Fox News reports on a study conducted by the University of Connecticut's Department of Public Policy and sponsored by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute.  The researchers asked some 14,000 randomly selected college freshmen and seniors multiple-choice questions about America's history, government, foreign relations and economy.  Some of their findings:

• On average, seniors scored just 1.5 percent better than freshmen did. And had the survey been graded as a test, seniors would have failed; they averaged 53.2 percent.
• Students at relatively inexpensive colleges often learn more, on average, than their counterparts at expensive colleges.
• Students at many supposedly top-flight schools seem to lose knowledge while on campus. At Berkeley (49th on the list) seniors scored 5.6 percent worse than freshmen, and at Johns Hopkins (dead last) they were 7.3 percent worse.
• Overall, of 50 schools surveyed, students regressed at 16 of them.

Could the universities be spending too much time celebrating diversity and promoting multiculturalism?

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I've long advocated that we begin a phased approach to completely shutting down the public education system. John Stossel, in a recent column on Townhall.com, seems to agree that some drastic changes need to be made. He asks, "why do we entrust something as important as our children's education to a government monopoly?" And suggests: "Instead of pouring more money into the failed government monopoly, let's free parents to control their own education money. Competition is a lot smarter than bureaucrats."

According to Stossel, the late Albert Shanker, once president of the American Federation of Teachers, said, "It's time to admit that the public education system operates like a planned economy, a bureaucratic system in which everybody's role is spelled out in advance and there are few incentives for innovation and productivity. It's no surprise that our school system doesn't improve. It more resembles the communist economy than our own market economy."

There should be no doubt in most people's minds that public education is failing to properly educate its students. We've all heard about the lack of discipline, the lack of parent involvement and the lack of competent teachers, but there are other concerns that are important to parents (at least to those involved). When governments run schools they can't resist the temptation to indoctrinate instead of educate. Our schools today seem to be doing more and more indoctrinating that conflicts with the values of parents and communities. And there is the religion thing. Public schools have to strive to be religion neutral, and sometimes appear to be anti-religion. In a private education system parents would be able to enroll their children in a school that is compatible with their beliefs and values.

Many people seem to want to keep trying to fix public education by feeding it more money. I say that it is not fixable. What we need to do is shut it down and turn entirely to private education. Yes, that would be a rather drastic course of action that could produce chaos if not done carefully. I believe that we can minimize the chaos by implementing a phased approach:

1. Eliminate the US Department of Education and terminate all federal government involvement in education -- no standards, no anything. (The DoE has only existed since 1979. Jimmy Carter considers it one of his great achievements. That should be argument enough to abandon it.) Return all the money that the fed now spends on education to the states. Phase this out after a few years.

2. Allocate all state education funds, including the returned federal money, to vouchers. Give the vouchers directly to parents of students with the lone stipulation that the money be spent on education. Phase this out after a few years. Terminate state government involvement in education -- no standards, no anything.

3. Continue the operation of local school districts for a few years, gradually phasing out their dependence on local tax receipts and phasing in their dependence on voucher money from parents. Put the school properties up for sale to private enterprises during this process. (If a school is privatized early in the process, the local school district may have to subsidize the private school for a couple of years.) Encourage the establishment of completely new schools in the local districts to compete with the privatized public schools. When two or more schools of the same level, say two middle schools, exist in the same community, ensure that they are sold to different private enterprises to ensure competition.

4. Gradually eliminate the taxes being collected to support the school district. Abolish the local school districts. Terminate all local government involvement in education -- no standards, no anything.

5. Encourage the establishment of privately funded foundations to provide scholarships for children whose parents can't afford to pay the tuition. Solicit generous individuals who would be willing to sponsor a child through school, or would be willing to contribute fractional support (their tax bill should be lower by now).

6. Eventually eliminate the vouchers and the taxes and rely completely on tuition payments, either directly from parents or from scholarships. Rely on competition in the marketplace to keep the standards high and the tuition affordable.

