A Deserved 'Moment of Truth' for Public
Schools as a Record Number of Parents
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PJ Media,
by
Rick Moran
Original Article
Posted By: ladydawgfan,
8/29/2021 3:06:44 AM
The public school system in America is in crisis — the worst crisis since the forced bussing and integration issues of the 1970s.
Simply put, parents and students have lost faith in the school system to educate. They doubt whether the schools have the best interests of their students at heart. This poisonous doubt is having a tangible effect on enrollment. Despite the fact that public education is free, parents are sending their children to private schools with more reliable, more predictable policies.
Enrollment in public schools nationwide declined by 3 percent last year. But it was the numbers for kindergarten enrollment
Reply 1 - Posted by:
mifla 8/29/2021 4:51:51 AM (No. 896633)
Public schools don't educate, they indoctrinate.
118 people like this.
Reply 2 - Posted by:
Highlander 8/29/2021 5:39:10 AM (No. 896654)
I am a substitute teacher, retired from public school five years ago. I heartily encourage home schools, charter schools, private schools, Christian schools, and charter schools. My district is mostly conservative, but there is political rot eating away at certain classrooms with liberal teachers. Surprisingly, many students overall, are resistant to propaganda teaching. They will make uncomplimentary comments about Biden. Good.
102 people like this.
Parents "doubt whether the schools have the best interests of their students at heart."
I know there are some good teachers, but if they are paying dues to their teachers union, they are putting their best interest above the best interest of their students!
The same is true of your doctor and your pharmacist. They are protecting their income more than protecting the lives of their patients by obeying the CDC and refusing life saving medications.
77 people like this.
Reply 4 - Posted by:
DCGIRL 8/29/2021 6:21:34 AM (No. 896675)
Thank you #2, your statement is true. The same is happening in my school district. I would like my school tax go toward christian and charter schools. Public schools are becoming too political with all the liberal teachers and the teacher unions. My son and his wife have decided to send our granddaughter to a christian school in our district.
71 people like this.
Reply 5 - Posted by:
raspberry 8/29/2021 6:53:19 AM (No. 896698)
Government schools are propagandizing.
51 people like this.
Reply 6 - Posted by:
Rinktum 8/29/2021 6:55:30 AM (No. 896699)
I am a defender of public schools because in my community the schools have always been left behind in the race to indoctrinate. Like many rural schools, conservative beliefs still hold. The teachers are not been political zealots and keep their personal beliefs out of the classroom. However, I can see that liberalism is creeping in.
My community has been rural but many people are selling their farms to developers and the demographics are changing. The homes being built are not starter homes but homes geared toward the wealthy and unfortunately with wealth sometimes comes liberalism. There is a wokeness creeping in. You know that when emotional arguments are offered instead of fact based data or statistics. Also, the so called elites are quite condescending believing truth cannot possibly come from the yokels who have lived here a very long time. I will grant you, it could become a problem even in my little idyllic community. We have seen real resistance by a great many people who oppose liberal indoctrination.
Many parents cannot afford private schools or they are not able to homeschool because they both work to make ends meet. We have to fight for those families. We cannot just let them be absorbed into a toxic environment because they do not have the means to opt out. We have to stand with them and fight hard against what the left is pushing. I know for a fact, many teachers are very opposed to liberal curriculum. Once again, many are in no position to lose their jobs but believe me, they fight back in their own ways to give their kids the best education they can. Just as liberal teachers push hard to get their beliefs into the classroom so do conservative teachers. We all want quality education for our children and we cannot give up the fight and leave it to the radicals for the sake of the children who do not have alternatives. Many communities just like mine are waking up. The wealthy can afford to send their children to private schools. However, for the most part, they do not because they feel they have the power to control the curriculum. Many conservative parents in communities just like mine are saying, wait a minute, not here, not now. Conservative families matter too.
63 people like this.
