Please wake up and start working to ELIMINATE the "PUBLIC SCHOOLS" rather than reforming them. Public schools are an artifact of the 17th century - the colonies (which were theocratic dictatorships) instituted them in the 1640s under the mistaken idea that the schools, like the government, would always be under the control of the church. Instead they created a monster that is controlled by whatever funds it. Most of the money your school district receives doesn’t come from district parents; the main sources are the state and federal governments. Even the local property taxes mostly don’t come from district parents, and that relatively small funding is unconditional and therefore exerts no influence on school policy. So parents have no leverage. Public schools are socialist entities; they get your money up front and unconditionally. It doesn’t matter how much they succeed or fail – they get the money anyway. The time you will waste trying to fix a system that cannot be fixed could instead be directed into helping your own children. Public schools, like communist governments, destroy the private marketplace for education by funneling people's education money into the state. Imagine what education could be like if you had five or ten commercial education companies vying for your dollars. Stop trying to influence your neighbors and your district. Start doing what is actually in your power to do: GET YOUR KIDS OUT. https://www.publicschoolexit.com/
David: I appreciate your passion, but this is NOT a "public schools" matter! Please re-read #3 above, where it says: "The SBOE is key as it determines the subject standards, approves textbooks, and oversees statewide exams — for all K-12 courses and for ALL K-12 students (public, private, and home-schooled)."
In other words, the exact same problems would exist if there were zero public schools. Please refocus your interest on the real problem.
But thank you for this article; you've inspired me to collect a bunch of notes that I've been posting for years, and to consolidate them into an article, which I am writing as we are posting here. "Conservative" parents don't seem to understand that by voting for more state funding of their schools (in a misguided attempt to pawn off the expense of their kids' educations onto someone else), they've also handed all authority to the state and federal governments, and therefore have lost control. Parents don't like it when I point out that they have no right to expect control of their local schools when they, both as individuals and as a district , provide the minority of those schools' funding. My article will hopefully help hit them over the head with this reality.
Unfortunately the public schools are still the source of the problem and we're not going to fix them. The power of your state legislators derives from your public schools' unions, which are easily the most powerful political forces in most states. Until we take the wheels off their bus, there will be no relief. We cannot fix the legislature any more than we can fix the public schools and their unions. The vast majority of conservatives still send their kids to public schools, and there are LOTS of us. If we would only do the same to them that we've done to Annheuser-Busch, you might start seeing some changes. But until then, we're sticking our fingers in a dike that was already broken decades ago.
David: I'm not a current public schools advocate — but I do believe that they can be fixed. Until you read an understand my prior reply (above), most of your energy is being wasted in the wrong direction.
Well if you have some time please read about my odyssey with the public schools and see if, afterwards, I haven't changed your mind: http://mychildwillread.org/the-problem.shtml
OK, I did read it — and will include it in my next Newsletter. To me the most important section is "WHO MAKES CURRICULUM DECISIONS?" I didn't really see the correct answer, which is "Your State Board of Education" — and that applies to ALL schools, pubic and private.
Thanks for taking the time. Sure, your state board of education makes the decisions, but who is on the state board? A more local analogy is to believe that your school board controls your local district. Right, but who is on the school board? Mostly, school boards are filled with union- and administration- selected toadies who easily win low-turnout elections where preoccupied parents have other things to do besides show up to vote for something whose significance they do not understand. Curriculum publishers have far more incentive and money than you do to control who is on the state board, and if the public can convince the board to do something the publishers don't like, their solution is to replace board members until the "correct" decisions are being made. The point of my diatribe is this: almost 70 years ago the public was massively awakened to the travesty in public school reading instruction. The term "Why Johnny Can't Read" is widely known, but today almost nobody knows its significance; in my talks I haven't found a single person yet, including people my age and older, who knows that it's the title of a book, much less that the book sold millions of copies. Nobody has fixed this thing in all that time, despite relatively simple solutions having been widely known all along. I think it's wildly presumptious to believe that we're going to fix it now.
Thanks, I subscribed. 😂 That’s MY world now. But, I was here first! I’m not leaving. I’m staying to fight the good fight until I take my last breath. I’ve raised good kids to think for themselves and I spread hope and my love for God & America daily. There are more good people than bad. I’m the “zebra with the red paint”, that Jordan Peterson talks about. Bring it, I’m not scared. ✌🏼
John...excellent recap of a strategy to fix our K-12 Education System. The State Boards of Education (SBOE) are the power and gatekeepers of our Education System. They approve things that are very important...curriculum, books, tests, etc. There are only about 500 people that fill these chairs...some appointed and some elected. My guess is that most of these people are good people. However, with all due respects to this group, my view is that many have not been paying attention and don’t actually know the details of what they’ve approved. Thus, a corrupted curriculum has become the deaf to national standard. Your good work in North Carolina, effectively using your seven steps, demonstrates that America’s Education System can be fixed. Getting the Scientific Method into the curriculum is a great first step. Obviously adding Critical Thinking is an important next step followed by eliminating the ideological biases which are throughout the curriculum.
