Education Reform

Problem:

Education in the U.S. is expensive, biased and ineffective as administrated by the public sector.


I have to blame the deteriation of the public education system on the liberals.

Affirmative action has made government and related employment opportunities the exclusive property of liberals. This has created a conflict of interest in our educational system. It is no longer focused on educating students, but rather in pushing the political agenda of the left. Balance is gone. History and science are re-written or ignored. Teachers and administrators are focused towards maximizing their benefits rather than the quality of their product. Math and science are denigrated. Students are being “dummed” down.

Access is deliberately restricted, with allocation of scarce opportunities based on race, sex and/or other preferential demographics. Funding is skimmed “off the top” to the favor of administrators and to the disadvantage of students. Increasingly only the wealthy or politically preferred can access quality educational opportunities.

Whoa…. Stop the press. What are we doing?

As a poor white student in rural Appalachia, I learned first hand about hopelessness and racial/sexual discrimination in our educational system. As a “poor” white male, the only opportunities available to me were through military service. I was told clearly and often that “quotas” prevented my access to student aid, grants, scholarships and even admission to colleges. I also came to learn that less than 1 percent of my peers had any hope of ever attending college. They weren’t stupid or lazy. They were realistic. This is the poor white side of education in America. It mirrors the inner city situation. Our high school was “condemned” in 1954. Students were still attending it in the early 1970s. The areas which were collapsed or collapsing were simply cordoned off. Calculus was not "in" the curriculum. My father made minimum wage, if he could find work. I was picking my mother up, from one jail or another weekly. She was both alcohol and drug impaired. Thankfully, she eventually ended up serving a lengthy prison term.

Roll the clock forward and little has changed. Quotas are now illegal, replaced with “diversity goals”. The “poor” students in America still struggle as did I. The only difference is the entire middle class is now struggling with the same dysfunctional system.

Parents blame the schools, the government…
Schools blame the parents…
Students just feel hopless…

Solution:

"Hope is the fuel of learning" GPC 2008

First we must realize that as in the days of Abraham Lincoln; a viable school system is a willing and capable teacher at one end of a log and a willing and eager student at the other end of the log. We must restore hope to each and every student sitting on the end of any log, no matter how humble. This must be equally true for the young inner city black, the Appalacian or the middle aged student.


Implement 100% vouchers immediately. Let parents and students vote with their feet from kindergarten through PHD. Means test and prorate the vouchers after high school, and also for home schooling.

Means test example:
Voucher cost to student kindergarten through high school is zero.
Voucher cost to poor student college credit is less than 5 dolloars, cost to rich student college is ~65 dollars. Books and lab fees are also vouchered.


College, medical and technical trade school are part of the system of life long education. It is free or within the cost coverage of a voucher at any state sponsored school within the student’s state of residence. Any student may attend any of their state's colleges or trade schools and enroll in any curriculum of study. Pass the class and the voucher pays, fail the class and it’s your dime. If there aren’t enough seats expand the college. Eliminate the entire system of elites determining/rationing education. Admissions boards, tests, etc are eliminated at all state educational institutions. If a state does not provide educational institutions, vouchers will be provided for private institutions or out of state institutions world wide.


Now for the good part, the federal sales tax (see tax reform) and income tax will collect back the cost of education from an increasingly valuable base of human capital.

George