The next area I am looking for our post-2022 elected state government to tackle is education. While some reports place the US as #1 in education rankings globally, when you get past the “how many people went to school” level that formed that ranking, the results underneath are dismal and frankly, cause for alert.
In my opinion, the US should rank atop every educational category; we aren’t even close, and the gap is widening. Here are some fun facts to consider: Of 79 educated countries tested … in 2020 … the US ranked 9th in reading and 21st in math proficiency. That’s embarrassing, and that was 2 years ago. Fun fact: The Boomers were the last generation to rank at or near the top globally (all of us born through 1964) – and we’ve been falling ever since. Now we rank UNDER the global testing average in critical areas, especially mathematics.
While we’ve had a much bigger emphasis on using proper pronouns and teaching theories that have little to zero basis in historical fact, our kids have been falling behind in areas where they can actually succeed when we release them into a global economy and job market. And if there is one good outcome from the school closures and remote learning over the last two years, is that parents have been finding out what’s been happening – and the result of their outcry is nothing short of astounding.
Did you know that over 1.2 million students left public (district) schools in the US in the last 1-2 years, in favor of charter, private, or home-schooling options? In Colorado this has also been happening: In my county alone the number of students leaving district schools approached 4,000. That costs district schools millions of dollars each year in state funding.
What’s the solution? Return the focus to education in core competencies that prepare our children to enter and succeed in the world. I will cast my vote for candidates that pledge to de-emphasize and eliminate so-called “woke” agendas, and instead focus energy into re-invigorating our public (district) school system by placing emphasis on the following:
- Create and pass legislation that requires school districts across the state to meet and/or improve scoring in core competencies, or face year-on-year escalations in funding reduction amounts. Focus on what makes kids successful – and provide instruction to meet those goals.
- Compensate teachers based on performance, eliminate tenure (including in colleges and universities), and bring the option to terminate based on performance back to the table.
- Re-introduce arts and sports on a much broader scale than is currently available today. A couple points of fact: Rises in criminal gang activity and juvenile delinquency has a frightening correlation to not giving our kids more activities to pursue within the school system. Another fact is that a full regimen of sports (football, basketball, track, tennis, soccer, etc.), and musical and drama classes existed all the way down to the Junior High School levels in Colorado until only the last 20-25 years. Where did all of that funding go for those programs? I have researched this and the answer I’ll let you go find it on your own, as it’s a bit polarizing. It didn’t go to the kids…
- Re-visit the logic of 4-year High Schools vs. 3-year, and the abolishment of Junior Highs. Study after study has highlighted the detrimental affect of ninth graders in the same setting as twelfth graders. This has led (in far too many cases) some schools to isolating a portion of that younger age group away from the bullying and other aggressive tactics the older group has often exploited.
- Re-visit why we have allowed over 116 school districts in Colorado to move to 4-day weeks. They do maintain the same required contact hours, and a study by the State DOE found no appreciable difference in testing proficiency, but I still question it for many of those districts. Keep in mind this started over 20 years ago to help mostly rural districts – 39 were approved in 2001. Now we have 3x as many approved for a 4-day week.
- Expand vocational educational opportunities. These have not grown at the pace to meet industry needs. Re-visit 3 year degree programs in colleges and universities, as is done in Europe.
- Aggressively pursue sourcing and initiating Public – Private partnerships with industry leaders, with a particular focus on science and technology. Create an interest and organic motivation in our children, leveraging these industry partners to invest in, and later harvest the pent-up intelligence in our own youth. Have you noticed the last few decades in medicine; in technology; in other applied sciences? Those are among the highest paying jobs in the world, and in the US we have brought in skills from other countries to fill those vacancies (in the millions, literally). That, to me, is nothing short of a travesty. I have seen this over the years in the Middle East (among other examples I have personally visited on numerous occasions): The local youth are poorly invested in, and the highly-educated skill sets are imported into those countries. Guess what happened to those local youth? Now look out your own windows here today…
Education is the cornerstone of any viable society, and the foundation of innovation. In Colorado we need to set a national example and take a long look in the mirror. My vote goes to the candidates that take that look seriously.
