Political agendas are destroying public education
To the editor:
Education! A disaster? Public School Review cites the failures of our system. Among them are; academic decline — lowest reading and math results in more than three decades.
Lowering standards have only encouraged lower performance. Students regress further since there is no achievement requirement. It is like running a race with no finish line. This concept has lowered the entire education process.
Public school enrollment is down 7.6%. Attendance is much less, especially for those who need it the most. Why attend school if work is not expected?
Discipline has become worse, making teaching very difficult and making it harder for the better students to learn. The concept of being so limited in discipline has made our classrooms chaotic and not a good place to learn.
Schools are dangerous with bullies and shooters more prevalent. Most schools now have to have security.
Schools are distracted by non-educational attempts to be the student’s family providing meals, healthcare and mental health counseling.
Political and moral beliefs such as transgender, LBGTQ, negative views of America, racism is taught instead of knowledge that will enhance success and improve life. Instead, math, English, finance, and health are courses that the student needs for the rest of their life.
Government created scars with their extreme pandemic closures of schools, churches and small business
Education was devastated. Our K-12 students had almost no COVID problems, not much more than flu, still many students had no education for nearly two years. The Democrats’ extreme COVID rules, has especially hurt the low-income students, minorities and foreign students who were not able to learn English. This will have an impact for decades. There are some education experts who believe that they will never catch up. Many people feel that the extreme rules had more of a negative impact on America than COVID.
Why has this failure happened? Some states seek to make education easier and spend more time doing non-educational work than educating children. St. Paul, Minn. has reading proficiency down to 38% in some minority groups but they are busy with meals, mental treatment and other welfare activities.
Blue states are marked by abundant bureaucrats who still are trying to decide how to teach students to read. Minnesota spends twice as much for education than Florida which ranks high among the 50 states.
Teachers unions are political to the extreme. They are the largest contributor to the Democratic Party. In Blue Minnesota, 98.96% of its contributions goes to the Democrats. The federal government is also heavily influenced by the Teacher’s Union having such a close bond with Democrats. A federal woke agenda and bureaucratic multiplication is the result.
Instead of bureaucracy, America needs parental choice in education instead of government politics.
John Benedict
Cape Coral