The idea of free public education is a fine one, a laudable goal, IF it’s carried out intelligently and well. It’s not.
Let’s begin with the seasonal nature of public education. The “summer break” began a hundred years ago with the necessity of childrens’ assistance with the crop harvest. I haven’t checked recently, but I grew up in a state that actually has farms, and no one I knew was needed on a farm during the summertime. In fact, many of the farmers were no longer needed on the farm at any time, efficiencies and mechanization making farming a larger-scale enterprise. It is time to give up the idea that kids “deserve a break” of three months every year and keep them going year-round, with perhaps three or four longer vacation periods (say, two or three weeks, max). The benefits of a three-month holiday do not come close to offsetting the negatives.
Oh, I can hear you saying “but the classrooms aren’t air-conditioned.” Well, I guess the little darlings will just have to deal. Yes, even in the South. Who was the braintrust who built schools without air-conditioning in the South, anyway?
I can also hear you saying “the teachers need a break to plan, and organize, and rest up” and other various and sundry excuses. To which I respond: why are teachers the only group that requires 25% of their year as vacation to plan things? I don’t get 25% of my year to “plan” and “rest,” and neither do any other groups outside of teaching that I can think of. Everyone else seems to be chugging along just fine. Plus, even with all this “planning” and “resting” and so forth the vast majority of public schools seem to still be failing, even by their own knee-high goals.
Which, of course, leads us to one of the two root problems within the larger problem: the teachers unions. Judging simply by the vitriol the unions spew about charter schools and vouchers (both of which work, of course, and save money at the same time) the teacher unions are well aware their model is broken, vast numbers of their teachers unable or unwilling to teach, not to mention overpaid and overstaffed. Did I cover everything there? Methinks thou dost protest too much. Ideas such as seniority-based pay or LIFO staffing and a layer-cake of overstuffed “administrators” are over. Please step out of the way and let the market tell you what the model should be.
Which brings us of course to the largest problem with public education: it’s run by the government. Nothing the government does, by definition, is done efficiently or well. This includes educating our youths. Turning out uneducated drones with no curiosity, no ability to think for themselves, no creativity, no personality, least-common-denominator voters is what the present system does well. I’m not saying there are no exceptions; miraculously, some manage to run this gauntlet of mediocrity and apathy and, on their own, not only actually learn things, but somehow figure out a way to prosper intellectually despite the smothering lackadaisical government figureheads in the front of their classrooms. I have no idea how it happens. Law of large numbers, I guess.
Let me add that I went to public school through high school, and it was painful and it was an immense waste of my time. Time that I will never get back, experiences I would never relive for all the gold at the NY Fed. What I could have achieved with an actual education I will never know. I do know that because of the schools I attended, I was never challenged and thus never had to develop any sort of study habits, habits which might have come in handy when I faced private school-educated peers in college who didn’t seem to be drowning in the deluge of material at the private college I attended.
Enough ranting, time for the solution:
1) Take the limits off charter schools. Let the market decide if a charter school is a good idea or not.
2) Give taxpayers with children a voucher, good at ANY school of their choosing, or even as a direct tax credit if they choose to homeschool, for precisely HALF what the district spent the prior year per pupil.
3) When the bad public school’s student population drops to less than half the original population, shut it down. Consolidate the remaining students at the remaining schools. Sell or lease the empty facilities to the charter schools, if they’ll take them. Fire or re-assign the teachers, but the teacher population has to shrink overall by the number at the failed school (ie, if they are re-assigned, another teacher will have to be fired in order to keep them – see, I anticipated the unions there).
4) Don’t negotiate with the teacher’s union. This is not a negotiation. This is a broken, failed system, and the teachers unions are culpable. If their members want to keep teaching, they’re welcome to interview at the charter schools for a new position. With their experience in education and seniority, that should be a piece of cake, right? Particularly with all the “planning” they’ve been doing with their summers since college?
5) Educate year-round, 225 school days up from the standard 170 or whatever it is now. That gives our youths five weeks of holiday a year, two or three weeks more than any working adult on the planet except the French. Last I checked, we weren’t France, so I think we can handle it. Break it up however you want through the year.
With a plan like this, I predict that within ten years over 50% of public school students will be in a charter school. Scratch that. FIVE years. The other half of students will be in a vastly different reality in public school. Municipalities will save billions. Taxpayers (aka “voters”) will save billions, and their children will actually get an education. And the bad teachers will have all the time they want to “rest” and “plan.” [I think I've identified the only losers in this little plan of mine.]