Our Educational Disaster: Pay More Get Less

The United States is home to more than 2,000 dysfunctional High Schools.  They represent 15 % of American High Schools Yet account for half of our dropouts.  When you break this down you find that these institutions produce 81% of Native American dropouts, 73% of all American dropouts, and 66% of all Hispanic dropouts.

At our grade schools, two-thirds of all eight graders score below proficient in math and reading.  The average African American or Latino 9 year old is three grades behind in these subjects.

We have dropped from first to twelfth place in the percentage of people between the ages of 25 to 34 who have a college degree. America is now in danger of producing a new generation that will be less educated than their parents.

Clearly it's not for lack of money.  Over the past three decades we've nearly doubled spending on K-12 education in real terms.  So, why are we spending so much and getting so little in return? The answer is that while the system is failing our children, it works very well for some adults. These adults include leaders of the teachers unions,  They include the the politicians whom the unions reward with their cash and political support.  They include the vast educational bureaucracies. They include teachers salaries that allow them to retire with more money than they made while they were teaching.  In business terms, we have a system that rewards the providers and punishes the customers.

So, how do we fix it? Clearly a big part of the answer is giving parents more choices for their kids. For choices to mean anything, however, parents also need transparency so they can make real comparisons.
The Los Angeles Times just gave us an excellent example of this kind of transparency when it published a database of about 6,000 third through fifth grade teachers ranked by their effectiveness in raising student test scores. If you are a mom with a son or daughter in one of these classrooms, you know this information is vital.  Unfortunately it's the type of  information that seldom sees the light of day. Unfortunately our systems is set up to protect bad teachers rather than reward good teachers.

On top of that we have chancellors, superintendents and principals who can't hire and fire based on performance.  We have tougher standards on "American Idol" And as long as we refuse to measure success by what our children are learning, we're going to have higher performance by pop stars than for public schools.

When we allow the children of other people to fail or leave school without an education, they do not disappear.  They become adults who cannot provide for themselves.  And guess what?  The costs will be borne by our children.

It's time we begin ensuring that every boy and girl who enters a public school leaves with the same shot at the American Dream we insist on for our own children.