Who runs our K-12 education? Local and state government schools, right? It’s not capitalists, billionaires and bankers. It’s our government paid experts.
So who is failing our kids with respect to education? Maybe it’s time to look at HB 20.
The United States spends more money on education than almost any place on earth. But our children are not receiving an appropriate value for the dollars spent. Our students just keep falling behind.
According to the National Center on Education and the Economy (NCEE) we are way behind. We are 3.5 years behind Singapore in Maths. In reading our children are 1.5 years behind. In science we lag 2.5 years behind. We sad fact is we are behind much of the developed world.
No more rationalization or blame throwing: The numbers need to change
We have all had the rationalization discussions with educators. My school’s better than… If only we had… Somebody else spends more…
The point here is: There is no correlation between spending and education quality. Even within the states, some of the highest spending is the most wasteful. Conversely, some of the most frugal places have much better educational outcomes. This is not universally true, which is part of our frustration.
But we have been collecting education data nationally for more than five decades. Why is it we cannot analyze the statistics in a manner that improves educational outcomes? Do the people doing analysis have such deep bias they are simply confirming their biases? Is there an institutional lack of analytical competency?
It has become painfully obvious. The best way to improve education outcomes isn’t to keep throwing money at the problem. To fix our education system we need to introduce competition, freedom and choice. Education is broken.
It is time to allow parents to move their children out of government run schools. Education funding needs to be made portable in some way. Government has proven itself over the last 60 – 70 years to be part of the problem not part of the solution. It is time to do some things differently. If you always do what you’ve always done; you’ll always get what you’ve always gotten.
