- This essay is on Wikiversity to encourage a wide discussion of the issues it raises moderated by the Wikimedia rules that invite contributors to “be bold but not reckless,” contributing revisions written from a neutral point of view citing credible sources -- and raising other questions and concerns on the associated '“Discuss”' page.
This is a stub to be expanded to cite research relevant (pro and con) to the following public policy proposals:
Sufficient funding for public schools
Fair pay for teachers
Alternative school funding
No tax diversion for expansion of charter schools
Fund extracurriculars
Add protected classes for bullying
Comprehensive sex ed (opt out)
Academics over athletics
Media and school achievement
Some of these issues are discussed in "Improving schools/Efforts to improve schools". This "Improving schools" article ends with a discussion of "Media and school achievement, which says the following:
- Progress on many if not all substantive issues is blocked, because every countermeasure threatens someone with substantive control over the media.
The role of the media in amplifying problems in many areas is summarized in the Wikiversity article on “Winning the War on Terror”. As this applies to educational achievement in the US, we should explore the possible contributions of several factors including the following:
- Private schools probably have higher advertising budgets than public schools; if so, this would give the mainstream broadcasters a conflict of interest in honestly discussing the available data.
- Beyond this, one suspects that the people who control major advertising budgets in the US do not want the public to believe that the government can do anything positive except when it support the efforts of US multinational corporations to do whatever they want in the US and around the world -- and the editorial policies of the mainstream media, most especially the mainstream commercial broadcasters, have been largely skewed to support this political agenda. To do otherwise would require the media to regularly bite the hands that feed them.