The Right Opinion
The Education Blob
Since progressives want government to run health care, let's look at what government management did to K-12 education. While most every other service in life has gotten better and cheaper, American education remains stagnant.
Spending has tripled! Why no improvement? Because K-12 education is a virtual government monopoly -- and monopolies don't improve.
In every other sector of the economy, market competition forces providers to improve constantly. It's why most things get better -- often cheaper, too (except when government interferes, as in health care).
Politicians claim that education and health care are different -- too important to leave to market competition. Patients and parents aren't real consumers because they don't have the expertise to know which hospital or school is best. That's why they must be centrally planned by government "experts."
Those experts have been in charge for years. School reformers call them the "Blob." Jeanne Allen of the Center for Education Reform says that attempts to improve the government monopoly have run "smack into federations, alliances, departments, councils, boards, commissions, panels, herds, flocks and convoys that make up the education industrial complex, or the Blob. Taken individually, they were frustrating enough, each with its own bureaucracy, but taken as a whole they were (and are) maddening in their resistance to change. Not really a wall -- they always talk about change -- but more like quicksand, or a tar pit where ideas slowly sink."
The Blob claims teachers are underpaid. But today American teachers average more than $50,000 a year. Teachers' hourly wages exceed what most architects, accountants and nurses make.
The Blob constantly demands more money, but tripling spending and vastly increasing the ratio of staff to student have brought no improvement. When the Blob is in control, waste and indifference live on and on.
The Blob claims that public education is "the great equalizer." Rich and poor and different races mix and learn together. It's a beautiful concept. But it is a lie. Rich parents buy homes in neighborhoods with better schools.
As a result, public -- I mean, government -- schools are now more racially segregated than private schools. One survey found that public schools were significantly more likely to be almost entirely white or entirely minority. Another found that at private schools, students of different races were more likely to sit together.
The Blob's most powerful argument is that poor people need government-run schools. How could poor people possibly afford tuition?
Well, consider some truly destitute places. James Tooley spends most of his time in the poorest parts of Africa, India and China. Those countries copied America's "free public education," and Tooley wanted to see how that's worked out. What he learned is that in India and China, where kids outperform American kids on tests, it's not because they attend the government's free schools. Government schools are horrible. So even in the worst slums, parents try to send their kids to private, for-profit schools.
How can the world's poorest people afford tuition? And why would they pay for what their governments offer for free?
Tooley says parents with meager resources still sacrifice to send their kids to private schools because the private owner does something that's virtually impossible in government schools: replace teachers who do not teach. Government teachers in India and Africa have jobs for life, just like American teachers. Many sleep on the job. Some don't even show up for work.
As a result, says Tooley, "the majority of (poor) schoolchildren are in private school." Even small villages have as many as six private schools, "and these schools outperform government schools at a fraction of the teacher cost."
As in America, government officials in those countries scoff at private schools and parents who choose them. A woman who runs government schools in Nigeria calls such parents "ignoramuses." They aren't -- and thanks to competition, their children won't be, either.
Low-income Americans are far richer than the poor people of China, India and Africa. So if competitive private education can work in Beijing, Calcutta and Nairobi, it can work in the United States.
We just need to get around the Blob.
COPYRIGHT 2012 BY JFS PRODUCTIONS, INC.
DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS.COM
4 Comments
wjm in Colorado
Wednesday, July 4, 2012 at 9:15 AM
If the government or a union is involved, expect failure.
pete in CA
Wednesday, July 4, 2012 at 4:40 PM
And it works like a champ - if you want your whole population to be as smart as a door knob!
Joe in Texas
Wednesday, July 4, 2012 at 9:13 PM
"The Blob claims teachers are underpaid. But today American teachers average more than $50,000 a year. Teachers' hourly wages exceed what most architects, accountants and nurses make."
My wife is a teacher. She makes just shy of $50,000. Many people think that teachers get lots of perks and have an easy job. That is not the case. We spend our OWN money at the start of the school year buying school supplies for her students. She isn't one of those, "We can't be too hard on the children as to hurt their self esteem," teachers. She teaches and expects results. If you fail, then you fail. Many parents call her all the time asking, "Why did you fail my kid?" When we were kids, it was our parents asking us, "Why did you fail your class? Study more!"
In Texas, thank God that the teacher unions are not the problem they are in CA, NY, or most recently in WI. My wife gets to work at 630am and leaves at 5pm everyday. She then spends a couple hrs every night grading papers. Trust me, they put the hours in! I even help her grade papers, and the future isn't looking good, based on the writing skills of the average 15 year old! Many people say that teachers should be paid based on performance. Yes, I agree, to a point. My wife has improved the passing rates and test scores of every school she's taught at, so it can be done. But, if a kid doesn't want to do the work, then they won't. Why should a teacher be responsible for a student not giving a F!@#?
In Texas, some teachers are let go for poor performance. The problems in many cases lie with the state gov't bureaucrats and the "teachers of teachers" that dumb down the curriculum.
Liberals would say that Texas education is so bad because of conservative rule. Wrong. Texas education is so bad because we have to educate so many non-English speaking illegals. If you take away the state's enduring costs in $ and hours educating illegals (which also slows down the education of English speaking students), Texas's ranking would rise significantly, and compete with states that don't have a huge illegal problem.
Based on my wife's performance, and hours she puts in, yes she deserves a raise. Good teachers work HARD! Bad teachers SUCK! What really pisses me off is that teachers that are resposible for educating our youth aren't paid as well as some other gov't employees like US postal workers. Pay lazy gov't employees less, and GOOD teachers more, without changing the state budget.
Howard Last in Wyoming
Thursday, July 5, 2012 at 3:34 PM
New York City has a Catholic School System approx. 1/3 the size of the NYC Public School System. The ethnic makeup of both systems is the same. The NYC Public Schools have about 5,000 (yes thousand) administrators at their central headquarters. The Cardinal was asked several years back how many administrators the Catholic Schools have. He said he did not know, but will find out. In a few minutes he came back and said 25. How do you know, I counted them. That must be why the NYC Public Schools are doing much better. What the Catholic School do better, that can't be right.