Education was a priority in my family. I was a schoolteacher, my dad was a superintendent of an area technical school, my brother was a high school guidance counselor, and my sister-in-law was head of a special-education program. We went into the field of education because we thought that we could make a difference.

How is education really faring today? Why do we keep hearing and reading that our schools in the U.S. are failing? Students from Shanghai, Korea, Finland, Hong Kong, Singapore, Canada, New Zealand, Japan, Australia, Netherlands, Belgium, Norway and more countries all score higher than American children in almost every area, especially mathematics, science and reading.[1]

Are you shocked by this statistic? This was unimaginable a generation ago.

We should all be asking ourselves: how did we let this happen, and how do we get out of this situation?

Ronald Reagan was concerned with our educational system in the 1980′s. He formed a commission to study this problem, and the underlying issue that was exposed was a rising tide of mediocrity.[2] This was thirty years ago, and not much has changed.

Mediocrity seems to have swept over our schools like a virus. Yet, we have doubled our spending (in inflation adjusted dollars) on k-12 public education. According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, only one-third or fewer of eighth-grade students were proficient in math, science or reading. And ACT, the national organization that administers college-admissions tests, discovered that 76% of high-school graduates “were not adequately prepared academically for first-year college courses.”[3]

Another study revealed mediocrity as well. A Global Report Card (GRC) was developed to compare academic achievement in math and reading between 2004 and 2007 for U.S. school districts to the average achievements in a set of 25 countries with developed economies. Compared to students in these countries, we did not fare too well. View the results for your district here: http://globalreportcard.org.

It’s often assumed that students in affluent suburban districts are getting an excellent education. The GRC study found that while these suburban towns may have outperformed their urban neighbors, they did not do as well in international comparisons. Relative to the GRC’s global comparison group here’s how a few affluent communities performed in math:

* White Plains, NY was only at the 39th percentile

* Grosse Point, MI was at the 56th percentile

* Evanston, IL was at the 48th percentile

* Montgomery County, MD at the 50th percentile

* Fairfax, VA at the 49th percentile

* Shaker Heights, OH at the 50th percentile

* Lower Merion, PA at the 66th percentile

* Ladue, MO at the 62nd percentile

* Plano, TX at the 64th percentile[4]

These communities are all among the wealthiest in the United States. All of them are overwhelmingly white and thought to be elite. But most of them are barely keeping pace with the average students in other developed countries.

Should we be satisfied that much of our education today is indoctrination rather than instruction? Or should our students be encouraged to use critical thinking skills and therefore be allowed to express an opinion? Take the case of Hunter Rogers, a high school student from North Carolina. He recently expressed his thoughts during a classroom dialogue when he compared President Obama and GOP candidate Mitt Romney on the subject of bullying. When Rogers pointed out in class that President Obama also bullied someone in his youth just as Mitt Romney, his teacher began chastising him and told him he was not allowed to disrespect the President.[5]

This teacher was suspended (with pay) for her behavior, which was captured on video. The school district issued a statement saying that they expect “all students and employees to be respectful in the school environment and for all teachers to maintain professionalism in the classroom.”[6]

Is the school district missing the point here? Is the point professionalism or indoctrination in the classroom? Are more and more teachers teaching from their personal viewpoints or are they encouraging students to gather information, think critically, and come to their own conclusions?

The purpose of education should be to prepare students to compete in the world today. Do we want our students to simply be indoctrinated with certain viewpoints, or do we want our students to grow up and be able to draw conclusions on their own? Should we continue to allow indoctrination in our schools or should we encourage our young people to come to conclusions about government spending, the environment, a free-market system, the economy, etc. on their own?

So, what can we do? We could stay mediocre, or, we can consider the advice of Dr. Roland Fryer, an economist who started The Educational Innovation Laboratory at Harvard. Dr. Fryer strongly believes in charter schools, but he believes that the following principles work for all schools:

* Hire effective principals and teachers in every school and get rid of the ineffective ones.

* Have more instructional time and extend the school day and year.

* Make use of data to drive instruction. Always be aware of students’ strengths and weaknesses, and when the students don’t learn it, re-teach it.

* Have high-dosage, individualized tutoring so every child can learn.

