Most Americans have benefited from free public education, but many are not willing to pay escalating taxes for schools in this time of hyperbolic political rhetoric. Education is the most expensive item on most state budgets, and it is the first thing that politicians want to cut.

Too often professional educators are left out of this conversation and choices are made by politicians who want quick results and do not recognize the importance of preparing the next generation for international technology and a worldwide marketplace.

The history of American Education is full of reform movements, but rapid changes in technology make traditional concepts of educational reform obsolete. In the 1600s religious organizations sponsored most learning opportunities, and during the 1700s educational institutions were established for nonsectarian learning at Benjamin Franklin’s Academy of Philadelphia and Thomas Jefferson’s Universities of Virginia. Then in the 1800s elementary schools were available in many parts of the U.S. with textbooks like McGuffey’s readers setting the norm for students who might go to state land grant universities.

By 1900 teacher training was given at “normal schools,” but no formal teacher training was required in most localities. Young men would teach before they went to a university, and young women might teach until they got married. The schools were paid for by property taxes in some states, but educational funding was not universally available, and many children never went to school at all.

However, those who finished high school and college had great advantages over those who did not graduate. National norms had to be established to determine when and how a student could earned credits toward graduation from American high schools. The National Education Association established Carnegie units as the standard for satisfactory performance on high school course work required for graduation. At the beginning of World War II less than half of all American adults had finished high school; now 90% have high school diplomas.

Since 1950 American public schools have weathered cultural storms over integration for people of color, inclusion of Americans with disabilities, and acceptance of individuals of gender ambivalence. Politicians have talked about: “More Phonics,” “Academic Accountability,” “Equal Opportunity in Education,” “Having a Moral Compass,” “Goals 2000,” “Teacher Merit Pay,” and “No Child Left Behind.”

However, politicians have not paid attention to the emerging economies in the world and all the changes in technology. Americans do not care about what is going on in foreign countries or how to prepare workers to compete. We do not realize that there is an age when our young children could learn a foreign language with ease, and then they could sell products to people in other countries.

We do not recognize the need to be able to use the metric system to be more effective in producing and selling products where feet and pounds do not count. We have far too many people who do not understand that science is not perfect, but it is the best thing we have developed to understand the pandemic and climate change.

It is time for teachers to be in the political conversation about education.