Gerry Charlotte Phelps

Start A School!

                    (Image from lpnnrd.org.)

Why would a poor South Carolina teen work his way through a private school?  Entirely on his own, Rontrell Matthews ended up on the doorstep of a small private school with $32.86, his first earnings from a sandwich shop.  The 16 year old was determined to buy his own way out of his failing public school, writes  Brendan Miniter today in the Wall Street Journal, here.

That private school, in a poor, rural community near Charleston, is the Capers Preparatory Christian Academy.  " Rontrell is now excelling in school, encouraging his younger brother to study hard.  He has landed a partial scholarship and continues to work at a Subway to pay part of his $400-a-month tuition bill.  He's a good kid," writes Miniter.

But Capers is only a tiny school, founded by Faye Brown, a 55-year-old retired public school teacher, to serve a poor rural area.  It operates out of rented office space, has 42 students in K-12, and an annual budget of about $160,000.  Nearly all its equipment is donated, including the 8 imacs in its computer lab.  The teachers who aren't volunteers make $8 an hour with no fringe benefits.

"Many of the students show up without lunch," writes Miniter.  "Often parents fail to make their monthly tuition bills."  Only 5 students come from 2-parent homes.  Most of the students are African-American.  Every year Ms. Brown has to dip into her retirement account to keep the school going.

But one place Capers doesn't skimp is academics.  There is a heavy emphasis on reading, writing and math.  And the school's average SAT score, 1150, is 164 points above the state average.  The school these students would be attending, if not for Capers, has an average SAT score of only 788. This year the school expects that every one of its graduates will go to college. 

How many other retired school teachers would be willing to start such a school?  It would be hard, though sastisfying.  But just look at the payoff!  There are what - around 100,000 retired teachers?  If only 10,000 of them did this, think of the difference it would make to the country.  Think of what it does for the students!

"Rontrell freely admits that he was a problem student in public school, acting up in class and neglecting to hit the books," writes Miniter.  "He might just as easily have given up.  He notes his friends from public school still tell him that he's 'stupid' for turning his paychecks over to Capers."

Schools are poor all over the country, even when not as poor as in Rontrell's state of South Carolina.  But retired school teachers, and other educated retirees, could turn the country around by following the example of Faye Brown. 

Churches, even small ones, can do this too.

Who will be willing to step up to this challenge?

(For beginners in starting charitible non-profits, see Chapter 29 in my book, here.)

IS BAD U.S. EDUCATION INEVITABLE?

              (Image from chronicle.uchicago.edu)

One intelligent blogger was driven to despair about U.S. education (here, under 2-25-07.)  She wrote:

"'The Feast of Reason' author talks about rationality.  There are very few 'rationals' in the world...even fewer 'altruistic rationals'...So we must expect that most of our institutions are run by 'altruistic irrationals'. Because of this, we must expect some chaos in the way our institutions are run.

"Education is a primary example.  I find public school teachers to be some of the most over-emotional, irrational human beings on this earth.  Perhaps this profession attracts them.  So we must never expect that the educational system in the U.S. will be well run.  The same with any social service agency.  We just have to accept humans for the flawed beings they are."

My view about why our education system is so bad is different.  Here it is:

"It's how the 60s counter-culture bent these teachers' generation.  The former teachers were different and much better.  But most quit years ago.

"Those of us who are old enough to remember a better education system, now very largely displaced, are among the relatively few who witnessed that difference.

"For instance, I attended eight K-12 schools, 1936-1949.  In none of them did I ever have, or hear of, a teacher who performed on the basis of feelings and emotion, not thinking and reason.  (Well, except for one really lazy driving instructor married to the Superintendent's daughter!)

"Those teachers were all disciplinarians, tough, courteous, all good at their work and satisfied in it.  Their students performed at a level much higher than now.  They read better, earlier and more books.  Better spelling, grammar.  Good in math, earlier.  Knew far more history and geography.  Had at least 2 years of foreign language.

"Human nature has not changed, of course.  But human NURTURE has.  IQs have not changed either.  Yet there has been a dumbing-down at all levels.

"It is sadder for those of us who can remember - the better schooling, the tiny crime rates and the mostly 2-parent children.  A different world.

"And by the way, there were almost no social workers before LBJ's 'War on Poverty' in 1965.  Somehow we managed without them

"It is painfully sad when my generation remembers that all this came from stupid choices made by the very smart, even brilliant, over-confident people who led the process.  Sad to say, I had a part in that.

"Where we are now is right where they dreamed of taking us.  Unfortunately, they got to build their dream into our present reality.  Their utopia has become our dystopia. 

"To most, our present education system seems inevitable.  Generations younger than mine don't remember how much better education was before.  So they think it is 'natural', a result of human nature.  But it is not.  It came from a massive change in our culture, driven by leftist visions.  Our present educational system arose out of the hippie/neo-hippie Counter-Culture, not some force of nature.

