On June 5, Andrew Coulson posted a disturbing graph at Big Government:
He showed that public education costs are skyrocketing while student achievement remains flat. In another graph in the same post, he showed that the public school bureaucracy is growing TEN times as fast as the student body.
The bottom line: The growth and cost of the education establishment is out of control, while the quality of public education is in desperate need of improvement.
Regarding the latter, just how bad can things be? Check out this brief video clip:
“She went to the public school. They taught her nothing but the ABCs the entire year,” says the frustrated father to a news reporter. Then, looking down at his daughter: “Would you like to tell [the reporter] what letter you ended up with at the end of the year?”
The little girl responds: “W”
W.
The footage, just released online, was captured about 10 years ago from a local TV station in Ohio. The Institute for Justice was in the midst of a heated school choice lawsuit based out of Cleveland. In 2000, while the suit was in full swing, the Cleveland public schools failed all 27 state standards for student performance. The high school graduation rate was below 50 percent.
Here’s the kicker: Only 1 in 14 students entrusted to the Cleveland public schools graduated on time reading and performing math at grade level.
The school choice program was implemented to give the kids a better chance. And soon after, the powerful teachers unions and their allies had filed suit against the program. At one point they argued that parents are “inconsequential conduits” channeling money away from public schools. IJ had stepped in to defend to the families, and took their fight all the way to the Supreme Court.
And we won.
As I posted earlier, IJ will return to the Supreme Court next term to fight once again for school choice.
Simply put, every child deserves a quality education. And every parent deserves the freedom to choose the school that best meets their needs.
Support school choice efforts in your area. Because the alphabet doesn’t end in W.