Reply 7 - Posted by:
Kafka2 8/29/2021 7:28:58 AM (No. 896723)
Although most of the private schools are free of CRT and other indoctrination, there are some that are just as bad. Parents need to check to make sure they are not transferring their children to just another indoctrination center.
42 people like this.
I read that some public school districts are losing large amounts of funding because parents are simply refusing to send their kids back after observing via remote learning the garbage they are being taught. This is where we hit them at. Funding means everything to them, and the only marker is how many kids they run through the system.
Take your kids out, and starve the beast. It is the only way to bring down the public school system that FedGov has poisoned thoroughly.
62 people like this.
Reply 9 - Posted by:
sw penn 8/29/2021 7:42:47 AM (No. 896739)
"Despite the fact that public education is free"
Public education is not "free".
Parents are taxed out the wazoo for "free" public education.
Teachers Unionistas are Tade Unionistas,
Marxist Trade Unionists.
In order to sabotage Capitalism, Marxists teach children to fail.
The children fail, become the homeless, Capitalism must be bad, let's try Marxism, yeah!
This is why everyone who loves freedom anywhere is against government trade unionism everywhere.
Trade Unionism with a Philosophy of Actualism was Mussolini's definition of Fascism.
Look it up if you like.
40 people like this.
It's not just the parents that are taxed out the Wazoo for public schools, #9. I pay a ridiculous amount of property taxes to the public schools every year, despite the fact that I have no children.
74 people like this.
Reply 11 - Posted by:
Strike3 8/29/2021 7:49:53 AM (No. 896749)
Public schools are NOT free, we pay at least eight thousand dollars per student for this "service" and they dare to force garbage down the students' throats in place of education. Our teachers today are the worst we have seen in forty years. Close it all down!
62 people like this.
Reply 12 - Posted by:
franq 8/29/2021 7:55:34 AM (No. 896755)
They have become day care centers, for the most part.
36 people like this.
Reply 13 - Posted by:
tootall 8/29/2021 8:29:22 AM (No. 896779)
People that can afford to are moving away from Urban Centers so naturally enrollment will be down. They mention Brooklyn. People with jobs where they now work from home, and school age children are fleeing as fast as they can to the suburbs. Same with other 'Blue..Woke' type cities. I say let them decline with no tax income
25 people like this.
Reply 14 - Posted by:
Gina 8/29/2021 8:46:02 AM (No. 896797)
I have a sister who teaches in public school in Texas. She has always been a Republican and she voted for Trump. My brother was a teacher for a few years but went back to school and became a Lutheran pastor in the LCMS. Before he went back to school, he taught at a Lutheran school in New Orleans. Brother is also a conservative and voted for Trump. There are Republicans/Conservatives teaching in public and private schools. We need more of them. .
36 people like this.
Reply 15 - Posted by:
udanja99 8/29/2021 8:47:15 AM (No. 896800)
Um, Rick, public education is not free. I’ve been paying for it my entire working life, even while we were paying for our daughter to attend Catholic school.
39 people like this.
Reply 16 - Posted by:
JackBurton 8/29/2021 8:50:52 AM (No. 896806)
FTA: Despite the fact that public education is free, ..
Doesn't anyone look at the detail in their property tax bill? I do. Free my maiden aunt's corset cover!
Starting this spring, I began to see full curriculum books for kindergarteners thru 6th grade, with summer work books for the same grades, showing up at Costco and Sams Club. My guess is, with a minimal amount of time, a first grader could finish books up to fourth grade in one year with ease and be better educated than going to school.
35 people like this.
Reply 17 - Posted by:
jkb 8/29/2021 8:55:30 AM (No. 896809)
The schools here take up some 80% of the county tax budget. 80%!!!! We have to starve the beast. Fund students not systems. Schools aren't underfunded, they're wasting huge amounts of cash on stupid programs. It's not expensive to teach reading, writing and arithmetic. It is expensive to hire crackpot consultants. Like #6 our community is also changing for the worse. Two things that drive much of that: 1. Uncontrolled growth and 2. Unaccountable schools. If you can, run for school board or the planning commission in your town/county. Planning Commissions must stop zoning/rezoning additional growth which doesn't pay for itself but requires more taxes. If you can't run support those who can. At least be a body in the room when these groups meet. I know we're busy, but if this is a cultural war, we need troops on the front lines.
