Do we really need public schools?

 Do we really need public schools?

 

Public schools cost a great deal of money.  In fact, in most local jurisdictions schools use the majority of local funds.  In addition to all the local funds, there are also state funds.   And in Maryland, we now have the Blueprint for the Future that is going to plow in millions more over the next few years.

Is all that money worth it?  State testing, community colleges and 4-year post-secondary institutions all tell us that students are nowhere near grade level.   Well over half of all students entering community colleges must take zero credit remedial courses for which they pay tuition.   Statewide test results tell us that only a minority of kids is performing on grade level.

So, what exactly is the taxpayer getting for all that money.  Some schools are better than others, mostly in the high rent districts.  But even in those areas, many families opt to go private.  In the northeast, public schools spend just  under twenty thousand dollars per student.  McDonogh School in Baltimore County Maryland is generally considered one of the most prestigious private schools in the country.  Their tuition averages about thirty-one thousand a year.  Class size is under ten students.  The average class size in a public school in Maryland is supposed to be 21.  Try and find that.

The question is could the taxpayers get a better deal for their money and could kids get a better education?

In Maryland the state pays to build school buildings.  The biggest cost to public schools is human- teachers and administrators.  Under the Blueprint teachers with no experience and just an undergraduate degree will start at 60K.

One of the drawbacks of doing away with public schools is that who would start a school in the worst of the worst neighborhoods besides public schools.  We already know that schools in these neighborhoods have the worst and least experienced teachers because the unions won’t allow the system to put the best teachers there.

What if, just what if, we did away with public schools BUT kept public financing for the education of kids.   First off, we would do away with unions.  We could also cut costs for lots of administrators.   Suppose we retrofitted the buildings, offered per pupil funding to proposal writers to run their own schools.  That was the idea behind charter schools before unions got into the act and made sure teachers were union members and met state certification standards.  What if those charter schools could establish their own curricula and taught kids what they NEEDED to know and not what some summer work committee thought they SHOULD know?  What if schools were measured by how successful kids were once they got out of school not by how successful they were at test taking?  Using real kids and real metrics?  What if we went back to where it used to be when schools were established by communities and not part of some monolith bureaucracy that is increasingly being used for political purposes.

What if schools really served kids and not the unions, the administrators or the politicians?  What if there were no more public schools as we know them?   Just asking for a friend.