From First to Worst? The Quality of Our Education System

PART 1 of 2

The quality of our world’s future depends on the quality of education.

In the 21st century, there is nothing more important to individual opportunity and societies well being then education. In a free society, a self-governing society, education is essential. At a time when traditional jobs are disappearing into a raging sea of globalism and computerization, and when new jobs are being invented faster than the Labor Department can slap names on them, education is crucial. In an age when our leaders seem to have lost their common sense and, increasingly, their common decency; when the New Deal has become No Deal; and when the shining city on the hill is only shining because the lights of a new casino are on, education is the make-or-break factor of our future.

And, we are broken.

Only 25 years ago we were ranked number one in the world in education, today we’re 18th. (Behind Poland) (CBS News, Poor Marks for U.S. Education System) We spend more than $500 billion a year on K-12 grade education. And what do we get for our money? You know the answer. Our primary school education system is so broken and so bureaucratized that America’s fastest growing schools are home schools. Perhaps we should not be surprised at the quality of education we get with chronically low paid teachers who often have to buy school supplies for their students. It’s hard for teachers to concentrate when 40% of them are thinking of quitting because of threats of violence. And “Leaving no child behind” is a joke because the money your school receives is based mostly on the property values of the neighborhood it’s in.

For example, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, just one of the city’s 12 high schools made “adequate yearly progress” last year under the federal No Child Left Behind Act. Of Albuquerque’s 128 public schools, only 47 met the standard, according to the state Public Education Department. There is also rising frustration and desperation over poor student achievement, crumbling buildings, bureaucratic wrangling among school officials and revolving-door superintendents. (USA TODAY, More Mayors Move to Take Over Schools)

So what’s going on? Education, with its half trillion-dollar budget is simply a bureaucracy stumbling around, wrestling in its own underwear. Teacher unions, administrators and politicians all want more money. And maybe they should get some, but not without a proven plan.

For starters, most school districts spend nearly 40% of their budget on administration and overhead. If we could only cut that down to 35% we could hire 350,000 more teachers. 350,000 more! Today!

But beyond just hiring more teachers, we already know what works. We’ve got plenty of examples. All across our country there are brilliant administrators and dedicated teachers who create schools of unexpected excellence. What they seem to have in common is a whole person commitment to each student. Teachers and administrators who actually care about kids and aren’t afraid to show it. Discipline, standards, inspiration, expectations and consequences are critical. And where there is little parental support, mentors, interns and extended school hours, even Saturday field trips, can make a difference.

The answers are right in front of us. It’s no big mystery. What’s missing is leadership. The will to change things.

6 comments.

Why Health Care is Killing Us

“Seven Democratic candidates for president promised Saturday to
guarantee health insurance for all, but they disagreed over how to pay
for it and how fast it could be achieved.” (NY Times Article) Well, awesome! Polls everywhere confirm that’s what America wants. But it’s not as easy as a political promise.

There are lots of people that are making lots of money on the current system.
They profit for inefficiency, regulation, and limiting access to care.
Some want the government to take over everything. Turn our health
system into a kind of Medicare - Post Office. Hmmm. One thing’s for
sure, we need something vastly better than what we have.

Recently I was in a small cafe and saw a plastic canister with a
photocopied picture of a child in need of a $300,000 surgery to remove
a brain tumor. The canister was for donations. The child’s parents
worked at the cafe and everyone, their co-workers and regular
customers, were pitching in to raise money. These hard working parents made too much money to qualify for Medicaid, but too little to have adequate health insurance. Two thoughts went through my mind. First, their only real option was to have the surgery and declare bankruptcy.

(About half of American bankruptcies are caused by stratospheric medical bills not covered by insurance. That’s right; lots of us have health insurance and still go bankrupt.)

Second, this is absolutely nuts. We live in the only first world country in the world where full time, hard working people have to beg for money to take care of their children’s medical needs. We all see it. Homemade donation canisters for uncovered medical expenses are on store counters in every town in America. Think about it. The only countries where people have to beg for money to be cared for is us and countries run by thieving dictators who don’t care about their citizens. Too strong? You might not think so if you were trying to raise money for your child. Or you
had your medical insurance claims denied based on a trivial technicality, which also happens to millions of us each year.