This is meant to be a top-level summary of an approach to privatizing the public school system. Obviously there are a lot of details that would have to be filled in. I believe that it is doable and that it will produce a better education system than the one we have now. Some will argue that those children whose parents don't encourage them and don't actively supervise their education will not be well served in this system. I say perhaps not, but they should be better served than by the system we have now.

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We are constantly bombarded with news stories about parents complaining about what their children are seeing, hearing or doing in the public schools -- or what their children are not seeing, hearing or doing. Some want more religion in the schools, some want less. Some want the school curriculum to be more liberal, some want it to be more conservative. Here are some recent instances:

• One teenage student's father is upset that his child's school has allowed a visiting speaker to pass out what he deems "anti-Muslim literature." He insists that such material is not free speech, but hate speech. Read the story here.
• An Islamic group is pressuring a school board to remove Jewish and Christian holidays from the school calendar. The group believes that since there are no Muslin holidays there should be no Jewish or Christian holidays. Read the story here.
• A public school student was not allowed to wear a Jesus costume to a school Halloween function. The school officials thought it would be seen as promoting a particular religion. Read the story here.

My point here is not to argue who's right or wrong in these instances. The point I want to make is that all this could be avoided if governments weren't operating the schools. If we had more private schools and fewer government-run public schools then these parents could find a school more suitable for their children. A private school can hand out whatever literature it chooses and if someone can't live with that they can find another school. A private school can observe whatever holidays it chooses and if someone can't live with that they can find another school. A private school can let all its students wear a Jesus costume every day if it wants and if someone can't live with that they can find another school.

I have argued before that we need to shut down our public education system and rely on private enterprise to fill the gap. Private schools can avoid the 'one size fits all' approach to education that the public schools are forced to follow. Private schools can choose to indoctrinate or not to indoctrinate; public schools will always have to indoctrinate. There should be no question that private schools serve their students and parents better than public schools. Why else would the wealthy send their children to private schools?

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The American Spectator reports:

In a nail-biting 38-37 vote last week, Utah's heavily Republican House of Representatives passed the nation's first universally available school choice program. The Senate followed, by a vote of 19-10, and Governor Jon Huntsman signed the bill into law on Monday. Under the program, every family in Utah will receive a voucher worth between $3,000 per child (for the lowest income families) and $500 (for those with the highest incomes). Parents will be able to redeem these vouchers at whatever private school they deem best for their kids.

Well, it looks like some progress might be made toward privatizing education. The Utah law has some drawbacks but it is a step in the right direction. Perhaps it will lead other states to experiment with universal vouchers.

Flashpoint led me to the article. Read Brian's comments.

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CBS News reports, in an article titled "Duke Case Spurs Campus Culture Cleanup," that Duke University administrators are undertaking an introspective examination of campus culture. But wait. Before you jump to the conclusion that they are talking about looking into why they immediately presumed that the accused lacrosse players were guilty and took several punitive actions against them, consider this:

The notoriety of the case forced Duke to the front of academe in this evaluation of student life and campus culture. But colleges across the U.S. are also soul-searching and refining policies in the wake of the case, recognizing that Duke is not the only campus where the confluence of race, sex, privilege, and booze could spark a scandal.

"In part because of the Duke scandal, there's a trend in higher education towards increasing accountability for perpetrators, more and better support for victims, and ... more intensive prevention programs," says Alan Berkowitz, a social justice consultant in Trumansburg, N.Y.

Not sure about who they mean by perpetrators and victims? Read on:

... since the case came to the fore last spring, colleges have been instituting or hurrying planned changes to address the problems of an athletics-dominated college atmosphere, where even Division III schools are relying on fine-tuned squads to draw recruits and prestige.

Still not certain what they think the real problem is? Keep reading:

"The Duke situation does reinforce the importance of not presuming a student is guilty, but, while tragic for the individuals involved, it has also had the important effect of causing universities to rethink the role athletes play and the rules that govern conduct," says Karen-Ann Broe, a risk analyst at UEI.