21 people like this.
It is imperative that America-hating boards of education be purged of its damaging elements.....by any means necessary
18 people like this.
Reply 19 - Posted by:
MickTurn 8/29/2021 9:10:05 AM (No. 896841)
The MONEY should follow the CHILD, PERIOD!
31 people like this.
Reply 20 - Posted by:
MaMe2 8/29/2021 9:20:42 AM (No. 896862)
Sorry #3 but you are wrong. Physicians and pharmacies are not allowed to prescribe certain meds under penalty of law. You'd be surprised how many physicians kept their offices open during the pandemic and they never took a paycheck. The little that trickled in went to cover salaries of their staff.
14 people like this.
Reply 21 - Posted by:
MDConservative 8/29/2021 9:29:40 AM (No. 896882)
Take a look at West Virginia. It's "HOPE Scholarship Program" is an education savings account allowing parents to receive the average per-pupil state funding already set aside for their children’s education in a PARENT-CONTROLLED fund for educational expenses. Those expenses can include private school tuition, tutoring, credentialing, therapies, transportation and more. It is anticipated that the program will expand into homeschooling. Currently, 93$ of WV's students are eligible for $4600 this school year, and any unused funds carry over to the next school year.
14 people like this.
Reply 22 - Posted by:
jacksin5 8/29/2021 9:36:19 AM (No. 896897)
If you intend to place your children in a Charter School, be aware that these schools are still under the control of the school board, and Teacher's Union in your community. In Maine, the Unions are sending all their problem students to the Charter Schools, rendering them ineffective at teaching the gifted students such schools were set up for, due to the constant disruptions caused by the unruly transfer students.
16 people like this.
Reply 23 - Posted by:
Zigrid 8/29/2021 9:41:35 AM (No. 896901)
My children are highly educated because I took them out of the public school system when the government dictated busing...I took a lot of heat from my neighbors because they said I was a racist...yeah..even back then they used racism as a tool...my life was threatened and my car was sabotaged because I had to drive my children to their private schools...best decision I ever made...
22 people like this.
Reply 24 - Posted by:
starboard 8/29/2021 9:53:45 AM (No. 896918)
The children are the future of our country and the communists know it. The past few years have been a wake up call for all of us to discover what is happening to our children in the public school system. Perhaps the Covid plague and the radical left government officials are revealing just how bad our schools are. Young parents need to become proactive in their school district. They should let school districts know there are alternatives to educating our children. Contact your church or join a church and help organize tutoring services for home schoolers. This would be great for grandparents to participate on a volunteer basis. Promote School choice in your district. Remember all politics is local. Don't elect Democrats Socialists to anything. You can't ever trust them.
Even though it may be expensive, there could be a private enterprise formed in the community that would bring in affordable schooling for those with low or average income parents. This venture could be formed as a mutual structure where the parents are offered stock in this venture. Volunteers would be unsung heroes. It will take a lot of people doing a little bit. There are many ideas that can replace the broken and corrupt system we now have. It all starts with a first step right the right direction.
12 people like this.
#20 it is not "penalty of law" - a policeman will NOT arrest them for their choice of how to treat their patients.
(Frontline doctors writing prescriptions and various pharmacies filling them every day is absolute proof of this fact.)
It is the threat by their medical boards and pharmacy boards, because they are all walking in goose step with the political CDC and Fauci as their god.
17 people like this.
Public schools are nothing more than taxpayer-funded daycare centers, first, and then idoctrination centers for socialism, communism and hatred for the United States and its histroy. They would be the envy of the former German Democratic Republic.
18 people like this.
