What’s Wrong With Our Schools?

President Obama is focusing some of his attention on public schools and the problem of “dropouts” which is termed “epidemic.” Reading a story by By Darlene Superville, Associated Press Writer, I was struck by two or three statements –

[President] Obama has been pushing schools — using federal money as his leverage — to raise their standards and prod them to get more children ready for college or work. It is a task that former President George W. Bush and Congress, along with many leaders before them, have long taken on, but the challenge is steep.

If that is true, surely there is action that needs to be taken closer to home. I know getting that Federal money (which is just local money laundered through Washington) is a constant priority, but it is this statement that really gets me churning –

“There’s got to be a sense of accountability,”  again, attributed to President Obama. Is it possible that those who are responsible for neighborhood schools are not accountable? Is it conceivable that your local School Board, Superintendent, Principal, or whoever else one might name, is allowing poor teaching, lack of discipline, bad behavior, inferior facilities, missing supplies, need I go on, to negatively affect our educational resources? Education is vital, and everyone from the student to the School Board (assuming you can find some ascendancy in that order) must be accountable.

In this same Associated Press story, four models for changing schools are presented: “Turnaround Model,” “Restart Model,” School Closure,” and “Transformational Model.” If we need the President of the United States of America to tell us how to fix our schools, then he is right, there is no sense of accountability at the local level. Each of these models contains provisions that ought to be absolute in every public school in the nation.

There are only one or two possibilities why they aren’t – One, there is a focus only on getting “more Federal money,” or, two, we are impotent to take the actions needed which may be quite drastic in many cases. Either way, it is our kids who suffer the consequences. That’s a dirty shame.