Where I live, Hoboken, NJ, the high school math and reading proficiency rate are 8% and 44% respectively, while the graduation rate is >95%
What the hell are they doing if they're not even teaching kids math and reading? And why are they graduating them?
Grades aren't meant to be a feel good merit badge. They're supposed to be an accurate reflection of your level of knowledge relative to your peers. If it ceases to be that, then the selection just happens elsewhere. So now high school diploma isn't worth anything because everyone graduates. Hiring a high school graduate doesn't even guarantee you the person can read. Same thing happens in bachelors as schools become less selective and inflate grades.
My personal opinion is that the government should get out of education, just lower our taxes and let the free market handle the rest. Never gonna happen, however.
If we wanted to succeed here, we would likely need to invest more money to hire more or superior teachers that could work individually with these students that struggle to meet the requirements. The worst part would be that even with that investment it may not even be enough. Some portion of the students who don't achieve are not interested in excelling, and individual attention may not help much there.
I went to mostly black and poor public schools my entire childhood. Back then there were a few teachers who clearly didn't care and were never held accountable. Most of the teachers were pretty good though. It's increasingly shifted towards the opposite.
I was blown away by how pathetically run my children's public schools are here in Colorado so I put them both in private school. They get less than half the money per student that the public school system I live in gets, and are vastly more efficient. The operations, the instructors, it's all just run correctly.
When my daughter was still in a public elementary school I walked in one day to try to get her iPad fixed when they were doing full remote learning due to the pandemic. There was a large meeting taking place amongst all the staff. None of them had bothered to return my calls which is why I had to go in person. They looked like they were having a party because I didn't see any work getting done.
At the end of the day it's a government school. Name a single government agency that is efficient with their money. Name a government agency that's good at hiring, or keeping good talent.
We should just do a voucher system and let the private sector deal with this. As a taxpayer I'm deeply resentful of having my money get taken from me and given to unionized teachers who refused to work for a full year and then had the nerve to take summer vacation as if it had been a normal year. These were the same folks who were put at the front of the line for vaccinations independent of their age groups. And then they proceeded to act like they were still in danger and couldn't open schools.
The vaccine wasn’t really available till a few months into 2021, and I can understand the hesitation on some to be the first to take a new vaccine.
Yes private schools might run better. Shockingly richer and generally two parent families are going to have children that been primed to respect learning and have less trauma so much easier to deal with. Public schools teachers don’t have this luxury.
There certainly could be improvements to public school, some of the curriculum is dumb, but again they have to serve all customers, private schools don’t.
I don’t begrudge public school teachers their vacation.
I also realize this past year+ has been extremely stressful on parents, especially those who can’t work from home