Public education in the United States has failed. It is broken and beyond the point where it will recover. It would be best to enact government-assisted suicide on the whole system.
Wow, you're thinking that is a pretty harsh statement? Well let's look at the facts:
Financially, schools are unable to exist comfortably within an ever decreasing source of funding. Over 20 years ago in Oregon the state's voters passed Measure 5. This decreased the amount of taxes recieved from property taxes and moved funding from local sources to a state funded system. My comment then and still prophetic was that there will be no more money for education. Do schools need more money? Schools say yes and tax payers say no.
Schools complain that they are underfunded. Class sizes are too high, teachers are under paid, and there is little support for or value held in their tasks. Teachers average about $43K a year which is reported to be anywhere from 10 to 30% lower then other professions. However, when you take into account that this is a 9-month salary, you find that they are roughly equal to other professions. Also, most educators enjoy between 30-50% additional compensation through health insurance, retirement, and other negotiated benefits. All these requirements add up to at least 90% of a schools budget.
When schools make cuts, they usually need to cut people. A real down side of this is very apparent in secondary schools where union seniority dictates who stays and who goes. The result is that schools retain teachers because of years of service and not based upon the academic needs. Underprepared teachers are reassigned in subject areas they are not fully qualified to teach. What effect does this have upon the youth in their classes? Some of these people are very good teachers who work hard to do the best they can - but would you go to a dentist (with no dental training) who is trained to be a chiropractor and expect that your dental health wouldn't suffer? Yes it IS an extreme analogy. The problem is that this is happening in too many of our schools.
Public education has failed because it is not able to meet the diverse learning demands of its students. The high achieving student is not adequately challenged. The average student is often forgotten in favor of the truly needy underachieving students. Curricula are watered down ("dumbed down") to serve the least common denominator among the classroom full of students. Should all these students have a right to an education? Absolutely!!! But it is necessary for students to receive an education that fits their individual needs - not everyone is equal in ability and thus the school can't serve one education formula and assume it will benefit all. A public education can't serve all students equally because they are not all equal in ability. That is not a popular thought, but it is reality.
Public education has failed because parents and family in many homes don't educate. Education can't be the sole responsibility of a school. If education doesn't also occur in the home then the child will not have a complete experience. The child's home must be as much of a learning environment as anywhere.
More to come:::