The Way I See It
By Joseph C. Phillips

The Question of Education

The report card for our nation’s schools is in and it doesn’t look good.  Half a dozen studies and reports have been released in the last month and all of them concluded that the achievement gap between white and black students was alive and well.  Most disturbing was the revelation that on average black high school students were reading and performing math at the level of white junior high school students. 

In response to the studies Senator Edward Kennedy (D-MA), who is expected to chair the senate education committee, has promised to seek more resources for education.  Way to think outside of the box Teddy!  The problem, of course, is not lack of resources, but how those resources are spent.  The Los Angeles Unified School District for example constantly cries poverty -- begging alms “for the children” – and yet had the genius to spend $1 billion (yes you read that correctly) to build 2 new schools, one of which sits on a toxic waste dump.  This while many classrooms make use of outdated text books. 

Frugality is only part of the problem, however.  We have also drastically changed the answer we give to the education question.  To whit:  Whose responsibility is it to educate children?  Far too many of us respond that this is the job of government (whether state or federal).  That answer is incorrect.  The responsibility of educating children belongs to parents.  Public schools are merely a tool to fulfill that responsibility.  The difference in how we answer the education question is the difference between public dollars made available to parents for the purposes of educating their children and government schools, manned with government employees, filled with government curriculum, at the mercy of government bureaucracy.

This is not a slam against public schooling.  I was a product of public schools as were my parents, as was my wife. All of our children presently attend public schools.  My high school graduating class sent students to schools like Harvard, Stanford, Columbia and the various Military academies.  That class produced doctors, lawyers, social workers, scientists and businessmen, teachers, janitors and housewives, in short productive members of society.  And there was nothing unique about my school.  The same story was replicated in high schools across the city, in every corner of this nation and across the decades.  The Public school system has produced generations of citizen leaders and been the doorway for millions of immigrants into full participation in American society and a share of the American dream.  Something must be right with the public schools.

There remains, however, the sad fact that for some the public schools are failing.  These reports make clear that Black and Hispanic students continue to under perform their white and Asian counterparts, and this underperformance persists in spite of decades of increased federal intervention, truckloads of money and billion dollar schools built on toxic waste dumps.

Good people despair because we recognize that an educated populace is essential for the health of a free society.  We also know poorly educated students mean poorly prepared workers, and workers ill prepared to compete in the job market will struggle with low paying jobs, stand in line for public entitlements and nibble forever at the edges of the American dream.   

Making more public dollars available for irresponsible bureaucrats to waste has done very little to improve the performance of Black and Hispanic children, and based on these studies there is little to suggest that it ever will.  Closing the achievement gap and at the same time putting the luster back on America’s public education system will require us to reconsider our answer to the education question and then rethink our approach to public education.  How can government work better as a partner and resource for those truly responsible for the education of children? 

Government is a very poor substitute for a parent, which is why public education works while government schools continue to fail.

Send me your ways of seeing it at Josephcp@netlistings.com