"Those of us who saw what happened, when and how, will not be around to describe that much longer.  But we do know the current sorry state of education is not inevitable, nor irreversible.  We just hope more of this generation will 'get' that too.

"Oh, and how could I forget - the reason that teachers were good teachers then?  The bad ones got fired!  No teachers' unions!  Competition works when we let it."

U.S. Schools: More Money, Less Results

Last Monday, January 16, in "Why U.S. Education Far Behind 20 Countries," below, John Stossel's 20/20 special on education of Friday, January 12 was featured.  Now Stossel is responding to the avalanche of angry responses, many, he says, fomented by the NEA (National Education Association.) 

Stossel replies that the NEA is always saying that U.S. education needs more money.  He comments that we already spend too much, with U.S. government figures showing that we spend $10,000 a child.  For a class of 25, that's $250,000!  And that does not include capital costs!  He points out that with that kind of money you could hire several good teachers.  And probably wouldn't hire many bureaucrats.  "Governments, like most monopolies, squander money," he says, noting that "America spends far more on schooling than the vast majority of the countries that outscore us on the international tests."

He cites the example of a Kansas City, MO judge who ordered the government to spend billions more on the schools.  The story:

"The bureaucrats renovated school buildings, adding enormous gymns, an Olympic swimming pool, a robotics lab, TV studios, a zoo, a planetarium and a wildlife sanctuary.  They added intense instruction in foreign languages.  They spent so much money that when they decided to bring more white kids to the city's schools, they didn't resort to busing.  Instead, they paid for 120 taxis.  Taxis!"

The result?:

"The schools got worse.  in 2000, five years and $2 billion later, the Kansas City School District failed 11 performance standards and lost its academic accreditation for the first time in the district's history." (Emphasis added)

But in contrast, look what a Hoover Institution study of public vs. private schools in 3 of the 5 burroughs of New York City found, just a few years ago: 

"Parochial schools outperformed the nation's largest school system 'in every instance,' they found - and it did it at less than half the cost per student."

Ben Chavez, the former public school principal who now runs the Oakland charter school featured in Friday's 20/20 show, commented,

"Everyone has been conned - you can give public schools all the money in America and it will not be enough."

He has proved that in the low-cost school (which still pays teachers more than public schools) "...that has gone from being among the worst middle schools in Oakland to the one where the kids get the best test scores," Stossel points out.

More money?  No, more competition!  Let the public schools compete with more and more private schools. 

The teachers' unions, who work so hard to block vouchers to private schools, should consider themselves on notice: this is not primarily about them or what they want.  It's about our kids!

Whether unions fight it or not, like it or not, or tell the truth or not -  Americans will eventually see to it that their kids get a much better education.   

MORE BAD NEWS FOR US SCHOOLS JUST BROKE

Just when I got worked into a lather over the sorry state of U.S. education, here comes fresh outrageous news in the Wall Street Journal.  The headline - quoting a student about Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle's new program - "He's Throwing Away My Dream."  Reporter John Fund writes the subtitle: "Today It's Liberal Democrats Who Stand In The Schoolhouse Door."

The same story all over again.  After years of effort, school reformers in Milwaukee, with a huge push from then-Gov. Tommy Thompson in 1995, finally, finally got a better, lower cost, higher-performing school system.  With a limited number of scholarship vouchers, not only did the children moving to private schools do better.  The public schools, racing to compete enough to stay in business, improved tremendously as well.  But - the teachers' union was unhappy.

Then - The Empire Strikes Back!  Just days ago.  The usual suspects - the teachers' unions plus their politicans - found a way to cripple the new reforms.  The clock is to be turned back.  Again.

How long are we willing to let them keep jerking our kids around this way? 

Gov. Jim Doyle is the ally of the teacher's unions in this setback.  Tomorrow he will deliver his annual State of the Union Message.

Anybody out there have a message for him??

WHY US EDUCATION FAR BEHIND 20 COUNTRIES

Of course I'm wrong.  But I try not to even think about how bad American education is, because it is so painful to me.  But lately, ABC - of all people - snapped me to attention again, with their 20/20 special on education on Friday, January 13.  Please click on the link and watch the 3 available mini-videos.  Only takes 9 minutes.  (Best to do it now, as I don't know how long the link will be good.)

We're not talking just bad spelling or grammar, of course, but math, science, history, everything!  Even poor countries like Poland and Estonia are far, far ahead of our kids.  See the 20/20 videos!  Please! 

Our kids are not stupid.  Far from it.  But they are criminally badly taught.

Also see "War Against Vouchers" by David Coulson in Sunday, 1-15-06 Wall Street Journal, about how the best schools in Florida just got shut down by the Florida Supreme Court.

Here's the basic problem.  We've been trying and trying everything for 30 years to get better schools.  And when finally, painfully some gain is made, it is often erased a few years later.  The same well-funded opponents, usually teachers' unions, scuttle any advances we make.

This can't continue.  This is something we must change.  What are our kids worth?