* Establish a culture of high expectations for all.[7]

Perhaps you have read this and feel it does not apply to you. You may not have children or your children may be grown and out of our educational system. However, we live in a global world today. This is a world of strongly motivated competitors, and our students need to become productive, independent adults who compete in the global marketplace. Future generations are depending on us to change our failing schools to make this happen. If we do not, we will only have ourselves to blame for our children’s future.

We must pull our schools, our children, and our educators out of the mire of mediocrity and into excellence in order to survive in a highly competitive industrialized world.

Be involved in your community. Vote in school board members who share your viewpoint for change. Find out how your school district is spending money. Vote in candidates who believe in quality education. Be instrumental in bringing back change that will prepare us for a better America.

Our schools are failing. Don’t fail our students!

Nearly everyone agrees that our public education system is deeply flawed, but there’s little agreement on exactly how to fix it.  This is the focus of ongoing debate, discussion and cries of alarm.  “A Nation At Risk,” [2] the now famous education reform report called the U.S. “At Risk” because of an educational system that has, in many ways, failed our students.

There is a long list of recognized problems in schools – too much focus on standardized tests; teachers teaching to the tests; a boring, fill-in-the-blank approach to teaching; the removal of the arts.  But for teachers hemmed in by mandated curriculum, a yearly schedule of required testing and burdensome federal education legislation, innovation isn’t usually practical.

In search of something better, groups of parents, along with teachers and community leaders, have carved an alternative out of the education landscape. Charter schools, which receive public money, are free from some of the rules that apply to traditional public schools.  In return, they are accountable for results, but they are also free to try new things and to pursue new ideas for how to best teach kids. [3]

There are successful charter schools all across the U.S.  According to the Center for Education Reform, today there are over 5,400 charter schools operating in 41 states and the District of Columbia. [4]

The Chicago International School, The Nationwide Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP) Schools, The Pacific Collegiate School in California – these charter schools all have students that regularly outperform their peers in traditional public schools. These are schools that may even be right in the same neighborhood!

So what’s the problem?  Charter schools, despite offering an innovative option for students, often meet with roadblocks thrown in their way by teachers’ unions and public school districts.

In 2008, Georgia passed a law that gave a state commission the power to approve and fund startup charter schools.  Seven large school districts challenged the law, and earlier this year the Georgia Supreme Court sided with the school districts and said that the law was unconstitutional.  The court decision claimed that charter schools did not fit the Constitution’s definition of “special schools” that receive funding, only counting schools that serve the disabled as “special schools”.  The Georgia Association of Educators Union celebrated the decision! [5] This type of legal gymnastics has played out in other states as well, creating obstacles to school choice.

Simply put, public school districts and teachers’ unions don’t want charter schools.  Why? The majority of charter school teachers are not unionized. [6]  The charter schools get money that would otherwise go to the traditional public schools, and by that, the teachers’ union.  So where there is a charter school, there are likely to be teachers not paying dues to the unions’ treasure chest.

Legitimate collective bargaining is not what’s at issue here. The problem is when the activity of school districts and teachers’ unions block educational choices.  Do you think that’s how our nation’s educational system should be controlled?  Should charter schools, which have been called the most “successful education reform in recent decades” [7] be free to try new educational approaches and tactics, or should the unions and educational bureaucrats limit our students?

The story of the teacher who couldn’t read has a happy ending.  John Corcoran went to a tutor at age 48 and learned to read.  He also became an advocate for literacy and education.  Today there are still kids who are struggling and failing in our schools, and unfortunately there are unions and school districts that fight against the very reforms that could bring solutions.

In the 2012 elections, we must look for candidates who know that teachers’ unions are not motivated by what’s best for the students.  Get involved in your area and look for the candidates who will support educational innovation and parents having a choice in where they send their children to school.

