The unfixable machine

"News flash which most of us already know. It is not about how much money is spent."

Once again, we just received our yearly news about how we are just not improving on our education scores. How we still have the "achievement gap". And that "gap" is staying stagnant.

Our top notch head of the state Department of Education (not to be confused with that other waste of space, the federal Department of Education) is clueless on why improvements have not come. Me? It think it is the money. After all, we are only spending a quarter of our state budget on K-12 education. Maybe we should spend half. Or three quarters. Or we can really be brave and spend one and a half times our budget on K-12.

News flash which most of us already know. It is not about how much money is spent. The analogy I always use about our nation's education program is this. Imagine having some kind of machine which was made incorrectly. And because of that, it would never run the right way. No matter how much money you put into it for maintenance every year, it would never run correctly. However, you have been told over and over, to have the machine run the right way, it needs to be rebuilt. Rebuilt the right way. Then it would give you the results you want at a fraction of the cost. 

It is also not a matter of having high speed internet in the classroom. It is not a matter of every student having an I-Pad. It is not having classrooms with only 12 students in them. It is about ATTITUDE. When I went through K-12, we did not have fancy electronic gizmos. All we had were books and a teacher. And because we were "boomers", our class size was enormous - like between 30 and 35 kids. 

Here is the weird thing about when I went through school. With all those "obstacles" against us, most of us still learned. Why? OUR PARENTS told us it was important. If we did not learn, we would not succeed in life. It was IMPORTANT that we become contributing members of society. Today? Not so much. Especially in many of the inner cities. Learning is met with a huge "meh". Many of the homes are dysfunctional, so the kids don't get the "talk" like we did. And THAT is a big part of the problem.

HOWEVER, that part of the problem does not have to be the unfixable part. It is our government education which is the problem. It is the unholy alliance with the NEA on a federal level and Education Minnesota on a state level. The Department of Educations (state and federal) along with the Teacher's Union have created this Frankenstein's Monster. And the only way to kill the monster is to get rid of the three entities which created it.

I have seen private schools in the heart of the city get amazing results from all types of kids at a fraction of the price we spend on government education. And the results some private schools obtain are not just marginally better, they are astronomically better that government schools.

I want the unfixable machine scrapped for two reasons. First as taxpayers, we are getting hosed - big time. We are paying top dollar for lousy results. Second and more importantly, we are selling our kids short. We are creating young adults who are not equipped to compete in world markets. Trust me, every year that will become more and more important. Some kids are getting out of school are not equipped to do the most mundane of tasks - anywhere and under any condition.

This election season when the door knocker come around, be sure to ask what his or her view is on public education. Then have your facts ready if you get a status quo, la-la answer. I have my list of questions all ready to go. Knocking on my door will either be a pleasurable experience or a very painful one. If it is painful, I am sorry. Our future is just too important to screw around any longer.