You would think the bureaucrats who run government schools would want to focus on the basics, such as teaching reading, writing, and arithmetic.
After all, no nation spends more per pupil on education than the United States. And based on some Cato Institute research, I suspect the OECD estimate of about $15,000 per student is a low-ball estimate of the burden on American taxpayers.
So what do we get for all this money? To be blunt, the results are miserable, with Americans ranking well below average compared to our overseas competitors.
Here are some comparisons on both literacy and numeracy from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. You’ll have to click the images to get an enlarged view. But maybe you won’t want to do that since it’s depressing to see that Americans are near the bottom for math skills and well below average for verbal skills.
Geesh, this is embarrassing. I like Slovaks, but I don’t want Americans to be less intelligent. I also like Belgians, but why are they kicking our tail? And I really like Estonians, but they’re putting us to shame.
So how is the education establishment dealing with these dismal results?
Well, they keep asking for more money. But as this remarkable chart from the Cato Institute illustrates, throwing more money at the system is a great way of building bureaucracy. But it sure doesn’t do much for kids.
So you could say this is a form of child abuse. But that would trivialize the plights of kids who are grossly mistreated. So let’s say that the sub-par education provided by government schools is a form of child victimization. Or mistreatment. Or some word that signifies how they are not well served by the government’s education monopoly.
But let’s also remember that sub-par education is not the only bad thing that happens in government schools.
We also have amazing (in a bad way) episodes of intrusive and abusive political correctness.
Here’s a story from Massachusetts about a student being punished for doing the right thing.
It’s tough for Eleanor Cox to talk about how heartbroken her daughter Erin is over the punishment she received for doing what she thought was right. …Two weeks ago, Erin received a call from a friend at a party who was too drunk to drive. Erin drove to Boxford after work to pick up her friend. Moments after she arrived, the cops arrived too and busted several kids for underage possession of alcohol. A North Andover High School honor student, Erin was cleared by police, who agreed she had not been drinking and was not in possession of alcohol. But Andover High told Erin she was in violation of the district’s zero tolerance policy against alcohol and drug use. In the middle of her senior year, Erin was demoted from captain of the volleyball team and told she would be suspended from playing for five games. …the parents of Erin’s teammates have started a petition to support her.
I’m dismayed, of course, that the school wants to punish someone who didn’t do anything wrong, but what really irks me is that the school wants to regulate and control behavior that takes place off school property and outside of school hours.
To be blunt, it’s none of their you-know-what business. Parents should have primary responsibility for their kids and law enforcement has a role if they’re breaking the law.
Let’s now travel down south and read part of a report about how some mindless school bureaucrats punished an autistic student because he drew a picture of a bomb and brought the drawing to school.
…it all started when her son had made the hand-drawn picture of the bomb during the weekend at home. Parham said Rhett is a fan of the video game Bomber Man and drew the cartoon-ish like explosive. She told FOX Carolina on Monday that her son took the picture to Hillcrest Middle School, and that’s where problems arose. Parham said she was told that her son showed the picture to some older children, who reported him to school administration. …She said her son was suspended indefinitely by the school.
Fortunately, the government backed down after the story generated some unfavorable attention for the bureaucratic drones.
But we should ask ourselves why it even got to that stage. And perhaps get some counseling for the little brats who snitched on him. Sounds like they’re future IRS agents in training.
Sadly, this is just part of a pattern we’ve seen in government schools, with bureaucrats hyperventilating over normal kid behavior. Here are some other examples.
- Bureaucrats suspended a little boy for taking bites out of a pop tart in such a way that it was shaped like a gun.
- Bureaucrats suspended a 7-year boy for pretending to throw a non-existent grenade on the playground.
- Bureaucrats suspended a 6-year old boy in Maryland for making a gun shape with his finger.
- Bureaucrats busted a 5-year old girl in Pennsylvania for having a pink plastic gun that shoots bubbles.
- A teacher in Rhode Island caught an 8-year old boy with some plastic toy army men.
- Bureaucrats evacuated a school because an 11-year old boy made a motion detector for his science experiment.
- Bureaucrats in Florida kicked an 8-year old boy out of school for a year because he had a plastic gun in his backpack.
- A dual award in Virginia, with half the prize for the bureaucrats who suspended a 10-year old boy for a toy gun and half the prize for the cops who then arrested the kid.
- A third-grader got in trouble for having toy army men on his birthday cupcakes.
