Past experience with federal education programs predicts that
the No Child Left Behind act (NCLB) will also fail parents
whose children are doing poorly in school. The federal
government has spent over $120 billion on Title 1 programs for
low-income students since 1965. Yet the literacy rates for
these children today are appalling and the achievement gap
between low-income children and their peers has not closed.
If the U.S. Department of Education wants to give real choice
to parents, they should not be tinkering with a failed
government-controlled school system that, by its very nature,
strangles free choice and competition.
Americans have been blessed with a system that gives them
almost unlimited choices in their daily lives for almost four
hundred years - it's called the free market. If parents could
pay for their kids' education in a totally unregulated,
fiercely competitive education free market, free from
government controls, parents would have all the school choice
in the world. This education free market would also give their
kids a superb, low-cost education.
Yet too often, government officials with their bureaucratic
mentality, distrust the free market, the same free market that
brings them their cars, clothes, computers, electricity, and
fresh food. The No Child Left Behind Act adds yet another layer
of federal regulations to the already strangling layers of local
and state government regulations on education.
If the federal government truly wants to give parents more
school choice, they should be working to remove local and state
controls over education, not adding to those controls with the
No Child Left Behind law and other regulations. That is like
trying to cure a person dying of arsenic poisoning by giving
him more arsenic.
Naturally, government education officials can't understand the
fact that government control of education is not the solution,
it is the problem.
Over the past fifty years, federal, state, and city governments
have spent hundreds of billions of dollars trying to "fix" the
public schools. They have failed, time and again. For example,
in July, 2005, the Congress-mandated National Assessment of
Education Progress showed that high-school students' dismal
reading skills have not improved since 1999.
High-school drop-out rates in inner-city, low-income minority
areas range from 30 percent to over 50 percent. High-school
dropouts are far more likely to end up in prison during their
lifetimes. A U.S. Bureau of Justice report estimates that
approximately 47 percent of drug offenders and 75 percent of
state prison inmates are high-school dropouts. Dropouts are
also about three times more likely than high-school graduates
to end up on welfare.
These are not just appalling statistics. These numbers
represent millions of bright, eager chidren whose lives can be
ruined by public schools that fail them.
Trying to repair the public-school system is futile, precisely
because it is a compulsory, government-controlled
near-monopoly. Trying to fix this system with vouchers, charter
schools, or the No Child Left Behind Law is like trying to cure
cancer with a band-aid.
Parents should not pin their hopes on any government-sponsored
school-choice alternative. Vouchers, charter schools, and the
No Child Left Behind Act are simply too little, too late. Also,
powerful, entrenched special-interest groups in the
public-school establishment fight school choice because they
benefit from parents' and children's subservience to the
system.
Parents should not expect the public schools in their
neighborhoods to improve. If you want to give your children a
decent education and a chance at life, you must take their
future into your own hands, now. It is useless to hope that the
public-school system has the will or ability to reform itself.
It is a waste of your time, and your children's precious time,
to deal with, plead with, or complain to public-school
authorities or employees who benefit by the system.
Instead, do as the citizen-slaves of communist East Berlin did
when they fled to freedom in West Berlin - vote with your feet.
Consider writing-off the public-school system. Consider taking
your children out of these schools, permanently. You and your
children remain victims of the public-school system only by
your own consent. The power to withdraw your consent is a power
that public-school authorities can't stop. Withdraw your consent
and refuse to be a victim any longer.
There are many other education resources that parents can use
right now to give their kids a quality, low-cost education.
These resources include the new Internet private schools,
Internet tutors, low-cost, learn-to-read and learn-math books
in libraries and bookstores, computer learning software, and
home-schooling. I discuss all these great new education options
in my book, "Public Schools, Public Menace."
Article Copyrighted ? 2005 by Joel Turtel.
Source: http://www.ArticlePros.com/author.php?Joel Turtel
|
