Public Education

There is a huge debate going on about public education in this country, and instead of focusing on the quality of education, the debate seems to be centered on cost. In my opinion the debate should be on cost vs. results, as I am the single parent of my 13 year old son, and this debate is very important to me.
There are two types of public schools in this country, one is the traditional public schools that operate within a given district,
 and has many levels of administration from the individual school principle upward, to the Director of Education in any given state. This form with all it's administrative layers is an almost universal failure.

The other form of public schools are actually quasi public/private schools, that have non-profit status, and a much lower number of administrators, who have a much greater latitude, and actually perform well. I am talking about my favorite type of public education, the Charter School. I would like to discuss both types of public education with you.

The first public school in America was actually founded 153 years before the signing of the US Constitution, and is also the oldest public high school in America. This is the Boston Latin School in Boston Massachusetts, which has kept its standards of excellence over the years, and currently ranks #38 of the top 100 schools in the US.

In 1642, just seven years after the Boston Latin School was founded, the Massachusetts Bay Colony made getting a proper education compulsory, and the public school system was born in the Colonies, with the various other Colonies passing their own version of compulsory education laws in the mid 1600s.

While they had indeed founded the public school system, the Colonies did not make education free, the schools were paid through a combination of tuition, and charities, free education wouldn't come until much later.

By the time of the Revolutionary War most of the public schools had become elite private academies, but with the the end of the war, a new emphasis was placed on education, and once again children being educated was at the forefront of peoples minds, and of course the public education system was reborn, only this time with the education being paid for by taxes.

The debate over taxes being used to fund education in this country is not a new one, and goes as far back as the late 1700s, when the rich did not want to pay taxes to aid the poor get an education, (sound familiar? It is the basis of the debate raging in the US right now. The rich don't want to pay for education, and they make it seem like the schools are the reason the country is broke, but in actuality the problem would not exist if the rich hadn't sent all the manufacturing overseas), and it is a debate that will rage until the end of time.

The education system in this country kept progressing over the years, and branching out from a basic Parochial type education, into math, science, history etc., and while the education being taught was expanded upon, the quality of what was being taught expanded with it.

The emphasis on children being educated kept being pushed, as did compulsory education laws, until thirty of the states required children aged eight to fourteen years to attend school, so they could attain at least an eighth grade level of education, by 1900, and by 1940 something very uniquely American happened, nearly 40% of all adults in the United States had achieved a high school diploma. This was something the rest of the world could not boast, and it made America #1 worldwide for standard of education, a statistic that has taken a drastic hit over the last few years, and left America, the richest country in the world, with an educational standing of 17th, (yes I said 17th!), in the developed world.

In 2002 President George W. Bush signed the No Child Left Behind Act, (NCLB), into law, and as it turns out, sounded the death knell for the public education system in this country. The NCLB required standardized testing within a state for that state to continue receiving education funding from the federal government, but the law was unfunded, and actually hurt the individual States' ability to teach their children. Now instead of teaching using a full and rich curriculum to educate our children, teachers began to teach to the standardized their state had dreamed up. Which of course brought the quality of education down overall, and made our children woefully unprepared for a post secondary education.

With the advent of the NCLB educators were made to focus on the low performing students with most of a schools resources being used up in title one, and special education projects, (and teachers teaching down to lower performing students), with little or no resources being used to on the high achievers. This has of course made our standard of education slip in the developed world, and has led to more slothful students. I use the term slothful, as it take on average five years for an American student to complete a four year degree.

The failing of our public school system should not be taken as some sort of malignment of the educators in the system, their are many factors behind this failure, the least of which are the teachers who work on a daily basis to try and make our children into better human beings.

The failure lies in the Federal Government for becoming involved in States rights in the first place, and trying to decide educational levels in any given state on a Federal level. In the inner cities the failure lies in communities that allow rampant gang activities and violence, there is the homeless problem to factor in, and hunger, which also play an active part in that failure. When a child is constantly worried about where he is going to sleep or if he's going to have anything to eat, he has very little time to focus on his studies. And finally, parents are partially to blame in the failure of the public school system as well. As parents  we must be willing to spend an hour or so a day helping our children with their studies, and providing a positive influence for their lives.

All is not lost though, there are the Charter Schools I mentioned earlier in this article.

Charter Schools are a form of public school that are run based on a charter granted by the state, and paid for out of state coffers,  and through charities, and private funding, rather than through property taxes, and are only paid for the number of students enrolled in the school at any given time.

The state funding for a Charter School is generally calculated at 61% of the funding per student that a typical public school receives, and Charter Schools are held to strict accountability as far as funding goes. What I mean by this is Charter Schools have to operate within their funding, as they are not allowed to raise taxes for extra funds, and are not allowed to operate on negative funding like their traditional public school counterparts.

Charters are a much better choice than traditional public schools, as they are not bound by the same rules, and red tape that binds traditional schools. A Charter School is run based on the Charter Law of the state they are in , and have much more flexibility with their hiring practices, their curriculum, and have a much better teacher to pupil ratio than most public schools, as Charters set that ratio, and put students wishing to enroll on a waiting list if that ratio is achieved.

In the public school system there are several tiers of administration that hamper the effectiveness of educators to get much needed supplies or materials. Once the teacher identifies the item or items needed, she takes the list to the school principle, who forwards it to the Superintendent, who forwards it to the School Board, ad nauseum infintum, until it eventually makes it way to the top level, where a decision is made then handed back down, this decision can take up to a year or two at times. This is not the case with a Charter School. In a Charter the teacher identifies the need, takes it to the principle, who is often on the board of directors and can often make the decision by himself and get the supplies right away, and generally if he cannot make that decision, he is in contact with those who can.

Charter Schools are the perfect blend of state supported education, and the free market system, as they are actually held accountable for what they teach. If the Charter isn't meeting the needs of the children in the school, parents enroll them in other schools, and the Charter loses funding for that child, which means it loses money for the school, something no intelligent businessman wants to see happen, so they provide the best education possible for your child.

Totally cutting education spending from your states' budget will only lead to a jobless future for your children, and will drive out all high tech industry and high finance from your state as well.
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