Education...what now?

My brother wrote a great post about education here.... and this is my response.

As far as educational inequality and inequality of opportunity...
I believe the inequality in opportunity starts even before the students reach school age. It seems that a huge problem is actually in the home. Many parents don't realize the importance of education, and children, because of their inexperience, don't realize the importance of education until it is too late (in their own mind at least). In our conversations with Melinda, it seems that a great deal of her students are not successful because their parents don't put any value or importance on their education. (This is only an observation and not a proved statistic, so I could be wrong.)

As far as school and teacher quality, there are programs (see New York Teach and Teach for America) in place that attempt to put recent college grads or successful professionals in cities or schools that normally do not attract quality teachers. I do not know if this is enough. But it's definitely a program that is attempting to equalize the opportunities and education available to ALL students. It could be possible that we should be looking towards private organizations and individuals to alleviate problems rather than trying to overhaul the whole educational system.

The previous thought process runs along the lines of your idea of transferring educational responsibility to the states. Smaller organizations are usually more efficient and the problem of education might be solved better if 50 seperate organizations were each practicing a different solution, with greater opportunities to learn from eachother.

In regards to No Child Left Behind, in a recent statement to congress, Bill Gates (in speaking for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation's research) stated that the program, though it had its faults, had greatly improved education. So it could be that No Child Left Behind just needs a few tweaks rather than throwing it out.

Privatizing education (or partially privatizing it) may have some positive effects. If we privatized education, students might be able to have a better choice in their education. By better choice however, I am not thinking about actual 'ranking in school' or test scores, but rather a choice in a variety of specialty schools. If a student is interested in music, they can attend a school that emphasizes music. If the student was interested in machinery, there would be a school that had a better mechanic program. However, even then, I wonder if that would be the result of privatization. Privatization may only further divide schools and students from one another in equality of opportunity. Students with low incomes would continually receive a worse education and school would continue to struggle with funding.

There are my thoughts, John. So what do you think?

P.S. My brother is so smart and I am so proud of him. He makes the family look good.