From a macro perspective, the most distressing aspect of America’s education system is that taxpayers spend a lot of money (more than any other people in the world, on a per-student basis) and we get very mediocre results.
And it’s getting worse over time. This famous chart, 
prepared by my colleague Andrew Coulson, shows how spending and bureaucracy have skyrocketed since 1970 while test scores have been stagnant.
Blacks and other minorities are the biggest victims. They are trapped in the worst-performing schools, largely because leftist politicians would rather curry favor with union bosses then help the poor.
But I don’t want to focus on these depressing macro issues.
Instead, we’re going to look at a depressing micro issue. To be more specific, let’s share a story about brain-dead political correctness (another one to add to a depressing collection).
Here are some details from a local news report.
First-grader Darin Simak is a little shy, a little upset and a little confused about why he can’t go back to Martin Elementary in New Kensington.
So what happened? Did he stab a classmate? Set fire to the classroom? Steal from the school’s petty cash fund?
No, none of those options. Instead, he did something far worse.
At least in the minds of brainless school bureaucrats.
Jennifer Mathabel said her son left his usual backpack in a friend’s car the night before, so he packed another one but missed the toy gun inside. “So I send my child to school. My child discovers a fake toy gun at about 1:30 p.m. He turns it in to the teacher and he’s sent to the office and suspended,” said Mathabel.
Yup, you read correctly. Darin found a toy gun in his backpack, and apparently he’s been successfully brainwashed that toy guns somehow are bad, so he gave it to the teacher.
The teacher then acted like a functionary from the Cuban KGB and turned Darin over to her superiors.
Not surprisingly, Darin’s mom is not happy that she’s paying taxes to subsidize such stupidity.
…she felt her son shouldn’t be suspended, and still sent him to school Thursday morning. “I got a phone call from the principal at 9 a.m., and she said, ‘Darin is not to be in school,’ and I said, ‘I’m sending him to school because he is entitled to be in school and be educated,'” said Mathabel. …The New Kensington-Arnold School District superintendent said that bringing a toy gun to school violates the district’s policy at the highest level and requires a child to be suspended immediately until a meeting can be held to discuss what happened and whether punishment is warranted.
You’ll be happy to know that our story has a happy ending.
Actually, allow me to modify that sentence. It’s a happy ending only in the sense that the school bureaucrats graciously and mercifully decided not to expel Darin.
Instead, he was suspended for two days.
Darin will not be expelled. The school district held a meeting and decided to suspend the first-grader for two days.
Astounding, in a horrible way. Makes you wonder whether government-run schools should be considered a form of child abuse.
Since we’re on the topic of government-run education (or mis-education, to use a clunky but more accurate phrase), let’s divert to the topic of common core.
Robby Soave of Reason explores an additional reason to dislike this new form of bureaucratized centralization.
Opponents of Common Core have plenty of ammunition by now: The standards erode local autonomy, are costly to implement, and some experts dispute their rigor. But an underexplored aspect of this problematic national education reform is the massive financial incentive that certain textbook and standardized test companies have to keep the U.S. on board with it. …the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC)—recently invited curriculum companies to compete for the contract to design the tests. Textbook giant Pearson won the contract, surprising no one.
Soave explains why this should make parents (and taxpayers) worried.
A PARCC press release described the selection of Pearson as the result of a “competitive bidding process.” But it’s hard to tell whether the process was truly competitive, given that Pearson was the only company to even submit a bid. …Keep in mind that the contract is worth so much money that officials haven’t even attached a formal price tag. Instead, they have used the phrase “unprecedented in scale.” …it certainly undermines the notion that this is a “bottom up” education reform when state and federal lawmakers are colluding with mega corporations to dictate the tests to local school districts.
If you want to know more about the shortcomings of common core, I cite both George Will and one of Cato’s education experts in a post back in January.
But all you really need to know is that we’ll get a far better system of education if the federal government has less involvement, not more involvement.
Indeed, we should get rid of the entire Department of Education. Canada is doing better on education than the United States, and there’s no role for the national government in Ottawa.
