Yet another bright idea comes out of Washington (these guys just love "reform" and "change", that I can believe in). New Education Chief Arne Duncan feels that America school children are not in school enough and that is why we are falling behind China and India (and a lot of other countries too) in educational rankings. It makes perfect sense--kids receive terrible public education and teaching, but if we just leave them in the school for an extra month they'll magically perform better. That is of course, if the school district is given more money (and kids are our future so why would you deny them money?).
No our school systems don't need more money, they need less bureaucracy. Education is perhaps the best thing a child will ever receive in his/her lifetime and we want to put that responsibility in the hands of the same people who run the post office and the IRS? Are we insane? No, just ignorant to the fact that the laws of economics don't just apply to Wall St., but rather the principles extend into most facets of life. The problem with our schools isn't the the length of the school year, it's the lack of competition and accountability within the system. When you combine both the teacher's unions with government bureaucracy, you suddenly have thousands of barriers put up between children receiving the best education.
Think of it this way. Schools are no different than any other business--they offer a service, education. In order to make profits they have to offer a superior service than the other schools--this is called competition. If the school cannot keep up with the other schools and offers only a 50% graduation rate (true of a vast amount of public high schools) no one would want their kids to go there and that school would fail. That possibility of failing is what would motivate teachers and school officials to really invest in children's education since their pay depends on it. This is not the case today. The opposite is true actually. If a school district receives horrible marks it doesn't close down, it receives more money. The teachers have no motivation to provide the best service possible because of the job security teacher's unions provide, making it almost impossible to fire a teacher. This is not how a successful business is run and not how education (our most important asset) should be run.
This special report "Stupid In America" by John Stossel sums up the problems well.
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