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The National Shame of our Public Schools As February came to an end, a page one story in my local daily was headlined, "Retired teachers told: Medical bills on state." In what was described as "a side deal with the state teacher’s union" New Jersey’s Governor Jon Corzine had agreed that the taxpayers would pick up their share of the bill cited at $53.6 billion! These kinds of sweetheart deals exist everywhere state teacher’s unions wield the kind of political power that exists in New Jersey. Political pundits have concluded that, if the National Education Association—a union—ever deserted the Democrat Party, it could no longer exist. They are the volunteers and much of the money that keeps it going.
One report was the National Assessment of Educational Progress. It was created in 1964 when Congress concluded that American students were lagging behind those in other nations. They still are. The only difference today is that they are getting passing and better grades because no school wants to be deemed a failure under George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind, enacted in 2002. We were assured it was going to be the cure for all our educational woes. Instead, five years later, critics say that No Child Left Behind is the source of the problem. Have a problem with high standards? Don’t want a school to be labeled a failure? Just lower the standards! The definition of "proficient" is such that not one single State achieved the standards set by the National Assessment of Educational Progress, while at the same time showing that their kids were somehow doing just great. Why we even have a federal Department of Education defies a decent answer. Ronald Reagan took office with the intention of eliminating it from the federal bureaucracy. By contrast, George W. Bush put it in charge of how education is to be conducted coast to coast, thereby insuring that this, along with just about everything else the federal government is responsible for, will be done poorly. The Department of Education is the FEMA of education. Got a crisis? They will study it to death and still not come forth with any other answer than to test, test, and test! The National Assessment of Educational Progress, often referred to as the nation’s report card, has been flunking teachers and administrators for decades. Meanwhile, Leave No Child Behind comes up for review in Congress this month. Does anyone think the people elected to public office, many of whom are the products of our failed educational systems, are going to find a way to improve it? Leave No Child Behind currently requires reading and math tests annually in grades three through eight and once in high school. The Bush administration wants to add more testing in high school. U.S. News and World Report recently noted that, "Two top Senate Democrats have introduced legislation that would require the federal government to define the standards against which all states would be measured." That’s what we need, a new definition! New federal standards! More tests! By now, anyone who was blessedly home schooled or has any common sense knows this is not the answer. Something is horribly wrong when just one-fourth of twelfth graders score as proficient or better in math and three-fourths were deemed "proficient" readers at the basic level. One assumes this means they can read a paragraph without having to move their lips! Less than half, forty-three percent of the white students scored at or above "proficient" levels on the reading test, compared with twenty percent of Hispanics and sixteen percent of black students. Putting aside the more than half of the white students that were not deemed "proficient", no one can tell me that Hispanics and blacks possess brains that cannot, if properly taught, master these fundamental skills. That, however, brings us to the crux of the problem of education in America. The teachers. Thanks to the unions, it is virtually impossible to fire an incompetent teacher. Merit has nothing to do with teaching. Longevity is the name of the game. And the multitudinous layers of "administrators", the top among whom receive salaries that rival and surpass those employed in private industry, are part of problem too. America needs another Revolution, an Education Revolution. Parents must rally, school by school, to wrest back control over their local schools from the teacher’s unions. They must find a way to hire people who are actually competent in their subject areas. States must demand real standards for graduation from their colleges of education. The Education Revolution can begin by writing to your Senator or Representative in Washington, D.C., and demanding that No Child Left Behind be allowed to go inactive. Then you will have fifty laboratories, the States, in which new curriculums can be tested to see what works and what doesn’t. That knowledge will be shared and the overall quality of education will improve. And maybe students will not have to attend schools that require armed guards at the doors and patrolling the hallways to maintain some semblance of civilization. Maybe students would not be just so much sausage to process through what passes for schools these days. The Center needs your donation to maintain this website and our communications programs. Help the Center to keep you informed in ways the mainstream media never will. If you prefer, send your check payable to The Caruba Organization, 28 West Third St., Suite 1321, South Orange, NJ 07079. Thank you! Imagine yourself as a winged creature, free to fly, free to soar above the Earth, moving effortlessly from continent to continent, to hover over great cities and tiny villages, crossing oceans, crossing deserts, visiting the North and South Poles. That would be the really big picture, wouldn’t it? If you could do that, what would you see? For one thing you’d see a planet with an astonishing population of six billion human beings, more than at any other time in history. For them, it is not a clash of economic systems that matters, but having enough money to pay for food, having a clean place in which to live, and having a life that involves family. Rich or poor, in most of the world television shows them what others have. What they want, however, is their own definition of comfort.
