The solution is not increased institutionalization, and as you point out, this is something that many Montessori and charter schools already understand.

But instead of selling off our educational system and instead of depleting schools of their brightest students, we should be mimicking and implementing the programs and pedagogical models that have been proven effective.

I noticed that a reader copied and pasted my essay into a Houma, Louisiana forum, and someone named “fs” responded. They wrote:

“I like the plan to reallocate money to send the brightest children to private and charter schools. I will be happy for my tax money to send someone else’s child to private school if that child is a honor student. MOST parents cannot afford that and if the child is a honor student, why should they stay in public schools, failing schools, they should be able to broaden their smarts further.

“And as for Georges putting a laptop on the desk of every student, who is going to pay for that, you? And if the schools with computers today are failing, what the hell is a laptop going to do more? NOT A DAMN THING.

“My plan:
Place all honor students in charter schools. Place all failing students at the age of 15 and above who wish and who’s parents approve, place them in alternative schools not for behavioral problems, but for alternative teaching. Instead of teaching them chemistry, trigonometry, and all that, teach them job skills, money management, resume’ writing, social skills, how to cope with difficulties in life, how to survive on minimum wage, how to raise children, and let them instead of a diploma on strict state guidelines, educate them for a GED.

“Let all other students go to public school. Let those “C” average students stay in the public schools because that is who the school system is set up for. Those are the average kids who will go many different ways when they graduate, college, army, work force, etc…”

I have many objections to this person’s response. First, a laptop on every desk is not prohibitively expensive. Georges believes he can get it done for $20 million, and considering the grant opportunities and our ability to partner, on the state-level, with a company like Apple or Dell, $20 million will go a long way. It represents an initial investment of approximately $30 per student, including Pre-K and Kindergarten students. If you were to locate an 80/20 matching grant and supplement that grant with additional partnerships, the program should not be difficult to implement. I am not sure why this person does not understand that laptops are powerful educational tools. Perhaps they are just being contrarian. But they should consider that all students, even those who are preparing for a skills-based career, need to be proficient in computers.

Obviously this person’s “plan” is fundamentally flawed. There are currently more than 21,000 public school students in the Gifted and Talented program. This does not include the tens of thousands of students who enroll in “honor’s” classes. Not all schools offer the Gifted program. There are only 370 private schools in the State of Louisiana and even fewer “charter schools.” These schools are scattered throughout the State. Let’s say we sent just those students enrolled in the Gifted program. The average private school’s enrollment would increase by nearly sixty. You do not need to be “gifted” to know that this it would be an operational and logistical nightmare.

But this person does not propose sending only Gifted and Talented students; they propose sending all “honors” students. Even if honors students represent only 10% of our student population, we’re still looking at over 60,000 students to “charter schools.” Louisiana currently has 57 charter schools, 15 more than our cap. This means the average “charter school,” most of which are already at full capacity, would receive over 1,000 new students.

We should be honest about our situation. Although our educational performance numbers are terrible, we still send over 14,900 students every year to Louisiana colleges and universities. We likely send thousands more to out-of-state institutions. 14,900 students represents 2% of our entire student population, grades Pre-K-12.

More importantly, 14,900 students is approximately 40% of the average 12th grade class, which means that at least two out of five graduating students are college-bound. No, we’re not Connecticut, but it is hard to make the argument that it is impossible to receive a quality education in our public school system. I know a number of public school students who scored perfectly on the ACT and/or the SAT, and many public education school students, like Bobby Jindal, later graduate from the finest universities in the nation.

When you deplete our public schools of their brightest students, you are buying into the erroneous and (frankly) insulting supposition that public schools cannot offer a quality education. They can. But by incentivizing the abandonment of public schools, we will only hurt our schools (and the students who have been marginalized by a system that associates test scores with intelligence). When we lose our bright students, we will also likely lose many of our brightest and most qualified teachers. And then, the sustained “failure” of some of our schools becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

“What can be done? First we need a ferocious national debate that doesn’t quit, day after day, year after year. We need to scream and argue about this school thing until it is fixed or broken beyond repair, one or the other. If we can fix it, fine; if we cannot then the success of homeschooling shows a different road to take that has great promise. Pouring the money we now pour into family education might kill two birds with one stone, repairing families as it repairs children.”

and made the assumption that I’m advocating homeschooling for the entire population? Okay, maybe Gatto, in his later work, argued that our educational system is beyond repair. Based on my goals for my family and my idea of what “success” is, I tend to agree with him. I’m glad that my family has chosen a lifestyle which allows us to all be home together. I don’t think that school is an optimal environment for my child. But – and a big but here – I’m fully aware that there are many parents who are too busy, don’t care enough, aren’t capable enough, or just choose not to home school.

