What are your thoughts on the state of public education in our country?

I live in America. Took my child out of the failing public school into a remote only private academy. One of the best decisions we’ve ever made.

Just listening to a fascinating discussion about this very topic.

Basically: public education in the U.S. is screwed. Both Republicans and Democrats are contributing to its downfall. Republicans are trying to weaken the public education system with scare-mongering about CRT and “Don’t Say Gay” bills and are pushing for charter schools, private schools, and homeschooling, and Democrats are doing nothing to address the real problems of how education has suffered during the pandemic, how education is not the only solution to poverty, and how schools are supposed to do more than simply train people for the workforce (and they also are favoring charter schools).

My takeaway is that many public education systems in the U.S. are due to collapse. They were fragile before the pandemic, but the pandemic is acting as the last straw. The Betsy DeVos vision of education is coming to fruition.

And for those who cannot afford a private academy?

But don’t you think the decline of the schools mirrors the other rot afflicting us.? This resort to recruiting teachers abroad is just an admission that you cannot earn a decent living as a teacher.

Boys and girls should go to separate schools (or classes, at least) in junior and senior high.

Uneven. Even in so called wealthy states, the quality of schools is mixed, largely (but not totally) based on race and income level.

Two solid reasons for this:

1) With maybe one exception (hawaii), schools are funded at a county or city level, not at a state level, and definitely not at a federal level. Which means that the funding for schools tightly mirrors property taxes (which is how almost all localities pay for schools). Low property taxes = low quality schools = poorly paid teachers = lousy education.

2) School board members are – in many places – elected on a partisan basis. Not everywhere, but in many cities and counties. In many states, the State board of education members are appointed by the Governor, making state education a political tool. And in rural states, do you think that the governor is going to appoint democrats to deal with educational policy? Ha!

Bottom line – the US made some governance decisions 100 years ago that wre questionable then and downright damaging now.

Lack of parental involvement.

@Dutchess_III Actually, now I think that sometimes there is too much parental involvement with parents coming to school boards and thinking they can dictate the curriculum to ban books and the teaching of certain subjects. It’s a mixed bag.

A mixed bag full of holes. The race is on to see which will crumble first, the schools, the cities, the roads and bridges. The workforce has been trampled and wrung out to the extent that droves have concluded that it’s no longer worth it. You gotta wonder.

True @janbb. The least educated parents get the most involved.

I’m in the US. The religious right has been attacking the public school system for years. I believe the people leading that movement are purposefully and maliciously trying to break it apart to fund religious schools and install more and more religious education. Many people helping this along don’t realize this ultimate goal. Vouchers going to religious schools, that’s crazy to me that it could happen in the US. Even government providing busing to private schools is really borderline, I think it’s not ok.

Then add in many Democrats have joined in the song that American schools suck compared to the rest of the world. Bullshit. We still have plenty of great schools, but we do need to improve, and we definitely need to make education better across the board all income levels. It seems to me most teachers are good at there jobs and care about doing a good job.

Several years ago I saw some new education programs (I think it was a Bill Gates project) where kids do a lot of learning online at their own pace, and a teacher helps each student where they need help. The teacher was more monitoring and tutoring and it was very tailored to each student. I don’t know how successful it was, but that model seems like it could work well during a pandemic.

Oh, and speaking of pandemics, covid really just pushed some of the education problems forward. Some good some bad. I heard in Florida the governor is raising minimum salaries for teachers; I’m not sure if it has been done yet. Florida needed a salary boost though, it was lagging behind many other states. Some states pay teachers well, not all teachers are underpaid, but some are extremely underpaid. That needs to be fixed.

I don’t think pay is the only reason people aren’t going into or staying in the field of teaching. It used to be teaching was good hours of people had children, and summers off. Now, teachers seem to have shorter summers, teaching is more complicated now from what I can tell, and teachers even worry about their safety more than in the past. Back to the topic of good hours, now many professional jobs have much more flexibility, working from home, hybrid, and can take vacations when flights and hotels are less expensive and crowds are low, because they aren’t controlled by the school calendar.

The religious right wing is getting what they asked for to some extent, but I would warn them that old cliche to be careful what they wish for. They don’t realize what it really will result in, even though you can see around the world that the most prosperous and civilized countries all have strong public education systems, and countries where you need money to get your kids educated are third world countries with great poverty and an incredible lack of education among the masses.

Both the Democrats and the Republicans are doing some things that are hurting the schools in some parts of the country. It really varies around the country.