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.