THE WEIRS TIMES & THE COCHECO TIMES, Thursday, December 1, 2011 GORRELL from 6
has bought us middle of the pack status compared to our global competitors and is in need of structur- al reform. Our most recent international assessment (PISA), measuring U.S. students against those in 34 developed nations, places us 14th in reading, 17th in science, and 25th in mathematics…but 2nd in spending per student. The author defends that dismal record, achieved over decades and at the cost of trillions of dollars, while branding as failures innovative programs en- abling parental choice, experiments that have run for only a few years at rela- tively little cost. At the end of the day,
studies and statistics are only aggregate represen- tations of individual stu- dents - real people. Lost entirely in that article were the two most important concepts in the education reform debate: Parental choice and education as a “public good” in and of itself. Parental choice is the
third rail of public edu- cation policy because it takes decision making (also known as power, prestige, and union dues)
away from an entrenched bureaucracy that consis- tently puts process ahead of the people it is meant to serve. Rather than the lat- est top-down reforms, sin- gle standards, and bizarre fads (see “Outcome Based Education” and “Everyday Math”), education should be student-focused, with parents deciding which certified program is best for their child. The concept that edu-
cation is a public good worthy of public funding, capable of being accessed through a variety of meth- ods and settings selected by parents, threatens the guardians of government- run education. They need us to believe that publicly- mandated primary and secondary education can only be achieved rightly and properly through gov- ernment schools. That system’s poor track record and the abundance of vi- able, popular alternatives will not dissuade them. If our common goal is
to educate children, let’s set the standards, provide regulation and oversight, and let parents vote with their feet – using some of the same dollars that fund public schools – in pursuit of that common
good. It shouldn’t matter where students run the race, as long as they cross the finish line. But such a concept is anathema to the public education bureaucracy. Like the Big Three automobile manu- facturers in the 1980s facing competition from high-quality, reliable small cars from Japan, today’s education establishment seeks to limit competi- tion and choice. Had the Big Three succeeded with long-term import quotas, we might be driving 2011 Chevy Vegas instead of Civics and Corollas - or Cruzes and Fusions. Com- petition raises the bar for every producer, and con- sumers are better off. Far from offering false
hope, programs that en- able parental choice in education offer the only hope many students will have of breaking free from public schools that don’t meet their needs. Fair and open competition, applied to K-12 education, also offers the hope that pub- lic schools will rise to the challenges of an expanded education marketplace. And the nation will be bet- ter off.
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