Dumbfounded

Two recent comments made in light of the Presidential election have left me jaw open, eyes wide and frankly totally dumbfounded.  One of the Presidential candidates said that he was worried about the ability of our Navy to accomplish its mission so he would spend a couple of trillion to enhance the fleet.  Meanwhile, his wife said in an interview today that public schools need to be thrown out and we need to start over with a choice program.

The two largest labor intensive government programs in the U.S. are our military and public education.  I am in shock that the solution to improve the military is to throw money at it, and that the solution to improve public schools is to promote choice, increase accountability and divert public funds from public ed to the private sector. 

Dumbfounded.

Suppose we reverse this inherent cognitive dissonance.  Suppose we decide that a solution to improve public education is to throw money at it.  If we doubled the budget we could double our staff.  All the data indicates that smaller teacher/pupil ratios improve student performance.  All the data indicates that if teachers are allowed to plan and collaborate and engage in meaningful professional development student performance improves.  There is no data that indicates schools of choice are outperforming public schools.  If we could double the staff then teachers could flip-flip schedules, teach several small classes and have the rest of the day to grade, plan, collaborate, and learn while the second fleet of teachers is actually teaching smaller classes.  If the Navy needs more ships, schools need more teachers.

On the other hand, if we are concerned about our Navy, then why don’t we reduce funding, open up the functions of the Navy to the private sector and divert government funds from the Navy to those private sector enterprises whose mission is to make money, not provide defense, and hold the Navy more accountable for fulfilling it’s mission.  In other words, why don’t we provide less money, more accountability and competition, the current philosophy driving public education accountability, and see how they do?

No one would support those notions for the Navy.  What in the world are we thinking about public education? 

The only rationale I can find is that we want our Navy to be successful and accomplish its mission.  We do not want public education to be successful at educating all kids so we hamstring the organization, develop an accountability system that makes us look terrible, and then divert money from public ed to the private sector.  We want to be safe.  Do we really want all kids to be successful?

I do.  I believe it is as critical to our national defense as ships at sea.

I remain dumbfounded.