The Election -- Education

For most of my life, education has been a local or state issue only. In fact, for the first two hundred years of the United States, there was a clear consensus that education was handled only at those levels and the federal government had nothing to do with it. That has been changing, however. Today, the Department of Education has a budget of about $70 billion dollars per year, and there are other federal grant programs that come through federal agencies beside that department.

In the presidential campaign, there is a clear difference of philosophy between president Obama and governor Romney. Strangely, this difference plays out most clearly when the question of failing public schools is addressed. Millions of students now attend schools that just do not do their job. Millions of students spend their days in schools that do not educate them. A great many high school graduates are not prepared for life; they cannot read well or do most simple mathmatics. For the children who drop out of school, the situation is even more bleak. America is creating a permanent underclass, a group of people who have been denied the skills needed to succeed in today's economy. To a significant extent this group is composed of minorities and the children of the poor.

There have been a great many ideas pushed for solving the terrible dilemma of failing schools. Teachers are underpaid we have been told. Class sizes are too big we have been told. Both problems were address by spending more on schools, but there has been no appreciable improvement in the results. Some of the districts turning out illiterate students are also those where the teachers are the best compensated.

The conservative idea to solve the problem has been to introduce competition into the education system. In other words, the schools will compete for students and the successful schools will be rewarded with more attendees. Similarly, incompetent teachers will no longer be judged on the basis of tenure but rather on the basis of accomplishment, of success in teaching kids. Such ideas strike, however, at the very heart of the educational establishment and the teachers' unions.

The teachers' union has been a pillar of the Democrat establishment for decades. No Democrat has opposed the teachers' union, and Obama is no exception to that rule. Is tenure keeping poor teachers while better teachers get laid off? No problem -- Obama is in favor of that system since the teachers' union likes it. Are students stuck in failing schools rather than given the opportunity to try successful charter schools? No problem -- Obama favors the union over the kids.

Romney, however, has clearly come out on the side of the the kids. He wants to promote opportunity for all Americans, the opportunity that comes from having a good education. The Republicans favor school choice; failing schools can be left behind by students striving to succeed. If the teachers at the failing schools suffer as a result, it is because they are failing to meet their basic responsibility of educating the kids.

Education is another area where the Romney position is clearly preferable to Obama's.