Ther might be more good parents than you realize.

"We are in the business of raising taxpayers!" Wow. I cannot wait to hear the rest.

"There is no reason why this couldn't be down in the classroom instead of expecting the kids to learn at the same rate" This is one reason I consider it evil. Children are treated like cars coming off of an assemby line. I had not heard about these programs. It sounds like it is giving the parents a little wiggle room to treat their children as individuals.

Good point. I was going ask people to put up hundreds of billboards around the country reading "Public Education in America is child abuse." Now I might change it to "Government Education..."

On purpose. This is the evil that is Public Education.

Right. The whole system reeks of the opinion "we dont need no thinking students" The sooner they can get the good teachers out, the faster they can achieve their utopian dream of the total control over all minds.

You misunderstood. I would never want her in a class with 29 other kids. I think the whole class arrangement is wrong. And making a child wait to start school for another year because the birthday is after Oct. 1st is ludicrous. I guess I've been away from the school systems for too long. My youngest will be 36 in Nov. Slipping socialist hints into school is evil. Before my granddaughter was ready to start school, my daughter & I looked into the available Home Schooling options in our area. We were favorably impress.

Why would you WANT her in a classroom with 29 other kids? No one expects kids to learn at the same rate, but each over packed class has kids across the spectrum...it's not fair to the higher kids...their progress gets held back by default. I've worked in kindergarten for almost 10 years. This is my last year. I've watched it too long and every year it's worse...and here come Common Core. Having 30 kids to teach is a completely inefficient way to teach kids...too many distractions from behavioral issues that waste teaching time and slow down the process. I'm ALL for homeschooling, The GOV should not be anywhere near our schools let alone run them. (Evil IS the right word.....or do you not believe slipping socialist hints into school work isn't evil.) I'm looking very forward to home schooling my grandson. Kudos to your granddaughter's mother. She should be applauded.

Or "Tax payer funded schools". People forget THEY'RE paying for them.

No, the government run schools are evil because they are based upon the initiation of force. The whole system is based on force. From it's revenue source (taxiation) to it's forced demand (compulsory attendance laws). This government instituted initiation of force is an immoral violation of individual's rights.

Actually, we have a lot of history and data to sort out under the rubric of "public education." Generally, school boards are local and are INDEPENDENT of "the government." In other words, the mayor and city council have no control over the schools.

Truly, public education has been complicated and compromised by its relationship to government. Probably all US states license teachers.Here in Texas, the State buys all textbooks for all public schools.

That aside, the basic truth is the public schooling reflects America's commitment to learning. Like public buses and public zoos** public education is just a way to achieve what most people seem to want. It is not optimal. As an educator myself, I agree that completely privatizing education would be best. My wishes aside, the social structures and social functions of local education tell me that if you are unhappy with your local schools, then maybe you should get involved with the school board and maybe run for office.

If you would rather start your own for-profit school, that is highly laudable.

Just to complain achieves nothing.

**On public zoos: the world is not short of problems to decry but no one here so far has claimed that Marxist zoos harm animals.

Many years ago, I started out to get my teaching certification based on my military experience and the fact I did have a Master's. I enjoyed teaching as a sub and wanted to be able to teach full time in Lit or History. (BA in History, English minor) all was going well until my interview with the 'gatekeeper'. She later told me the problem was when I said I expected the students to come to class prepared to discuss the work assigned, to take a thesis, research it and defend it. She told me that was too much to expect from HS students and that I would probably be better off teaching at a JC level. So much for education.

Thank you. The community college I taught at in NJ was no different. Telling the students what I expected of them was derided by the administration.. I hope MikeMarotta reads your post.

And doctors should be judged on whether you get sick or not? If you get ill, or die, "twice in a row", they're out? You can't control children anymore in a classroom than you can control adults unless you use the role of authoritarian and scare them into learning. These days, it's not only children, but teachers, principals. and recently in TN, superintendents fighting back to the bureaucracy. Too bad most of the good ones have already shrugged or close to it.

Yeah, I had that hanging in my classroom too. Good luck to you. I know there are pockets of public education out there still fighting the system and I wish you luck, Paulford1, but I hope you're not being naïve.

Following is a link to a High School entrance examination in 1885. I believe the school was Dickinson High Jersey City NJ. Please read the questions and tell me if you could have passed it when you graduated Grammar School. Do you think the average student could pass it today? Is it possible humans can get dumber over time? Why do think our general knowledge has been collapsing and continues to do so? Is it a liitle likely that the NEAs magic is kicking in on an accelerating rate?
https://schotlinepress.wordpress.com/200...

Parents? If there are 2, they are too busy working or from what we see in public, the news, by the popularity of certain shows, and too self absorbed and scattered between tweeting and texting to make a lesson plan.

Aside from Silicon Valley, the Internet, stem cells, recombinant DNA and genetically modified organisms, Hollywood, and the highest standard of living on the planet?

“A slightly higher proportion of American adults qualify as scientifically literate than European or Japanese adults, but the truth is that no major industrial nation in the world today has a sufficient number of scientifically literate adults,” he said. “We should take no pride in a finding that 70 percent of Americans cannot read and understand the science section of the New York Times.”
Approximately 28 percent of American adults currently qualify as scientifically literate, an increase from around 10 percent in the late 1980s and early 1990s, according to Miller's research. (Science Daily here.)
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/200...

Also, the collapse in the last 50+ years has many causes. Still and all, if you never judged a regional science fair, you have not seen the best side of this. Total privatization would be best of all, but the very existence of public education reflects a basic virtue in American culture.

"That aside, the basic truth is the public schooling reflects America's commitment to learning." We, America, have spent trillions in the last fifty or so years on education and what have we gotten for our money? Please point me to the achievements. What have our children learned? What measures of success are you using?

Thank you for the lead.

Yes. Me too. We older folks were taught to reason out our opinions for ourselves and to take the consequences of our mistakes. Common Core treats all children as cattle. I wonder if they will have ID tags clipped onto their ears?

If all education were either home-schooling or privately run schools, bad teaching would be localized and self-correcting. As it stands now, if Common Core sucks, it will destroy a generation of minds.

Yup. I agree.

Not. I am a retired teacher. John Dewey is the father of modern education and the NEA dutifully follows his teachings. He is the anti-Rand. What follows is the 4th paragraph of his My Pedigogic Creed " I believe that knowledge of social conditions, of the present state of civilization, is necessary in order properly to interpret the child's powers. The child has his own instincts and tendencies, but we do not know what these mean until we can translate them into their social equivalents. We must be able to carry them back into a social past and see them as the inheritance of previous race activities. We must also be able to project them into the future to see what their outcome and end will be. In the illustration just used, it is the ability to see in the child's babblings the promise and potency of a future social intercourse and conversation which enables one to deal in the proper way with that instinct." Do you understand this crap? Please read it and tell me how successful Public Education has been in their "attempt to fight ignorance and idiocy in this country..." Be honest with me, without looking it up, can you name the five rights affirmed in the 1st Amendment in the Bill of Rights? I'm not dissing individual teachers, We cannot all be philosophers. I'm trying to kill Dewey's ideas.

You've got to read "The New Abolitionism: Why Education Emancipation is the Moral Imperative of our Time" by C. Bradley Thompson: http://www.theobjectivestandard.com/issu...

"I begin with my conclusion: The 'public' school system is the most immoral and corrupt institution in the United States of America today, and it should be abolished. It should be abolished for the same reason that chattel slavery was ended in the 19th century: Although different in purpose and in magnitude of harm to its victims, public education, like slavery, is a form of involuntary servitude. The primary difference is that public schools force children to serve the interests of the state rather than those of an individual master."