how to fix education by Michelle Obama

This article in USA Today by the first lady (who sends her children to $40,000/year private school) attempts to tell America how to improve the nation's public schools. She first gives the standard reform speak: more educated teachers, more responsibility by parents... but then the real agenda comes out with ... we need government to support significant efforts to recruit and retain teachers and to reward high-performing teachers. Along those lines, President Obama is already investing more than $3 billion to turn around struggling schools. And he has proposed a nationwide Teacher Recruitment Program to attract more people to the profession, especially in high-need schools.

Let me give you a hint Michelle, the system itself is broken. Until the stranglehold of the NEA is cut and there is accountability (as opposed to the circular blame game that happens now) for each child's education, there will be no improvement, no matter how much money thrown at the problem. Why do I have a gut feeling this is major pay-back to the union?

We need universities to double down on their efforts to prepare teachers and to improve and expand effective alternative routes to certify teachers. What universities do now is indoctrinate education majors about the need to drug little boys who are fidgety, promote multiculturalism with a pass on how to teach engage students in real learning, and use flowery language to intimidate parents and sound more "professional."

We need to encourage more experienced professionals to consider teaching as the next chapter in their careers. What retired engineer, businessman, or physician in their right mind would consider degrading themselves to teach in a classroom today with an administrative system which treats them like children? As a former public school teacher and the daughter of the same, I saw good teachers criticized and punished by incompetent bureaucrats (who hadn't taught in 15 years). To use the military in comparison, good generals and admirals expect officers to be competent and back them up, they don't treat them like lowly E-3s right out of boot camp. But this is what the public schools do regularly, they refrain from giving veteran teachers any authority and undercut them when any criticism comes their way.

And we need to treat teachers like the professionals they are by providing good salaries and high-quality professional development opportunities. They already get good salaries and excellent benefits, especially considering they work 8 hours a day with planning time for only 180 days. Professional architects, physicians, and engineers work 12 hour days, 250 days a year.
We need parents to do their part as well to match that leadership in the classroom with leadership at home. We need to set limits and turn off the TV. We need to put away those video games and make sure that homework gets done. Teachers blame the parents and previous teachers, parents blame the school, and administrative types act like they are above the fray. Homeschooling eliminates this merry-go-round of evading responsibility. If my child is not reading then I try my hardest to find out why and fix it. There is too much blame in the public school system and not enough responsibility. My guess is that an evaluation of why homeschooling works would show that a return to more local control improves children's education.

We need to reinforce the example that's being set and the lessons being taught at school and make sure that learning continues at home. One of the reasons many parents teach their children at home are the poor/dangerous examples and lessons in the public school setting such as bullying, drugs, gangs, zero tolerance policies, excessive testing, sex education, and the dumbing down of the curriculum and materials.

Nothing the federal government does, save the military, is as efficient as what can be done by the private sector. Everything from delivering the mail, running the trains, saving for retirement, collecting tax money, delivering health care to seniors, and teaching our children is financially wasteful and time consuming. Instead of admitting this and allowing the competitive market to work, the Obama administration wants to throw more money at the problem. I, like many of my fellow American parents, decide every day to remove ourselves and our children from this unending carnival ride and teach at home, collecting both the responsibilities and rewards of educating our children.