How do we fix public education?

There are any number of ways to fix the problems with the public school systems. In general, I think that schools are doing an okay job. One of the problems I see is that our children are lagging behind children of other nations in areas such as math and science.

I believe that we need to increase the standards within the schools systems. But what of the students that are unmotivated or cannot meet the higher standards? Don't be afraid to fail them. When I went to high school in NY state they had different levels of classes. There was the general level of classes and then there were Regents classes. The general level was the minimum standard that everyone had to meet.

The regents level classes went into more depth and were taught at a quicker pace. Some schools districts outside of NY may call these AP classes.

For the students that may not be able to go to college for one reason or another there was BOCES school. BOCES stood for Board of Cooperative Extension Services. I hope I have that right. It was a trade school were students could learn a job skill such as carpentry, printing/photography and others. The students would spend part of their day at their home school taking core classes and the other half of day at the BOCES center.

I also believe that the teachers union needs to be eliminated. What good is it doing besides protecting the teachers that suck? If a teacher is sub-standard then the school needs to have more freedom to eliminate them from teaching.

Community involvement will help also. Let the people that work in certain fields work with school boards and the schools to let them know what is needed for certain fields.