David Nicholson has a powerful account of dealing with the Washington D.C. public school bureaucracy in I Just Couldn't Sacrifice My Son. I enjoyed the article. David loved living in Washington D.C. He use to give his friends a bad time when they moved out to make sure their children received a decent education.
The shoe was on the other foot when David finally had a son in elementary school. He ends the article with:
"In the end, though, I couldn't sacrifice my son to an education system that seems at best inefficient and at worst willfully corrupt. As much as I admire Mayor Fenty, I can't help noting that his children go to a private school.
"And if he doesn't send his kids to D.C. schools, why should I?"
To an extent I think most parents suffer many of the same problems David struggled with his local public schools. At some point many parents say this is enough. Parents moved their children to better school districts, or pay money to send them to private schools, or homeschool. Fundamentally the big problem is public schools are bureaucracies and have little motivation to improve. As monopolies they have a captive audience. It takes a lot of effort for parents pull their children. Many parents find it easier to just coast along.
As public schools get worse I predict that more and more parents will say:
"I won't sacrifice my children to an education system that seems at best inefficient and at worst willfully corrupt."
(Hat tip: edspresso)
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Technorati tags: homeschooling, homeschool, home school, home education, parenting, children, education
2 comments:
"It took a year and the help of a court-appointed attorney to get the school district to agree to provide services...."
This is government education at its worst - smugly thumbing its collective nose at the tax payers who pay for it and whose children which it is supposed to serve - all for the sake of job security, union solidarity and power consolidation to benefit the educational elite.
Change is done with the aid of an attorney and wasted time. All to the detriment of the child. Government waste, fraud, and mismanagement personified at the local level.
Washington, D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty obviously was painfully aware of this even when making campaign promises to keep his kids in government schools. But he, like many members of this nation's congress, obviously know better than the 'sucker tax payers' because up to 46% of those legislators place their own children in private schools rather than DC's failing government schools.
Same for many government school teachers. That 'profession' ranks at the top of all professions for placing their own children in private schools rather than the same government schools that employ them. Maybe they know something that 'we the people' don't. Yet the law demands 'we the people' fund those government schools and send our own children there - unless one can afford to fund both the government schools and private school tuition. What other commodity can you name where the 'consumer' is denied economic choice and is forced to purchase both if a choice is to be made?
My broken record keeps on repeating: it is waaay past time to vote school vouchers - vote school choice.
"I won't sacrifice my children to an education system that seems at best inefficient and at worst willfully corrupt."
~Feel the ground swell...........and contact your legislator to end this taxpayer funded NEA madness!!
Then they have the audacity to turn around and tell parents that they cannot educate their own children. We should leave it to the professionals.
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