Despite the billions of tax dollars being pumped into the public school system, our country’s educational performance levels on a whole are not really doing so well. In 2013 The Learning Curve report, developed by the Economist Intelligence Unit, says, “the United States ranks seventeenth out of forty countries ranked in overall educational performance.” 

You may be wondering how that’s even remotely possible considering the exorbitant amount of money being pumped into the system. “Where are the dividends,” you might be asking? In this case, “you get what you pay for,” need not apply. It certainly makes sense to expect that the billions of dollars invested overtime would have solved the problems that continually plague the public system in America. Then along comes a quick glance at a statistic that blows that logic right out the window! An “Education at a Glance 2013″ report says “trends in several dozen countries” insist, “the United States is behind in early childhood education even though it spends more and that American teachers spend more time in class than their international peers.”

Teachers spending “more time in class than their international peers” is almost laughable considering hundreds, if not thousands, of teachers aren’t working but still getting paid! In fact, New Yorkers are paying “$144 million a year” for the “Absent Teacher Reserve Pool.” The “reserve pool,” which is more like the (winning) lottery pool, is nothing more than a “permanent way station for teachers whose jobs have been eliminated due to school closures or other reasons.” Many of those “other reasons” include teachers who were brought up on “disciplinary charges” and “received unsatisfactory evaluation ratings,” all while “earning their full salary and benefits.”

But it doesn’t stop there! Exorbitant administrative salaries come at a nice price (cha ching, cha ching)! Let’s just say it pays to be the principal or superintendent of schools in New York State. According to the 2013-14 “Budgeted Administrative Salary Disclosure,” administrative salaries can earn anywhere up to 200k and sometimes more. That usually includes benefits!

And no offense to the great teachers out there, but we must not forget about the “reassignment centers,” otherwise known as, “rubber rooms.” Those very comfortable and cozy rooms have forced tens of millions of taxpayer dollars to keep teachers temporarily waiting to be reassigned work. Problem is, “temporary” turns into years without having to hold a job, and getting paid to do so, once again at the expense of YOUR tax dollars.
NBC reported that “the rubber room is where teachers accused of everything from drug abuse to sexual harassment are sent to do nothing, but still collect a salary, benefits and accrue time toward pensions.” 

What a life! So while teachers accused of drug abuse, sexual harassment and who are being brought up on disciplinary charges, continue to get paid, the culmination of billions of misallocated tax dollars continue to take place! Is it any wonder that our children’s performance levels are diminishing?

It’s well known that federal programs like Head Start, safe sex education awareness programs, and zero-tolerance policies (one ex: the banning of toy guns), have all proven to be failures. To add to the many failures when it comes to student performance and teacher & administrative accountability, children and faculty members are having to prepare and gird themselves for the next mass shooting. So much for the banning of toy guns… In 2011, research, published in the “Journal of School Psychology” determined for varying reasons, that there’s “little correlation” between “zero-tolerance discipline policies and well-behaved students.” This makes perfect sense, because since the Columbine High School massacre there has been countless acts of violence, primarily consisting of deadly shootings and stabbings. So much for banning the toy gun! And since the recent case in which a teen was charged for going on a stabbing spree and injuring at least 20 people at a Pennsylvania high school, I’m still wondering when liberals are going to start a knife ban.

To make matters worse the “Common Core” curriculum, otherwise known as the “teach-to-the-test mentality,” has even teachers up in arms! And states that once embraced the curriculum in return for millions of federal dollars are now rejecting the “one-size-fits-all” approach!  But it gets worse. The latest of Common Core abuses take “sex education” to a whole new low within the public school system. A very recent case in which a father was arrested for protesting a VERY sexually explicit book that his 14 year old daughter was forced to read, and mind you, without his consent!! He described the book as a “transcript for a triple X porno movie.”

And they said “No Child Left Behind” was bad!

Last but not least, in today’s USA TODAY, “abysmal” is how they describe the nation’s report card for high school students performance in both math and reading, and insisted that “large numbers of students are unprepared for either college or the workplace.”

Time to bring prayer back into schools!