Education reform in the United States is facing many obstacles, coming from many different directions. Arne Duncan and his precious Department of Education are interfering with school reform via the Race To The Top program. Michael Bloomberg is exacerbating an already dismal situation in New York City. All the while, teacher unions are making it more difficult to reform schools, creating an even worse situation for the country to deal with, and especially New York City.
The Obama Administration’s federal accountability and standardized testing policies, which have not proven to be effective, have been adopted by the mayor of this country’s largest city – Michael Bloomberg. Bloomberg, and his school chancellor Joel Klein, are after Race To The Top funds, which reward schools based on their students’ performance and teacher’s effectiveness. This accountability issue is a major concern. Teachers “fired” under the accountability policy continue to receive pay during their time in “The Rubber Room” – a place where they sit and do nothing for years on end as they await their hearing. This is because teachers are never truly fired due to clauses in union contracts. Teachers have been caught being racist, sexually inappropriate, drunk, and purely incompetent and still receive pay until a verdict is issued in their hearing, which can take years to complete.
The combination of Bloomberg’s accountability policies and the teacher union’s due process policies, which nearly give teachers complete immunity, have led to the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars. This money could be used improving schools, but instead it is wasted on bureaucratic policies, paying teachers to not work because they were found to be too dangerous or unfit, to work around children. Because of the lack of funds, Bloomberg has decided to shut down dozens of “underperforming” schools in New York City.
Bloomberg has stumbled across one good idea, though. That idea is the establishment of charter schools – public schools that do not have to follow the same guidelines as normal public schools. However, the creation of these schools has cost money, which he had to shut down other public schools to obtain. If the funds mentioned above were not wasted on teachers that should have been fired months earlier, then there would not be a need to close any schools. David Hursh, a professor at the Warner School, stated in my interview with him that, “Instead of closing schools, we should focus on developing structures and systems to improve the schools.” This is true, but as I have already stated, unions have caused many obstacles in the realm of education reform.
Randi Weingarten, head of the American Federation of Teachers, is one of the main union culprits behind these problems America’s education system is facing. Besides giving terrible teachers amnesty and costing the government valuable money, she also promotes the airing of misleading commercials. The commercials her union puts out claim public schools are improving, while they are clearly not (largely due to union involvement).
However, there are two solutions to this education reform problem. The formation of more charter schools is one solution. The second is the use of state funds to provide vouchers to every child in the state, instead of allocating the money to the schools specifically.
The benefits of charter schools are as follows. The can fire underperforming teachers, while rewarding better ones with bonuses; this provides incentives for teachers, which they do not usually get while working for a union. In addition to that, they must be innovative in order to attract students if they wish to stay open. The overall education at charter schools is better than at normal public schools.
My favorite solution to the problem of poorly performing public schools is the assignment of state funds directly to students, so they, or more likely their parents, may spend the vouchers on whatever education they see fit. Public schools, charter schools, and private schools – religious and secular – will all have to compete in order to stay open. This will cause the teachers and school administrators to operate more efficiently in order to attract the students, and their money. This idea has been successfully implemented in Belgium already.
The current system of schooling in the U.S. gives public schools monopoly status over low income families and monopolies have no incentive to improve; the DMV is a good example of this. Charter schools and public schools, however, must continue to offer something better in order to remain open; schools that do not perform well fail because they do not receive any money. This competition is healthy for the education system, so giving students vouchers is the most logical, and may I add capitalist, option for the states to consider.
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