Fixing America's Broken
Public Education
Dozens of powerful solutions to the hidden problems gnawing away at the effectiveness of American public education
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Summary/Contents
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Reform
Mission Statement
Education Reform Now! aims to empower citizens to achieve solutions to the problems of American public education, deal with societal injustices, and return public education in America to human realities. ERN strips away empty rhetoric, exposes the inner workings of a system that tenaciously resists change -- a system that whines and threatens in its constant demands for more and more taxpayer dollars and guarantees only mediocrity, rather than the efficient, effective education America deserves.
Clear-Eyed View of
American Public Education
The Emperor's New Clothes
American public education is steeped in mythologies. It is the intention of Education Reform Now! to explode these mythologies--recognize that the emperor does indeed have no clothes-so that the American people can understand the realities of their public education system and thus be equipped to bring about genuine reform--make their schools really better in every respect.
Two key problems that pull American public education down are the unhappy exaltation of methodology over content and the related exaltation of the psychology of weakness. However, if we want to find a kernel, it's a lack of rationality. American public education is plagued by an emotionalism that runs the full gamut of the political spectrum from extreme left to extreme right. It is hemmed in by a plethora of regulations from government at every level and by restrictions in union contracts that inhibit the flexible, rational approach needed to bring workable solutions to the never ending day-to-day and longer-term problems educators and parents must constantly deal with.
Although we clearly favor a more rigorous, structured education as providing the greatest benefit for both the individual and society as a whole, the most important principle is freedom of choice. Parents must be free to choose the type and style of education they want for their children, organized and delivered in ways they find most suitable. One of the most pernicious of the mythologies of American public education is that some kind of wisdom resides in the bureaucratic tangles of government that makes it a fit dictator of the right and proper ways to educate children.
We don't agree.