You can't legislate intelligence, so why waste money trying?

The Federal government, states, and municipalities are following a path of folly in wasting millions after millions on "students" who simply do not want to learn. To add to the problem, these "students" are supported in their model for failure through the lack of involvement of their parents who don't seem to care if their children learn or not.

Every year we read reports showing that regardless of all the new programs implemented in the classroom at great cost to the taxpayers, regardless of yet another reshuffling in school administartion and teaching staff, regardless of the spin school superintendents and school boards put out to the general public, standardized tests show a great number of students are scoring below grade level.

Political correctness, which will be the ruin of this country if permitted to remain the status quo, calls for ever newer "strategies", new software, new tests, more tests, greater "oversight", blaming the teachers, blaming the principals, blaming global warming,  bla, bla, bla ad infinitum.  This approach sidesteps the real issues and no group gets hurt. But if we truly want to address the issues, we need to take bold steps and identify the root causes regardless of how they'll play out politically.

A continuous flow of immigrantion - both legal and illegal - from Latin America, Haiti, Jamaica and other underdeveloped countries has radically impacted our classrooms.  The demands for expanded ESL and ESE and other supportive programs is a tremendous drain on already depleted funds. But to simply say that they're a financial drain is not enough since education should be a Top Priority item on the country's agenda.  The fact is that returns on this "investment" are minimal at best. Students who refuse to apply themselves in the classroom not only cause a disservice to themselves by their bad behavior, but more importantly, distract those who wish to learn .  The effect is that real students are deprived of a proper learning environment, and consequenetly their learning potential is reduced by the time lost while the teacher attempts to deal with behavior problems. For the most part detentions, suspensions, parent conferences, etc. do not work in correcting the problem. So what happens next? Simply put the problem students remain in class, the good students continue to be robbed of the level of education they deserve. The  process is further gerrymandered and watered down in an attempt to show improvement on the part of all students, as required by statutes and the No Child Left Behind Act. End result?  The US ranks 18th out of 36 nations in quality of education with South Korea on top and Mexico on the bottom. Interesting statistic, since Mexicans form an ethnic group of some 10 million illegal aliens in the U.S. and whose children make up a disproportionately high number of "at risk" students. 

Can anything be done to change this failing model of our educational system, since obviously we're not going to alter inteligence levels and behavioral problems simply by passing worthless legisdlation? Yes: institute early testing to identify a student's learning potential, and then shift those students who show a lack of aptitude for normal classroom work into vocational programs where they won't have to be tested in such areas as  algebra, history, writing, science, etc. in other words, subjects that in the real world will not be of great need to them and that will actually hamper their progress in a vocational field of their choice where they will have an increased chance of success and become positive contributors to our society instead of being parasites.