Improving America's Schools

The Atlantic has an article about our public school system and what should be done to fix it. It boils down to removing local control and nationalizing our schools because that is how some of the most successful nations have done it.

I don't think that is a good idea. Giant bureaucracies are not efficient or adept at dealing with small issues like little Jimmie struggling with his math. Here are a couple things that I think we need to improve our school systems.

1) Teacher accountability. It is asinine that teacher's can get tenured and then only be fired for "gross misconduct" or something else. Tenure is good, but it should only cover things such as what the teacher publishes or talks about and the like. Teachers should most certainly be held accountable for student performance. If a teacher's students continually fall short then the he or she needs to be held accountable. What other industry can you get into where you are virtually immune to termination even if you don't do your job?

2) More teacher autonomy. Teachers need more free reign within their classroom. Yes, their students still need to be taught certain things, but the teachers need more latitude in how it's done. This would better allow them to target individual students who are ahead or behind in certain areas.

3) Students as individuals. We need to develop plans for individual students and not for masses of students. Every student is unique in learning style, likes/dislikes, temperament, and abilities. Schools need to treat them as such and create plans for individual students. Yes, this will create more work for schools, but that's why I think we need to recruit more teachers in order to shrink classroom size. We should also have more teacher's aides to assist them in this effort.

I don't think we need to make a big effort to increase teacher pay. Do teacher's deserve it? Probably, but they already typically make higher than average salaries. We need to spend money hiring more teachers as I mentioned previously, but also making sure that we provide teachers and students the tools they need. Schools should not be crumbling and falling apart. Teachers should not have to buy their own supplies - paper, pencils, and other basic materials - for their classrooms. Schools should have heat and air conditioning. Schools should have large, safe playgrounds. These things are where we need to be spending more money.

In short, I believe we do need to make changes in our schools. Bureaucracy is not the answer, though. We've all seen how well the Department of Homeland Security functions.