[Sioux-san]

Like all bad institutions, Education cannot be fixed from within...get your precious babies out of their clutches. Find a legislator with the guts to push legislation for your tax money to serve your child and not the Dewey Dupes.

[Sioux-san]

Mediocrity is being kind. Way worse that that, methinks.

[fso301]

To fix public education, fix the families of students attending public schools.

[PoloSec]

I can narrow it down to one reason...Government Control!

[Da Coyote]

Nine reasons?

NEA^9

[ConservativeInPA]

Number 10: Teacher Unions. (Actually my number 1)

[Alberta's Child]

There's one very important thing that needs to be remembered about this issue: We've deliberately blurred the distinction between education and schools.

All this talk about "why public schools wallow in mediocrity" is misleading. Public schools wallow in mediocrity because they are mediocre by design.

[oh8eleven]

Why Public Schools Wallow In Mediocrity
Back in the day, I would always ask whatever school official I was meeting with regarding "new and improved" teaching methods -

"Why are you trying to change the American school system that gave us the people who won WWII and scientists who put a man on the moon?"

Never got more that some BS psychobabble as an answer.

[trek]

Ah, but you overlook the great Progressive seeds being planted in the minds of the next generation. For example, children are taught that having even a PICTURE of a gun is a completely inappropriate behaviour warranting the most punitive consequences including a march to the principal's office and possible expulsion. And this is for the youngest and most impressionable wards of the government schools.

What chance does the Second Amendment have once the products of this indoctrination machine are the low information voting majority?

[sagar]

How about the gubmint keep their fangs out of education? There is no “right” to education, just like there is no right to anything but life and liberty. It is your own responsibility to educate your progeny, not mine or anybody else’s. Besides, it is about competition — if your children are educated, then they will compete against mine in the future; so, why should I (be forced to) spend my money on yours and why should you on mine? It is insane. Besides, if only select few are truly educated, then the value of education will be high and things matter.

When every freak holds a degree, what is the point of having education?

[svcw]

There is only one - unions

[CodeToad]

Only 1 reason is needed to be known: Schools are run by liberals.

[outofsalt]

Social ambivalence instead of standards. There is no right or wrong. Johnny has no daddy, two mommies twelve step siblings...”what difference does it make” so long as he has a village?

[The Great RJ]

I can’t believe that the whole word reading method has not been discarded as ineffective decades ago. My older brother and sister (now in their 70s) were taught that way and according to my mother struggled with reading. I attended the same school, but was taught phonics. My children fortunately had a very good first grade teacher who watered down the whole word method again in vogue and taught them phonics. However the whole word method is still being used. Can’t someone in the education establishment finally acknowledge that phonics works best instead of continuing to cripple generations of people with poor reading skills?

[EEGator]

Busing city trash out to all the suburban schools.

[TalBlack]

Whole word (also known as sight-words, Dolch words, and many other aliases) is an 85-year flop that never worked.

And yet...there it is, in the schools, STILL being used without causing the vast majority of people involved to wonder: WHY!!?

[Texicanus]

Parents who value education and discipline are an important factor. I have heard many a teacher, public or private, state “the nut doesn’t fall too far from the tree”. This applies to the social behaviour as well as the aptitude of the student. I could go on but I think you can see the connection.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

Einstein's definition of insanity was doing the same thing over and over again while expecting a different result. The feral-government/teachers-union criminal-complex has been running the public education system for over forty years. Time to kick them out.

[wintertime]

Bruce Deitrick Price is a consist IDIOT. ( Yeah! I am shouting.)

The fundamental reason government schooling fails is that it is godless SS schooling ( single-payer and socialist-entitlement) schooling. It is a abominable institution that compels attendance and funding through threat of police and court action. ( Real bullets in those guns on the hip.)

[wintertime]

That should be “consistent”.

I would certain appreciate it if FR would get an edit option.

[mulligan]

Government control. Department of Education should be eliminated. The government is controlled by fools so what would one expect the outcome to be? Disaster.