Commentary by Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
The public school system in the U.S. continues to receive low grades from the public with most people referring private schools by a wide margin.
According to Gallup’s latest poll, only 44 percent of those polled ranked public schools in America as excellent or good which is lower than all other forms of education, including homeschooling. Independent private schools scored the highest at 71 percent, with parochial or church-related schools at 63 percent. Fifty-five percent of respondents ranked charter schools, and 46 percent ranked homeschooling, as excellent or good .
“Americans as a whole believe private and parochial schools do a better job of educating students than public schools do, something that might be remedied with the right federal or state public school education policies,” Gallup summarized. “Another remedy may be expanding charter schools so that parents of children in failing public schools who can’t afford private school have other options for their children.”
These polls are very much in line with what the new Secretary of Education, Betsey DeVos, believes about the education system in America and the role government should be expected to play in it.
DeVos recently told a charter schools conference, “No one has a monopoly on innovation. No one has a monopoly on creativity. No one has a monopoly on knowing how every child learns.”
As Gallup reports, “That reflects a very different philosophy of education than the philosophy that government money should be focused on lifting public schools to their maximum potential.”
Even though the favorable ratings for public schools did improve somewhat since the last time this poll was conducted, they are definitely suffering from a well-deserved image problem among the American public.
For example, the scores from one of the biggest cross-national tests, the Program for International Student Assessment, ranked the U.S. a dismal 38 out of 71 countries in math skills among 15 year-olds. Science was somewhat better, giving the U.S. a rank of 24 out of 71.
“Among the 35 members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which sponsors the PISA initiative, the U.S. ranked 30th in math and 19th in science,” Pew reports.
Such lackluster performance results, coupled with repeated controversies over the Common Core curriculum, transgender bathrooms, graphic sex education, the banning of all religious expression and the institution of pro-homosexuality “bullying programs,” have caused parents across the nation to sour on the idea of putting their children into the public education system.
Although it’s free, too many are beginning to believe that “you get what you pay for” when it comes to public schooling – an inadequate education system dominated by left-leaning teachers’ unions that sometimes seem more interested in promoting social engineering than good basic schooling.
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