Public education has quietly become the nation’s largest business, consuming some $413.8 billion each year, nearly 1½ times our expenditures on national defense.  Yet, the “product” being delivered by the 2,500,000 public school teachers employed by this politically powerful industry continues flounder.

National studies have consistently demonstrated the appalling lack of knowledge on the part of American high school students in such basic disciplines as mathematics, science, geography, history, the humanities and a  mastery of foreign languages.  When our students are given standardized tests along with their peers from thirteen other industrialized countries, America’s youth consistently scores 12th or 13th in every category.  It seems there’s a serious crisis in every area of academic pursuit which is tested. 

In the wake of lower 1991 SAT score results, educators have devised a convenient “spin”, blaming the increased number of students taking the exam for lower average scores.  It’s noteworthy there’s no hint the education establishment itself may be at least partly culpable.

Confronted with these and other hard facts reinforcing the lack of basic knowledge and critical skills on the part of students who move through our public education system, we are fed a diet of endless excuses, inevitably leading to the same solution … more money, mostly in the form of increased salaries and enhanced employee benefits.  Let’s remember the nation’s average public school teacher receives a salary of $32,880, plus benefits packages most of us can only  dream about, and all for less than ten months work.  At the state university level, individual annual incomes can become staggering!

When the public questions why student performance is so low and asks for some measure of teacher accountability, these educators and their parasitic allies, the legions of education experts and consultants, spew forth a predictable diatribe as to why “merit” systems and demands for individual responsibility and accountability can not work in public schools … a philosophy blindly accepted by all but a few courageous school boards. 

Clearly, there are tens of thousands of dedicated and competent teachers … and they should embrace such a change.  Merit based rewards for excellence of performance will quickly accrue to them.

However, there are also many fine and dedicated educators who are unfortunately ineffective … while still others are simply lousy teachers.  Understandably, these groups have a right to be concerned if they are suddenly to be held accountable for their performance … the education imparted to their student charges.

In no other industry, does hard work and a beating heart alone guarantee tenure … and it shouldn’t in public education, either.  Teachers and administrators must be held to demanding standards of professional performance in order to receive raises, earn promotions or retain their jobs.  Even members of Congress, our nation’s 535 most elite and protected excuse makers, periodically have to answer to the people for their actions or inactions.

We can no longer afford “business as usual”, watching children leave high school, only to spend their first year or two in college taking remedial courses to learn skills which should have been acquired as part of a basic secondary education, unable to complete an employment application, or even incapable of articulating a coherent sentence.

It’s time for the public to reassert it role as the ultimate employer of the country’s educational establishment.  It must ignore the often made threats an from educational cartel which tells us that unless we again open our wallets, our children’s future will be lost.  Rather, the people must demand the same levels of accountability from those to whom the role of education has been entrusted as is both expected and required from the rest of society.

When representatives of local school districts or state university systems appear before the school boards, city aldermen, town meetings or state legislatures asking for still more money or when the next round of negotiations with educator’s unions begins … “we the people” have an inalienable right to demand their individual members finally accept full responsibility and accountability for their performance and the quality of education they impart to their students. 

If that implies more work on their parts, more student homework, much tougher standards of acceptable (average) student performance, longer school days, lengthened school years, less administrative overhead, elimination of bloated state bureaucracies, the scraping of archaic certification requirements and more demanding standards of student decorum and discipline then so-be-it.  Concurrently, parents must then actively embrace and support such needed changes.

When educators finally accept responsibility for their performance, taxpayers may be more willing to see greater sums spent on the public education system, as they will finally be able to place a tangible value on the product they are purchasing.  If not, it’s time to tell those intractable individuals to “take a hike” and then demand the hiring of teachers and administrators who are willing to accept such a challenge in the pursuit of educational excellence.