Home Schooling

U.S. students aren't catching up to their peers in other industrialized countries. A report recently published by Harvard (your #1 school on your list) University's Program on Education Policy and Governance found that students in Latvia, Chile and Brazil are making gains in academics three times faster than American students, while those in Portugal, Hong Kong, Germany, Poland, Liechtenstein, Slovenia, Colombia and Lithuania are improving at twice the rate. Researchers estimate that gains made by students in those 11 countries equate to about two years of learning. What gains U.S. students posted in recent years are "hardly remarkable by world standards," according to the report. Although the U.S. is not one of the nine countries that lost academic ground for the 14-year period between 1995 and 2009, more countries were improving at a rate significantly faster than that of the U.S. (Researchers looked at data for 49 countries). The study's findings echo years of rankings that show foreign students outpacing their American peers academically. Students in Shanghai who recently took international exams for the first time outscored every other school system in the world. In the same test, American students ranked 25th in math, 17th in science and 14th in reading. (And these are supposed to be the best students America has to offer). A 2009 study found that U.S. students ranked 25th among 34 countries in math and science, behind nations like China, Singapore, South Korea, Hong Kong and Finland. Figures like these have groups like StudentsFirst, headed by former D.C. schools chancellor Michelle Rhee (aka the "Teacher Terminator"), concerned and calling for reforms to "our education system [that] can't compete with the rest of the world." Just 6 percent of U.S. students performed at the advanced level on an international exam administered in 56 countries in 2006. That proportion is lower than those achieved by students in 30 other countries. American students' low performance and slow progress in math could also threaten the country's economic growth, experts have said from the Harvard study. (Your top school is admitting that American schools are failing). Here's one bit from the study: "Because rates of economic growth have a huge impact on the future well-being of the nation, there is a simple message: A country ignores the quality of its schools at its economic peril. Some would excuse the mediocre U.S. performance by claiming that it provides a more equal education to a much more diverse population than other countries do. It is claimed that test scores in the United States are lower than those in many other countries because they are not providing an education to all their students. That argument might have made some sense 50 or 75 years ago, but it is a seriously dated view of the world." Stateside, districts, states and the U.S. Department of Education are fighting to close large achievement gaps. The federal government has made hefty financial commitments to education in recent years, including the implementation of No Child Left Behind and the subsequent waivers from the standards-based law as well as the influx of about $89 billion in stimulus dollars to prevent teacher layoffs, keep class sizes down and avoid program cuts. Still, the Harvard study found little correlation between increased per-pupil spending and gains in test scores. A similar analysis by 24/7 Wall St. last July yielded similar results. In 2009, the U.S. spent more than $10,000 per student, ranging from $6,356 in Utah to $18,126 in New York. Utah's high school graduation rate, however, was higher than New York's. And Harvard's report isn't even taking the OECD reports into account. And those researchers have been tracking America's school progress since the 1990s. It's always the same: More spending, no achievement. Now that we know that the public school is getting more and more outta wack, let's target home and Charter schools. There are now over 2.04 million kids being homeschooled in America, a 75% increase from 1999. In the same report from Harvard that's listed above, the careers of the parents of homeschoolers were examined. 17.3% of the parents had a career in engineering and accounting, 16.9% held professions in law, medicine, and teaching, and 10.7% were business owners. The homeschooling eventually pairs off, as their test scores were compared to the test scores of the students in the school zone that the families were listed in. The results are mind blowing. Out of 100%, here's what the homeschool kids scored vs the public school kids on their state tests: In Reading: 89% vs 50% In Language:84% vs 72% In Math: 74% vs 42% In Science: 86% vs 77% In Social Studies: 66% vs 34% Needless to say, a homeschooled student is 2.34% more likely to get into college compared to their public school counterparts. There is one major downside to homeschooling: lack of peers. "When it comes to relationships and bonding, homeschooled kids suffer. But when the United States is ranked at what it is in terms of student performance, perhaps it's time to get better acquainted with the textbook, rather than the party." sums up one of the researchers. So we see public schools and home schools. They both have flaws, but what if you want the education quality of a homeschooler, and the peer on peer interaction of a public school. Well we are a free market society, and once again, the free market has the answer. New "Charter Schools" are popping up in America and bashing the stagnant methods of the public schools wide open. This has, however attracted the wrath of both the Teachers Union and the government monopoly of researchers, both of whom are keen to destroy anything that threatens them. Year after year, the government releases smearing reports and bad results, while the teachers unions protest the working conditions and lack of tenure. But is any of this true? Are kids in these new experimental schools really getting a sub-par education? The answer is no. In actuality, students are outperforming both public and homeschooled kids. And they are spending thousands of dollars less to do it. That's because charter schools are run by private profit driven owners, who have to compete for students. If a charter school fails it's students, then the parents can send their child to a different charter school. This ensures that bad schools close, and incompetent teachers are fired. This outrages the teachers unions, who are protected by tenure. Tenure is a fancy word for being "un-fireable". If a principal wants to fire a teacher, he has to jump through hoops to do so. The union contract is 600 pages of fine print long, after all. Take this example: A teacher in New York was caught sending sexually explicit photos to one of his 16 year old female students. It took the school board 5 years, over $614,000 in legal fees, plus they had to pay his $300,000 dollar salary just to fire him. The total cost to terminate him: $2,114,000 Why on earth does it cost that much? Because of his union contract. He thankfully will not be able to teach again, but in a unionized public school, teachers are near impossible to get rid of. This hurts not only our international standing, but also the students and families. This doesn't happen at a charter school though. At charters, teachers can be fired at the drop of a dime. It may seem unfair, but if the school wants to succeed, then bad employees have to go. That's not the only new thing about charter schools though. Parents are so eager to enroll their children that the school has to hold lotteries to determine which kids to admit. Some get lucky but sadly, most do not as they are forced to enroll their children into poorly performing schools assigned to them by their zip code. Once again innovation and the free market blossom, while monopolized industries fail to improve and leave America in the dust.