A Ray of Hope for Public Education

Traditional Water Seller of Morocco - photo by JoAnn Sturman

Scott Sturman
fliesinyoureyes.com

Mrs. Calkins, Mrs. Peasley, Mrs. Fowler, Mrs. Thompson, and Mr. Burky were my elementary school teachers in Cheyenne, Wyoming, and the primary reason why my classmates and I received a strong educational foundation. Why aren’t more of them around to teach the next generation?

Every so often one witnesses clues that both ends of the political spectrum are converging to address a serious problem which threatens to undermine the welfare of the country. This most recent evidence, Joel Klein’s “Scenes from the Class Struggle,” was published in the June 2011 issue of The Atlantic.

Joel Klein served for eight years as Chancellor of the New York City school system. He aimed to reform an ailing school system by placing the welfare of students first, forcing the powerful American Federation of Teachers Union (AFT) to reward teachers according to merit rather than longevity, and adapting a competitive curriculum for the nation’s largest school system. At nearly every turn he was thwarted by the AFT, and although some progress was made, it paled in comparison to what could have been accomplished.

The imbroglio will never be resolved until parents have a choice where their children attend school -- public, private, parochial, or military. (“Waiting for Superman”) In the end it is all about money, and as long as the public school system is guaranteed to receive all of it, then there is little impetus to change. The facts cannot be more clear: excellent teachers make an enormous positive impact in regard to student performance and well educated students are more likely to succeed in today’s technical society.

Without competition public educators will never regain their preeminence as the primary advocate for America’s children. As it stands, school administrators and teachers’ unions have more in common with the robber barons of the 18th and 19th centuries than protector of society’s most cherished asset.