ABOLISH PUBLIC EDUCATION?

boblonsberry.com ^ | 06/23/10 | Bob Lonsberry

[Tax-chick]

I propose that “public education” be publicly funded

Why?

make it Constitutionally illegal for the government to control the education or to tie any strings to the funding

You're joking, right? You think the people who find a Constitutional Right to partial-birth abortion and sodomy are going to let that influence them in any way?

[gunnyg]

dump pubed, the po, irs, and a whole lot more; dump the presidential palace on penna ave, the ss, aircraft, limos, etc., etc.

[frogjerk]

Save taxpayer money and save our kids....States need to OUTSOURCE education to the private sector thru vouchers.

[ChurtleDawg]

if we eliminate the public schools, that atmosphere would go to the private schools, or worse, if the kids aren’t in school at all and are roaming the streets

[Tax-chick]

Oh, excellent work! I’m going to email those to Anoreth: she’s re-educating her entire ship’s crew as they putter about the Western Pacific. It’s very frustrating for her (but a good preparation to be a mother someday ;-).

[esquirette]

“dump pubed, the po, irs, and a whole lot more; dump the presidential palace on penna ave, the ss, aircraft, limos, etc., etc.”

Ayup. Let’s start a “Just Leave Me Alone” party.

[ChurtleDawg]

so each parent writes their own curriculum? I think this is rather unfeasible.

[Carry_Okie]

No, conservatives don’t want to abolish public education.

I do. We could put the best educational material and instruction in the world on the equivalent of YouTube, test in strip malls, and shut the whole babysitting service down for good and do a better job for about a tenth the cost, if that much.

My wife just finished her Masters' as a clinical nurse specialist in the newborn intensive care unit. She took her certification exam at H&R Block and got her results in less than a minute. She said it was the hardest test she'd taken in the entire Masters' program. If they can do that, they can do anything up to the BS level except for lab work.

"Public education" is an archaic and maliciously destructive control edifice. It should be shut down, but not immediately. The NEA was founded by the ideological cohorts of Mann and Dewey. Their purpose in initiating public schooling was to bring socialism to the US. This wasn't some kind of high-jacking, it was planned from the start.

Here is a program to get real change from public schools:

Education Policy Components

1. Enforce the U.S. Supreme Court decision re Communications Workers v. Beck (487 US 735, 1988).
2. Assist formation of corporate service associations. Offer State funding for local school districts to divest into smaller, more personalized institutions.
3. Use the private and home education market to develop and test learning tools and services. Private validation services could assess product performance against product claims. School boards would be free to select guaranteed products for use in public schools.
4. Insurance on the guarantee would cover the cost of remedial education if the product fails to meet warranted performance.
5. Veto any bill requiring home and private educators to conform to State teacher certification standards.
6. Veto any bill requiring State supervision of home schools.
7. Analyze any Federal program for insufficient funds and unintended consequences suspecting unfunded mandates. Cite New York v. United States (505 US 144, 1992).

Here is a speech on the topic I wrote for Bill Simon:

Education

Education is the most critical issue in California, more serious than even the budget crisis. When Gray Davis first ran for Governor, he promised that Education was to be his highest three priorities, but instead Mr. Davis has shown us what they really were all along: Re-Election, Re-Election, and Re-Election. What were the results? Education spending per student has increased nearly 30%, while classroom performance remains relatively unimproved and at the bottom of a nation producing a third rate primary and secondary education product. The system is broken and the State is nearly bankrupt. So what can we do?

One answer is to free California’s teachers from the overwhelming power of national unions. Teachers should have a choice whether or not to support an often radical political agenda. Unlike Gray Davis, if you elect me Governor of California, I will enforce the law that prohibits unions from requiring campaign contributions in dues payments without teacher’s permission (Beck (487 US 735), 1988).

Second, we must reverse the trend toward large unified school districts that has effectively excluded parents from affecting public school decisions. The purpose of consolidation was supposedly to reduce the cost of overhead through economies of scale and to strengthen the districts’ collective bargaining power, but that isn’t how it has turned out. Instead, district bureaucracies have become enormous and the resulting issues are so complex that parents are pushed aside by an organizational machine controlled by union lawyers.

I plan to assist formation of corporate service associations for school districts so that they can divest operations into smaller, more personalized institutions while retaining the organizational muscle to deal with the unions. Smaller school districts will give parents a stronger voice on district boards over the issues that matter to them. The principle need to make this possible is to develop programs for children with special needs. Here is where can turn to parents for solutions.

Some would argue that parents on local School Boards aren’t qualified to make administrative decisions about public education, especially over programs for children with developmental challenges. So, I’d like to talk about an education success-story that not only proves that argument wrong, it points toward a total transformation in public education.

Home education is enjoying a renaissance in America, and religious freedom isn’t the principle reason. Parents are choosing to home school to assure educational excellence for their children, whose learning habits they know best. A family bond of patience and discipline is a critical factor in student success, especially in a challenging situation. What many people don't know about home-schools is that they have a high percentage of students with genetic, behavioral, and developmental disabilities that had often been poorly served by public institutions. Even with that statistical disadvantage, SAT, ACT, and STAR test scores strongly indicate that home education is producing superior results across the entire spectrum of individual ability.

