by Richard Jesel

Created on: March 05, 2009

It is time to get the control of our schools back. It is time to get them out of the hands of the government once and for all. Our children's education is at stake!

The government, some decades ago, decided that they wanted to bring education to the vast majority of the people. So they spent civilian money and created schools and hired teachers and bought books and literature and all was right in the world. Fast forward to 2009. The United States has one of the worst averages in education and one of the highest dropout rates when it comes to public schools. How could this have happened? They put so much money into education, (four times what we put into national defense) there should be no dropouts at all, or at least very few, right?

Logic dictates that money is not the solution. The government has given teachers a goal. A percentage to achieve in graduates. This rule has been created in order to lower the dropout rate. That should work, right? No. Now the teachers decide to lower the standards of their education and give students a free pass so their salary will continue to grow, making the test's easier or practically giving away the answers. There is no incentive to educate the students other than to keep one's job so the teacher's don't have a reason to care. They don't even get paid very well to do what is one of the most important objectives in the country which is to educate the young.

Giving local control to the schools will change most of these problems, but some believe that going to school will become more expensive. This is quite a possibility but if the education of your child is at stake it should be worth every penny. That kind of money will go directly into that school resulting in increased expenses on education like books, computers and laboratories. The teachers might even get paid what they are worth as well with actual raises based on proper quality testing and high graduation rates that could all be controlled by the owner of the school. That person, in turn, wants to make sure that the parents are getting what they are paying for for fear that children will be pulled out of that school resulting in a loss of revenue.

This brings me to another point on local control. The owners of these schools will be competing with eachvother on education, costs, and dropout rates along with national recognition. Competition has always and will always create a better system, a better player, a better team or company in this country. Why not a better school? If one school fails to bring the children in, then that simply means that there is a better one out there with better opportunities. With our current system, there are no real better opportunities unless you go to private schools. A lesson to be learned, maybe.

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