We have several bills in the House addressing the various dimensions of the education curriculum problem. We also have reasonable control of the Dept of Education, at least at the top level. The bills are very slow to pass and a "follow the money" approach to understanding why isn't turning up much we didn't already suspect. It's not enough to sway legislators even if exposed. But the real problem is textbooks. We can get some textbooks that include all the right information. The publisher is right in our county. But, it is overtly Christian, which I am for, but it makes it difficult to adopt at the state level. I don't think the county boards or the statewide charter school board will "buy" those books. To sum: we need new textbooks. Especially, we need new textbooks that use the experience of the Covid-19 era throughout as a explicit example of the consequence of lack of critical thinking skills and an understanding of the scientific method. Chicken or egg. I believe the textbooks need to be there so that the parents can lobby for them. What do you think?
Where are you located? I fully agree that proper textbooks are an important element in fixing this mess. IMO the sequence is to fix the standards first, and the texbooks, statewide tests and teachers will follow.
I'll send you a note. You have my contact info elsewhere. But this is truly chicken and egg. We have at least 5 bills sitting in committee in the House. I haven't looked, but I suspect there are parallel bills in the Senate. They sit. In another state I was on a school board for 10 years. When one writes standards, the methodology that works is to outline the textbook that will meet those standards before you actually write the standards to propose. That is how all the Covid-19 stuff I do matures to the point where it can be communicated, made consistent, written as bills, as well as defended. It is really a business process that works and is the shortest path to a good result: RFI, response, RFQ, response, contract, response, approve, execute and project manage. The RFI is the rough draft outline of the textbook. But to do that you have to do a deep dive down the rabbit hole, which results in a rough draft of the completed textbook- probably with a lot of detail mistakes, but with a good understanding of what the requirements are going to be. I'll contact our Superintendent of Education on this to get her opinion.
Please wake up and start working to ELIMINATE the "PUBLIC SCHOOLS" rather than reforming them. Public schools are an artifact of the 17th century - the colonies (which were theocratic dictatorships) instituted them in the 1640s under the mistaken idea that the schools, like the government, would always be under the control of the church. Instead they created a monster that is controlled by whatever funds it. Most of the money your school district receives doesn’t come from district parents; the main sources are the state and federal governments. Even the local property taxes mostly don’t come from district parents, and that relatively small funding is unconditional and therefore exerts no influence on school policy. So parents have no leverage. Public schools are socialist entities; they get your money up front and unconditionally. It doesn’t matter how much they succeed or fail – they get the money anyway. The time you will waste trying to fix a system that cannot be fixed could instead be directed into helping your own children. Public schools, like communist governments, destroy the private marketplace for education by funneling people's education money into the state. Imagine what education could be like if you had five or ten commercial education companies vying for your dollars. Stop trying to influence your neighbors and your district. Start doing what is actually in your power to do: GET YOUR KIDS OUT. https://www.publicschoolexit.com/
David: I appreciate your passion, but this is NOT a "public schools" matter! Please re-read #3 above, where it says: "The SBOE is key as it determines the subject standards, approves textbooks, and oversees statewide exams — for all K-12 courses and for ALL K-12 students (public, private, and home-schooled)."
In other words, the exact same problems would exist if there were zero public schools. Please refocus your interest on the real problem.
But thank you for this article; you've inspired me to collect a bunch of notes that I've been posting for years, and to consolidate them into an article, which I am writing as we are posting here. "Conservative" parents don't seem to understand that by voting for more state funding of their schools (in a misguided attempt to pawn off the expense of their kids' educations onto someone else), they've also handed all authority to the state and federal governments, and therefore have lost control. Parents don't like it when I point out that they have no right to expect control of their local schools when they, both as individuals and as a district , provide the minority of those schools' funding. My article will hopefully help hit them over the head with this reality.
Unfortunately the public schools are still the source of the problem and we're not going to fix them. The power of your state legislators derives from your public schools' unions, which are easily the most powerful political forces in most states. Until we take the wheels off their bus, there will be no relief. We cannot fix the legislature any more than we can fix the public schools and their unions. The vast majority of conservatives still send their kids to public schools, and there are LOTS of us. If we would only do the same to them that we've done to Annheuser-Busch, you might start seeing some changes. But until then, we're sticking our fingers in a dike that was already broken decades ago.
