Our education system is failing for several reasons.

1. Family structures aren't what they used to be. Then again, neither is the country. Respect for symbols, adults, each other, has gone the way of Common Sense. If it isn't on social media readily available on an electronic device, then why bother thinking about it, researching it, questioning it?

2. Apparently there isn't a lot of reading going on in a lot of families. If the parents don't read it is guaranteed the children won't, either. Good luck getting a child to curl up with a good book on a rainy or just-too-hot-day to be outdoors. They will play video games until their eyes dry up. No student should be allowed past 3rd and 8th grades without being able to read for understanding at those levels. This newspaper I believe, is written for an 11th grade level, if I am not mistaken. This means that ninth-graders should be able to handle it. Most adults read at 7th or 8th grade level. Most books are at this level. This literacy fact says a lot about us as a nation.

3. Our educational system structure is partially to blame. K-12 demands regular annual progress regardless of whether any material was learned for understanding and retained. There's another class coming along, and heaven forbid we hold any student back, at any age. Social promotion has been the standing order of the day, for DECADES. Teachers' hold-back recommendations are routinely ignored.

4. An overhaul of our educational structure is long past due. K-3, 4-6, 7-9, 10-14. Students should start K at age 6, 1st grade at age 7. Middle school should run three years, grades 7-9. High school should be lengthened to 5 or 6 years. I don't make this recommendation lightly. To borrow a phrase, students are getting "a mile-wide education one inch deep." Look up SC (or any state) high school core subject standards. Read line by line what teachers are expected to teach. On too many facets, teachers could spend weeks, months, or an entire year on them, to insure learning for understanding. They don't have the time, so they merely introduce topics, not study them. Imagine sending more mature and actually prepared high school graduates out into the world at jobs, or at college, able to actually function without needing remedial courses. It's a concept. It's supposed to be the whole point of education.

All the disgraceful national stories about college behaviorial problems on campuses, including frats and sororities, would probably be greatly reduced if the environment consisted of older and more mature young citizens, actually interested in learning and questioning. Our brains don't fully develop for about 23 years or so. Until all those neurons are connected, why push students through a system they aren't ready for?

Annually, everywhere, because students mature at different paces, there are 7th graders not ready for 8th, 8th not ready for 9th, 12s not ready for college, etc. This is fact, and this is fixable. Students in each of the numeric categories I listed would be able to proceed at their own pace. Under this overhaul, the best would still graduate in four years, and NOT need remedial college courses, and NOT need help filling out a job app. There would be no social stigma staying an extra half year, year, or up to two years.

The goal of education is to produce qualified, literate citizens ready to take their place in the world. Who cares how long that takes? We are failing at that, annually, in great numbers. That failure is showing up everywhere, in the low quality of elected leaders at every level and job of govt; low levels of journalism; medical mistakes, you name the career field, it has problems it didn't use to have.

Our current crop of citizens can't lift their heads up away from their devices to walk, talk, drive, or be civil. They can't carry on a conversation unless they use their thumbs. Their standard response to social confrontations however minor or major, is to either flash a middle finger, or a gun. The complete visible lack of manners, tolerance, and Common Sense, is atrocious. They don't even like our Flag.

This is nuts. We allowed this to happen. We created this. We can fix this. We will not fix it if we continue to support the current education structure, one in which too many certified teachers become expensive administrators, or simply quit; where we socially promote the un-ready; where we praise the few with particular skills in whatever (sports, mostly) and ignore the majority; where we allow tax dollars to be pulled away from public schools to fund charter schools that, even with selective admittance programs, show barely more progress.

States need to tell the feds to stay out of public education, and learn to go their own way. States know where their problems are. Relying on blanket programs from the feds that don't allow for individual fixes is wrong, and proven wrong.

Our ineffective, broken national public school system doesn't necessarily need a lot of money to be fixed.

Let's first define the problem. Life-risking busses? Low-paid staff? Too may administrators, not enough classroom teachers? Crumbling facilities? Lousy test scores? Low h.s. grad rate, recently manipulated in this state by lowering the scoring system? High drop-out rate? Too many needing remedial classes in the basic skills their first year of college?

SC is slowly, like it does everything, proceeding to acquire a few new busses each year. It's a start. There will be a horrible accident or two before that gets the attention it deserves. New roads have started, as well. So, there's some light in those tunnels.

Staff are low paid, especially classroom teachers. When her district allegedly has a 16-person public affairs staff, it's difficult to listen to her and the school board complain about funds shortages. When local and state govt officials give away the bank to entice new businesses to settle here, there is a not so hidden cost to those offers: someone else is going to get short-changed. So far, that someone else has been SC education.

Low test scores, grad rates, high drop out rates, and a high number of graduated students needing remedial courses, is mostly a function of lousy home lives, and of schools trying to teach too much in four short years, or 175 days times 4 = 700 high school days. That simply is not enough time. It just isn't. Teach less, or add more days. That simple.

Parents and students should not get all glossy-eyed over great GPAs. Almost none are based on detailed knowledge of any subject. Scan through the standards for any required high school course. I defy you to explain to me or anyone else, satisfactorily, how so much can be taught for understanding, in such a short time period. Answer is, that it can not and is not being done. Remedial college freshman courses, drop out rates, and grad rates, are all proof. Students for decades and decades have received a "miles wide, inch-deep" education exposure. Most folks posting here including me are victims of this approach.

Simply by reading the core state standards/requirements, one should quickly grasp that students simply aren't being given enough time to absorb, critically think about, and understand the material, much less the nuances. We annually send off un-prepared, mostly socially promoted students into the world, be it to sell drugs and work retail, attend a career technical school, or attend an actual college, sorely un-prepared to handle the advanced course work or life challenges.

One shouldn't criticize, without having viable alternatives. Here's mine.

We need to re-structure our K-12 system. it currently is based upon age. If you are a certain age you need to be in a certain grade level, and that is all there is to that. The horror of holding a chlld back a year, especially in early years, is too much for those involved. That self-esteem thing weighs more than any other single factor.

Our schools should start first graders at age 7. No one goes to 4th grade without reading at 3rd grade level, period, nor does anyone go past 8th grade without reading at an 8th grade level. Most newspapers are I believe, set for 8th grade reading levels. It's not that tough a standard.

If it takes a student six years to graduate high school, I say why not. Eliminate the four anachronistic levels, and replace with a different, perhaps numeric scale. One being beginning knowledge levels, and 6 being actually ready for college course work without needing remedial classes. Testing at registration would help place students in appropriate starting levels.

Sending 19-20 year olds off to college isn't a bad idea. Their advanced maturity should translate to less college nonsense, especially fraternity and sorority behaviors that have made national headlines over the years, and more students actually staying in college, actually learning, as opposed to one and done, or not even attending at all. This carries forward to graduating 25-26 year olds into the real world, far better prepared to handle job challenges and life itself. Repeated studies have shown human brains take about 23-25 years to fully mature. Why rush students through a system they aren't built for?

Personally, I want my nurse to know what the heck he or she is doing. I want my airplane pilot to be smarter than his or her instruments. I want my train engineer fully alert at all times. I want the truck drivers high-balling me on the highways trained and able to handle their rigs. That list goes on and on.

Shut down charter schools. Stop the drain of public school funding. Change our school funding system. Pay all our teachers a living wage. And let's re-invent the way we teach our young.