American Analysis: The American Education Winning Team

Wednesday, October 2, 2024

The American Education Winning Team

The American Education Winning Team

"The best way to predict your future is to create it."

Abraham Lincoln

Education has always been more than a way out of poverty for many and more than the mechanism to supply skilled workers for the economy; it has been the most effective social equalizer. Today, it has also become an imperative of national security. Our best-educated youth is competing internationally with the best students from China, a communist totalitarian dictatorship committed to our demise. It is suicidal for our society to pursue educational parity for all American students as a form of achieving social equality. Granted, we must always subscribe to the policy of no child left behind, but while making sure that no child is held behind. We need to provide the best possible education for all our students, nevertheless, mainstream students must be provided advanced learning to the limit of their capacity; they are the American Winning Team that will win the international competition for us. Private schools are continuing to supply a portion of the best-educated youth, but the mass of American students depends on a failing public school system.

Today, many public school districts in the country are requiring classrooms to allow slower-learning students to catch up with faster learners. Furthermore, disruptive students in the classroom are nearly impossible to be expelled from neighborhood-assigned public schools. This may sound politically correct to some, but it is a guarantee that our society will be grossly outcompeted in the global economy. In the international arena, not every child gets a trophy. Equal opportunity, personal responsibility, and individual merit are the basic elements to achieve the desired fairness. Underperforming public schools are the problem, not slow learners. Equitable school choice for parents is the answer. All public schools should gradually become privately administered as chartered schools without the stranglehold of the teachers' unions. Their individual survival should depend on their ability to attract students with locally uniform government-funded vouchers. All private schools must be able to compete on a level playing field.