When it comes to education the goal for changes we make to the system should be based on improvement. Unfortunately the Republican solutions seem to value privatization over all else.
In state after state Republican legislators claim that public education is broken yet rather than looking at the fact based data that shows the best methods for improving performance they insist on changes that don't improve education but rather changes that address their political donor's priorities.
The main Republican education solutions tend to be more Charter schools, end unions, and fire more teachers. Luckily by now there is enough data to show the false promise of these "solutions".
First it should be noted that while some Charter schools outperform their public school counterparts, there are also a lot of Charter schools that underperform compared to public schools. In fact 15% of all Charter schools have been closed because of their dismal results. On average Charter schools perform no better than public schools so if public schools are broken then so are the Republican solution.
For some Republicans outcomes is secondary to their belief that Charter schools cost less. Of course this is a prevalent fallacy among conservatives. While some Charter schools do cost less than public schools, others cost more. But if you analyze the data you will see the smoke and mirrors required to achieve this savings. For example Charter schools serve less of the costliest and neediest students, they hire younger teachers with lower qualifications, and they have fewer restrictions when it comes to removing the most time consuming and disruptive students.
Another perceived value of Charter schools is the belief that they are free to fire all of the bad teachers that have infested our public schools yet data shows that Charter schools don't tend to fire more teachers than public schools. While prevalent, this idea that you can't fire bad teachers is inaccurate. Opponents often quote statistics regarding the low number of tenured teachers who get released. The reality is that many of the mythical "bad" teachers are weeded out before they reach tenure as 46% of educators leave the profession in the first five years. The majority of those left have been thoroughly vetted and are dedicated to helping America's children.
Of course the problems with the Republicans "solutions" don't stop there. Contrary to their belief unionized teachers do not produce worse educational outcomes, nor do they cost more. Also for a group that is worried about where their tax dollars go and the alleged corruption of unions they seem to completely ignore the growing financial mismanagement among Charter schools or that fact that Charter schools pay their administrators more than public schools. And perhaps worst of all; these "buy American" anti-immigrant fanatics seem oblivious to the massive amounts of foreign funds that are flowing into Charter schools from other countries. Essentially your tax dollars are legally being funneled to foreigners through Republican sponsored Charter schools.
Rather than arbitrarily castigating public employees and peculating tax payer dollars under the false hope of privatization, legislators should focus on changes that actually improve outcomes for everyone like Reducing poverty, using evaluations as a means to identify educators deficiencies and enhance their performance instead of a means to fire, increase parent involvement, incentivize student achievement, increase recess time, and include teachers in the leadership role. Because until politicians educate themselves on what actually improves educational outcomes tax payers will continue to be the mark in this politically motivated game of Three card Monte.
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