School All Year = Quantity Over Quality
Recently, The Journal and Governor Joe Manchin mentioned that West Virginia should examine the merits of all year schooling. It is well-intended to attempt school reform; however, attempting to institute all year schooling approaches education reform completely backwards.
Simply putting children in school all year will not make them better students. If an athlete wishes to build upper body strength by doing push ups yet each time the athlete does a push up it is incorrect, simply doing more incorrect push ups will not yield better results than doing fewer pushers ups correctly. The cliché “quality over quantity” definitely applies to exercise as well as school reform. Our current public schools incorrectly exercise our students’ educational muscles just as the athlete incorrectly exercises upper body muscles. In both cases, more incorrect exercise will do little to achieve better results.
Real education reform rests in charter schools and school choice. If Governor Manchin really wanted to achieve education reform, he would push for the adoption of one new charter school in each county at each level-elementary, intermediate, middle, and high-and the creation of an education tax credit for families who home school or send their children to private school. This would create competition within an education industry that is almost completely monopolized by top-down, centrally planned government schools.
Charter schools and broad-based school choice will have a greater impact on our children’s education not only because of increased competition, but because charter schools, private schools, and home schools are smaller, more accommodating, and more flexible. Top-down, centrally planned government schools, or public schools as we know them, tend to be large and rigid. Increasing the time a student spends in a large, rigid public school will not increase that student’s academic excellence. We need to change the entire learning process. Creating charter schools and providing parents and children with educational choices will help change that process, not a year round school calendar.
Berkeley County schools struggle attracting quality teachers because of a lack of flexibility in allocating resources for salaries. This will not change when school is all year. A new charter school, though, truly creates local control over education by placing nearly all of the responsibilities with the principal. Current public schools don’t allow principals much flexibility in discipline standards, allocating resources, or curriculum decisions. Allowing principals greater authority over things like discipline, the allocation of resources, and the school curriculum will do much more to improve public education than school all year. For more information, check out school choice and charter schools at www.cato.org and www.heartland.org. |
