Education

It is my belief that the American primary school system has failed our country and our families. In practically every measured indicator, the performance of our primary schools are ranked near the bottom in comparison to the systems of other modern industrial states. I believe the system is like this due to a multitude of reasons, such as:

• Overcentralization: in the 1920s, there were over 120,000 school districts; today, there are fewer than 15,000, providing services to over twice the population we had then. Centralization minimizes the competitive forces essential for natural increases in quality to occur.

• Negative union influence: the NEA/AFT use their phenomenal power to oppose practically every attempt at educational reform, regardless of the welfare of their students or this country. Instead, they consistently advocate increasing educational spending in complete disregard of data that shows continued educational decline even as spending is increased (for example, look at the district of Washington, DC: at over $13,000 spent per student, it ranks as the most well funded in America, yet it ranks the lowest in measures of academic performance).

• Egalitarianism: it's ridiculous to expect equal results from all individuals with complete disregard of that individual's mental abilities. Yet, that is exactly the goal of the "No Child Left Behind" program. Unable to equalize the results, schools report false numbers and teach the tests, whose standards are continuously lowered on a yearly basis so that government bureaucrats can proclaim their "success." As a result, students are taught less and less and the gifted are left behind while attention is directed to those who have reached the extent of their ability.

I believe that the solution to these problems, and a myriad of others, is to increase competition via the implementation of a nation-wide program of school privatization to create a public-private partnership. The system would work by:

1. Privatizing a large swath of the public school system on a national level, selling individual schools to private companies and creating a certification system to minimize fraud in the private sector
2. Creating a voucher system, under the control of the Department of Education, in which each student is issued a voucher to be used at the school of their choice, public or private, in any location. A formula will be developed to ascertain how much each voucher should be worth, and will be tied to inflation
3. The vouchers will be paid for via a national sales tax; local, state, and federal school funding will be eliminated, their revenues returned, and taxes reduced
4. Private-sector entities will receive tax deductions for identifying and assisting in the education of students with high potential
5. For public-schools, students should not be limited to attending only one school chosen by their local or state government; rather, students should be allowed to attend any public school, with no restrictions on choice
6. Eliminate politically correct textbooks from the curriculum and end the mentality that our school system is first and foremost a social engineering program. Redefine the school system's purpose to something more in line with the development of well-rounded, energetic, ambitious, and patriotic citizens
7. Finally, abolish "No Child Left Behind" and all attempts at creating a truly egalitarianism system; students should be treated solely upon their individual abilities, of which each individual is different from another

Tertiary issues:

• Sex education: generally, I believe the role of the schools is not to teach about human sexual relations, but the right and left have made it quite an obsession: the right believes that sex education does not belong in schools and, if it does, it should focus solely on abstinence education; the left believes that sex education does belong in schools and should teach about practically everything, except abstinence. Since this is such a ridiculous and minor issue in comparison to the grand scheme of things, I take a position firmly in the center: sex education does have a role in our schools and should focus on emphasizing the importance of abstinence, while also teaching about STDs and the various contraceptive methods available if abstinence is to be ignored. It is unrealistic to think that abstinence is the solve-all solution, because it cannot be proven that all students will practice it and won't take risks; we should do what we can to help minimize the risks that they take.

• Evolution vs. Creationism / ID: this is just an absurd debate. Evolution is a fact and Creationism / Intelligent Design belongs in the social sciences. There really is no debating this.