kids cannot read, write, or do math at grade level.  Many of these kids primarily in our inner cities are way below grade level.  They leave school even if they manage to graduate without marketable job skills.  To be fair, these kids often come from dysfunctional families with no father in the home.   Drug and alcohol addiction are common in many families, which is also a real problem related to family stability.  As a country, we  need to deal with these issues; by arguing right from wrong.  However, the reality is that our public schools must deal with the hand they have been dealt.  They can't control what goes on at home.  All they can do is provide proper, no nonsense focused education to help break the cycle of poverty.

To do so, teachers and administrators must be held accountable for student's academic performance.  That means performance metrics and merit pay for success, both of which the teacher unions oppose.  Since we have 3 or 4 levels of education bureaucracy, wasting a lot of time and money, many of these administrative positions need to be eliminated to hire more teachers and pay them more money for top notch performance.  We also should end teacher tenure so that bad teachers can be FIRED.  

And, we have to stop all the identify politics and politically correct BS that is a waste of time in order to focus on hard core educational instruction and classroom discipline.  We have to support the traditional values of faith, family and country that made our country great.  Public Schools in the past were critical to creating one nation under God.  Somehow that goal has been lost. 

Since we have so many immigrants in our country whether legal or not, we must go back to the Melting Pot concept teaching English as a national unifier.  That does not mean lack of respect for people's national origins, or languages; but rather a recognition that we must be one people to compete with other countries.  Those that continue to divide our country along racial, religious, sexual orientation, or ethnic lines are destroying our country.  It has to stop.  Our Public Schools need to get back to the business of educating all children to make them well educated Americans.  

Clearly, that is not what is happening today.  If things don't change and soon, the School Choice movement is necessary to create competition and to allow inner city parents in particular the opportunity to get their kids into private schools in business to educate rather than indoctrinate.  

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