Yes, they are still piling on the athletes. The athletes are the perps! While admitting that it is not good to prejudge someone, they still intend to blame the athletes for the whole thing.

I can save the university administrators a lot of money. No matter how many nannies you hire to lecture to a bunch of college boys some of them are going to get themselves and you in trouble. Don't assume that you can do anything to make college life all that different from life in general.

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Dennis DeTurck, an award-winning professor of mathematics at the University of Pennsylvania, is calling for an end to the teaching of fractions to young students. He favors going all decimal. George Andrews, a mathematics professor over at Penn State, says that "all of this is absurd." I agree with Andrews.

DeTurck thinks fractions should be taught later when students are better able to understand them -- perhaps after learning calculus. I say that if a student can't comprehend fractions he or she has no business taking calculus -- or algebra.

How would someone get to a decimal value without understanding fractions? If told to add 1/3 and 1/2, would they know to add 0.3333 to 0.5 and get 0.8333, since they presumably don't know how to get a common denominator and then add the numerators to get 5/6? Would they know that 5/6 is an exact result while 0.8333 is not?

If students can solve for the two possible values of x in this algebraic equation, 3x/4 - 1/x = 1, they should be able to solve this one, 1/3 + 1/2 = x, and get x = 5/6 rather than x = 0.8333. If so, they understand fractions -- but they might not know it. If they don't know it, they might get 0.9999 when asked to add 1/3 and 1/3 and 1/3.

No Dennis, I think we need to keep trying to teach kids to understand and work with fractions. If they have too much trouble with it they should consider going into music, art, athletics or politics.

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The Associated Press reports that:

"California parents who don't have teaching credentials no longer can home school their children, according to a recent state appellate court ruling."

"Parents do not have a constitutional right to home school their children," Justice H. Walter Croskey wrote in a Feb. 28 opinion for the 2nd District Court of Appeals.

If this is an accurate quote, Justice Croskey is an idiot. Or California is an idiot state. But we already know that, so what's my point?

Home-schooling parents should rebel by sending their kids to school naked. If the state is going to assume the responsibility for educating their kids, why should the parents have to furnish their clothing? California already provides transportation to school and lunches for kids that can't afford them. Why not make them provide clothing too? And lunches for all the kids? And pay for their medical treatment if they get sick at school?

Home-schooling parents should sue the school system every time their kids get anything less than all As on their report cards. They should sue every time a teacher provides incorrect subject matter to their kids.

But most importantly, home-schooling parents should organize and demand a face-off with the public school teachers to determine who is the smartest. I suggest the format of the television show, Are You Smarter than a Fifth-Grader? The parents without teaching credentials would be the fifth-graders and the teachers the contestants. This should be a public event conducted statewide and perhaps covered by local television stations.

I know. This won't ever happen because the public school system knows that the parents would win. The show doesn't ask questions like:

How should you react if James wears a dress to school?
A. Ignore him
B. Call him a sissy
C. Ask him if his parents are in financial trouble
D. Applaud his courage

Only credentialed public school teachers know the answer is D. A simple parent might choose A or C.

A reader's question prompted me to add this update:

The US Constitution does not grant the federal government the right to educate children. (But this fact is ignored by liberals and "compassionate" conservatives alike.) The federal government's limited powers are enumerated in the constitution and all others are (supposed to be) left to the states. This means there is nothing to keep the states from running a public education system, but it is my belief that they don't have the right to compel parents to enroll their children in that system. Nor do I believe they have the right to impose a curriculum on home-schooled children or set the qualifications for home-schooling parents.

This is a matter of individual liberty, but also a matter of the quality of education that children receive. It is a fact that on average home-schooled and private-schooled children are better educated than public-schooled children. It takes some gall for a government to force children into an inferior education system.

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