More freedom and less government

I like most in American have become concerned with the educated product we are putting into the market today. Being a long time employer I always required an educated workforce and just before I sold my business to a major corporation I had noticed the lack of education by applicants for our starting positions. I was recently reading a piece in a trade publication that shared some of my concerns about the lack of education our youth seemed to be receiving in our public schools today. Then the talk about government stimulus ......................... and my blood begin to boil.

The Stimulus calls for nearly doubling federal spending on education, which means doubling federal control. We are going to double spending on a product to which we have achieved no real success. Makes a lot of sense does it not? America is an oppressive and unjust society are the words of William Ayers. Anyone remember Mr. Ayers? A friend to President Obama. Being that American is oppressive and unjust is the right reason to double federal spending on education. Government never learns.

I share President Obama's concerns about education. We certainly need to do a better job of utilizing our tax dollars for better results. For Obama, the solution to everything seems to be government and spending. But in improving education, more of neither seems to work. Never has and never will in my opinion.

According to Department of Education data, reported by the Cato Institute, K-12 spending per student, adjusted for inflation, went from $5,393 in 1970 to $11,470 in 2004. Over the same period, there were tiny increases in math scores among 17-year-olds and no improvement in reading scores. One of the greatest think tanks in the world came to the same conclusion I came to long ago - kids can't read. I found the problem to be a lack of desire to learn to read. I brought reading intervention teachers into my facilities to help my workforce. In turn I was looking for better productivity. Over 75% eventually lost their jobs due to a mistake made for a reading problem. Lack of desire to learn to read caused them their job and caused my operation valuable productivity time. If I added the total cost of reading intervention expenses, lost productivity, etc. it would most likely be in the millions of dollars.

Can we really believe that over the 35 years that per pupil spending doubled it did not dawn on any educator that reform was in order? There are endless new ideas about how to spend money to manipulate kids into learning. The problem with professional bureaucrats is that they think we learn about human beings in laboratories and academic studies. It never occurs to them the problem is a bankrupt culture, which they themselves often reflect, and what's needed is a return to traditional values.

Anyone recently watch the made-for-television movie, Gifted Hands? It is about Dr. Ben Carson one of the world's few black pediatric neurosurgeons, world renowned for his professional accomplishments. He is a professor at John Hopkins. In his own words, he was an "at risk" child -- a black male raised in poverty by a young, poorly educated single mother.

According to Carson, "My mother worked as a domestic, two, sometimes three jobs at a time because she didn't want to be on welfare. She felt very strongly that if she gave up and went on welfare, that she would give up control of her life and of our lives, and I think she was probably correct about that." When Carson was failing in school as a young boy, she laid down the law to him and his brother. Both of them would read two books a week and give her a book report (they had no idea she couldn't read). And, they'd be limited to three television shows per week.

Ben Carson, of course, is an exceptional man. But his story verifies what existing studies show. The main predictor of a child's educational success is the parental guidance and involvement that the child gets at home. Per Star Parker a syndicated columnist, "Central to this also must be values. The problem is that these values -- the traditional values that Ben Carson's mother taught him -- are off limits in our public schools."

I think that by now most will agree that throwing money at a government school monopoly is not going to change education realities. The real need is freedom, not money. The ability to pick and choose a school without government intervention. Public or private the money needs to flow with the student. We need more common sense and freedom in K-12 education -- not more government programs and money. There are far to many inefficient government programs that currently exist in the education arena due to career educators who lack the expertise to spend wisely and efficiently. Ben Carson's mother proved that more money and fancy education theories were not the answer for her child, and this is mostly likely the same answer for all children within the education system today.