Failed Education System

Public Education is overpriced and underperforming. They won’t reduce costs or improve outcomes until we make public schools non-union and close the Federal Department of Education as a signal to school districts that the job is theirs to do. Our bloated public education systems needs to be drastically reorganized or disbanded. Disturbed, abused and low academic achievers need to be together and not sprinkled around in each classroom. In Singapore, all students take a test and must pass it to move to 7th grade. Those who do not pass are sent to occupational education to learn to become taxi drivers, maids, housekeepers, etc. We need to get serious.

Technologies are available and have been deployed elsewhere to improve instruction and lower cost. These involve large class sizes with DVD lectures by the best teachers and internet courses. We need a 30% reductions in school employee headcount. The Public Education headcount and expense increase we’ve seen over the past 40 years is not the answer. It’s exactly like government; the more expensive it gets, the worse the outcomes.


At the beginning of this recession, the private sector reduced headcount and costs as demand fell. Our productivity increases have strengthened us. The public sector is still wringing their hands over cutting staff or raising taxes. The answer is to cut staff and costs to match expected tax revenues and implement effective strategies.

The content taught and level of teacher competency are abysmal. Smart teachers become unhappy working in a dumb, bureaucratic , godless, politicized system. Our out-of-control, evolving anti-discrimination laws coupled with the Marxist invasion and unionization of teachers is a train wreck. We rank low globally on every scale. Barely literate teachers are sent from teacher’s colleges, armed with their socialist orientation, certifications and union cards to indoctrinate public school students in all Progressive myths. Armies of Marxists and Atheists are recruited from our graduate schools to indoctrinate college students. All of our real math and engineering students are here on student visas from foreign countries.

The text book monopoly is a disaster. Like lemmings, every year, school districts run to the sea of ineffective text books. Text books are written by indoctrinated graduate students who never really learned the subject matter. They are wordy, boring and unhelpful. They sell for over $50 each. School Superintendents must demand better teaching materials. Physics Made Simple is a good example of a straightforward helpful text. The internet has better material than our current textbooks. The material used by home schooling moms seems to work. I would replace current textbooks with the home school material. This should happen, one school district at a time.

Because indoctrination has replaced education, too many courses increasingly offer no useful knowledge or skill. It is not only possible to graduate with a bachelor’s degree and no employable skills, it is probable. Most black studies, women’s studies, criminal justice, environmental studies and art history graduates remain in the retail, service or clerical jobs they held as students, or go to work for the government. Marketing, communications and business graduates become administrative assistants or remain in retail. Environmentalism is not an occupation, it’s a religion. Accounting is an occupation. The global warming hoax has given “political science” a whole new meaning.

Waste in the public school system rivals the waste Medicare fraud and the rest of the government-run operations. Millions are spent building new schools because state legislatures specify the facilities as elementary, middle school and high school. This flies in the face of moving demographics. Schools close, students are transferred to nearby schools not in their neighborhoods and new schools are built. What makes sense is to build generic school buildings that can be retrofitted to change from elementary to middle school to high school. The amount of dollars in school owned goods stored in school warehouses should be publicized and reviewed. Millions of dollars are spent on buildings and equipment rather than instruction. These are large bureaucracies with huge budgets. Public schools maintain unsustainable defined benefit pension plans and should convert them to defined contribution plans Home and Internet schooling doesn’t require school buildings, staff, guards and buses. Home schooled students do better than public school students in part because they can move at their own pace and they work faster. Public schools are overpriced and produce poor results.

In colleges, the progressive political agenda dominates many departments; only progressives need apply. Nursing and Social Work Schools insist on a strong pro-abortion and statist orientation as part of their admissions process. Biology and Environmental majors are pre-indoctrinated to believe that government jobs are good, Darwin hung the moon, God is a myth and global warming is real. Private universities are no better off. They chase student aid cash and enroll anybody who can sign a loan document. These students struggle, but they need to keep their tuition flowing because these poor students are critical to school revenues. They live on government supplied financial aid dollars. Harvard, it appears, trains lawyers to ignore the Constitution. Nobody at Yale suggests there might be a Progressive political-industrial complex, based on favored treatment in exchange for their silence and campaign contributions, we should be concerned about.

We need to repeal the current case law governing the separation of church and state. We need to remove the political indoctrination material from our schools. It is a destructive waste of time. Schools spend too much time trying to keep from being sued. It’s time to tell offended minorities that majority rules. Parochial schools don’t have security guards and metal detectors, so why should public schools bear this expense. State Lawmakers need to be wary of state laws that saddle school districts with ridged school construction restrictions This makes construction an expensive never-ending sand hole because of shifting demographics. Lists of subjects to be “covered” for graduation is like the minimum wage and gives schools an excuse to graduate the brain-dead. There are some things government should have never taken on, and schools, it appears, is one of them.

Lower current tax revenues and the need to cut costs should motivate legislatures and school superintendents to reduce headcount and adopt cost-effective changes. These changes must be planned and well implemented and can start one class at a time based on the identification of good substitute materials. Teachers with the worst student performance and surplus staff should be cut by 30%. Class sizes should be increased. Students should be grouped by competency level, so classes can be tailored to their abilities. When classes are too diverse in their abilities, teachers can laps into thinking their job is just to cover the material and no more and do this at a middle pace to bore the bright students and lose the poor students.

Comprehensive exams should determine the student’s competency level. Students should not be advanced to the next class until they have a good grasp of the material in the last class as evidenced by their exam score. Extracurricular activities should not be eliminated. The students who are not performing well academically, may be good athletes, musicians, gymnasts and actors. Good extracurricular performance can make up for the lack of academic talent. They can and should involve participation fees where needed.

Beware of teachers’ unions who resist the needed cuts and changes, but who suggest diversionary schemes. They’ve not been right so far. We need to stop seeing education as a jobs program or we will continue to see the same dismal results. Beware of Democrats (always).