So now, every politician is talking about universal health care. Talk is cheap. What’s outrageous is the cost. Empty promises mean nothing. The solution isn’t schemes to make it illegal not to own health insurance or new programs to cover prescription drugs which will cost presently uncalculated hundreds of billions of ours and our children’s tax dollars a year. Of course access to quality health care is essential to 21st century civilization. That’s a given. But it’s the wildly escalating costs of health care that must be stopped. The health care system is a crazy hodgepodge of old processes, individualistic doctors, inefficient hospitals, financially driven insurance and drug companies, non-sensical regulations, and bewildered, frightened and frustrated patients all competing in a jungle of self-interests. The result is not efficiency and quality predicted by a free market of voluntary exchange but the opposite. We lead the developed world in cost and in death by medical errors. The American Medical Association estimates over 800 people a day die in American hospitals due to avoidable mistakes. That is more than an “oops.”

We just aren’t getting much for all the money we spend. So it’s silly to work on access to a ridiculously expensive health system when the system is broken and cost of subsidizing it will bankrupt us. We have to re-invent the whole system of health prevention, education, and care. It starts with us. Most of us need a healthier diet, more exercise and less work and debt-induced stress. We all know that. Next, there are many islands of excellence where costs are lower and quality is higher in US health care. These include doctors, hospitals, and insurers that work collaboratively, employ technology, and specialize in specific illnesses and treatment. It’s just applied common sense without the barriers of bureaucracy and greed.

We can fix health care and create universal access with the right leadership. But if government subsidizing the current system with our tax dollars is the only solution, heaven help us. Because we’ll all be broke and dying sooner than we need to.

8 comments.

Ruining Mexico

The heated Mexican/U.S. border debate rages on. We read about it in the papers; we hear about on the news. But the debate doesn’t even seem to be dealing with the real issues.

First of all, claiming that it’s all right to exploit Mexican workers in the U.S. because they do jobs we won’t do is twisted logic. If we have jobs only a desperate immigrant would do for exploitive wages, why do these jobs even exist?

There is zero evidence that Americans won’t do hard jobs that are safe and pay fair wages. So if we need Mexicans to do dangerous, toxic, dirty work for unfair wages there is something wrong with the morals of the exploiters. Slave owners also thought they were giving Africans a better life.

More importantly, illegal immigration is killing Mexico. Over half of Mexico’s 100 million citizens say they want to move to the U.S. Is that a good thing? The tens of thousands of young men and women leaving Mexico are Mexico’s most entrepreneurial, most resourceful of their vast underclass. There are entire towns and villages peopled only by the women and children left behind. The whole nation is dependent on the billions of dollars illegally employed family members send home creating a false economy. This creates price inflation in Mexico while robbing our economy of the purchasing power of the wages we are paying. Most of all Mexico remains unable to move behind a corrupt banana republic system of the rich and privileged making a mockery of democracy. The corruption of rich using laws and regulations preventing real capitalism from nurturing a middle class has created a country rich in resources sinking in greed and bribery.

Since it is unlikely we will annex Mexico, we must use our political, economic and investment policy to promote real reform. Access to quality education and capital must improve. The legal system must be made reliable. Misery as a way of life must end, and much more. All this may take decades. But is the alternative to have most of Mexico’s future sneak across our border?

As for us, never in our history has this number of immigrants come to America so fast. Where are schools, roads, hospitals, housing, water, sewers coming from? Is having 400,000 million Americans in the next 35 years really a good idea for anyone but big box retailers and fast food outlets? Is this really the best idea for our future?

What do you think? The article “Ambassador: Mexico to lobby hard for immigration reform” found in USA Today on Feb. 20, 2007 states that Mexico favors creating a guest worker program. The article also states that a Republican-led Congress prior to November’s Congressional elections feels the solution is to increase security and building border walls to prevent illegal immigration. But does this solve anything?

Where do you stand? What are your ideas to solve this problem? Let us know. We want to hear your voice.

7 comments.