A different way of thinking

Choice, autonomy, and accountability
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Kansas advocates the privatization of each school in America into an independent, non-profit form:

1.1 under which each will be responsible for determining the philosophy, style, and execution in the teaching of their charges in accordance to commonly accepted formats of teaching;

1.2 held accountable to a national system of standards that are specific in aim of basic skills for all students regardless of school type, and globally preeminent standards for each type of school; where

1.3 the federal government provides the cost of tuition for all students, and determines the cost of tuition for each school on the basis of a
standard formula of performance;

1.4 the opportunity for parents to determine the school of choice for their children within their districts, and where available, outside of them.

A change of thought
Indeed, such a reform is a departure for the better – public by nature of funding and accountability, but autonomous by the means in which they are reached. For schools now are placed in an interesting situation: not dictated by free markets and lacking direct, active investors, there is no existence or necessity for the system’s evolution. Perhaps this gives reason to Bill Gates’ claim that schools are “obsolete.”

Today, schools are reduced to an extreme polarity of classes of great difficulty and those of near trivial importance. Students are reduced to notes and definites in a rigid structure—where they should be enabled. It is unfortunate that out of irrelevance—and the lack of an opportunity to pursue their own passions, dedication is written off and the most vulnerable walk away.

Often, the most difficult classes are the result of a vicious cycle of misunderstanding—the result of a lack of time, increasing frustration, and a lack of awareness on part of the teacher of what their students really know.

As an institution, schools are further severing themselves from their responsibilities through bureaucratic decay. A focus on proximate indicators—race among them—bears little relevance to the nature of a modern society where wealth determines all. Narrow metrics—less children per teacher—cause a shotgun effect of irrational phenomena, often at the detriment of other aims—hiring more unqualified teachers.

Certainly it is possible for a cynic to argue that teachers have become but mere commodities reduced to a state of depressing manipulation. The National Educators Association, a teacher’s union, reports that 73% of new hires report entering the profession out of their desire to work with young people and 68% cite it as the reason for remaining. It is a shame many leave within their first five years.[1] By no means should teachers be compelled to sign themselves away to an oath of poverty. That—and bureaucratic obscurity.

Three-hundred and sixty-five years after the Massachusetts Bay Colony made proper education compulsory, the least we’ve learned is that education is not meant to fail you.

[1] National Teacher Day Spotlights Key Issues Facing Profession. National Educators Association. 2 May 2006. http://www.nea.org/newsreleases/2006/nr060502.