Our kids are worth it!
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Resources

[1] http://www.10news.com/news/15274005/detail.html

http://www.johncorcoranfoundation.com

[2] http://www2.ed.gov/pubs/NatAtRisk/risk.html

[3] http://www.edreform.com/in-the-states/

[4] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/16/charter-school-authorizer_n_862776.htm

http://gae2.org/content.asp?ContentId=1475

[5] The national charter school research project: http://www.ncsrp.rg/downloads/charter_unions.pdf

[6] http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704779704574555994244755948.html

“Today I have a message…to the children, the students, the workers, the masses, and to the bloodsuckers, the parasites, the vampires who are the capitalists of the world.” [1]  So reads a passage from a textbook used in the ethnic studies curriculum in Tucson, Arizona’s public schools.

That’s right, a reference to capitalist “parasites and vampires” in a public school textbook!

Students as young as 3^rd grade have been using this book in their Hispanic culture and history classes.  A poem in the same textbook says, “We have to destroy capitalism…The Declaration of Independence states that we the people have the right to revolution.”

In May 2011, angry parents confronted the Tucson school board about why their children were being taught from this anti-capitalist, anti-American textbook. [2]

One issue here is the confusion around the word “Capitalism.”  It has often been used incorrectly to describe systems of trade that are corrupt and unfair.  The true definition of Capitalism is a system of trade in which both parties believe they receive something of equal or greater value for what they gave up.

When it is truly capitalism, all trading partners are satisfied with the trade.  True Capitalism is not something that people must be taught; it is instinctive!  Throughout history people have been trading goods with each other. Even kids figure out that they can get something they want in a trade by giving up something that they have.

For the Hispanic students in Tucson, is it going to help or hurt them when their textbooks speak strongly against capitalism?  After all, the system of true capitalistic trade and the prosperity it brought to America is what drew many Hispanics here in the first place.

Adding to the controversy in Arizona, the Tucson school district is currently being challenged for violating an Arizona law banning classes that promote ethnic resentment.  While sitting in on a Chicano literature class, the superintendent of Arizona’s public schools noticed a picture of Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara on the wall, heard Benjamin Franklin being cast as a racist, and listened while the teacher taught the students from a textbook called “Pedagogy (Teaching) of the Oppressed.”

After the superintendent’s visit to the classroom his conclusion was, “These kids got it. They understood the framework that was being laid out — that Hispanics are the oppressed and Caucasians are the oppressors. That’s very troubling.” [3]

Hispanic students taking Mexican-American studies in Tucson’s public schools are being taught not only to hate capitalism, but also to view themselves as oppressed.  Instead of being taught to think independently, and to develop real critical thinking skills that would one day help them to succeed in a profession, they’re being conditioned to think of themselves as part of an oppressed group.

Critical thinking is a process that spells out the problem, checks assumptions, evaluates evidence, avoids guessing, and tests conclusions. [4]

A supporter of the ethnic studies program in Tucson accused those challenging the program of being “anti-intellectual.” [5]  However, his defense of the program reveals the core flaw with the ethnic studies classes – the students aren’t learning how to think critically!  The author points out that the students are learning “self-empowerment,” and that they regularly recite a poem in class that teaches, “I love you because I love myself.”

Also, while noting the importance of young Latinos “thinking critically,” the writer holds up as evidence of the impact of the ethnic studies classes the words of a current student, whose message is that we need to “learn to love each other.”  Does this sound like a student learning how to think or learning how to feel?

People truly become “empowered” when they develop their own unique abilities, learn how to solve problems, and can use these skills to provide for themselves and pursue their passions.  Is being conditioned to view yourself as a member of an oppressed group going to prepare you to become independent, self-reliant and productive?

The impact of this type of curriculum on students goes way beyond the classroom.  By encouraging students to think like an oppressed group that must fight the capitalistic system in our country, what results is a “nationwide nursery of government-dependent adults from which [progressive leaders] draw lifelong votes and income.” [6]

Since the 1960s American’s dependence on the government for their daily needs like housing, food and health care has grown steadily.  In 2010, 64.3 million people (20.9 percent of the total U.S. population) were receiving some level of government assistance. [7]

If our schools don’t prepare students with the skills needed to think for themselves and lead independent, productive adult lives, how many more will be added to the ranks of the government-dependent?

Our public schools play a powerful role in the intellectual and personal development of our children.  When it’s time to vote in 2012, remember that the future of our country as a strong and independent nation depends on future generations being creative problem solvers and strong leaders.  Support the candidates who will fight for excellence in education!