Another snippet from that speech: “Independent study, community service, adventures in experience, large doses of privacy and solitude, a thousand different apprenticeships, the one day variety or longer — these are all powerful, cheap and effective ways to start a real reform of schooling.”

Why can’t schools (along with lots of family involvement) provide that? Independent study, community service, apprenticeships? Why are students sitting in desks all day learning (or not) how to take standardized tests? Why aren’t parents more involved with their children’s education? And I don’t mean parents volunteering for carpool pickup and snack time or merely checking homework. I mean parents *really* involved in the classroom and at home. “Education” should at least be a cooperative endeavor between schools and families.

I think we’re getting it wrong when we assume that children are empty vessels or blank slates ready to be filled with a certain body of knowledge. Schools that encourage curiosity and creativity instead of teaching a checklist of required information would be 100 times better for most of the population. Do you need examples of schools that are structured differently and are working for many students? (I shudder to think what you’ll say about these suggestions – hippy-dippy freethinker weirdness abounds! The horror!) Montessori schools are thriving in the US and Europe. The original Sudbury Valley school has been around for almost 40 years. There are dozens of “Sudbury schools” across the country modeled after the original. Not all of them are private schools. Some have opened as cooperative schools (where parents spend a *lot* of time assisting). The Albany Free School in New York draws half of its students from the inner city. There are newer, more creative, more inspiring models of school that are working for hundreds of thousands of children. These children grow up to lead very diverse lives – some going to college, others not. One child may become a federal judge and the other a gypsy in a traveling circus. Both of those are valid choices.

We should be striving for an entirely different model of school than the one we have now. We’ve got to stop with the band aid treatment. No Child Left Behind isn’t working. “Teaching to the test” isn’t working. Coercing children into learning isn’t working. When we can give children a lot more freedom to follow their interests and find ways for family to be more involved with the education process, we will be on the right track.

Bird, I agree with much of what you have said. However, I do not think “discipline was taken out of the schools.” There still may be a problem with a teacher’s ability to effectively discipline certain students. For example, I am aware of several incidents in which teachers who have tried to discipline athletes were overruled by their principal. This is a broad subject with many nuances, and it is important not to oversimplify this subject.

Still, I definitely agree that we became too consumed with the notion that ALL children are college-bound, and as a result of this and the teach-for-the-test imperative, we are not preparing students for “work in the 21st century.”

1) Our schools have gone through several decades of identity crises. First, they had to deal with integration. School boards had to figure out how to balance schools on race first, not quality in education. Then came the every child must be developed as “college” material. Again, school boards had to look at curriculum to put all kids on a tract heading towards college, even though most would never get there. And finally, came the accountability years. School boards found themselves faced with standardized test after standardized test which their schools would “compete” against other schools with in scoring to determine who was doing the best job of educating their students.

2) Discipline was taken out of the schools. I can remember my parents going to school on parents night and telling all of my teachers if I got in trouble at school they wanted to know because I was getting twice as many licks at home. NO MORE today. Teachers are battling kids who curse back, threaten to beat them up in the parking lot and even worse – parents who defend such actions claiming the teachers must have provoked such actions.

3) We know longer have tech prep. Funding has been pulled and courses dropped as a result of the “all kids must go to college mentality.” This is why we have no one prepared for work in the 21st century.

4) The knowledge economy requires an understanding of technology, but more importantly, it requires a good solid understanding of the basics – reading, writing, and math! We’re not teaching this any longer. We’re teaching kids how to pass tests. They can’t read rulers. They can’t write grammatically correct sentences. They can’t work out simple reasoning problems. All for the sake of accountability.

There use to be a time when parents were angry because “Johnny can’t read” as a result of the “graduate to get the trouble maker out of my class mentality” now it’s “you better let my child move onto the next grade or I’ll sue for discrimination of your standardized test.” No child left behind has not succeeded in bringing those truly behind in basic skills up to the level of basic.

The educational problems are not just a result of the education system, they are symptomatic of our social problems of the day. People will not accept responsiblity for their own actions nor will they accept responsiblity for their own futures. Until life skills and responsilbiity are taught, we have no hope in education our future workers.