Government run schools. What (if anything) would you do to change them if you could?

Response to comment [from a Satanist]:  "Make taxpayer funding for them dependent on whether or not the taxpaying parent has a child enrolled there."

"...[Leftifts oppose] ...even mentioning God in public schools — students must graduate as secular as possible.

It is not secularism that animates those positions; it is leftism..."  Full text:  Government--Not God or Parents

Throwing more money at public schools is not the answer.  They've received more money and have little to show for it.  If you'd like public schools to work, stop asking God to stay outside. 

Response to comment [from a Satanist]:  "As usual, you didn't address anything I actually said."

I just think you're missing the bigger point.  It's not solely a money issue.  There is obviously a benefit to society when our kids are educated; however, when God is systematically removed from our public schools, it a no-brainer that they will fail. 

Shifting money around will not solve the problem.  Even if parents do not have to pay for public schools because they put their kids in private or parochial schools--it does not solve the problem.  Public school kids are still housed in failing institutions and we must ask why.  I say--it's because we've asked God to leave (Deut 28).  Funding will not change that.

Response to comment [from a Satanist]:  "That seems to imply that every parochial school will be a success.  Or, that allowing kids to pray will roll back years of poor teaching, mediocre curriculums, and low expectations."

I don't know, Harvard was founded by a Presbyterian minister primarily for the purposes of training clergy in the Christian faith How the mighty fall. 

See:  

An Outline History of Religion in American Schools

[Edited notes Ghost That Haunt Us by Adrian Rogers] "What is wrong in America? We are in a crisis. No longer do we believe in absolute truth. If you go back to a period, it began in 1962 to 1982, the courts in 20 years reversed the principle of "One Nation Under God" that had been the principle of American History. In 1962, in Engel v. Vitale Justice Hugo Black ruled that voluntary prayer in schools was unconstitutional. In 1963, in Abington Township School District v. Schempp Justice Thomas Clark set in motion the dismantling of Bible reading. Then, in 1980 the posting of the Ten Commandments was declared unconstitutional. Then came 1982, and the courts prohibited the teaching of creationism--that men, boys and girls were created by Almighty God. Twenty years it took them to expel God from the public schools and tell him not to come back.

What has been the result of that? Children need permission to have medication, but aided by high school counselors, they may have an abortion and to kill a baby. We are in serious times. God has been so systematically excluded a study by the U.S. Department of Education headed up by Dr. Vitz, a professor of psychology at New York university was released to the American public. It was a study centered on text books used by millions of boys and girls in public schools. After the study, Dr. Vitz said: "Those responsible for these books appear to have a deep seated fear of any form of active contemporary Christianity, especially serious, committed Protestantism. This fear has led the authors to deny and repress the importance of this kind of religion in American life. This nature of the bias is clear. Religion, traditional family values, and conservative political and economic positions have been reliably excluded from children's textbooks. The exclusion is particularly disturbing because it is found in a system paid for by taxpayers and one that claims moreover to be committed to impartial knowledge and accuracy. Textbooks are so written as to present a systematic denial of the history, heritage, beliefs, and values of a very large segment of the American people."

That is not a preacher saying that. That is a report by a professor of psychology of New York University, funded by the United States Department of Education. There has been a systematic move to exclude those things we find dear and what we believe to be the foundation of this nation. And as a result, we see values clarification being put into schools. We see values neutral sex education put into schools. We see dispensing of birth control devices and condoms being put into schools. We see abortion counseling without parental notification being put into schools. We see homosexuality being introduced in textbooks as an acceptable lifestyle..."  Full text:  Ghost That Haunt Us

"The Philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the Philosophy of Government in the next." Abraham Lincoln

Government run schools. What (if anything) would you do to change them if you could?