The Public School Blues

President Obama came out this week in favor of accountability in our educational system.  He even endorsed the Rhode Island school district that recently decided to fire all the teachers in a substandard school.  I am reminded of something the Chancellor of the District of Columbia's Public Schools, Michelle Rhee, said about a year ago in justifying her own pogrom against teachers--that the single most important factor in a student's success is having a good teacher.
      I beg to differ.  I am all for holding schools and teachers accountable for all that they can reasonably do.  And I certainly wouldn't defend incompetent, apathetic teachers. But the sine qua non of student success is the home environment.  In my experience, successful students generally have parents who understand and care about education.  The real problem is that young people are not being held accountable for their performance in school--either by their parents or their schools.
       No one is left back anymore; they get social promotions lest their self-esteem suffer or they bully the younger kids.  Parents coddle their kids when they flunk out or drop out of school rather than send them out to work.  We no longer have a military draft to motivate kids to stay in school.  Instead, our high-school drop-outs are swelling out the ranks of the underclass so deplorably represented on Jerry Springer, Maury Povich, and other train-wreck TV shows.
        We can beat up on teachers all we want, but it won't fix the problem.  We need to beat up--metaphorically, of course--on the kids who are blowing off school and the parents who are letting them. --EFP