So you want to fix education…

Not content to let the war in Afghanistan slide onto the back burner while he pimps for a Chicago Olympics (read: help dirtbags like Valerie Jarrett and other Chicago scum profiteer while the city of Chicago takes a longterm net loss on the event), our Narcissist in Chief now thinks shortening summer vacation is the way to improve American education.

Keep in mind, this is a state and local issue, so the good news is that his dopey ideas can’t take hold anytime soon.

His basic premise is that kids forget stuff if they are out of school too long on summer vacation. So his simplistic fix is to shorten the vacation.

I have some reporting experience on this concept and can say with reasonable certainty that much more can be accomplished without increasing the number of instructional days per year.

It’s called year-round school and it’s been tried in many communities around the nation. All you do is set up a school calendar that has more, but shorter, vacations. Of course, there is always some resistance to this kind of change. Lebanon Community Schools in Lebanon, Ind. instituted a year-round calendar in one of its elementary schools back in the 1990s and Superintendent Dave Hutton was pushing a plan to eventually convert the entire system to a year-round calendar.

That was until the politically ambitious wife of a funeral director convinced three local people to run for the school board on a platform of opposing Hutton’s proposed changes. There was more than enough fear and ignorance in the community to elect the three and once they got control of the board they ran Hutton out of town and purged the system of anyone who agreed with him. Hutton landed on his feet in Michigan, proving that living well really is the best revenge.

Once their mission was accomplished, the three new board members were out of ideas and the district drifted. It was a classic example of what happens when school board members decide they know more about education than professional educators and proceed to micromanage a district into stagnation. In my years as an education reporter, I saw it happen several times and never with a good outcome.

The year-round calendar at Lebanon’s Harney Elementary School, however, had such a devoted following among some families that it continued for several years. I find no reference to a year-round calendar on today’s Lebanon Community Schools web site, so it may have fallen by the wayside.

That said, the only real fix for American education is in the hands of parents. We’ll see incredible improvement in education if and when parents decide to actually be parents and take an active interest in their kids’ education.

Kids who come from stable, loving two-parent families consistently do well in school and later, in life.

Several years ago, Indianapolis News Managing Editor Wendell C. Phillippi opined in an editorial meeting that the proliferation of daycare centers was resulting in a new breed of criminal. His remark was greeted by a stunned silence and murmurs that he was drunk or crazy.

But it turns out that WCP was more perceptive than we knew. Early childhood development experts have demonstrated repeatedly how important parental presence is during a child’s first few – and highly formative – years of life.

If Obama really wants to help American education, he needs to do whatever he can to strengthen families and help parents understand that their kids are their first priority.

End of rant.