I'm to the point of this; take 5 or 10 states in different make-ups, different parts of the country and do the following over the next 5 years.
Take:
VT and ME
MO and KY
LA and AL
UT and ID
In the first states mentioned, VT, MO, LA, UT, give these states a choice to where their parents can choose vouchers or public schools. Fund it through the federal government. Just vouchers; no other major changes to the curriculum/pay schedules, etc.. that wouldn't have been made anyway.
In the 2nd States Mentioned, ME, KY, AL, and ID make it all voucher driven.
At the end of 5 years, if the first group is better than the other 40 states, we have a solution. If the 2nd group is superior to the first group and/or the 40 other states, we have a more definite solution.
If the 40 states are kicking the other 10 state's asses, well, that would speak for itself too.
Candycorn, your idea is ok, but I have a problem with just one thing. Our math education system is not an interstate problem, it's an international problem. We should be #1. Instead, we're #23, down from being #11 several years ago, which is way down from where we were in or around 1955-1965.
Excellence in higher science is 1000% dependent on having good mathematicians. Period. Education has lost its way without excellence in mathematics in this day and age.
I have to say, Obama has this one item right, but he placed this hurting priority below priorities which will cause the nation to founder financially in the future.
With Obamacare extracting as much as the GNP in 5 years, there's nothing left for anything else that is important.
We spent a lot of money on war, and we have a lot of men and women who were wounded there that we need to take care of on a priority basis because of their sacrifices.
You'd get more bang for your buck if you took the math teachers of America, and offered them a $2,000 bonus for every 98% math score of their kids on the SAT scores. Teachers are human, and the incentive to get kids to do excellence is the only way you can throw money at a problem and get results. Unionizing teachers didn't do it, it converted them to thinking in terms of entitlement rather than excellence.
Oh, and tap the Professional Engineers Society that conducts MathCounts tests to check the results with tests of their own.
No slouching from the peanut gallery who might be tempted to ahem "fix" scores to enrich themselves. The Society of Professional Engineers won't let that happen. They are pledged to a standard, and they simply do not steer off course. And they'll fund it themselves like they do MathCounts. Additionally, they will privately fund college tuition and lifelong good jobs for the top scores.
So taxpayers won't be out $1B. It might cost a couple of million in postage and communication fees, but not a billion, and not 50 additional teachers per state either.
American students should be kicking ass on international mathematics scores.
Instead, we have a lot of students now who are the victims of entitled teachers molesting them at an alarming rate in almost every school system from coast to coast. There's too much personal shit going on in the schools and not enough reading, writing, and arithmetic.
The way to do that is to get the teachers back into excellence mode and out of entitlement mode.
That will not happen under the current administration of Marxism into every aspect of health care under Obamacare due to the expenses of making all hospitals and patients subdue to unions.
Sick people in a hospital setting must never be subjected to what Wisconsin teachers subjected children to in confronting the governor of that state a couple of years back. Getting kids to sing mean political songs in a state capitol without their parents knowledge or consent is one of the world's worst spectacles since the spectacle of Hitler's youth were used to murder minority members of society in Germany from the late 30s through 1945.
It's international test scores that tell us where we are, not interstate.
Simply are they capable of performing at the level needed to make us number one? Honest question. It takes discipline to get to this level at the very least.
