Friday, July 13, 2012

Pennsylvania Public Schools: Yuck!


In the ten years from 2000 to 2010, Pennsylvania’s public schools suffered a dropout rate of 20 percent and lost 27,000 students. (Among blacks and Hispanics, dropouts were 50 percent.)

Not only that, half of the 11th graders have inadequate reading and math skills – greater than half if dropouts were taken into account.

Despite fewer students, Pennsylvania’s public-school spending during the same ten-year period grew by 69 percent. The system gained a net 33,000 employees.

Pennsylvania’s not alone in its rotten schools. One-quarter of Detroit’s high-school graduates are functionally illiterate. Generally, the public schools are especially poor in areas that have long had Democrat leadership. 

Enough! Let’s shut down public education and privatize all the schools. Some would be operated for profit; others non-profit. The costs would fall, and the quality would improve substantially.

But people in the central cities couldn’t afford the tuitions, right?

True, some couldn’t. But with government out of the way, tax rates could fall substantially. Prosperous people, paying less in taxes, would compete as to who could provide the most assistance to central-city schools.

Teachers unions aren’t exactly nuts about the idea.

No comments:

Post a Comment