how to bail out our public schools

Our public school system is a complete disaster. Compared to other industrialized nations, our students’ math and reading skills are appallingly poor and people like to scapegoat things such as music programs, physical education, and sex ed, of all things! And the lack of money to fund our schools.

Is it really about not having enough money? While money is needed to fund curriculum changes, but that’s the end all, be all to solving this problem. I agree with this commentary and its stance on what it takes to fix our education system. First and foremost, we need to recruit and hire better teachers. I know this because I’ve had some really shitty teachers growing up (K-12). Some teachers believed that effective teaching meant popping a VHS title such as “Sword in the Stone”, “Mary Poppins”, or “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe” on Friday afternoons, instead of teaching us something useful.

We also need to make sure that our schools have well-rounded curriculums by including sports, music, art, etc. Without a well-rounded education, students have no chance at developing their creativity. They could only think on two planes and not understand the multiplex nature of tough problems today.

A few weeks ago, a founder of charter schools in the L.A. area came to give a talk about the charter schools that he’s been involved with. What I got out of it is that the charter school model should be more widely adopted as it makes schools more accountable, can be autonomous in their decision making so that the most qualified teachers are hired and retained, and students feel like they have a purpose by attending school. He threw out some staggering figures, such as the percentage of high school students in Los Angeles who actually graduate high school. I forgot what that figure what, but it was shockingly low.

If I ever have kids some day, I don’t think I would send them to a public school the way it is right now. Parents should always want their kids to have something better, so that their kids can live a better life than they did, are smarter than them, etc. I don’t want my kids to be dumber than me I.