David: I'm not a current public schools advocate — but I do believe that they can be fixed. Until you read an understand my prior reply (above), most of your energy is being wasted in the wrong direction.
Well if you have some time please read about my odyssey with the public schools and see if, afterwards, I haven't changed your mind: http://mychildwillread.org/the-problem.shtml
OK, I did read it — and will include it in my next Newsletter. To me the most important section is "WHO MAKES CURRICULUM DECISIONS?" I didn't really see the correct answer, which is "Your State Board of Education" — and that applies to ALL schools, pubic and private.
Thanks for taking the time. Sure, your state board of education makes the decisions, but who is on the state board? A more local analogy is to believe that your school board controls your local district. Right, but who is on the school board? Mostly, school boards are filled with union- and administration- selected toadies who easily win low-turnout elections where preoccupied parents have other things to do besides show up to vote for something whose significance they do not understand. Curriculum publishers have far more incentive and money than you do to control who is on the state board, and if the public can convince the board to do something the publishers don't like, their solution is to replace board members until the "correct" decisions are being made. The point of my diatribe is this: almost 70 years ago the public was massively awakened to the travesty in public school reading instruction. The term "Why Johnny Can't Read" is widely known, but today almost nobody knows its significance; in my talks I haven't found a single person yet, including people my age and older, who knows that it's the title of a book, much less that the book sold millions of copies. Nobody has fixed this thing in all that time, despite relatively simple solutions having been widely known all along. I think it's wildly presumptious to believe that we're going to fix it now.
I’m all over this. Thank you for taking time to address this important issue.
Good! FYI, You might find this story about one of the last Republicans in Portland OR, to be interesting <https://dianelgruber.substack.com/p/living-behind-enemy-lines-tale-2>.
Thanks, I subscribed. 😂 That’s MY world now. But, I was here first! I’m not leaving. I’m staying to fight the good fight until I take my last breath. I’ve raised good kids to think for themselves and I spread hope and my love for God & America daily. There are more good people than bad. I’m the “zebra with the red paint”, that Jordan Peterson talks about. Bring it, I’m not scared. ✌🏼
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJo_QTTiB5A
OK, that's fine. We're here to help.
John...excellent recap of a strategy to fix our K-12 Education System. The State Boards of Education (SBOE) are the power and gatekeepers of our Education System. They approve things that are very important...curriculum, books, tests, etc. There are only about 500 people that fill these chairs...some appointed and some elected. My guess is that most of these people are good people. However, with all due respects to this group, my view is that many have not been paying attention and don’t actually know the details of what they’ve approved. Thus, a corrupted curriculum has become the deaf to national standard. Your good work in North Carolina, effectively using your seven steps, demonstrates that America’s Education System can be fixed. Getting the Scientific Method into the curriculum is a great first step. Obviously adding Critical Thinking is an important next step followed by eliminating the ideological biases which are throughout the curriculum.
We have several bills in the House addressing the various dimensions of the education curriculum problem. We also have reasonable control of the Dept of Education, at least at the top level. The bills are very slow to pass and a "follow the money" approach to understanding why isn't turning up much we didn't already suspect. It's not enough to sway legislators even if exposed. But the real problem is textbooks. We can get some textbooks that include all the right information. The publisher is right in our county. But, it is overtly Christian, which I am for, but it makes it difficult to adopt at the state level. I don't think the county boards or the statewide charter school board will "buy" those books. To sum: we need new textbooks. Especially, we need new textbooks that use the experience of the Covid-19 era throughout as a explicit example of the consequence of lack of critical thinking skills and an understanding of the scientific method. Chicken or egg. I believe the textbooks need to be there so that the parents can lobby for them. What do you think?
Where are you located? I fully agree that proper textbooks are an important element in fixing this mess. IMO the sequence is to fix the standards first, and the texbooks, statewide tests and teachers will follow.
I'll send you a note. You have my contact info elsewhere. But this is truly chicken and egg. We have at least 5 bills sitting in committee in the House. I haven't looked, but I suspect there are parallel bills in the Senate. They sit. In another state I was on a school board for 10 years. When one writes standards, the methodology that works is to outline the textbook that will meet those standards before you actually write the standards to propose. That is how all the Covid-19 stuff I do matures to the point where it can be communicated, made consistent, written as bills, as well as defended. It is really a business process that works and is the shortest path to a good result: RFI, response, RFQ, response, contract, response, approve, execute and project manage. The RFI is the rough draft outline of the textbook. But to do that you have to do a deep dive down the rabbit hole, which results in a rough draft of the completed textbook- probably with a lot of detail mistakes, but with a good understanding of what the requirements are going to be. I'll contact our Superintendent of Education on this to get her opinion.