Dear Commons Community,
The issue of education in this country has received very little attention during the Republican presidential primaries. The focus has been largely on the economy, foreign affairs, and personality issues. Candidate Rick Santorum yesterday came out with a position yesterday that questioned the legitimacy of federal government involvement with public education. The New York Times is reporting that:
“he said the idea of schools run by the federal government or by state governments was “anachronistic.” Mr. Santorum did not say public schools were a bad idea, and he said that there was a role for government help in education.
But it was the latest in a series of comments by the former Pennsylvania senator — who is tied in polls in the critical Ohio and Michigan primary contests — suggesting that he takes a dim view of public schooling. He and his wife home-schooled their children.
For the first 150 years, most presidents home-schooled their children at the White House, he said. “Where did they come up that public education and bigger education bureaucracies was the rule in America? Parents educated their children, because it’s their responsibility to educate their children.”
“Yes the government can help,” Mr. Santorum added. “But the idea that the federal government should be running schools, frankly much less that the state government should be running schools, is anachronistic. It goes back to the time of industrialization of America when people came off the farms where they did home-school or have the little neighborhood school, and into these big factories, so we built equal factories called public schools. And while those factories as we all know in Ohio and Pennsylvania have fundamentally changed, the factory school has not.”
Historically, state and local governments have been responsible for public schooling. According to the Department of Education, the federal government contributes almost 11 percent of the cost of elementary and secondary education, financing intended to compel districts to enforce standards.
I don’t support Santorum’s position but in the past dozen years, the requirements of federal No Child Left Behind and its successor Race to the Top programs with their unbridled and simplistic emphasis on standardized testing have done and are doing more harm to education than good.
Tony
Alan,
Thank you for your comment and sharing your experiences with our education system. They provide good insight from the perspective of a concerned parent.
Tony
No doubt Santorum is judging from his very limited world view. Spiraling tuition costs would be a byproduct of such a choice. A mixed model such as Charter School is more feasible. Either way funding will be required and without oversight or left to market forces school tuition would again spiral out of reach for othe less privileged (most of us), leaving parents to request scholarships and loans for their kindergarteners amidst a very Darwinian nightmare.
For the record I have children that have attended all three types: Private, Public and Public Charter School. We had good and bad experiences. I love the Charter School model since it allows specialization vs mainstreaming. Private Schools can be run whimsically and pose a danger without appropriate oversight. One component of the success if any school should be addressed, that is parental involvement. It seems many parents want a depository/caretaker for their children instead of a partner in their growth.