so my question is related to a comment
you made about how
you would want to get rid of the
department of education and i know the
conservative view is to keep public
education very very local
but how would you go about funding
public education
on a local level when a lot of our local
small communities do not have the
infrastructure to support it like
there's not a lot enough businesses and
commercial businesses and people who own
property to pay taxes so how would you
go about that very thoughtful question
thank you and thank you for being here
so i would abolish the department of
education immediately and
instantaneously and send all the money
back to the states two things would then
happen
first of all that money will be spent a
lot more efficiently state by state
because you don't have to pay for
federal bureaucrats walking around this
building in dc that do nothing all day
long the department of education you
guys can fact check me on it um their
budget is probably between 40 or 50
billion dollars a year 45.8 45.8 that's
why you're a member of turning point usa
because you know i'm i'm the leader and
i'm for bosch in the doi so yeah between
40 and 50 so the average is putting on
an event with it but here's the thing i
want to make something super important
and i could sense that you would
understand that from your question i
want to reinforce it just because you
want to abolish the department of
education does not mean you don't care
about education i want to abolish it
because i think education
is the key to opportunity for low-income
communities and for a healthy vibrant
culture and society and that the
department education has gotten the way
of that in the last 60 years so how
would you fund it well first and
foremost our public education system is
not a funding problem currently it's not
a lot of demagoguing politicians will
make it seem as if it's a funding
problem now there are schools that are
underfunded but if you look at a
parochial school for example in chicago
or you look at a catholic school
it costs to educate a child per year
about seven to nine thousand dollars a
year through a chicago catholic school
on average on the high end ten thousand
in chicago public school for a miserable
education it's about twenty three to
twenty eight thousand dollars a year for
a much lower quality good or service so
it's not necessarily a funding problem
so here's how i would solve it first and
foremost you could free up a tremendous
amount of capital by firing bad teachers
i think at least 10 to 15 percent of
teachers should be fired easily and i
know this from personal experience by
seeing teachers that took time off that
didn't have any attention to me but good
teachers should be paid more now good
teachers do not get rewarded when
they're doing an excellent job bad
teachers don't get fired you might say
charlie how would you judge those
teachers
well you do it through a variety of
different ways
first and foremost you have teachers
great teachers no one's ever really
thought of this before because really
good teachers don't want bad teachers to
be around now of course people could
manipulate the way to do it you have a
comprehensive way to evaluate it if we
can run fortune 500 companies and find
high performing employees we can find
high performing teachers and by the way
you walk into a school you ask 10
students who the best teacher is it's no
mystery with the teachers that are there
at 6 a.m and they leave at 6 00 p.m
public education teachers played a huge
role in my life and people say oh
charlie you're anti-teacher i'm not i'm
anti-bad teacher there were teachers
that sacrificed everything you wouldn't
believe and they were earning 55 000 a
year because they were lower on the
entry level on the tenure scale and i'd
ask them the question how is it fair
that this next teacher next door gets in
right as the bell rings they leave right
as the bell rings they don't grade any
homework they do nothing and the teacher
would say you're right that's not fair
but there's nothing i could do about it
so you'd free up a tremendous amount of
capital the second thing is this we need
market forces in education but more than
that put simply
money that goes towards education is
very top-heavy it goes to the
administration it goes to paper pushers
and the dean and the principal's office
that do nothing all day long they do
nothing but comply with federal
regulation with federal mandates they're
pushing papers around they're not
actually educating the student if you
look at studies across the country it's
not funding
it's not even class size it's not
geography that determines a likelihood
of a student to learn something it's the
quality of teacher and all of you that
have had good teachers before know
exactly what i'm talking about a teacher
that is enthusiastic energetic engaging
can pick out when a student is not
learning properly and spends extra time
with them there's nothing better than a
quality teacher teachers are modern day
superheroes bad teachers are modern day
villains because they bring down the
moving average they bring down the
attitude of a entire teacher community
so what's the solution well the market
has taught us that it usually solves
problems like this now i'm not talking
not necessarily a free market but market
forces what does that mean
accountability
the ability to reward good behavior and
punish bad behavior the ability to
remove bad and have good be
escalated further up
and finally is this is if you had a more
voucher system and you allowed people to
use the money they're putting into the
tax pool to go to a better school that
would solve a lot of problems in chicago
it is a it is a civil rights
catastrophe that there are families on
the south side of chicago that have to
send their kids to schools with teachers
that don't care the schools are
crumbling
and they're almost destined for failure
there's something wrong with that and
now who's getting in the way of it well
karen lewis and the chicago teacher
unions are the one that are getting in
the way of it because they're saying
it's just a funding issue it's just a
funding issue well the numbers show that
it isn't that if you're able to move
those tax dollars to a better performing
school get better teachers and pay them
more then you're able to have a better
performance so the final thing i'll say
is this we as conservatives have to
change our tone when it comes to
education because people think that
we're anti-education but we're not we're
anti-stuff that doesn't work and right
now the education system is a moral and
abject failure and i'm i actually
believe that people on the left want it
to continue that way they just want to
throw more money at it well the
baltimore public schools have had an
influx of federal funding over the last
10 years there are seven schools in the
baltimore public school system where
they could not find one eighth grader
that was proficient in math or reading
not one
seven schools but they couldn't find an
eighth grade eighth grader that was not
proficient in math or reading and it's
also a negative feedback loop where you
have two kids in third grade that can't
read well how are they supposed to do
the math if they can't even read the
problem then how are they supposed to do
fifth grade work if they all of a sudden
it's a negative feedback loop and they
keep moving it up because the teachers
don't care so they just keep moving the
kids up to a higher grade by the time
they're in sixth grade they're they're
asked to read a book and they can't even
read the cover
and that's when you start to have kids
drop out by seventh or eighth grade join
gangs they find meaning so on and so
forth how do you solve it
school choice
and also letting good teachers be paid
more so
the number one reason when kids students
say charlie i want to be a teacher but
it doesn't pay enough that's what i hear
well i think we should be paying
teachers two or three hundred thousand
dollars a year there should be just less
teachers and reward the good ones more
only a market would do that so thank you
for your question
you
