We don't need no mind control

Public education is one of the greatest scams perpetuated on the masses.

Thomas Sowell on public service and education

An excerpt: "Higher education is supposed to teach people to see beyond surface glitter and plausible words. It is supposed to see beyond the fads of today to the broad sweep of history. Most of history is the story of how political leaders have squandered the blood and treasure of the human race."

HT: Liberty Pen

High school grad can’t read diploma

From Times Union:

ALBANY -- David Streck graduated from East Greenbush's Columbia High School back in 2002 but he's never read beyond a third-grade level.

Show a business card or other written document to him and he'll give it a brief stare and tell you the words are meaningless.

t's not for lack of brain power. Streck, 25, said he passed high school math with little problem and he enjoys using computer spreadsheets and building Web sites.

When he drives, he navigates by memory rather than street signs.

But he knows that his future prospects are dim if he can't read instructions on a job application, respond to e-mails or even go through the newspaper want ads.

Comment: This poor fellow was moved along from grade to grade with little help. While the reason that he can’t read is due to dyslexia, the fact that he was able to graduate high school with barely a third grade reading level is baffling and disturbing. Another example of how our tax dollars are wasted away.

Charter Schools popular in Harlem

From The Economist:

THOSE who had won whooped with joy and punched their fists. The disappointed shed tears. Some 5,000 people attended April 17th's Harlem Success Academy Charter School lottery, the largest ever held for charter schools in the history of New York state. About 3,600 applied for 600 available places, and 900 applied for the 11 open slots in the second grade.

The desperation of these parents is hardly surprising. In one Harlem school district, not one public elementary school has more than 55% of its pupils reading at the level expected for their grade. And 75% of 14-year-olds are unable to read at their grade level. So Harlem parents are beginning to leave the public school system in crowds.

Despite what United Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten tells us about the “failure” of school vouchers and charter schools on Charlie Rose, desperate parents living in one of the toughest parts of New York City are aching for something better for their children than the usual rhetorical pabulum served up by the Teachers Union. In the interview with Charlie Rose, Ms. Weingarten tells Rose that the voucher program in Milwaukee is a failure and that therefore, she insinuates, the system will not work in New York City (Harlem). What she fails to understand or willfully ignores, is that a similar lottery system exists in Milwaukee as in Harlem. For the first eight years of its existence, Milwaukee's program was capped at about 1,500 students, for the next eight it was capped at 15,000. It is currently capped at 22,500 students. By getting local and state governments to kowtow to their powerful lobby, the teachers union effectively rigged the voucher market for difficulties and failure by putting an artificial cap on student enrollment. After all, if we capped the number of cell phones that Apple could sell, there would not only be a shortage of these items, but any excess demand by consumers would have to find other providers for a similar item. Unlike the cell phone market where there are many providers, the education market is dominated by one large monopoly. Students that don’t win the lottery must submit themselves to the local public schools. Additionally, if a charter school wants to expand enrollment, it can not do so quickly and easily due to its restrictive mandate. This is hardly a free-market and most certainly not a fair test of school vouchers or charter schools. The fact that a lottery is used to reward participation in a charter school is proof enough that Ms. Weingarten is being disingenuous and that charter schools are a lot more popular than the teachers union would ever care to admit.

Public schools and the Union

From Reason TV:

Vikki Reyes has had it with Locke High, the school her daughters attend in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles. She walked in on class one day and recalls “the place was just like a zoo!” Students had taken control, while the teacher sat quietly with a book.

Comment: I grew up in a rough part of N.Y.C and I also had the misfortune of having attended a high school that was very much like the one portrayed in this video. I am convinced that the only way to improve our public schools is by creating the market incentives that do not exist now in education. Teachers unions like to talk about how much they care about our kids but the results, as seen in this video, are almost always less than desirable.

A Reversal on School Choice

It seems that long time school choice advocate Sol Stern has expressed doubts on the free-markets ability to enhance public education; His change of opinion on the matter is a serious blow to free-market advocates. In his City Journal piece, Mr. Stern points out that one of the reasons that he has come to his new conclusion is due to the perceived failure of the Milwaukee voucher program; A program in which he was a lauded proponent. As Mr. Stern states of the programs fifteen year run, “no ‘Milwaukee miracle,’ no transformation of the public schools, has taken place.”

What I found most striking about Sterns conclusion about the Milwaukee voucher programs difficulties and struggles was that Stern completely missed the real cause of its problems. Milwaukee's voucher program was hamstrung from the start because it never operated in a true free-market. The voucher program was capped at 1,500 students for the first eight years. Can you imagine any other industry being forced to cap it’s customers for that length of time? It’s no wonder that Catholic schools are closing down all over the country as Stern states in his article. The game was rigged from the get-go. Stern suggests that it is possible, “to create the conditions for vigorous market competition within public school systems, with the same beneficent effects that were supposed to flow from a pure choice program.” But I think that he is simply looking through the wrong end of the telescope because there are still no real incentives for long term and institutional reform. Or that the power of special interests will be curbed as Stern himself admits. Perhaps Mr. Stern and others like him should take a closer look at Sweden, and they should ask themselves why a notoriously welfare-state has done so well with their school choice program.

How Schools Fail Our Children

If you live in the state of Washington you may want to see this video. When I first saw this video I was astonished and then I became quite angry at what children in the state of Washington are learning as “math” in some of their schools. This video vividly explains some of the setbacks that kids have had to endure at the hands of an educational bureaucracy that is no longer accountable to parents, pupils, or communities.

I have great respect for teachers and the teaching profession. But as a parent, when I find out that these sorts of things are going on in public schools, I wonder why there aren’t more teachers speaking out against these teaching methods. It seems to me that the only time I hear from teachers is when there is a threat to their jobs or salaries. And we usually hear from them through their union representative or when they muster their students to lobby for their needs.

Educational suicide

From the The Times Of India:

In 2006, 5,857 students — or 16 a day — committed suicide across India due to exam stress. And these are just the official figures.

Shimla superintendent of police (crime), Punita Bhardwaj, said incidents of children committing suicide because of examination stress often did not get reported as traumatized parents wanted to keep the issue under wraps.

Anita Naresh, a 16-year-old from Kanpur who swallowed dye last week as she felt she had not done well in her Class X exams, is one of them. Her condition is still critical. A teenager from Chandigarh attempted suicide inside the examination centre but was taken to hospital just in time. Bangalore has witnessed a series of attempted suicides by students denied a hall ticket for a board examination owing to poor attendance.

Comment: In the U.S. this sort of pressure simply does not exist. Our public schools are doing such a lousy job preparing our children for the real world outside of K-12 that just about any real reaction by a student failing a class or an exam would be cause for celebration. Considering that we are spending about $8,700 a year on average per student we do not seem to be getting much value for our money. Countries like Finland are spending less (about $7,500) and their students are considered high achievers on several world-wide measurements.

Tragic events such as are seen in India are not only foreign to our national culture but also completely unimaginable since we have long ago removed any sense of accountability and accomplishment from education. While I would never condone suicide and I believe that the great pressure that Indian children are forced to submit them selves to be extreme. Overall, there is something to admire about a culture that greatly values education and the promise of progress it instills in children. Would it be excellent if Indian society could find a happy balance for its school age children? Absolutely. And it would be quite a leap forward if American children and the educational system that serve them would have loftier goals.