What will we do when statism fails? Part four

Our educational needs are growing beyond public education's ability to keep up. Technological changes are demanding educational systems which are flexible, quick and focused on the edge of the wave. We are graduating kids who have no idea how to fit in to this new world.

When statism fails, education needs to be addressed and perhaps it will be time to remove education from government control . Children need to learn how technology is used and for what it's used. From what I see in the public schools, teachers don't understand the changing technologies well enough to properly prepare students for college, much less the real world.

"No child left behind" was intended to address these problems, but I don't foresee government education ever developing the flexibility needed to meet the needs of a rapidly changing technological society and global economy. It's too heavy with bureacracy and politics, so that the money doesn't flow to the critical sources of performance.

It's time for private education and competition so that parents have choices as to where to send their kids. The public educational system is blocking private innovation in education. Here, again, communities will deal with the problem of the poor not being able to afford education. Communities will not leave children behind. It's not even worth arguing -- proponents for public education are locked into their beliefs, people like me are locked into ours -- there is no way to know except to try it. My faith in the private sector working with parents in communities is much higher than my faith, which is low, in government educational solutions -- plus, we have had years of experience by which to judge the public education system and it's failing with a big F.

Competition and diversity in educational approaches will allow parents to guide their children into the best school, and to switch from one to the other if one is not getting results. This will give parents more power to assess performance and results. It will be easier for private schools to cull bad teachers and change approaches which aren't getting results.

Private schools using the latest technology to teach technology, which affects all areas of our lives, will be superior to the entrenched status quo of public education. Every parent I talk with has the same poor outlook on public education but nothing much is ever done about it -- however, today's world is much different and changing quickly -- it's not fair to the children of this country to allow a broken system to continue putting kids at a disadvantage. Private schools will have more leverage with the parents to bring discipline and learning back in to the classrooms.

Surveys show some support of vouchers and charter schools as a beginning to change, and a lot of dissatisfaction with public school systems. An overwhelming majority believe Democrats will do a better job improving public education -- and this might be the problem. Because the Democrats have supported public education more vocally, the impression is that they care more about its success, yet, obviously many haven't stopped to think that most of the changes, regulations and support of a protected, sluggish union that have created a public school system with which they are dissatisfied were promoted by Democrats.

It's the same old problem of false choices -- people have been trained to limit their choices for change to Republicans or Democrats, when in reality there's another choice -- private schools with no government involvement.