It seams every year we hear of another expensive education program that has either done nothing or made things worse. Now it is the “Reading First” program. It has cost $1 Billion per year for the past six years. The idea was to improve the reading level of children from kindergarten through third grade. The result has been no “statistically significant” improvement on reading or comprehension scores. [Huntsville Times]

Big government has never been and never will be the solution to improving education. What I think would help is closing the Department of Education. Set up a non-governmental commission to create a high school test that must be passed to get a degree or GED. Then all decisions about schools moves to a local level. Not the state level, but the local level where parents can and must get involved. There is a reason that home schooled children do better than average on national tests. It is called parental involvement.

The parents need a say in who educates their children as well as what textbooks are used. This input includes what teachers their children have. This means having a say in who is hired and fired from your school. And yes, incompetent employees should be fired regardless what job or union membership they have. Unions do a disservice to their members by fighting to keep bad employees. The purpose of a union is to see that its members are treated equitably and that no one is fired without just cause. It is not to ensure that no one gets fired ever for any reason.

We spend thousands of dollars every year on each student at our government schools. The results are often horrible; in Alabama the high school graduation rate is only sixty percent. [Huntsville Times]  More money is not the answer and more government is never the answer. Our education system does need to improve, but that will not happen from the top down. Therefore let us close the top layer and move the power down to the parents.