Not that I’m a big fan of what state and local governments are doing.
The ideal system would be based on markets and competition. Which means we should copy nations with widespread school choice, such as Chile, Sweden, and the Netherlands.
We have some school choice in America, and the evidence is very strong that we get better results.
P.S. The virus of political correctness is so bad in America’s education system that some schools have even cancelled award ceremonies because they might make some students feel excluded.
Reblogged this on Karl Dickey's Blog.
I don’t understand why this mother would allow her child back into such a tyrannical classroom. Both teacher and principal demonstrated that they do not have good judgement and they should not be responsible for other people’s children. First grade. This kid could well be poisoned against authority figures forever. Maybe a budding libertarian? Or criminal.
My 2nd grade grandchild is a straight A student, has never been in trouble in school and has even won the top ‘good citizen’ award for 3 years running in two different schools. She is just a lovely child. But she did something out of character- she made fun of a boy with a lisp. When she told her mother about it, she received a severe talking-to and punishment at home. Her mom also made her write a letter of apology to the boy and publicly apologize. She lost her recess for three days and lost eligibility for the citizen prize. Should be enough, right? But the school piled on to ‘make an example’. In addition, she was to be shunned at lunch by sitting alone at a lunch table for the last week of school. My daughter (rightly imo) thought this was appallingly harsh and actually detrimental to the child. So she went to speak to the principal who said any punishment at home had nothing to do with the school and she wouldn’t reconsider the lunch shunning. After trying to reason with her, my daughter told the principal that she couldn’t allow her daughter to be treated that way, and that she would be taking her out to eat in the car (no going out to lunch, because she didn’t want her girl to think she was being rewarded). The principal told her that if she did that (which she did), my granddaughter would go into ISS (in-school suspension) and wouldn’t be considered ‘present’ for the end of year assessment tests, and thus ineligible for the ice cream party that ALL the other kids would get. And the School Supervisor backed this tin-pot dictator up. My poor granddaughter now realizes that AUTHORITIES are often bullies, too. But the one good thing to come out of it is that she knows her family will correct her when she’s wrong, but also fight for her when they think she’s being unjustly treated!
^^^Especially egregious is punishing my granddaughter for her mother’s decision about the lunch-shunning. Did the school really think my granddaughter should or could disobey her mother when she told her to come?
I believe Common Core will simply shift more power to The Capitol and away from the districts. What if a local school district wanted to create a technology high school in which the curriculum focuses on computer programming, network design, etc., or a school with a significant focus on engineering or even medicine? In giving more power to DC, we would lose the power for individual schools and school districts to experiment with new approaches, new methods, etc. Creativity in teaching would be surrendered to a sea of bureaucrats in The Capitol. Even if we thought Common Core was a reasonable idea, how in the world would it ever be enforced? How is the bureaucracy in DC going to enforce this standard in every single classroom, which is where the learning takes place? Are they going to put a monitor in every classroom every day to ensure the correct curriculum is taught? The Common Core bureaucracy would have no power to enforce this standard other than to force teachers/principals to fill out more paperwork and submit it to DC seeking approbation, with the threat of withdrawal of federal funds if they fail to hold their mouths in the correct position while completing the paperwork. There is nothing good about removing power from parents and local communities and giving it to an education elite in DC. Nothing.
Baumol’s disease?
government overreach is everywhere… it is just a matter of time until the federal government mandates biometric sampling of children at their birth… our medical records will be subject to government scrutiny… our educational records will be provided to federal bureaucrats… our phone conversations monitored… our e-mails read… “total informational awareness” will become a reality unless we stop it…
school districts have very distinct skill sets necessary for their young people to prosper… training for success in the local economy makes sense… but it is not what Washington bureaucrats have in mind… they want control… and the tax dollars to pursue an abstract universalist vision of education… and it’s bull-sh%&…
the world is fed up with Washington’s dictates… as are a growing number of American citizens… child abuse? you bet…there is no way of justifying what is occurring in our public schools…
unless you are out of touch with reality…