- Two second-graders got suspended for holding pencils like they were guns.
- Bureaucrats suspended a kindergartener for having a lego-sized toy gun.
- Bureaucrats wanted a deaf child to change his sign-language name because it required him to shape his fingers in a way that resembled a gun.
- Bureaucrats suspended two boys for playing with toy guns while off school property.
Now ask yourself to key question: Do we want to maintain and perpetuate a failed government school monopoly, or should we implement school choice to get better results and less political correctness?
Heck, we should be able to reform our schools if there’s already choice in countries such as Chile, Sweden, and the Netherlands.
I believe that school performance by children is a reflection of discipline and learned self discipline. I do not let my child get away with skipping assignments, or doing them poorly. If her test grades are lower than I think they should be, I ask questions and we make sure there are improvements in test preparation next time. If the teacher allows for correcting assignments or retesting, I insist my child do it. And if her behavior was a problem at school, I would make sure that changed, too. American parents would need to become less distracted by their modern lives and more concerned about what their children are doing at school, and at home as it relates to school, for American kids to perform higher globally. Most parents who are capable of doing this have students who are performing at the higher end of their capabilities. Kids/parents who do not put effort into education get little in return. Kids who do not read or want to read learn less.
Public school now is not the same as it was 20, 30, 40 years ago. The need to use modern technology to research, compile, calculate, create, and submit a product (assignment) is time consuming, but is the focus of public education. Creating these assignments is much more time consuming than what was expected from teachers in the 1970s, 80s, 90s, but to what ends? The computer hardware, software, networking, tech staff, etc. are school costs. (So are the football fields and over-sized gymnasiums being built by public schools. Sports cost money.) Modern businesses expect tech-capable graduates. But there are lots of good public schools in America, and they are worth paying for with public taxes. Many students in modern public high schools can do way more academically than their parents or grandparents ever dreamed of doing.
I can only imagine how much WORSE America would look if low income parents could not send children to school. And that ignorant “home school” argument only works for those who are intelligent, capable, motivated, and can somehow not be at work while those children are being home schooled.
This is an income based argument, made by those with enough income to argue it. If you are anti-public education, you want 2 Americas. Those who, by a confluence of factors, are doing well, and the rest in hopeless ghettos who do your menial labor.
Lastly, the charts in the article are measurements of adult competencies from age 16 to 65. I would like to know what that says about American adults who graduated high school (if they did) as early as 1970 and whether we as a whole have maintained a level of competencies compared to other nations.
Note: that whole firearm/PC discussion is barely related, and we should all realize it is an overreaction to gun violence in schools. Some policies have been extreme in their interpretation, and I do shake my head in disbelief.
[…] spends far more than other developed nations, on a per-pupil basis. Yet our national test scores are dismal compared to other developed […]
[…] far more than other developed nations, on a per-pupil basis. Yet our national test scores are dismal compared to other developed […]
[…] spends far more than other developed nations, on a per-pupil basis. Yet our national test scores are dismal compared to other developed […]
[…] those who prefer to focus on outputs, however, it’s very difficult to be happy about the results we’re getting compared to all the money that’s being spent. Heck, in some cases it’s almost as if we’re […]
[…] those who prefer to focus on outputs, however, it’s very difficult to be happy about the results we’re getting compared to all the money that’s being spent. Heck, in some cases it’s almost as if we’re […]
[…] those who prefer to focus on outputs, however, it’s very difficult to be happy about the results we’re getting compared to all the money that’s being spent. Heck, in some cases it’s almost as if we’re […]
[…] those who prefer to focus on outputs, however, it’s very difficult to be happy about the results we’re getting compared to all the money that’s being spent. Heck, in some cases it’s almost as if […]
[…] if you look at the data is this post, you’ll see that American students are lagging behind their counterparts in other developed […]
[…] The US government’s monopoly education system is a travesty mostly because taxpayers spend record amounts of money and we get very poor results. […]
[…] The government’s monopoly education system is a travesty mostly because taxpayers spend record amounts of money and we get very poor results. […]
[…] https://danieljmitchell.wordpress.com/2013/10/26/the-two-types-of-child-victimization-at-government-s… […]
Because teachers and bus drivers, who have professional licenses at stake and must undergo extensive background checks in most states, and are adults, are on the same legal standing as the minors whom the law requires they look out for?
Being a kid in your house must be a lot of fun. Libertarianism ad absurdum.
