Education is supposed to make people smarter. But the process itself is incredibly stupid.
It hasn't always been so, but when public education was hijacked by liberals it began a downward spiral.
Efforts in Florida to reverse that trend are succeeding and being admired and copied in other states yet continue to draw opposition.
If you were going to design a system that you intended to fail, wouldn't you:
-- Make sure that all teachers were paid the same, so that there was no incentive to excel but only an incentive to show up for work?
-- Place the least effective teachers in the schools where students are struggling while the best go to schools containing gifted students who absorb information easily and need only textbooks to learn?
-- Prize political correctness more than learning facts?
-- Promote children whether they learn or not, in order to protect their self-esteem?
You would have to oppose any attempt to have standards or accountability in the system, on the basis that teaching is an art and its effectiveness can only be determined by other artists.
Liberals employ other novel ideas in arguments against education reform.
Take school choice. Reformers present this not as the solution to education problems, as opponents pretend in a straw-man argument, but as a valuable aid to the families of struggling students.
It is a win-win situation. Students escape failing schools and get a fresh chance in a school chosen by their parents, at less cost to taxpayers. As studies have shown, the competition even improves the public schools.
Yet, those who prefer the status quo insist that giving poor children the same chance as those from more affluent families drains money from the public schools.
It doesn't. Public education is piecework. Schools are given money based on the number of students they have. The left claims that it costs more to educate additional children in a school but also insists irrationally that it doesn't save money if a child leaves.
Unfortunately, such twisted reasoning occurs because public education is driven by the formula E=MPC2 Education equals Money times Political Correctness squared.
But, no one can explain the mysterious alchemy by which larger paychecks for adults allegedly can be transmuted into learning gains for children.
Liberals may think that teachers are holding children hostage, refusing to educate them until they get more money, but it seems far more likely that money is a lesser factor and that sound teaching practices, with standards for students and accountability for schools, produce better results.
As for the poor-mouthing about a lack of funds, a recent news story headlined this: The United States spends more than other developed nations on its students' education each year ...
This nation spends twice as much as Poland, to get the same results. I'll bet kids aren't taught that fact in the public schools.
Lloyd Brown was in the newspaper business nearly 50 years, beginning as a copy boy and retiring as editorial page editor of the Florida Times-Union in Jacksonville. After retirement he served as speech writer for Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.