In places like the African and Asian continent, masses of the population live in an unimaginable poverty, often in nations that are resource-rich, but run by horrid people. What they have are a family and a tribe. There are often invisible barriers to everything beyond that. Family and tribe also describe much of the Middle East as well. Mostly, though, as you soar above the world, despite the disease and poverty, there is peace. An astounding amount of peace exists throughout the world. What "wars" exist are relatively low-key affairs. While Americans debate their military presence in Iraq, obsessed with daily events there and eager to leave the Middle East, much of that nation functions without bloodshed. When you circle the region, it is clear that the "wars" in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Lebanon are relatively small, individual firefights, not massive armies moving back and forth across the terrain. The weapon of choice is the individual suicide bomber. They are surrounded by neighbor states free of warfare. When you fly in wider circles, the war that transfixes the news in America recedes as one goes in any direction. Look down and see Turkey is at peace. Europe is at peace. Russia is at peace. China is at peace. India is at peace. Southeast Asia, Australia, and, crossing the Pacific, the whole of South America is at peace. Where are the wars? In terms of how war was once defined there are none. My generation grew up in a world at war. America put massive armies, navies and air forces in Europe and in the Pacific. Not just whole cities, but whole continents saw destruction on a scale never experienced in history. Then, one day after two bombs had obliterated Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the war was over. Despite being weary, America threw itself into another war within a few years, seeking to protect South Korea from communist dictatorship. Nearly 37,000 men died in that war. From 1945 to 1989, the nation fought a "Cold War" with a Soviet empire whose only legacy is the millions it enslaved and killed. For seven years during that time, we sacrificed the lives of over 57,000 more Americans in a tiny nation called Vietnam though few recall why anymore. That was what a world at war looked like during much of the last century. Massed armies. Massive destruction. Death for civilian and soldier alike calculated in the thousands and the hundreds of thousands. Today, there are no massed armies facing each other on vast battlefields. There are only blustering men urging people to die for the promise of a paradise they cannot deliver on Earth. They cannot deliver enough food. They cannot deliver a thriving economy. They cannot deliver a better life. These few sad, mad people cannot defeat the West unless we utterly lose the will not just to fight them, but also to annihilate them. We are perilously close to no longer even wanting to fight them! They cannot defeat the sweep and flow of global trade the likes of which no one could imagine a score of years ago. They cannot defeat the spread of knowledge, of the awareness that out there, beyond family, beyond the tribe, there are places of amazing wealth and, for those willing to work for it, the opportunity to have some of it. There is no need to cower in the face of "terrorist" videos showing an old man dressed in the garb of the seventh century. Understand that this old man and the young ones he has recruited are a pathetic enemy, an army of lost hopes, and no future. Must they be defeated? Yes. The waging of war in our times is a terribly costly enterprise. The failure to wage war, however, will come with an even higher price, our freedom. What few Americans grasp is that the greatest export of the United States is protection. We protect the vital sea lanes of the world so commerce can safely move goods around, so natural resources for energy and everything else can reach their destinations. We protect our allies against the threats of their neighbors. We project power because, in a dangerous world, it is the only thing that insures peace. The world is mostly at peace, but as an ancient sage once said, "Si vis pacem, para bellum." If you want peace, plan for war. We can do that. We can prevail. We can and should plan for peace. It’s breaking out all over the world. If you have donated to the Center, thank you! If not, please consider helping us to get our message out to thinking, caring Americans and others like yourself.
©
2007 Alan Caruba. |
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A week prior, my daily reported "High schoolers see grades rise even as they lag on tests", a story by Associated Press reporter, Nancy Zuckerbrod. She noted that, "Two federal reports out yesterday offer conflicting messages about how well high-schoolers are doing academically. One showed that seniors did poorly on national math and reading tests. The other—a review of high school transcripts from 2005 graduates—showed students earning more credits, taking more challenging courses and getting better grades.
The world, however, is unfair. In wealthy westernized nations, most people havean astonishing level of comfort, but there are the poor, the homeless, and the less fortunate for whatever reason. Frequently the reason is a high level of corruption endemic to their society and/or government.