Should grants be awarded to school districts that try innovative methods to improve student achievement? – Part 9

Absolutely. The American public education system today is structured virtually the same as it was 100 years ago. The school day is generally 6-7 hours long and is composed of 6 one hour classes. While it is a given that reading, writing and arithmetic are vital things for children to learn, anything beyond that should be tailored to the talents and abilities of the student. “How do you do that?” By throwing a wrench into the entire system. Many pundits and politicians speak today of an “Apollo Program for Energy”. Great idea, but it may be impossible without first having an “Apollo Program for Education Reform”. I’m just as much for energy reform as the next guy; but, without an education system that enables American children to be able to compete on a level playing field with the likes of Indian and Chinese children, I’m afraid we may never realize true reform of anything, let alone energy. The first thing that should be done is to double, or sometimes triple teachers’ salaries. Again, “How do you do that?”. It is a widely held idea that teachers are vastly underpaid. Some of them are, however, many are paid exactly what they’re worth, as babysitters. Public schools across the country are filled with the resources to run them, in order to fill the gap. They’re called students. Empower the students to manage the schools. There aren’t many tasks involved in the day-to-day administration of a typical school that the right students couldn’t perform. Furthermore, you can take that same 6 hour school day with 6 classes and make it just three classes and the rest set aside for independent study. This would, in their early years give students a chance to find their own talents. As they get older, they can use that time to hone those talents into tangible skills. These ideas aren’t brand new, and variations of them have been used to some success in states such as Colorado and New Jersey. So, yes, while we’ve seen exactly how little impact programs such as “No Child Left Behind” have made on the success of public education, I feel grants to pioneering school systems would be a great idea.