Politicians, parents, and business leaders have repeatedly called for renewed efforts to improve education in America. The sad reality is the education system in 1950 (or even 1850) was more rigorous than it is today. At least during that era, those that received an education were appreciative and valued its benefits. It’s hard to imagine children today facing down national guardsmen and angry mobs, just to receive an education. The political solution is to throw more money at the problem, as we have see, however, this strategy has produced Zero results, parents and educators and business leaders have all come up with new proposals that will win widespread support. One such argument is to link teacher pay with student performance. In other words, if students perform well, presumably on standardized tests, then teachers get raises. So far no one has suggested teachers should loose pay if students perform poorly, but that would certainly motivate some lackluster teachers to excel or resign. Teacher, pay, however, isn’t the only factor that reformers should consider. In reality, most private school teachers earn far less than their public school counterparts, yet in many cases private school academic performance far exceeds public school students. As we noted in an earlier article, culture plays a significant role in the academic performance of most children. Those parents who instill a value and appreciation for education and knowledge have students that excel. Parents who embrace society’s values have students who do the same and lets face it society’s values are as far removed from education as man is removed from the amoeba. So…can culture be changed? Probably not and as libertarians we would certainly oppose any state effort to impose a moral code or societal values on the populace, but perhaps there are other solutions. We like the idea of pay for performance, but in this case we envision a user pays system. Students who perform poorly and the parents who sustain them drain more resources from the public school system than those who do not. . If society insists upon the existence of a public school system, shouldn’t we the taxpayers expect something for our money, namely measurable results? Why not tie parent pay to student performance? One can imagine that if mom and dad started loosing money because young Johnny was too busy hanging out at the mall to study…one could expect Johnny would quickly see the err in his ways. But alas, American society has fully embraced the Mussolini doctrine, thereby we blame others for our problems. Parents will never accept responsibility for the child’s failures, naturally it must be the teacher’s fault, or the lack of computers or some other imagined cause.
http://www.ajc.com/friday/content/epaper/editions/friday/opinion_34f4552cd104f0710005.html