School Choice vs School Curriculum

Critically Thinking about which is more important

There is no dispute that there are a LOT of serious problems with the current US education system. The question is (with our limited time, energy, and financial resources), where should we focus our efforts first? In other words, where do we get the most bang-for-the-buck — i.e., the greatest return on our investment of time and effort?

The Heritage Foundation says the answer is to fight for K-12 school choice. Note that Heritage’s ranking of state’s K-12 education programs (Education Freedom Report Card) is based on four (4) criteria — and essentially none of the rankings are based on WHAT our children are being taught!

FYI, Heritage is the largest US conservative organization (several hundred employees, many of them top experts), and Heritage has stated that fixing education is their number one priority. Based on those realities, one might logically conclude that working for school choice should be our top education priority.

IMHO following Heritage’s lead here is a major mistake. Although Heritage is comprised of a lot of excellent people, as an organization they have made a serious error in identifying school choice as our most pressing education problem. The correct answer is fixing the curriculum, especially the K-12 Science curriculum.

Why should school choice not be our #1 education priority? Here are a few reasons…

1 - It’s indisputable that WHAT our children are being taught (or not taught) is the crux of the education problem. Heritage acknowledges this, and their solution is school choice. In other words, Heritage contends that if parents are given the choice of which school to send their children to, that will effectively solve the “what they are taught, or not taught” problem. Not true!

2 - Moving our children from a poorly performing public school to a better performing public school, is like moving deck chairs on the Titanic. What does “better performing” mean? Basically, it means that kids score better on tests (e.g., due to better teachers). But what does that really mean? It says that kids do a better job of regurgitating WHAT they are taught, back to the testers. Is that a desirable outcome if WHAT they are being taught is nonsense??? NO!

3 - Moving our children from a poorly performing public school to a better performing private school, is also just a “feel good” result, for the same reason.

4 - Moving our children from a public school to a home school, is again an illusory solution, without major net benefits, again for the same reason. [Note: Home schooling is not part of the School Choice campaign, as parents are already given that choice in almost every state. I mention it just for comparison sake.]

5 - But won’t our children be taught the WHAT much better in any of these three options? Not likely! To understand why, we need to be clear as to how the education system is set up. Here are some key points that apply to most states:

a) Many people are unaware that the federal government has very little to do with WHAT is taught in K-12 schools (i.e., the curriculum). Each STATE determines WHAT is taught in each subject area, in all their K-12 schools.

b) Each State has a statewide Board of Education (SBOE) that is responsible for setting up the education STANDARDS for each K-12 subject area. These 12± people are typically political appointees — which means that many of them are there to impart political ideology (consciously or not) to the children in their K-12 system.

c) When the SBOE sets Standards for a subject area (e.g., Science), that means they establish a detailed written outline of what teachers STATEWIDE are expected to teach. That means teachers in all public schools, all private schools, and all home schools in their state.

d) As part of the Standards, the SBOE also approves a list of acceptable textbooks (acceptable means: consistent with the state’s Standards) in each subject area, for teachers to use. Again this applies to ALL public, private, and home schools.

e) Also as part of the Standards, the SBOE oversees tests for most subject areas (again consistent with the state’s Standards), for teachers to use. All public, private, and home-school children must pass these tests to get state certification.

f) The Left is well aware of how the system works, so they have specifically gone about infiltrating the state Standards in key subject areas (e.g., Science). See my Report for some details on how they have done this, and how it can be fixed.

Hopefully, this brief outline will make it clear that changing schools will NOT likely meaningfully change the WHAT that our children are being taught, as that is determined statewide, by each SBOE. Yes, students may get a better teacher — but WHAT they are teaching will not materially change.

Ironically, getting a better teacher might be detrimental, as it means that students would absorb more of WHAT is being taught, if the WHAT is Left-wing propaganda.

Yes, the Home Schooling parent can teach whatever they want, but if they do not use state-approved textbooks, their child will not likely pass state certification tests. Furthermore, for many real-world reasons, home schooling will never be a large-scale solution. Like it or not, we MUST meaningfully address the Public School system.

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So back to the original question: what is the #1 problem in our education system? IMO the clear answer is: the K-12 curriculum (i.e., WHAT our children are being taught, or not taught). Yes, the school choice matter is important, but it pales in comparison to the curriculum issue.

When I (and others who are not in the education business) make observations about WHAT is being taught, a common retort is to: “Stay out of their lane. Teachers and administrators are the professionals, so let them do their job.”

My comments about WHAT is being taught are focused on the Science curriculum. As a lifelong professional scientist, Science is my lane. (FYI, few K-12 Science teachers have advanced Science degrees.)

When I investigated what most state SBOEs have set up for K-12 Science Standards, it is abysmal. Here is my recent Report about numerous major concerns. The takeaway is that these purposefully inferior Science standards have now led to some 30 million American citizens being technically impaired in our highly technical society…

I’ve often wondered how tens of millions of citizens can be so gullible to believe unscientific nonsense about such things as climate alarmism, renewable energies, COVID policies, etc. The answer is right there in the defective K-12 Science standards (WHAT our children are being taught) that they were indoctrinated with.

Since that has worked so well, the bad actors have gradually upped the temperature of the lobsters in the pot (us), by creating the all-encompassing Woke ideology. If our K-12 curriculum was properly focused on imparting Critical Thinking skills, few people would adopt such illogical and counter-productive beliefs. Again, WHAT our youth are being taught not only skips over teaching them Critical Thinking, but continually hammers away at them to be compliant supporters of whatever is politically correct.

So it is up to Heritage and other US Conservative organizations to decide: how much longer will they wait until they focus ALL their efforts on focusing on WHAT our children are taught (and not taught)? FYI, while they are meditating, every year some 3+ MILLION propagandized K-12 graduates are becoming new voting citizens. This is intolerable!

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Here are other materials by this scientist that you might find interesting:

WiseEnergy.org: discusses the Science (or lack thereof) behind our energy options.

C19Science.info: covers the lack of genuine Science behind our COVID-19 policies.

Election-Integrity.info: multiple major reports on the election integrity issue.

Media Balance Newsletter: a free, twice-a-month newsletter that covers what the mainstream media does not do, on issues from COVID to climate, elections to education, renewables to religion, etc. Here are the Newsletter’s 2023 Archives. Send me an email to get your free copy. When emailing me, please make sure to include your full name and the state where you live. (Of course, you can cancel the Media Balance Newsletter at any time - but why would you?

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