Schools designate the location of the bus stops, and are in loco parentis under most tort law from the moment the student leaves the door of her home until the moment she returns. The path to the bus stop is, for this matter, school territory, a public thoroughfare, and a place where the school has some responsibility in all local jurisdictions for insuring the safety of the student.
Would it be reasonable for a school to allow students to shoot other students with these guns in the hallways of the school? No. It is also no reasonable that other students should be in a free-fire zone on the way to the bus.
Who is to rule what sorts of guns are acceptable? The district has a strict “no gun of any type” rule.
Would you really rather these miscreants be arrested for assault? They get off easy being expelled from school rather than being hauled up for criminal assault. Be careful what you whine.
So, this case demonstrates Mr. Mitchell’s gross over-reaction and injudicious withholding of salient facts.
Should we believe any of the other cases? I don’t see any reason to. You claim I have to disprove them? Mr. Mitchell can’t support his own assertions?
You have an odd view of argument, where already-proven-wrong, self-proclaimed libertarians are immune from having to prove their point without begging the question (I use that phrase in its argumentation definition).
I agree 100% with Mr. Mitchell’s point on school discipline. I believe the school’s jurisdiction stops at the campus boundary (excluding school-sponsored trips, of course).
As another example of school discipline run amok, my daughter’s high school (in the Oldham County school district, outside of Louisville, Kentucky) recently added another line to its athletic code of conduct on substance abuse. It says that a student can be compelled to respond to questions about possible violations, and that a refusal to respond would be tantamount to admitting guilt. I asked the principal whether this was a reverse lesson on our Constitution, in which we illustrate how a tyranny operates in contrast to the unalienable rights set forth in the Bill of Rights. Uh… no.
This was on top of an existing rule on student parking privileges. By this rule the local police department directly informs the district of student traffic violations for which the school then suspends that student’s parking privileges. On this one I asked whether the school enforces the same rule for teachers and administrators. The answer, of course, was “no.” But even more amazingly, that rule is not even enforced for school bus drivers.
To Ed Darrell,
You write: “Check out any of the incidents, Mr. Garland. Do any of them live up to the dracula billing our host gives them?”
You have two things wrong. (1) As a critic, it is your job to make and support your criticism. It is not my job to guess as to what you are criticizing. (2) Here is Mr. Mitchel’s “dracula billing”.
Mitchel: “Sadly, this is just part of a pattern we’ve seen in government schools, with bureaucrats hyperventilating over normal kid behavior.” You are demonizing Mitchel’s criticisms. Why?
You write to me: “Shooting at kids on the way to school. If your next door neighbor’s kids were shooting at your kids on the way to school, would you consider that innocuous?”
Mr. Mitchel at his post:
=== ===
Now let’s add some important caveats. Even though the toy guns only shoot little plastic pellets, it seems that the boys may have shot at some kids who weren’t part of their play. That’s something that should be punished.
And it’s also possible that the boys are troublemakers and the school was simply using this episode as an excuse to get rid of them.
So maybe there’s some sort of “rough justice” happening behind the scenes. Simply stated, there’s probably a back-story.
=== ===
That is a reasonable summary of the facts. The point you miss is, why should the school be piling on with its own system of punishment? The school delivers education. Part of education is teaching kids about good conduct. The scool’s first response is to exclude these boys for undesirable conduct outside of school. Exclusion for minor bad acts is not teaching.
Shooting pellets at anyone is not innocuous. We have police and laws to punish that. Why is the school stepping in, handing out punishments for actions unrelated to in-school discipline. And, those school punishments are out of proportion to the acts and their results.
EasyOpinions
The way things are going, (and it’s getting worse with biological boys being allowed to use girl’s bathrooms/showers in some schools now) Mr. Mitchell had it right the first time in his article; Public “education” is becoming a form of child “abuse,” with the increasingly abusive, PC mentality of school boards, teachers, and even police in some locals. But it’s all for a good reason, to further the turning of this once great nation into a godless, socialistic hell hole.
Poll after poll show that despite President Obama’s rhetorical skills most of us Americans today don’t like his core policies.
This is not a partisan statement … It is a fact that most Americans today have come to despise both mainstream Democratic and mainstream Republican party policies alike.
Specifically, most Americans today:
1. Believe by a 70 percent to 30 percent margin that big banks and corporations – rather than average Americans – have benefited most from Obama’s economic policies. 2 years ago, 74% thought that the bailouts helped Wall Street more than the people
2. Want to break up the big banks
Check out any of the incidents, Mr. Garland. Do any of them live up to the dracula billing our host gives them?
