Fastest way to improve schools? The quickest and best way to hold parents more responsible for the education of their children is to throw their underperforming or misbehaving children out of their easy and convenient neighborhood public schools and require the parents to assume the responsibility of finding and financing alternative education and transportation for their little darlings.
Parents have learned the local public schools have become babysitting centers that must bow down and take a lot of unacceptable behavior (at the expense of the children who do want to be there to learn). Such families who have learned they can abuse the privilege of a “free education” in this way hurt not only themselves, but others, and the schools, in attempting to be all things and social workers to all children, have allowed them to do this.
Immediately raise the academic performance standards at the general public schools, so that they can all, for example, produce an 80% pass rate on the national standardized IOWA tests. Quickly remove students who do not want to or cannot achieve there to less convenient schools for the family. The parents will be responsible for obtaining the legal minimum education for their kids (as they already are).
I feel we are offering TOO many social services and TOO much acceptance of unacceptable behavior and academic failure in the classrooms of our mainstream schools, which is a major impediment to both teaching and learning effectively, which should be the main (and only?) mission of the public school.
(If private schools wish to teach to “the whole child” and assume social worker responsibilities along with academic instruction, that would be their right and I heartily approve.)
Then try giving the minority of other children in the alternate public schools all the services they need, including individual tutoring if necessary, so that “no child is left behind.” They should also have ample opportunity to rejoin the mainstream schools if and when they prove themselves ready. But incentivize the parents to understand it is up to them and their children to determine their success. Do not pass children to the next grade until they have earned the privilege.
Involved and informed parents at the local level, if free of centralized mandates (and teacher unions protecting deadwood), will make sure the teachers and principals are doing a good job.
Stick to the mission, keep control local, incentivize and free teachers to teach and students to learn, do not tolerate deadwood in either students or teachers. Hmm, sounds like private school, doesn’t it?
That’s why I am also a proponent of school vouchers. I think it would be a big improvement if someday in the future the “government schools” were truly the schools of last resort for only a limited portion of the population, the most problematic and needy learners. But I still think private schools, churches, and institutions could handle those kids better than the government bureaucracy.
