Education is the big root problem. Niner touched on it earlier, but forgot to mention how teacher Unions are also complicit in America's failing education system. When the 1983 education report came out, it was supposed to be a wake-up call. In the intervening 25 years we just kept hiring more teachers and spending more money and got no where. Ask the Unions what to do nowadays? More teachers and more money! Why don't we just bang our heads against the wall...would be just as good. Sadly, the Unions oppose most innovation in education, whether it be home-schooling, voucher programs, or even distance learning online (yes, the teacher Union shot that down here in Wisconsin, along with a political party that shall go unnamed). Niner, even you must be frustrated with the hard line the NEA takes against innovation.
Here in southeastern PA, we've been kind of a laboratory for this sort of innovation, with privatization of school management, tons of charter schools, home schooling, you name it. The problem is, little if any of it really lives up to its promise. After a long and expensive experiment with privatization in Philadelphia, it just hasn't worked. We've had various failing charter schools, although most are good, kind of like the public schools. Homeschooling (I have several friends who do this) is iffy at best. It tends largely to be a way for parents to inculcate kids with their religious memes without having anything questioned by the outside world. There are a few homeschoolers that do it for reasons of excellence rather than religion; one friend of mine does that, and she does it pretty well, but she is really an exceptional person. There is no way that I could give my kids anything close to the experience they get in our local public schools. Personally, I spent time in both public and Catholic schools, and I came away from that being in favor of public education. The education I got while in Catholic school was just second rate. I know this isn't always the case, but to be honest, I'm just not in favor of religious schools. I don't want to outlaw them or anything like that, but vouchers are kind of a slippery slope in that they are usually a form of state subsidy for religious education. Where I live, we already support the local religious and private schools with bus service and sharing of various resources. This is entirely reasonable as these schools take pressure off the public schools, but I honestly don't know if the religious kids get as good of an education. You can't make the argument that the Catholic parents are paying property taxes that support the public schools, so they should get a rebate in the form of a voucher, because everyone pays for the schools, whether they have 16 kids or none. If the Catholic parents should get a rebate, then so should parents without kids, and people with more kids should pay more. And then it wouldn't be public education anymore. Since good public education is one of the things that made this country great, I just can't support vouchers, since they are subverting public education. So.... this is a long winded way of saying that I'm not bothered by the NEA's positions, since I don't see them doing much harm.
Also, our schools aren't failing. In the well-heeled suburbs, the schools are generally excellent. In the jobless ghettos of the inner cities, the schools aren't failing; it's the parents that are failing. The social decay in those communities makes it awfully difficult for even a good school to turn a totally unprepared kid into an academic while his culture is pulling him in the exact opposite direction.
