Submitted by fred stopsky, Apr 15, 2007 09:30

At the core of all educational problems in America is that schools offer a curriculum which is outdated, boring, and irrelevant to modern life. The testing mania tests that which is easiest to test rather than try to ascertain if children are learning. For example, Bloomberg/Klein want higher reading scores, but reading scores don't provide information if children read, enjoy reading or learn from reading. Every parent and teacher knows children in first grade love reading, by the 7th grade they hate it. Why? After 50 years in education, the key thing I have learned is that schools must decentralized, teachers placed in control of schools and allowed freedom to present curriculum as they see fit and the right to teach as they desire. Allow parents and children the right to select from among these entrepreneural models and we will truly have a market place driven education system. Bloomberg/Klein claim they have a "business attitude."
Anyone running a business in their top down, authoritarian manner, offering a product having nothing to do with modern life would go bankrupt.

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