Education in Campbell County
BY Joe Muse
I was just sitting back and pondering schools now that I have a little one. What am I going to do about schools? I was educated in the Campbell County school system and felt that I received a more than adequate education. Part of that was the effort on my part. Things have changed since I graduated in 1990 for the public school systems and not in a postitive way. I will give my opinion in three parts over the next few weeks about the school sytems and different areas they can improve.
The United States spends more than any other country on education, around $499 billion (2005 Department of Education statistics). You would think this would guarantee a superb school system. We spend over $9,000 a child, whereas the average private school tuition is only $6,779. This of course is an average, and varies by state. This tells an interesting fact. Private schools typically produce better results than public and they can be run more cost effectively. Yet the government attempts to throw more money at a broken system, and wonders why the results are not better. I feel a good example of today's public school spending is to take a pyramid, and turn it upside down where the large base is on top. That represents bureaucracy and the point at the bottom represents the teacher in the classroom. The top is the well paid bureaucrats in central office and the money trickles down to the teacher that earns very little. Typically the teacher also ends up spending money out of his or her own pocket.
I am not an expert on education. I have a feeling from the president to the congress they are not either. Looking at this from strictly a business stand point, if you get better results and it is cheaper for private education, then the government should step aside and send the money to the private industry and the country, and the children would be far better off. If not then dissect the model private schools use to achieve their objectives and toss aside the union controlled education system.
Next week I will talk about the Unions and their impact on education.
Comments or Questions? Xanthlore at yahoo.com
Education Part 2
By: Joe Muse
Well here I go again, my second round at talking about the problems in education. Disclaimer: I am not an expert, or even remotely close,(though the experts aren't doing such a great job anyway). I'm just observing from someone who navigated the system myself as a student at a different time, when we might have lagged a little behind other nations, but not faltered as we have today
. I was talking to a teacher who was talking about the special needs kids in her class take up so much of her time, that it is hard to teach the regular kids. I did a double take. Special needs kids mixed with regular kids. When I was in school the special needs had their own class rooms, the intermediate kids had their own class rooms, and the advanced kids had their own classes. This way the kids could keep pace and learn at a level on par with their peers. The thought of mixing special needs kids seems to explain why the United States has taken a staggering leap back from other industrialized nations. My friend that is a teacher described the nightmare blending the special needs kids in with the other kids was. Some people may think they should be so they are not treated differently, but let me detail for you why I think this is wrong.
If I were say a normal kid, who wanted to be lazy, all of a sudden I could pretend to be a special needs kid, who has to do far less home work. If you grouped the special kids together, yes their is a certain stigma, but realistically most of these kids won't even know the difference. This stigma will keep the normal kids from being lazy and pretending to be special needs to get out of home work. The blending of special needs severely handicaps teachers, so talented young men and women may never develop themselves, because the teachers have to give so much effort to the special needs kids.
Who ever had this idea of blending the kids, may have had the right intentions, but let's face it. Different people in different walks of like will excel, and others will fail. To set a kids expectation that he will be treated the same the rest of his life is cruel when he gets out into the real world and experiences the let down. The education system in my mind is being run by people who probably would love for us to live in a socialist society and everyone at every phase in their life be equal. That obviously worked so well for the U.S.S.R. We truly need to get back to basics, the kids should be separated according to ability, obviously when I was going to school the scores showed that worked better.
Want to comment or complain? Xanthlore at yahoo.com
Education Part 3
In my previous articles I talked about different reasons our school system is failing. This article will take on teacher unions. I think teachers are great, and under compensated. I have many friends that are teachers, and I feel they are poorly treated and face challenges that people in a private work environment would not have to face. Teacher unions on the other hand I have a different opinon on.
The Program for International Student Assessment compared the educations of American 15-year-olds with those of their peers in 56 other countries in December 2007. The results are Horrendous. In science literacy, American students placed 21st out of 30 developed countries. The U.S. finished just above the Slovak Republic.
In math literacy, the U.S. placed 25th out of 30, performing worse than third-world Azerbaijan. (Fittingly, due to printing errors on the U.S. test, American students' reading scores were not tabulated.)
What has happened? How could these scores be so low? The U.S. is still a global leader in countless industries, from high-tech to Hollywood. The answer is simple: Teacher unions.
While American businesses are plowing ahead into the twenty-first century, our public schools are stuck in the archaic systems. America has a shortage of schools that can prepare American students for the modern workforce, and our economic edge is steadily eroding every year.
The unions support an education system that cripples America's ability to compete in the global marketplace. The National Education Association, the American Federation of Teachers, and their thousands of affiliated unions have hijacked weak willed politicians with promises of votes in return for politicians hiding their eyes to a serious problem..
The unions have vested interests in maintaining the educational status quo, even if it makes us lag behind countires like Azerbaijan.
Teachers unions , no matter how badly they function, don't shut down, unlike their counterparts in other industries. That's why the unions oppose any attempt to introduce competition into education. Looking back at my previous article on how well private schools perform, you would imagine we would move in that direction, but again teacher unions can flex their muscles and make the politicians bow to political pressure.
In Detroit a teachers union organized a walk-out that derailed a $200 million private offer to fund charter schools in that troubled city. (The new charter schools would not have been unionized. This means they would have competed with Detroit's sub-par public education system.)
Aside from this, competition between schools isn't the only competition unions want to stifle. Competition among individual teachers, with incentives for the best performers, also undermines the unions' chief selling point, collective bargaining.
In most other professions, people are paid based on their merits. Why would the union want to negotiate their salaries through a system that collectively lumps talented, energetic teachers together with poor performers doing the bare minimum?
Pretty much the union is steeped in seniority rather than qualifications. The union doesn't actually care about our children's education. They are caught up in power and positioning. The good teachers would make a lot more in a system that based pay on qualifications and actual teaching ability. The bad teachers, well, they would improve or be replaced.
Let me give you a few examples of how teacher unions pick seniority over qualifications, (check out this site for a lot of information about teacher unions, Teachers UnionsFacts)
Cathy Nelson was named Minnesota's Teacher of the Year. However, she was laid off when her school's enrollment declined -- because of her union's contract, which required the most junior teachers to be let go first, regardless of ability. How fair is that?
Another teacher, Sarah Gustafson, was let go from her position the day after she was named to the Florida Educator Hall of Fame. She was lower on the totem poll so she was let go over teachers who had seniority, but lacked her talent.
This is a pattern for the unions who wield power supreme in the classroom. They do very little for the actual teaching conditions, but the people at the top of the food chain reap high salaries and untold perks.
They allow through the power of tenure to make it nearly impossible to get rid of unfit teachers, and keep the top teachers from truly excelling. If we truly want to take back our school systems, the power of the union must be broken. If we don't take back our school systems we will be falling behind more third world counties and have our national security severely compromised.