The Cost of Education

I have recently been looking at the education system in America, and the picture is not a pretty one. I don't want to seem particularly negative here, but this is where I see the education system of the US today:

• Government regulations at the state and federal level stifle discipline, creativity, competition, and prevent any real effort at improvement.
• Taxation that creates funding levels that should provide plenty of financial support (my local school district in Toledo spends over $10,000.00 per pupil, per year); but never seem to provide enough (even with supplemental income provided through the state-organized gambling more commonly known as The Lottery).
• Local governments that seem to be in bed with the Teacher's union. With the two of them feeding off of each other in a rather disgusting bit of symbiosis, resisting any change in the failed status quo of education.
• Teacher's unions doing what unions do best, getting a better deal for their members, even if it at the expense of "the children".
• Teachers' contracts with more twists and turns than the Monaco race track and rivaling the tax code for sheer bulk and complexity.
• School boards that are handcuffed by the federal regulations on one side and the contracts that they have signed in the past on the other; who have become at best apathetic, and at worst corrupt.
• Parents who won't or can't take enough time to find out what's actually happening in the schools that there children attend, but complain about their children's education and what they have to pay for it.
• Kids who can't excel in the current system, either because we don't measure success or are unwilling to accept the achievement of the few as being unfair to the rest.
• Kids who fail in the system and are knowingly passed along anyway as a self-esteem issue, allowing a small failure to snowball into a lifetime of ignorance and illiteracy.
• The small part of the system that is working (privately funded education, either through religious based schools, home schooling, or charter schools) being written off or demonized in spite of their successes.

The sheer momentum that has been allowed to build up over the years is like a super tanker with a crazy, drunken captain (can we all say Exxon Valdez?). It can't slow down, stop, or even change direction without a huge amount of effort; and that effort will never be made because the one at the controls has lost his mind and is out of control himself.

Now I grew up in the dark ages, when all children were forced to walk to school in the snow year round, up hill, both ways. Actually I am a product of a mostly Catholic education. Eight years of Catholic grade school, three years of Catholic High School, and year of Catholic College (DePaul, for those interested). The interesting part of this personal process is that I spent my freshman year (9th grade) in a public high school. The lack of discipline, disinterest of the teachers, 'dumbing' down of the curriculum, and time wasted following federal mandates almost ended my ability to be educated right there and then. It took me three years of fairly intense effort, while being challenged at an unprecedented level, to bring my GPA back up to a respectable level. Even then, the damage done caused me to place 17th in my graduating class. (Of course this is when we competed for such things instead of simply patting every student on the fanny.)

It was only in the disciplined and rigorous environment of parochial schools that I found the framework necessary to excel at learning. It was only in an environment that separated students by their ability to learn that I was able to be exposed to a curriculum not designed for the lowest common denominator. It was only when I was able to be challenged by knowledge outside of the basics and allowed to stretch myself to the limits of my abilities that I was able to discover what they were and how much fun learning could be. Now my experience may not be typical, but I suspect that it could be. Likewise, I don't have all of the answers for the ills of the public education system; but it is obvious that as analogies go, this patient is hanging on by life support. Only drastic change will hold any hope of bringing it back from the deaths-edge coma that it is in.

So here are my solutions:

• Abolish the NEA and every other federal bureaucracy that has to do with education. This is far too important to allow the government to experiment in more failed social dynamics. The only way to understand and serve the needs of a community is to put the process back in the hands of the community that the process serves.
• We need to get the government bureaucracy, the constant regulation, and union restrictions out of education entirely. Too much of the money that could be spent on education is spent on administration instead. Eliminate the paperwork that shows compliance with government rules and regulations and the people required to fill it out and put the money spent back into true education, and you cannot help but make the process more efficient.
• Take taxation of of school funding. It is unfair and tantamount to theft to charge people for services that they do not need or receive, even in the common good.
• Give people back this tax money and let them purchase the education for their children that they want. Let public and private education compete on a level playing field and "the children" cannot help but be the winner.
• We need to put parental choice back into the education process, choosing the amount and the type schools that they want for their children. Who knows better than they what the talents and abilities of those children are, and by what right do we choose to usurp it.
• We need to bring back classroom discipline and competition. No one can learn to succeed without facing and overcoming challenges. They provide true self-esteem and life lessons that will serve them well in their future.
• We need to separate children in school based on their ability to learn. As painful as it might be to their egos, we cannot hold all students back in the name of equality and fairness. Those who can learn more should be given the opportunity to do so. Such an opportunity is their right in a free society and that society will benefit from it.
• We need to build schools to be run like businesses, which in fact they are. They are businesses that provide a valuable service, but need to be held accountable for the service that they provide like any other.
• We need to hire and pay teachers well, but like the employees of any other business, hold them accountable for the job they do. Pay scales should be based on ability and performance, not the number of their degrees or their tenure in service. Let teachers compete for better pay like the rest of the world and they and their students will benefit.

The true cost of education is not that of the value of the money we spend on it, but the futures that we jeopardize by doing it improperly. We need to step up and take control of the ship before it's too late. In case you hadn't noticed, there are icebergs ahead.