Reply 27 - Posted by:
LadyHen 8/29/2021 10:42:40 AM (No. 896976)
Having homeschooled one kid from start to finish with another one in line for the same, we have been detached from the system for so long I don't keep up but I figured it would only get worse.
Around our parts we call schools "day jail" considering we have high schools that graduate only half the kids that start as freshmen and of those a full 25% can't read at an adult level. Yes, they can't read after 13 + years of institutionalized "schooling." My eldest was reading the newspaper at 4.
The only way to fix public schools is to SCRAP the whole system, burn it to the ground like scrub land, and start fresh. Firing/imprisioning most of the school administrators would be a good start.
22 people like this.
Reply 28 - Posted by:
Twinkle93 8/29/2021 10:48:43 AM (No. 896981)
I found what separates private school from public discipline and parent participation.
Often teachers make less than at public schools but to them it is worth it.
8 people like this.
Reply 29 - Posted by:
Dodge Boy 8/29/2021 11:12:36 AM (No. 897007)
Adding to what #15 said, everyone should have a look at their property tax statements and notice how much of their taxes goes to the schools. And for us seniors whose kids are grown and on their own, that tax burden is painful with little to no benefit to folks our age.
10 people like this.
Reply 30 - Posted by:
DVC 8/29/2021 11:14:03 AM (No. 897008)
The issue with homeschooling, from a 'nearby' perspective is that many parents are fine teaching the basics, say through 6th or 7th grade. But, at some point, the math and science may exceed the abilities of some parents to teach it well.
This is not always true, of course, I have friends who are engineers or scientists and who could teach ANY of the tech topics very well. But I would say, that there are a bunch of parents who get past their personal skill level as the math and science gets more to the HS level and struggle to teach it.
This is where an individual tutor or a more organized multi-student teaching environment can fill the gap while remaining out of the clutches of the government schools.
I tutored several home schooled kids in math, chemistry and physics for several years. One went on to Jr College, and we continued the tutoring during that time, too. I am pleased that my students always got at least a B+ and usually an A in the topics I tutored them in. My tutoring was oriented towards understanding the material, not just regurgitation, and that tends to become a useful life skill, not something that ricochets off the brain, gone in a year or two.
And I never took one penny for my years of tutoring, it was my gift to the students.
16 people like this.
Reply 31 - Posted by:
TXknitter 8/29/2021 11:15:49 AM (No. 897010)
That is good #14 but there have been good Christian and conservative teachers in government schools for a long time. They do not RUN the government school system in our state. Liberals do. They fight and until Marine Battalion Commander Scheller-type patriots within that system arise in numbers, it will continue that way. It will take sacrifice & courage as this Marine had to make any real change. My dearest friend is a retired conservative Texas teacher. This is what she says too.
10 people like this.
Reply 32 - Posted by:
cold porridge 8/29/2021 11:44:36 AM (No. 897031)
Kate Brown, the governor of Oregon just proved recently that the leftist politicians and teacher's unions don't care about educating your kids. They are all about indoctrinating. That's why she made it law in Oregon that students can graduate without passing grades in reading and math. That's also why the leftist's are pushing critical race theory. They are pushing hard to bring on communism.
11 people like this.
Reply 33 - Posted by:
SeenEnuf 8/29/2021 12:01:24 PM (No. 897046)
Why do parents turn their YOUNG kids into 'skulls full of mush' by parking them in any classroom or hospital bed without the presence of that red-eye. Everyone in this country is, without a given permission, being filmed on every store entrance, transportation hub, etc., etc., to be filmed. The day my kids put me in the home, we will choose one who has that red-eye in the corner. We watch our front door cameras better than most watch out for their kids.
7 people like this.
Reply 34 - Posted by:
cold porridge 8/29/2021 12:02:20 PM (No. 897048)
I apologize for the second post, but I want to add that in eastern Washington State, the cost of educating in my county and the one next to it is over $13,000 per year per student. That is horrendous and probably the same or worse in most of the country.
8 people like this.
