Overhaul public education
Dear Editor: We must begin to assert control over a public education system that, for all intents and purposes, now runs itself, and is fast running itself into the ground, carrying our future with it. Despite the investment second only to our Defense Department budget, public education in the United States is a failure.
Consider the facts from the National Assessment of Education Progress. Sixty-three percent of those ages 18 to 24 cannot find France on a map, Less than half can find New York state.
Ninety-four percent of 11thgraders cannot compute simple interest. In tests comparing math and science skills with those of five foreign countries and four Canadian provinces, American 13-year-olds finished last. Verizon found that only 2,000 out of 117,000 applicants pass its employment exam, and 80 percent of applicants fail Motorola’s exam based on seventhgrade English and fifth-grade math.
Yet, in spite of the facts, aptitude tests continue to satisfy the desires of most Americans; the illusion of living in a town where “all the children are above average.”
The first step toward solving a problem is to acknowledge and define it. Policies dictating how teachers should teach or how they should grade are taking the initiative out of the profession. This dysfunctional custom only inhibits one’s capabilities and aspirations. We begin to realize then that passing grades do not necessarily translate into satisfactory levels of actual learning.
Consequently, no data exists to supply facts about the quality of what children learn. We are able to learn about school buildings, costs per pupil or find out how many years children stay in school, but we have no way of assessing whether the time spent in school is effective.
As William J. Bennett, former U.S. secretary of education, said: “There are greater, more certain and more immediate penalties in this country for serving up a single bad hamburger than for repeatedly furnishing a thousand schoolchildren with a bad education.” . Robert Aiello
Saugerties