So parents ARE competent to make choices about their children’s education, and home schools successfully manage nearly every type of specialized educational problem. So what are they doing right that we can apply to public institutions?

As home-educators have grown in number, they have been organizing into loosely knit education cooperatives that point to a new form of public education: a decentralized, customer-oriented network for lifelong learning, using products customized to meet individual interests and abilities. That promises what 21^st Century public education could really become: a multi-disciplinary market of customized learning products and services.

We are already starting to see the effects of this change. Software and curriculum companies are finding a growing market of customers committed to gaining competitive advantage. Colleges and universities are offering online degrees because they need superior students to assure productive alumnae. Superior teachers could get rich transmitting their ideas and methods to a mass-market. Where better to develop those products and sell them to the world than California?

We can use private and home education as if they were R&D laboratories developing and testing proven learning tools and services. Public school parents on school boards could then select those products that the State would fund for use in public schools. It is a gradual transformation, from experimenting on our children with untested academic theories, to contracting for innovative tools and methods that have been proven in the marketplace.

All we have to do is let it happen and keep government from regulating new educational methods out of existence. If you elect me Governor, that is what I will do. Federal education dollars aren’t worth the price of Federal control and bureaucratic requirements. Private and home education both leave the State with more money to spend per-child and provide a competitive incentive for public schools to keep their customers.

Together, let’s help California rise from the ashes of a broken system and lead the way once again, into a world of exciting possibilities for our children.

Now, that program would bring real change.

[Tribune7]

It's Time To End Public Schools

[frogjerk]

Save taxpayer money and save our kids....States need to OUTSOURCE education to the private sector thru vouchers.

And the reduction of local taxes.

[barbarianbabs]

If you get rid of public schools...what will happen to:
Pajama Day?
Crazy Hair Day?
Red sock Day?
Whacky Hat Day?
Blue shirt Day?
Pink fingernail Day? etc.etc.
How will the children survive?

[stephenjohnbanker]

” No, conservatives don’t want to abolish public education. We want to improve it and make it more accountable to local taxpayers, parents and values.”

W R O N G

[SMARTY]

Kids pick up a GREAT DEAL by example...(THAT'S why the media and OTHER KIDS have so much effect on them.) Parents can set an example contravening all and everything that the friends, teachers, textbooks and the system routinely smuggle into his little conscience.

It can be done. Not as a line-item, labor-intensive process, That would be impossible...but, in the other much more dramatic and effective way. By EXAMPLE

[stephenjohnbanker]

“Public education” is an archaic and maliciously destructive control edifice. It should be shut down, but not immediately. The NEA was founded by the ideological cohorts of Mann and Dewey. Their purpose in initiating public schooling was to bring socialism to the US. This wasn’t some kind of high-jacking, it was planned from the start.

BINGO

[gunnyg]

now yer talkin’!!!!!

The Right To Be Left Alone....

http://gunnyg.wordpress.com/2007/09/22/the-right-to-be-left-alone/

[stephenjohnbanker]

” GWB sold us out on public education when he cut a deal with Ted Kennedy to remove private school vouchers from the socialist No Child Left Behind federal bill, “

This is when I wrote Bush off as our enemy. He got worse from there.

[Think free or die]

"But more often than not, conservatives find in public-school teachers and administrators not adversaries, but regular, hard-working people who look at the world the same way they do."

I'm not so sure I'd agree with Lonsberry on this point. Many are hard working, but I don't think most of them share my world view. Back when I was a kid in school that may have been true, but based on my experience with my sons' teachers, I don't think it's true now. Universities are another example of how lack of accountability to parents has flourished under government funding and influence.

That said, I'd probably put a higher priority on reforming public schools than on abolishing them. In the same way that abolishing Medicare or Social Security is politically and logistically a near impossibility, abolishing public schools is impractical. None of these programs should have been created in their present form, but calling for their elimination sounds too extreme to the average voter and will tend to scare them away. We've strayed way too far from our constitutional roots, but barring a complete collapse and starting over, I don't see us turning back the clock so drastically.

[Lurker]

He likes that middle-class welfare entitlement.

Bingo. Faux 'conservatives' like Lonsberry are all for taking away someone elses entitlements but would scream like little babies if theirs is threatened. Then he'd actually have to take some responsibility for educating his own brood.

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

I agree with Milton Freedman: Abolish Public Schools. If we insist on public funding of “schooling” ( I cannot bring myself to call it “education”) issue vouchers. He argued that the government does not run farms, canneries, abattoirs, supermarkets and bakeries. It issues FoodStamps (now EFT cards). Give parents a voucher and let them chose a school that best satisfies their aspirations for their children's education.

[timeflies]

I wish it was not so but some kids simply do not want to learn. These kids have parents who do not care. At least in a private school they can be kicked out. Schools are not supposed to be the parent.