THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume VII, Issue # 193, September 2, 2005
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
U.S. EDUCATION: WHAT IS WRONG WITH IT
& WHAT SHOULD BE DONE TO FIX IT
By Alan Caruba
AMERICA'S CONTEMPORARY TAX-SUPPORTED EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM: MAJOR DEFECTS IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOL
SYSTEM -- A TWELVE-STEP PLAN OF ACTION TO CORRECT THE DEFECTS, PUT AN END TO THE WASTE OF YOUNG MINDS & THE
TAXPAYERS' MONEY, & THEREBY ENSURE THAT AMERICA'S PUBLIC SCHOOL GRADUATES & THE AMERICAN NATION WILL BE
ABLE TO COMPETE IN THE GLOBAL MARKET PLACE OF THE FUTURE
FULL STORY:
America's schools are opening for the new school year and our children and youth from kindergarten to the twelfth grade are
returning . Some young people will do so joyously, happy to see their classmates, and others, as Shakespeare put it, “creeping like
a snail unwillingly to school.” All of these students will be subject to a multi-billion-dollar deception that involves the federal
government, the National Education Association, PTAs, school administrators, and the teachers themselves.
To put it plainly, U.S. education sucks! Education in America is a failed institution that is failing millions of students every year.
Ironically, as the system degrades, the number of tests being administered to “measure” whether students have learned anything
increases. “”Dumbed down” tests for “dumbed down” students are meaningless.
In New Jersey, my home state, the number of public school students taking state exams will nearly double this year. Where the
money to pay for these tests will come from is anybody’s guess, but the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) requires testing in
language arts and mathematics will expand to the fifth, sixth, and seventh grades, insuring that every student will be tested every
year from grades three to eight. At last count, the amount allocated to this was an astounding $23.2 million, a $7 million increase
over last year.
Now multiply this against all of the other forty-nine states or against the average of all fifty states. Do so, that is, if you can
multiply anything without the use of a calculator. If you have graduated from any public school since the 1960’s or 1970’s, the
odds are you can’t.
In an article written by Veronique de Rugy and Kathryn Newmark, respectively a research scholar and research assistant at the
American Enterprise Institute, the statistics of American education are served up with horrifying implications. They begin by
reminding readers that, in the 1990s, the Republican Party pledged itself to abolish the Department of Education (DOE). The GOP
platform accurately noted that, “The Federal government has no constitutional authority to be involved in school curricula or to
control jobs in the market place.”
Well, that was then, and this is now. “Now” is President George W. Bush’s appalling No Child Left Behind Act and his
administration’s commitment to throwing ever more dollars at the misnamed Department of Education. It should be called the
Department of Deception.
As Ms. Rugy and Newmark point out, “the entire education budget has ballooned during the President’s time in office.” The
Department of Education’s budget has grown by 82.5 percent in real terms from $34.9 billion in FY2001 to $63.7 billion in FY2005.
The President’s 2006 budget calls for more spending. “The average state receives a level of grant funding that is more than 50
percent higher than when President Bush took office; no state has an increase less than 35 percent.”
Americans are accustomed to a federal government spending billions, but, if they truly knew how little return on their tax dollars
they were receiving, they might rise up in protest. On the other hand, most Americans can’t even get to the election booth and
still fewer vote in local school board elections; a mere 12 percent! So, while the U.S.A. spends a far higher percentage per primary
school student than most other nations, “test scores show little improvement, dropout rates are high, and a large racial
achievement gap persists.”
Actual achievement per dollar spent, according to education economist, Caroline Hoxby, declined by 55 to 73 percent from 1971 to
1999. Not surprisingly, however, students at private and charter schools with higher standards and with lower expenditures per
pupil consistently scored higher on tests. Home-schooled kids outperform all others!
What’s wrong with this picture? Martin L. Gross, the author of several books on government incompetence, identified the problem
in a July commentary published in the Washington Times. “Our educators, from teachers through superintendents of
schools, are academically and intellectually so inferior that the fourth grade is apparently the outer limit of their teaching abilities.”
With excruciating detail, he examined the scores they achieved on the SATs and the Graduate Record Examination. Teachers score
the lowest.
Then, to add to the misery index, Gross notes:
“The educational establishment has created a costly, generally unnecessary
army of school bureaucrats. In 1960, there were 96,000. Now there are 215,000.
Support troops, reading specialists, guidance counselors, etc., have grown
from 700,000 in 1960 to 2.5 million, with no gain in academic performance.”
Why don’t parents protest? Because, says Gross,
“... they are lied to about their children’s progress. Students who should get
C’s and D’s are, instead, given A’s and B’s.”
Having often been rendered functionally illiterate and arithmetically incompetent, today’s parents have no way of knowing their
children will suffer the same fate.
So a combination of a generation or two of “dumbed down” graduates of a criminally incompetent education system, leaves us
today with far too many students who will discover that neither they nor the nation will be able to compete in the global market
place of tomorrow. Here’s what to do to avoid this fate:
First Step: Abolish the U.S. Department of Education.
Second Step: Abolish all undergraduate schools of education. Open up the teaching profession to people with real degrees in
specific areas of knowledge and, even better, real experience in the real world.
Third Step: Any teacher shown to be deliberately inflating students' grades should be subject to dismissal.
Fourth Step: Eliminate all the “fuzzy” and feel-good curricula and return to the standards that effectively educated generations
that passed through the educational system prior to the 1960s. Education is not magic. How to educate people was already well
known by the 19th. century.
Fifth Step: Eliminate bilingual teaching in favor of English language immersion. This will insure that children whose first language
is not English can become fluent in the common language of this nation.
Sixth Step: Eliminate the school-induced prescription of mind-altering drugs such as Ritalin to students. These are dangerous
substances, the use of which should solely be the decision of a parent and physician.
Seventh Step: Do not allow any member of the NEA, a union whose purpose is to serve the interest of teachers, not students, to
serve on any board of education anywhere.
Eighth Step: Eliminate tenure for teachers.
Ninth Step: End the “No Child Left Behind Act” and return control over local schools to local school boards.
Tenth Step: Return to schools real, strictly enforced standards of discipline, including (1) dress codes that require neatness and
a degree of modesty and (2) demands for punctuality, orderly conduct, and respectful behavior toward teachers and other students. Et
cetera!
Eleventh Step: End foolish “Zero tolerance” standards that punish even the use of an aspirin, and abolish all other "politically
correct" nonsense.
Twelfth Step: Permit voluntary school prayer and recognize religious holidays as part of this nation’s heritage and history.
The Department of Education will oppose this. The teacher’s unions and their political lackeys will oppose this. If nothing changes,
the waste of both money and minds will continue.
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
Education & America's Schools
A Practical Guide to Homeschooling
Alan Caruba is a veteran business and science writer, a Public Relations Counselor, and Founder of the National Anxiety Center, a
clearinghouse for information about media-driven scare campaigns. Caruba writes a weekly commentary, "Warning Signs," posted
on the Internet website of the National Anxiety Center, which is located at
www.anxietycenter.com.
© Alan Caruba 2005
Published with Permission of Alan Caruba
ACaruba@AOL.Com
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Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
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