Posted on 04/12/2018 9:19:47 AM PDT by Bob Celeste
How To Fix Public Education In 24 Hours Have you ever spent an entire afternoon playing Monopoly with your family? Monopoly always sounds like a great idea when you first pull the box off the shelf and count out the money. But, before long, the game becomes kind of miserable and everyone ends up mad at each other. That shouldn’t come as a surprise.
The game is called Monopoly for a reason.
Teachers work for a monopoly that is controlled by the state. Having a monopoly on a product or service only works for the owner of the monopoly and no one else. Customers must pay whatever price the monopolist demands, employees must work for whatever the monopolist is willing to pay, and the owner has no reason to improve his product as there is no competition. Neither the customer or the employee has a choice and the only ones benefiting are those at the top of the monopoly.
The government education monopoly is even worse as there is motivation by legislators to never actually make the teacher’s happy. Consider our current situation in Oklahoma. Our history includes HB1017 (the largest tax increase ever to fix education), then legalized horse racing, bingo, casinos, lottery, liquor by the drink and this week ball and dice gaming was passed and in every case the reason was to pay the teachers. So, where is the money?
The most important part of education is the classroom. The classroom and the teachers should be funded first. So why aren’t they? Oklahoma has a state minimum wage for teachers, but each district is free to pay their teachers as much as they like. Amazingly, there is always money for countless superintendents, deputy superintendents, press boxes and football stadiums. It’s not a revenue problem, it is a priority and management problem.
For some reason, we never see the Department of Education and Joy Hoffmeister threatening to strike. Apparently, their funds are getting through. The $52 million plus in salaries for the over 500 district superintendents seems to be getting through, as well, as they never threaten to strike.
Why is it teachers are the only group in the state always complaining about wages? Because they work for a monopoly controlled by state.
By the way, what government agency actually works efficiently? DMV? DHS? Social Security is bankrupt? The Affordable Care Act caused my premiums to quadruple! So why do we trust the government to run education efficiently?
There is an easy fix. Free the teachers. Let me share a real example.
In 1980, the minimum wage in the NFL was $30,000 per season. Players worked for a monopoly. They either played for the team that owned their rights for the amount that team was willing to pay or changed careers. In 1982, the USFL was created. There was competition and by 1985 the average salary in the NFL jumped to $212,000 per year. Then in 1987 players became free agents and they could choose to market their services to any team. This year the average salary in the NFL was $2.4 million per year. In 45 years, teacher’s salaries have increased 3x and NFL salaries have increased 80x.
Here is the solution.
Instead of handing $13,240 a student to the State Department of Education and trusting them to manage it (which they obviously aren’t doing well), put that money into an educational savings account controlled by the family (it’s the people’s money anyway) that could only be spent on education
Then let all schools, public and private, compete for the best teachers and compete to earn clients (students) by the quality of their product. If parents want their children to be taught social justice, climate change and transgenderism, they can send their kids to those schools. For parents that prefer quality reading, writing, arithmetic, real science and history, they can send their kids to schools that emphasize those classes. The quality of education will be fixed overnight, and parental control will be returned.
Public schools should excel as they already have the facilities, buses and personnel. The only way they don’t win is if they don’t provide a product the parents want at a price that is competitive.
Teachers will immediately have choices. When a known great teacher is on the free market, he/she might demand $100,000 in the first year. Great teachers will be paid great, good teachers will have a financial incentive to become great and average teachers will be motivated to improve.
If students don’t ride the bus, play sports or if they decide to bring their lunch from home, then they will save money. Any money left in their education account can be rolled over. If a student graduates high school with money left in his/her ESA, they can use it for college or trade school, reducing needs for student loans.
The teachers win. The parents win. The students win. Colleges win. The only ones that lose will be the unions who are constantly stirring seeds of dissatisfaction to justify their existence, educational bureaucrats that will no longer have a reason for existence (Can’t each school district choose its own curriculum and manage its own affairs?) and politicians that won’t be able to use the teachers as a tools for their next big tax increase or pet project to raise revenue – for the teachers.
With the passing of HB1010, the people of Oklahoma are angry, as their will has been ignored. The poor and middle class will be paying more at the pump. The middle class will suffer as they can’t write off their mortgage insurance and the life blood of Oklahoma (energy) will be punished with higher taxes.
The teachers will celebrate for the short term, thinking they’ve won something, but it won’t be long until the legislature figures out a way to diminish pension contributions or some other benefits because we now must fix our prisons, health department and decaying bridges. Within five years the union will have the teachers spitting mad again and ready to walk out on the kids. Where will the legislature turn next? Perhaps they’ll legalize prostitution, so they can tax it. After all, its for the children.
For such a time as this,
“...compete to earn clients (students) by the quality of their product.”
It always comes down to this. Some metric is developed and applied, with good intentions, and from there, it gets messed up.
There needs to be some objective hard-and-fast metric applied without human bastardization.
That “etc.” that you used turns into college-level sports stadiums/programs in high school, or below. When we first moved to Texas, the sports facilities we passed convinced me we must have passed a college town. Eventually, I learned how Texas loved to spend money on sport programs, and at early stages in the education system.
Pastor, My wife and I would like to help on what is and isn’t acceptable for Homeschoolers to use the funds for.
As you know we have homeschooled all of ours.
Thank you, Could you please send the lsit to bob.celeste@gmx.com
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