The American school system is completely broken. The quote below is from a recent Donald Trump   Jr. speech. It shows the complete lack of understanding most Americans have about what public schooling is;

The other party gave us public schools that far too often fail our students, especially those who have no options. Growing up, my siblings and I we were truly fortunate to have choices and options that others don’t have. We want all Americans to have those same opportunities. Our schools used to be an elevator to the middle class, now they’re stalled on the ground floor. They’re like Soviet-era department stores that are run for the benefit of the clerks and not the customers, for the teachers and the administrators and not the students. You know why other countries do better on K through 12? They let parents choose where to send their own children to school. That’s called competition. It’s called the free market. And it’s what the other party fears. They fear it because they’re more concerned about protecting the jobs of tenured teachers than serving the students in desperate need of a good education. They want to run everything top-down from Washington. They tell us they’re the experts and they know what’s best.

The free market – learning and public schooling are products, to be squeezed and purchased by discerning, parent consumers, who along with shrewd entrepreneurs,are the real educational experts.

In this analysis, there is no room for public education- the most successful collective initiative of western societies. There is no recognition that public education needs a collective public commitment, adequate support and resources, comprehensive teacher training, and professional autonomy.

To them, schooling is merely the purveying of knowledge, without developmental, cultural, or other affective benefit.

This Trump Jr. rant  expresses a preference for class strata, preferred experience, inequitable opportunity, and reduced social mobility.

Don’t fall for “school choice” or “parent choice” cries. They are simply euphemisms for “let’s fund private schools so my kid doesn’t have to mix with the riff raff left to wallow in under supported, dilapidated  public schools…”

Oh,, and don’t fall for the newest private school dog whistle.

” I think the money should follow the student not go to the schools…”

Per pupil funding, vouchers, and Charter School grants are vehicles which allow governments to encourage private school attendance and simultaneoulsy de-value public schools.

U.S. public schools are like educational  lemmings, and if our Socred government has its way, we in BC will soon be following them over the cliff.