Education: Our Biggest Challenge

by Representative Al Vezey

The educational system in America has been described as being in a state of crisis. Overall the American educational system has served its students well, but there are areas that definitely need improvement.

American educational policy has been based upon equality of opportunity. We require the education of our kids up to age 16. Special programs are set up to force them to stay in school even when it is a bad experience for both sides.

For nearly all high school graduates some kind of community college, University, trade school or vocational education is available. Financial aid is plentiful for those who want it.

We provide continuing education for adults, education for immigrants, education for prisoners, education for special students, and education for veterans. This policy has served America well.

Our kindergarten through 12^th grade educational systems have fallen behind the rest of the world. Many industrialized nations, such as Germany and Japan, have higher literacy rates; better serve the needs of business; better serve the needs of civic responsibilities; and better serve the needs of their students.

Many of our high school graduates can not function at college entry levels and many are troubled with violence and disorder.

We must adapt to a world economy and world economic competition. We must solve the problems of our society caused by the break up of our families regardless of the cause. We must search for tools for constant personal improvement so we can adapt to changing economic conditions and opportunities.

I offer a number of solutions to the current gaps in our educational system.

• Raise the standards of scholastic performance by requiring passing, promotion, and requiring a diploma to mean a student has received a quality education and learned the skills to carry them into a good job or college. This means performance examinations. Outcome based education is a prescription for failure.
  
• Strive to raise standards of behavior, politeness, manners, cleanliness, dress, and treatment of one another. Set standards for tests and expect schools, students, and teachers to meet them; reward them when they do. HB 145 is a very small but important step in this direction.
  
• Demand more from teachers and principals. Establish standards of performance and measures of evaluation. We must demand that they be met.
  
• Establish programs of encouragement and positive reinforcement and merit for those students, teachers, and staff who improve. Positive, certain, and immediate reward of good behavior and achievement will turn much of the system around. Merit pay for teachers is essential!
  
• Insist upon individual responsibility and standardized programs that require parents be involved. Reward parents for involvement and place morality back on the agenda.
  
• A violation of the law, even by a student, must be treated as a violation of the law. That includes assault, battery, sexual abuse, firearms or other weapons offenses, drugs and alcohol.
  
• Invest in technology. Our schools need to be on the cutting edge of technology. To not do so is kidding ourselves and robbing our children.
  
• Require advanced education in technology and teaching skills for our teachers. Make sure the education is relevant, current, and solid.
  
• Establish Charter Schools, even schools within our schools, where certain specific educational goals and objectives can be met. Our current Charter School law does not provide for educational choice and does not require that student performance be measured. House Bill 229 addresses the shortcomings of our current charter school law.
  
• Make educational vouchers an alternate. Society is paying for an education, after all, not teachers and buildings. They are part of the process by which education becomes available and realized. If the public school system can not meet the needs of a student, the students cost to the public school district and the parents could send the student elsewhere.
  
• Replace teacher tenure with multi-year, performance based contracts.

If the schools do not reform themselves and improve standards, behaviors, grades, results, safety, and the learning environment, then the voucher system may be necessary to replace the existing system.

We do not need to dismantle a system that has served our people and nation so well. It does need to be reformed and improved. We can do it!