Authored by Jackson Elliott via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
America’s education system has failed, according to a teacher and charter school enthusiast. And now parents search for new schools, surveys show.
“The goal of the education system today is no longer to educate. It’s to do everything but that,” Dan Fisher told the Epoch Times.
Fisher teaches 10th grade at a high school whose name he declined to publicize. Before that, he taught as a professor. The classrooms he is in today let him see a system in collapse.
Tenth-graders can’t read, most students don’t want to participate, and teachers care more about woke indoctrination than addressing these issues, Fisher said.
But kids have plenty of energy to invest in their tech, he added.
“After school is fascinating,” he said. “They’re not playing. They’re not running. They’re just on their phones,” he said.
Like several other educational activists, Fisher said COVID-19 pandemic changes revealed the rotting condition of America’s schools.
“They assumed that schools were the way they were when they went through, and they had no idea how much things have changed, as far as curriculum and other things,” he said.
High graduation rates are fake, said Fisher. Schools regularly pass students with little regard to whether they meet standards, he added.
“We’re asked at the 10th-grade level, 11th-grade level, to help teach reading,” he said. “Isn’t that kind of what K-8 is for?”
In this environment, it’s no wonder that most parents are looking for new schools Fisher said. He’s supported by a new survey by National School Choice Week, a charitable program of the nonprofit National School Choice Awareness Foundation.
Peeved Parents
Nearly 54 percent of parents of more than 3,800 surveyed have considered a new school for their children in the past year, the study found.
The number of dissatisfied parents got higher the younger parents were, researchers found.
Among parents ages 18–29, about six in 10 considered moving schools in the past year.
Among parents aged 30 to 44, a little more than half considered moving schools. Among those aged 45 to 60, just under half considered a move. And about four out of 10 parents aged 60 and above considered moving schools.
The survey noted that African American, Hispanic, and Millennial parents were most likely to consider changing schools. These groups were also most likely to say there weren’t enough choices between schools.
Caucasian Americans were least likely to consider changing schools and most likely to say school systems provided enough choice, the survey noted.
Not all parents who considered a new school chose one or remained in the tension of making a choice, the study said. About 16 percent of all parents surveyed chose new schools, 11.3 percent considered doing so but didn’t, and 25.8 percent are considering one.
Many parents considered multiple options, the survey said. But the most often-cited options were nearby traditional public schools. The second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth-most popular options were public schools outside parents’ districts, public charter schools, faith-based schools, homeschooling, and full-time online schooling.
The least-popular option was “microschooling” or “pod learning,” methods that teach a group of 10 or fewer kids.
Nearly 65 percent of parents said they wished they had more information on schooling options, the survey said.
Never Normal
For the past few years, parents have churned between schools, Shelby Doyle, vice president of public awareness at the National School Choice Awareness Foundation, told The Epoch Times.
With COVID-19 lockdowns over, this trend has continued.
Read more here...
