The school year begins soon, as does the next legislative session, and voters all over the country will hear cries of alarm over the state of public education, followed quickly by lawmakers' proposals for its reform. In the two years since I started teaching, I've heard dozens of public-school horror stories gleefully reported on the evening news. Students put LSD into a teacher's soda. Middle-schoolers show up for class with guns. A teacher is disciplined because two students fondled each other while he showed a movie, another for performing oral sex on her male students, and yet another for asking a student to model lingerie for him.
Students are drunk, stoned and peddling heroin.
Hallways are jammed and teachers have so many students they can hardly remember all their names, much less offer individual instruction. Worst of all, students arrive at college unprepared and enter the workplace functionally illiterate. Last year, the Florida legislature implemented a reform agenda that included raising grading scales and graduation standards, ending teacher tenure and easing administrative burdens. For the past few years, such programs have gained support among conservatives all over the nation. Believing that private schools can do a better job of educating our students than the public school system, parent groups, religious groups and legislators want to turn over to the private sector the task of preparing America's children for college and adulthood.