Having spent a few hours over the past several days watching the documentaries The Lottery and Waiting for "Superman", I am clearly more capable of making an entry about America's education system than I was before. Problem is, like with so many of today's "big" issues, there is no clear-cut answer. There are facts, however. Granted, facts can sometimes be misleading, skewed or simply irrelevant, but it sure beats hearsay or conjecture.

It might be argued by some that American schools are worse now than they were 10 or 20 or 30 years ago, but is it fact? We sure hear about how bad (mostly public) schools (in mostly impoverished areas) are. This is probably a fair statement. However, these schools were never necessarily great. The problem comes when you consider that there aren't as many decent options for the people coming out of these schools, regardless of whether or not they have a diploma in hand. The formerly "fall-back" jobs provided by the agricultural and manufacturing industries simply aren't there in the same quantity as before. They've either changed continents, or at least countries, or disappeared altogether. This has left many recipients of a poor school system more likely to end up confined to another damaged system, the prison system. If you look at the bright side, though, it means more gainful employment opportunities for those interested in being a prison guard.

Meanwhile, as those "fall-back" jobs have gone elsewhere, the people that took them are living in countries that now have better academic performance than the US on many levels. The leftovers of this "transaction" has been more poorly educated (if educated at all) people who do not even have a "fall-back" job to fall back on. These days the expectation of students is to gain an education that will demand a job and, more likely than ever, a well-paying job. As a result, the gap has widened to wider than ever before. Since you actually have to compete for a "good" job in the US these days, you are more inclined to get a higher degree (or equivalent), thus making you even more likely gainfully employed than those that went down the "fall-back" path.

So, the fact is, American schools are not really getting any worse relative to American schools of the past. The status quo has been very well maintained domestically. When compared to the educations being given and received globally, though, the US looks terrible. Everyone else has gotten better and did not really bother to make the US level of education the goal, but merely a milestone on the way to better. If the US truly wants to be a free market leader of the world, we must look beyond our broad borders for our competition, motivation and justification.

The two fine documentaries named way back in the first paragraph see charter schools as an idea to solve the problems. Although the evidence presented is quite convincing, even if these schools are not a fix-all, their mere existence brings to light much more. The argument here isn't the same as private versus public schools. That is an apples and oranges comparison. While the two ultimately strive to do the same basic thing, the approach, priorities, philosophy and often outcome differ greatly. With charter schools, the issue isn't whether classes are taught by nuns, or if school uniforms are required, or if sports are relevant, or who can afford the tuition. These charter schools are essentially "free" (in the same way other public schools are, which is to say they aren't really free) and are located in the school district which they serve. They also have been shown to often (but not absolutely always) out-perform their local "zoned" counterparts by a huge margin. Oh, but their teachers and administration are not part of teachers' unions. Oops.

What the involved union figureheads fail to realize is that this is not about them. Granted, teachers are (for the most part) underpaid and under-appreciated. That does not, however, make their pay scale or work schedule the focus. The matter at hand is the quality of the education of kids at their mercy. The plain truth is, nobody wants to make life harder for teachers. Nobody wants to tell a willing teacher they can't do their job. It's just a matter of keeping priorities straight and letting a little simple logic enter the equation. It stands to reason if the teachers have nothing to worry about in regard to their job being tied to their performance (like the vast majority of jobs that people actually have to apply for and be hired for), it's easy to see why so many will put their own interests first and do so in a staggeringly reprehensible fashion. Of course, not all teachers will do this, but the ones that will are probably the same ones that got into teaching because of the system in place and it probably wouldn't be a stretch to say they had a teacher or two with the same mindset while they were getting their own education. Right back to the status quo we go.

This union issue is pretty depressing, but not because unions in general are inherently good or bad. Bad teachers can't be fired and the option to avoid the bad teachers can't be exercised by many. As the documentaries state, the system is clearly broken, but that's not to say it's broken everywhere. I had the fortune of attending fine schools throughout my education, including public schools from the first day of middle school to the last day of graduate school. I also had a mother that placed a high priority of academic pursuits, just like many of the parents in the films and parents over the past several decades.

As long as there have been schools, there have been good students and bad students, good teachers and bad teachers, good ideas and bad ideas. It is time to take the good and replace the bad, even if the bad was once good. In other words, it's not just the system that's broken, but those at the helm as well. That is to say, it's not just about what others (be it domestically or abroad) are doing right or better, it's what we're doing wrong or worse.