Just a quick note to my readers to encourage you all to watch 20/20 tonight. The title of the show is ‘Stupid in America’, its description:
Jan. 9, 2006 — American students fizzle in international comparisons, placing 18th in reading, 22nd in science and 28th in math — behind countries like Poland, Australia and Korea. But why? Are American kids less intelligent? John Stossel looks at the ways the U.S. public education system cheats students out of a quality education in “Stupid in America: How We Cheat Our Kids,” airing this Friday at 10 p.m.
“We’re not stupid. … But we could do better,” one high school student tells Stossel. Another says, “I think it has to be something with the school, ’cause I don’t think we’re stupider.”
That’s the question Stossel examines in his special report: What is it that’s going wrong in public schools?
There are many factors that contribute to failure in school. A major factor, Stossel finds, is the government’s monopoly over the school system. Parents don’t get to choose where to send their children. In other countries, choice brings competition, and competition improves performance.
Stossel questions government officials, union leaders, parents and students and learns some surprising things about what’s happening in U.S. schools. He also examines how the educational system can be improved upon and reports on innovative programs across the country.
“Stupid In America: How We Cheat Our Kids” with John Stossel airs Jan. 13, at 10 p.m.
I encourage all of my readers, both supporters of vouchers and opponents of vouchers, to please watch this very important episode.
Update: John Stossel has more.
I will put this on the LR site, Al!
Thanks for the notice……we need to work ‘togetha’, YO! lololol!
Actually these numbers that Stossel and others cite about how Americans are last in he world or among developed countries or whatever are based on suspect tests. These tests are not adminsitered in most of the country’s best public schools– but they’re administered in every school in the countries we’re compared against. A study found that if Chicago public schools all took the test and were counted as a “country”, those students placed in the top ten in reading, math and science. I’d love to see how, and if, Stossel deals with the controversial numbers he uses….
Hey Paloma, I am watching it now and they gave the exact same test to those in the United States and in Belgium…so they were comparing apples to apples.
HP - did you see what they said about bilingual education… how lame it is… that is, how lame it is that we don’t have multi-lingual educational standards!
How come the “monopoly status” of unions isn’t challenged like Microsoft or Walmart (since I think those monopolies should be challenged)?
For liberal, mainstream media, that was a great program. Even my wife - a public school teacher for 10 years & huge advocate for public education, said, “I’m going to have to rethink vouchers.”
Yeah, I agree. It was done really really well. I couldn’t recommend it more.
I’m glad you and your wife were able to watch it. Btw, congrats on the child, you all make a great family.
The only downside is the late night hours. Otherwise, she’ll be a joy. And hopefully they’ll be voucher/choice when she is at school age.
I have to disagree. This was SO slanted! Why do we not get to see the good things that are happening in public education. Why don’t we get to see the good schools and good teachers? There are plenty out there.
No one is arguing against the existence of good teachers or good schools. There are some great ones of both out there.
But the overal system of education is broken. And until we have the courage to say it needs a major overhaul, like what vouchers/choice could provide, we’ll keep throwing kids futures away, burning out good teachers instead of rewarding them, and deepening the divide between rich & poor in the U.S., which current swings on education.
Stousse rightly highlights some outrageous problems with education in this country and then consistent with his right wing conservative bias use them to argue for dismantling the “monopoly” of public education with vouchers and competitive free market capitalism to run our schools.
Stoussel mentions that there are very good public schools in this country but fails to balance his report with what makes them so good. Good schools are usually in wealthy communities that value education and have high expectations of their teachers and
schools.
Euccation like
Often I have seen it argued by those who are employed by the government education system (and to the purely ignorant) that those of us who are critical of the system should simply exercise choice and pick a charter school or a private school. Choice, they say, is readily apparent and they don’t understand when people continuously argue for choice in education. So, for clarity I would once and for all like to set the record straight.
The fact of the matter is that in many states we have choices but we do not have real choice? While that may sound a bit convoluted, it is nevertheless true -let me explain. As a parent I can exercise my right to send my daughter to any school I choose, the overriding state requirement is that education is compulsory and we are allowed to home school, or send our kids to non public alternatives. Therefore we have some choices as to where we send our children for the education that the state has mandated take place. But choices and real choice are not the same thing.
As a taxpayer, I am compelled by the threat of conversion to pay real property taxes. As one who purchases other items and has earned income, I also pay sales tax and income tax. Each of these taxes are sources of revenue for the state and are used to fund the government schools; not a dime goes to fund home schooling, private or parochial schools. In fact, 100% of all income taxes collected go to fund K-12 education in Wisconsin (plus roughly 40% of property taxes). Therein lies the lack of true choice, more accurately described as real economic choice. For all intents and purposes, in a market economy, real economic choice or, simply, choice are synonymous.
The issue then is as follows - as a parent raising a child it is my solemn duty, responsibility and, in fact, pure joy to provide protection and to see to the training of the mind of my child so that she can become an independent, rational, self-reliant person. This is not the exception, it is the vast rule among the vast majority of parents - there are relatively few who shirk this solemn duty. If I choose to send her to the local government school for this mind training, I fully expect to pay for it and I do - via the taxes already mentioned. However, if I make an independent decision as a parent that what is in my daughter’s best interest is not attendance at Public Elementary, but rather Parochial School, I am exercising my parental rights and making a choice. Furthermore, I have to pay tuition at Parochial to exercise this state authorized choice because they do not receive funds from anywhere else. So, I have exercised my right granted to me by the state to send my daughter to a non-public school, however I have been denied the economic right to close the deal because I am still required to subsidize the education of other peoples children who attend the school that I deemed inappropriate for educating my child! I am being denied the economic right of choice by the state.
This denial occurs because economic choice implies voting with dollars between competing choices - if you buy a hamburger at McDonald’s but are required by law to also buy one from Hardees have you really made a choice? The fact that the state requires me to pay twice by not crediting to me the amount I have paid in tuition to exercise my parental rights over where my daughter is educated is simply and purely immoral. While I am educating my child, I have no obligation, duty or any other moral requirement to simultaneously pay for someone elses child to be educated! Unless, of course, I should choose to be truly benevolent. Moreover, when I am done educating my child my taxes will remain and I will continue to subsidize public education. The irony is glaring, by creating the socialist/altruist mentality that permeates the government schools they have removed from us the ability to engage in true benevolence.
Economic choice is the foundation of our market economy. Private property is the storehouse of a citizens individual wealth, their only means of attaining real independence in a democracy. By expropriating capital with the threat of conversion of ones private property, the state has undertaken a direct attack upon capitalism and free markets. To fund government controlled and mandated education with the proceeds thereof with no consideration for the economic reality of the rights of parents to educate there progeny as they believe best is a direct frontal attack on individual freedom and liberty - the essential foundation and philosophical basis to which our Founding Fathers looked in creating this great country. The state might as well deny me the right of choices as well. This is, in reality for many parents, exactly what happens because only the wealthiest among us can afford to pay twice.
Real economic educational choice is more than a tag line, it is more than a griping point, it is not a ploy by rich people to keep more of their money. It is one of the most fundamental issues we face in this country because it portends a future that implies either a socialist state or a truly free society. Those of us who argue vociferously for economic educational choice are on the right side of history and stand hand in hand with Adams, Jefferson, Paine, Henry, Lee and Washington.
Who do you stand with?