Agrarian America was based on family, faith & school with the latter two acting in loco parentis as needed. As we know all too well, in the 20th and 21st centuries family & faith have been targeted for destruction. But leftists repurposed schools as ideological day camps and were happy to use students as hostages of a sort.
The concept of schools with geographic catchment areas is, like Agrarian America, an anachronism. Placing smart, hard-working students in an enclosed space alongside perverts, thugs, addicts, psychos and criminals merely because they might share a ZIP code is counterproductive madness. Smaller, specialized academies by ability or subject would be much more efficient and cost-effective (and therefore opposed by unions). All the losers can go to a single open-air prison-type school.
5 people like this.
Reply 36 - Posted by:
Penney 8/29/2021 3:09:12 PM (No. 897178)
There is hope, at long last.
1 person likes this.
Reply 37 - Posted by:
LonestarM3 8/29/2021 4:37:52 PM (No. 897268)
The Federal Department of Education was established during the Carter Administration. The country did better with education before. It has become obvious the intended purpose was to achieve exactly what it has done: The formal progressive/socialist indoctrination of the nations youth.
Admittedly many teachers - most in much of the country, especially "fly over country" are dedicated as almost all were up throughout the 1950s.
The current moral crisis the nation is experiencing the movement away from "public schools" could yield one positive result to a sinister plot.
Just as honorable police officers are migrating from socialist hell-holes like the "defund police" cities to other more sane cities, real teachers could leave the unions and find respect and appreciation for their dedication in locally controlled private and locally charter schools.
The key would be, as several "red state" governors are proposing, to have the money go with the student. The greatest relative blessing would be low income families and minorities who would be able to move their children into good schools. It is reported that studies show far better results in charter and private schools at a cost to taxpayers of roughly 20% less than the current union controlled social/political indoctrination centers of the current public system.
It is late to remember Ronald Reagan's message that freedom is always only a generation or two from being lost. I just hope it is not too late for the vast majority of Americans, who still believe our Constitutional Republic was a good idea, to wake up.
3 people like this.
Reply 38 - Posted by:
LadyHen 8/29/2021 6:05:45 PM (No. 897374)
I get the "frightened" "unqualified" parent schtick that so many homeschooling critics throw up in our faces. It is right up there with "socialization" for the hand wringers.
At the beginning of this almost 2 decade home schooling journey an old home schooling mama looked at me when I voiced the possibility of my not being bale to do the high school work and she said "On your worst day you will do better at caring about your kid's future than any institutional teacher on their best day because you love your kid more than life." Let that sink in. My motto was "Come Hell or high water, there is a way!" And there always was, praise the Lord!
If you want to know why institutionalized schooling as a whole fails, read Dumbing Us Down by John Taylor Gatto. His credentials speak for themselves. It was the book that pushed me to home schooling. I have never regretted it.
3 people like this.
Reply 39 - Posted by:
danu 8/29/2021 6:20:44 PM (No. 897396)
FTA: * It will be extremely difficult to dislodge the teachers’ unions from their perch at the top of the food chain. Their political power is awesome, given the $30 million they pour into the war chests of Democratic state politicians. They also hold the fate of big-city mayors in the palms of their hands as they can easily blackmail even the most powerful mayor by threatening a walkout.*
Such threats are useless,,,, if the parents strike first.
IIRC, by boycotting the opening of the school term , parents will cost the unions vast amounts of gov't subsidies.
Those subsidy calculations occur at start of term --- based upon student attendance records!
Thus, parents stop the unions' patterns of bribes and blackmail , by keeping their children home then.
Consequently, the unions will nuke their own jobs, and their own power.
As for private schools costs, most parents don't find them affordable.
But they will not tolerate the risks to their children during their formative years.
Through great sacrifice, they forge ahead anyway to pay those tuitions
--on top of the burden of taxation for public schools they do not trust.
0 people like this.
Comments:
Aaah! The law of unintended consequences kicks in and takes over!!