The official student newspaper of University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire since 1923.

The Spectator

The official student newspaper of University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire since 1923.

The Spectator

The official student newspaper of University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire since 1923.

The Spectator

Real solution to education problem often overlooked

In two recent ballots – one from the San Francisco School Board, the other from a small voter turnout in New York City – decided that a premier for-profit charter school company, Edison School, was not welcome in their municipalities.

Never mind the fact that the company, which manages 113 schools in 45 cities, has shown very impressive results in increasing test scores, doubling the number of kids with high reading and math scores while seeing the number of children with lower scores cut by a third.

Also, why bother with the fact that the majority of schools that Edison improves have a student population that is predominately black and Hispanic?

Add into this equation the Philadelphia School Board’s recent decision to revoke the charters of 22 of the city’s 25 charter schools and something seems to be amiss.

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Is it that the public schools of these urban metropolises have solved their education problems and no longer need help from charter schools?

Probably not, according to most of the recent statistics from the latest National Assessment of Educational Progress report.

In the report, it was found that one-third of fourth-graders in the United States barely can read.

When the data is broken down even further, you find that 63 percent of African-American and 58 percent of Hispanic fourth-graders barely can read. Also, 60 percent of children whose parents earn below the poverty level read well below the basic needs that a job in today’s high-tech world requires.

Now I’m sure many of you reading this column will think the key to solving the education problem will be a simple one: throw more money at the system.

If only a liberal solution like that would work for the billions of dollars already accounted in public education.

In the past 25 years, this country has spent $125 billion on Title I. This is money meant to help inner cities and poverty-ridden areas.

In the last decade, $80 billion of that money was spent, mostly during the Clinton-Gore years.

There has not been a dent made in the educational opportunities of the under-privileged. If anything, the education system has gotten worse.

Perhaps the best way to describe the situation of education in this country is the economics term “stagflation.”

In stagflation, you have a decrease in something you want (in this case child literacy), while having an increase in something you don’t want (more students in classes). And in most cases of stagflation, something will have to give on one end before it’s over.

Here’s where I anger the education majors.

In most likelihood, it will have to be the demands of teacher unions in this country. This group seems to be so entranced by believing more money will solve the education problems they battle on a daily basis that they have become blind to the shortcomings they are guilty of themselves.

Simply answer these questions: Is more money going to solve the fact that the first-grade teacher who failed to teach that student, now in fourth grade, can’t do his or her job?

Are all the new technical gadgets that a district is buying going to help the children learn, or give them a new toy to play with in the classroom?

Also, how can you be sure letting a child use a calculator on a test guarantees he or she can do the same equation in his or her head?

Accountability must be made a way of life in our public schools, not an option. So what’s it going to be folks: better-educated kids or happier teachers?

You decide.

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Real solution to education problem often overlooked