Bill Gates On High Schools

"When I compare our high schools to what I see when I'm traveling abroad, I am terrified for our work force of tomorrow,"

"Only one-third of our students graduate from high school ready for college, work and citizenship,"

"In 2001, India graduated almost a million more students from college than the United States did; China graduates twice as many students with bachelor's degrees as the United States, and they have six times as many graduates majoring in engineering."

"But in many schools you need radical institutional change,"

2005 12th Grade NAEP Test Scores

12th grade National Assesment of Educational Progress test scores in 2005:

at or above proficient in math: 23% (77% of 12th grade students are not proficient in math)

at or above proficient in reading: 35% (down from 40% in 1992) (65% of 12th grade students are not proficient in reading)

The 12.5% decline in the percentage of proficient readers from 1992 to 2005 occurred while inflation-adjusted per-student spending on public schools increased over 20% and the percentage of students with a parent who graduated from college increased from 41% to 47%.

Quality Public School Leaders Hard To Attract

The inability of public school principals/superintendents to attract good teachers and to fire bad teachers makes being a public school leader a job in futility thereby dissuading the best people from becoming a public school principal/superintendent:

Public Schools Cannot Attract Good Teachers:

High performing people are discouraged from becoming public school teachers because their high performance is not rewarded. (Public school teachers make the same amount of money whether they are good at teaching or bad at teaching.)

Public Schools Cannot Fire Bad Teachers:

The lifetime tenure given to public school teachers makes firing bad public school teachers extremely difficult.

Steve Jobs On Teacher Unions

February 20, 2007

Austin, Texas

Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, at an education reform conference in Texas:

"I believe that what is wrong with our schools in this nation is that they have become unionized in the worst possible way,"

"This unionization and lifetime employment of K-12 teachers is off-the-charts crazy."

Recruiting Public School Principals:

"What kind of person could you get to run a small business if you told them, when they came in, they couldn't get rid of people they thought weren't any good in the first place? Or they couldn't pay people three times as much when they got three times as much work done?"

"Not really great ones because if you're really smart you go, 'I can't win.'"

Annual Growth Rates Of Milwaukee Vouchers

Annual Growth Rates Of Milwaukee Voucher Program Participation

97-98	1501	-7%
98-99	5740	282%
99-00	7596	32%
00-01	9104	20%
2001-2002	10391	14%
2002-2003	11209	8%
2003-2004	12788	14%
2004-2005	14427	13%
2005-2006	15091	5%
2006-2007	17275	14%

Average Annual Growth Rate In Milwaukee Vouchers From 1999-2000 to 2006-2007: 15%

This is 30 times the growth rate of Milwaukee's population from 2000 to 2006.

Assuming A Continued 15% Annual Growth Rate:

2007-2008 -- 19,866
2008-2009 -- 22,846
2009-2010 -- 26,273
2010-2011 -- 30,214
2011-2012 -- 34,746
2012-2013 -- 39,958
2013-2014 -- 45,952
2014-2015 -- 52,845
2015-2016 -- 60,771
2016-2017 -- 69,887
2017-2018 -- 80,370
2018-2019 -- 92,426
2019-2020 -- 106,289


If the number of students using vouchers continues to increase at the same rate as it has in the past 8 school years, then in 5 years the number of students using vouchers to attend a private school in Milwaukee will have doubled to nearly 35,000 students.

Public Schools Regulate Themselves

Summary:

1. The public education system is regulated by politicians.
2. Politicians are regulated by the public education system.
Therefore, the public education system is regulated by the public education system.

1. The public education system is regulated by politicians.
Regulations concerning teacher compensation and tenure are created by politicians.

2. Politicians are regulated by the public education system.
The public education system, primarily through public school teacher unions, has more influence than any other interest group on who gets elected to office. For example,

1. Teacher union members comprise the largest single group at Democratic presidental conventions.

2. The NEA and AFT are two of the top 13 all-time donors to the Democratic Party since 1978, giving nearly $12.4 million to Democrats as of June 2003, according to the Center for Public Integrity.