Academic Slums

by Walter E. Williams - December 19, 2007 - Townhall.com

Every three years, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) conducts its Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). PISA is a set of tests that measure 15-year-olds' performance in mathematics, science and reading [. . from all the major nations of the world].

American students ranked 33rd among industrialized countries in math literacy, and in science literacy, they ranked 27th. Reading literacy was not reported for the U.S. because of an error in the test instruction booklets. [That says as much as anything else about the competency of our educators!]

Click here for the complete report.

This is a great article and has much useful information but it also has some accurate statements that can still mislead. When you read the article, Walter takes some shots at the truth that many of the current students who study education are themselves extremely poor students who score horribly on tests for math and science. I agree that is true in general, however that does not tell the whole story. Many education students are extremely good and quite intelligent.

However many of the very good teachers who choose to make teaching their career, are rapidly taken out of the classroom by the new focus on moving our best teachers into higher paid jobs in central administration.

It is the combination of a large number of poor students who go into education with removal of the best from the classroom, while granting tenure to the poor teachers who stay in the classroom, that has contributed significantly to our current horrible situation. The teachers are then encouraged to use teaching techniques that border on stupid; like "whole language" reading and "everyday math". These systems are so useless they border on criminal.

One point that Walter does make is that it is not a problem of money. We throw more money at the problem of education than almost any country in the world. Our socialist bureaucrats are never shy at insisting we throw more money at the problem, and conscientious and concerned parents and taxpayers have accommodated this goal for three generations. Throwing more money at a system which is overpopulated by poor teachers, where the best are not allowed to teach and where the teachers use incompetent politically motivated teaching processes, will NEVER solve this problem.

There is little aspect of competition in our current system and what little exists is competition to remove the best teachers from the classroom. We need competition to teach our children if the school systems are to be any good. Our athletes are the best in the world because in athletics winners are still chosen by competition. In school tenure ends competition. Teacher's unions have fought to assure that the poor and middle class parents cannot opt out of our system. They have even tried in places to end the ability of the rich to take their children out of failing schools. Our children have essentially become slaves to the teacher's unions. Unless the parents are rich, or are willing to take extraordinary efforts to home school, the children are trapped. Even then teacher's unions make certain that these poor and middle class parents who home school still pay their taxes into the failing public schools, even though the schools do NOTHING for their children.

The current system is totally unjust and creates rage among many who see what it does. This system does not damage the children of the rich. They always have options. It damages the middle class some but mostly the poor. It is time the poor had options to get out of this system which is destroying their chance at the American Dream. Education is the first step to accomplishing the American Dream.

We are the richest nation on earth. However this problem is not about money. It is about a stupid process that fills our classrooms with teachers who will not . . . in many cases cannot . . teach our kids. Parents and taxpayers need to demand that school systems shut down the useless central administrations and put our best teachers back into classrooms that teach our children. Give parents of the poor the ability to take their children and the money and go to schools that have proven they can teach. Then end tenure so we can purge our systems of those who cannot teach. This three pronged approach will quickly fix the problem. In one generation we will not be behind 26 other nations. We will be back to number ONE.