Posted by
C. L. Palmer on Tuesday, June 10, 2008 10:42:39 PM
First, let us be rid of the notion of school vouchers as a panacea. Allowing the government to fund private schools will also allow government to put strings on the money. Here's how it will go...
First, the government will give a generous voucher to any student who wishes to attend a private school. Public school students will flood the private schools.
As many of the rowdier and more unproductive begin to be expelled or disciplined, complaints will mount. Jesse Jackson will ride in like the cavalry. Lawsuits will be filed. Legislation will be drawn up.
Within three years, most private schools will have expanded to meet the new demand. They will be in hawk up to their eyeballs. They will be dependent on government funded students to meet their financial obligations.
Cognizant of this fact, Congress and the various state legislatures will enact "educational equality" laws, severely hampering the private schools. Corporal punishment will be virtually banned. Students with problem behavior will have to be kept on. Students who fail to meet educational goals will be considered a reflection of the private schools, not their own laziness. Funding cuts will be threatened if a private school fails to "turn these students around".
In short, the private schools will be turned into duplicates of today's public schools. This is inevitable. The only thing privatization will do is ruin the private schools.
Now, let us see what can and should be done to improve education.
1. Schools must be restructured, eschewing the traditional K-12 model. Students will instead be measured by ability zones. An end-of-year test will determine if a student has passed into the next ability zone. Schools will continue to be organized by age (for some fairly obvious reasons), but classes will be grouped by achievement. When an ability level (as indicated by a set of skills to be mastered) has been measurably and objectively passed, the student moves on. If a student fails to pass, he remains at the present level until he does.
2. Diplomas must not be given unless all required criteria have been met. Period. Those students who are simply unable or unwilling to meet the criteria should be given the opportunity for vocational training.
3. Vouchers should be given to students who fail to meet behavior requirements. Those students should be sent to military academies, in which corporal punishment is allowed and used often. Toilets will be cleaned, and many vocationally useful experiences will be gained.
4. Non-citizens should not be eligible to receive Pell grants or any other form of government aid for college expenses. It is quite foolish of us to pay a foreigner's way through college so he may then go home and steal American jobs using the training we provided for him.
5. All schools should be required to find out and report the citizenship and/or immigration status of all enrolled students and their parents. Any violations of U.S. immigration policy must be reported and acted upon for that school to remain funded.
6. A law should be passed limiting the expenditure of public school funds outside of the actual school site. Ninety-five percent of funds should be spent at the individual school level. This may be used to pay for teacher salaries, classrooms, textbooks and materials, upkeep and maintenance of the grounds, etcetera. The other five percent of the funds may be spent on administration outside of the individual school site. (You would be appalled at the paltry amount of money that makes its way toward educating the actual students in our country.)
7. Corporal punishment, in the form of forced labor, should be allowable at all U.S. schools.
8. A universal curriculum should be made available to any school that wishes to use it. This curriculum, designed by actual teachers, would enable those who use it to pass the proficiency tests at the end of the year.
If these eight steps were followed, education in this country would flower and bloom as never before. Will this occur? Not so long as lily-livered politicians place more value on their continued presence in the halls of power than in solving the nation's problems.