Look at the last one. Playing with toys on private property?
No, shooting at kids on the way to school. If your next door neighbor’s kids were shooting at your kids on the way to school, would you consider that innocuous?
Look at the facts Fox didn’t have:
“It was unclear whether the gun was a toy gun or an actual firearm,” she said. “The school principal in conjunction with the police looked into the matter primarily because of the safety for students walking to and at the bus stop and also because we needed to determine whether a gun of any kind, whether a toy or otherwise, was on the school bus or made its way to school.”
After an investigation, the principal determined it was an Airsoft gun — an air-powered, toy replica firearm — and that the gun’s pellets had struck other students near the bus stop.
“One actually said he dropped his book bag and ran and still got hit,” Cox said. “They were suspended and recommended for expulsion.”
In a unanimous decision Tuesday, the three-member Virginia Beach school board did not go as far as to expel the students, but they did suspend them for the remainder of the school year.
“This was a measured response to a threat to student safety. A school principal took firm steps to ensure weapons didn’t make their way into his school and that children didn’t have to endure being shot at with a pellet gun as they walked to their bus stop,” Daniel D. Edwards, chairman of the Virginia Beach school board, said in a statement.
http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/09/25/20691948-virginia-middle-schoolers-suspended-for-the-year-after-toy-pellet-gun-incident
That’s the first one I looked at, and the facts are quite different from the description in Mr. Mitchell’s post.
Is any of these instances so egregious as Mr. Mitchell paints them? Which one?
Truer words were never spoken, Splashman!
The only kids that get victimized are the ones whose parents chose to send to government schools.
The other choice is easy and cheap: parents, homeschool your kids. Honest to God, you can’t do any worse than the teacher at the government school.
some young people just don’t do well in factory schools… and there is no reason to force them to participate in programs that are extremely costly and are producing bad results… and in many cases are contrary to the cultural or religious identity of individual students and their families… education should enrich the lives of young people… and prepare them to make their way in a diverse and ever changing world… the nature of an effective education is best shaped by individual communities… based on current and future opportunities within that community… [business and industry participation in the educational process is of tremendous benefit here…] and the knowledge of what it will take for their young people to lead happy and successful lives… choice… and the right to peruse happiness as one sees fit… remains the best approach to life… and to education…
perhaps Paul Simon was right when he said… “when I think back on all the crap I learned in high school… it’s a wonder I can think at all”….. based on bureaucratic hyperventilation… and overall bad results… Paul’s point is well taken….
To Ed Darrell,
You write: “Most of those incidents were understandable, when one gets the facts”
So, some of those incidents are not understandable. That is, the school officials involved showed bad judgement and rigid ideology.
That leaves the other incidents, where you say the facts explain those official’s actions. So, please identify some of the misunderstood incidents and provide a few facts to support what is now your pure expression of opinion.
That would go a long way toward actually discrediting Mr. Mitchel, rather than merely accusing him. Don’t leave us in the dark.
This insanity began in only a little over 30 yeas ago, http://coldwarwarrior.com/2013/08/12/the-borg-generation-a-cold-war-legacy/
These illustrations are really helpful. Thanks Dan!
Bureaucrats — like you?
Get real. Most of those incidents were understandable, when one gets the facts.
Moreover, those bureacratic procedures that cause problems are, in almost every single case, perpetrated by bureaucrats like the CATO Institute and its mavens, in pursuit of “libertarian” policies that allow parents to do whatever they want with their kids, on the public dime when it comes to schools, regardless the damage to the kid, the parent, the school or the community.
Throwing money at problems generally doesn’t help. Education has been money suppressed in the U.S. now for more than 40 years. Teacher salaries are stagnant or declining, teacher working conditions worsen. While you rail at spending in wrong places, you don’t stand up to divert millions for false accountability programs sent to large corporations, instead to teacher pay or useful teacher training, nor student resources and useful student learning facilities.
You really are obsessed with guns. No wonder you miss the big picture in education. Too bad.
This would be a good place to start your re-education in education issues, from a more kid-friendly, family-friendly view: http://dianeravitch.net/
Here is an article on the moral imperative to free our children from the government schools:
http://www.theobjectivestandard.com/issues/2012-winter/new-abolition.asp