Parents Not Welcome
Let’s cut through all the garbage in the education debate and let’s focus on one factor: parental involvement. This is the only variable we can consistently point to as a means to improve educational achievement. More money is not the answer. Better student teacher ratios are not the answer. Fancy computers, facilities and brand new books are not the answer either. But year after year the educational establishment trots out these issues as the cure all for what ails public education, and year after year they get what they want, by in large.
It’s time to stop the madness. It is time to put parents back in charge of education. It is time to trust parents again.
This is going to take more than an effort at the legislature. There needs to be a change of direction from the men in black robes, who in the 9th circuit court recently ruled that parental rights stop at the school gates. This verbage is in reference to a group of parents attempting to influence cirriculum at their school, which they found objectionable.
This type of mentality is also pervasive among education experts, in Utah and elsewhere. Parents are often a necessary evil and are tolerated but not accepted. Is it any wonder that parents are removing themselves, and where funds permit, their children from the system. Public schools have a bias toward parental exclusion and toward blanket prescription. This type of activity breeds cynicism and parental inactivity, the very tool that will help government funded schools achieve successful results.
While vouchers are not the end all be all, they help in turning government funded education back to parents and to treating them as partners and consumers rather than the people who babysit the schools’ children from 3:00 in the afternoon until 8:00 in the morning.
