[ZNPaaneah]

Without a doubt education will determine our future. This recent discussion on Fake News is all about education. The better educated a person is the harder it is to fool them with Fake News. Consider what the Catholic Church was able to get away with before the average man could read the Bible for themselves?

Before we discuss solutions we need to understand the history a little better.

First, there were 3 founders of this country that were very much involved in education and started 3 different universities. Therefore it is unrealistic to conclude that the lack of mention of education in the constitution was accidental. Instead, the comment that "whatever is not given to the Federal government is given to the States" should apply to education. There are different philosophies and "one shoe" definitely does not fit all. The founders understood this. Which is why I feel Bush exceeded his authority in seeking to become "the education president" and the Federal law "no child left behind" is an unconstitutional power grab by the Federal government. I would change the name of "no child left behind" to "no child gets ahead". The federal government has imposed regulations on public schools without funding them. As a result inner city schools with less funding are hamstrung whereas suburban schools with better funding are not. I have worked in both.

Second, home school has been very successful. This is despite research proving that the quality of the teacher is directly correlated to the performance of the students. Even though many home schools are run by parents who are not trained to teach, the results are far better than schools. This shows that the involvement of parents and the attention of parents is far more important.

Third, wealthy parents send their kids to private school. What concerns me about this is that Federal Law (NCLB) appears to be designed to severely hinder the opportunities for public school kids. The only ones who it seems would favor that are those whose kids go to private school because they are exempt from these laws. In addition, these laws were written and pushed by those who did go to private school.

Charter schools are also obligated to abide by these laws. However, it is well documented that they employ an intense strategy to get around them and only if the parents of the children are fully knowledgeable of the law are they forced to keep the law. When you see the term "charter school" you should understand that to mean "corporate, for profit schools". At $10,000 per student per year corporations see this as a huge potential market. How this works is that students are selected for charter schools based on a lottery that allows the students going to charter schools to be identical to the populations going to public schools. The charter school then has a concerted strategy to get the special education students (these students are much more expensive to educate and therefore cut into the profits, also these students as a group will bring the test averages down). So, six years later the charter school that had the same percentages of special ed students as the public school initially, will have a far lower percentage at graduation. Also, why do people think that charter schools are a better choice? It is simple, if you look at all charter schools they do not compare favorably with public schools. But people don't look at them that way. Each charter school is different (different corporation) so they compare an individual charter school to the public school as a whole. So, if you compare the top 5% of charter schools with the average public school you are no longer comparing apples to apples. Compare the top 5% of public schools with the top 5% of charter schools and public schools are far and away better. Why? Simple, public schools are union, have higher standards for teachers, have a much better established professional development, better hours, better benefits, etc. So, every teacher, if possible, would work with the public school. In comparison charter schools take teachers straight out of college without any teacher training. There is no requirement. They try to make up for less well trained teachers by making them work much longer hours. Again, it is a "for profit" school. The equation is very simple: get rid of the most expensive students and hire the cheapest teachers.