Education

Every week, millions of people voluntarily pay money for the minutely small chance to win a significant amount of money. The hope of a million dollars lies in the sacrifice of a spare dollar as people play the lottery hoping to get lucky, to obtain an opportunity to radically change their lifestyle with a large sum of money. But few ever get lucky; the majority goes on living the same lives they always have, waiting for that chance to make it big.

Lotteries are fine because those interested can participate, contributing to the educational fund, and others can ignore it and save their money.  But when the lottery principle is applied to public education, the situation changes. Suddenly parents are not playing the lottery for mere money but for the right to send their children to a school that will adequately prepare them for the future, for a real career, and for the various challenges of life. They gamble to send their children to schools with graduation rates of near 100%. Our students become mere numbers.  

And like the actual lottery, the chances or slim. Schools with only a few dozen open spots accept lottery applications from hundreds of eager potential students. The only alternative for most parents is dropout factories, schools with graduations rates of less than 50% where their kid will most likely fall behind academically, or, even worse, fail to graduate. 

The documentary Waiting For Superman examines the failing of America’s system, especially the use of these lotteries.  Because of this flawed educational system, many other aspects of our nation fall behind, things like the economy and the environment.  This video offers a snapshot of the problem. The US falls behind many of the world’s first-world countries in math, reading, and graduation rate, but American students are the most confident in their skills. Thanks to the education system, students get pumped with a false sense of accomplishment without actually learning anything.

One of the biggest problems seems to be bad teachers, but because of the nearly impossible-to-revise system of tenure, these horrible educators are allowed to continue their misaligned craft. If a teacher performs acceptably in a public school for two years, they gain tenure, and from then on, firing them becomes next to impossible. Removed a tenured teacher is so difficult in fact, that only 1 in 2500 are ever removed, according to Waiting for Superman. After obtaining tenure, many of these waste-of-time-and-money teachers, knowing their jobs are secure for life, completely turn down the effort and stop effectively teaching, putting students at risk of learning nothing and proceeding to the next grade woefully unprepared. This cycle of pathetic teachers continues until fall so far behind academically, they have little choice but to drop out. Basically, these teachers collect a salary for doing little to nothing while students suffer.

Instead of so viciously attacking the education system itself, why has there been little effort made in reforming teacher licensure programs?  Many tenured teachers appear to just give up teaching upon obtaining tenure, but what about those that simply do not know how to teach? The difficulties of a teaching career are not apparent to most educators when they first start, so I feel college education programs should be strengthened. If future teachers left their college programs better equipped and prepared to do real teaching work, the problems of tenure would lessen, and we would be one step closer to fixing what is wrong with the educational system in America.

I also wonder how viable an option homeschooling is; it never comes up in the documentary or Kozol’s book. Admittedly, I know little about the process of homeschooling, but if the parents are at least college educated and not too busy with work, they could take a child’s education into their own hands and not have to worry about the lackluster teaching that would receive in a public school. I realize this is not realistic in many situations and does nothing to fix the greater problems within the educational system.

I suppose that is why we have programs like the I Have a Dream Foundation. Even if those kids receive a poor education because of negligent teachers or other undesirable circumstances, we college students and community volunteers are there to help them keep up and actually assess what they are learning. Maybe the educational system should fund more of these programs and give more kids the opportunity to succeed and make it to college.

I don’t think the education system needs Superman.  One person will not end this crisis; there are just too many obstacles. People like Michelle Rhee have tried to make some reforms in the educational sphere, but every step of the way she was met with resistance: old systems in need of change, tenured teachers, angry unions. She found herself unable to make the changes she dreamed of although she made some progress. She tried to be a Superwoman but the amount of kryptonite in the educational system is unbelievable.  What the educational system needs my friends, is a super Justice League