With states across the country facing huge budget deficits and potential devastating cuts to services, the time has come to start charging parents tuition for their children’s public school education.

If parents of the 47 million students in the United States who attend kindergarten through

12^th grade were billed $360 per child per year, that’s $2 a day for each of the 180 days of instruction, nearly $17 billion would be generated. However, let’s say only half of the parents can foot the bill. That still leaves $8.5 billion to deliver to public schools.

Cutting a week out of the already skimpy school calendar as a way to save money, an idea proposed by California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, is not the solution to a fiscal crisis, though if the week cut out was the one for state testing, many teachers and students wouldn’t mind. Already American kids attend school fewer days than most other industrialized nations. While a free education for all is a wonderful gift, it’s simply not possible anymore.

Can half of America’s parents afford $360 per year for each of their children? For the price of a cup of coffee, a child can get educated for a day. For the price of a movie ticket, a child can get educated for a week. For the price of a cellular phone bill, a child can get educated for a month. For the price of a video game console, a child can get educated for an entire year.

There should be no sticker shock about this. Already parents pay for athletic uniforms, musical instruments, lab fees, school-embossed clothing, and field trips. Plus, they get nickeled and dimed to death from schools throughout the year to donate money for art and music programs, to get their cars washed for athletic programs, to consume cardboard pizza so that a few dollars will go to the schools. Children would no longer have to go begging relatives and neighbors to buy coupon books.

For years community colleges charged no tuition. Then 20 years ago they started implementing a $50 per semester fee which rose to $60 per semester in the 1990’s. “How dare they” demonstrations broke out proclaiming the beginning of the end of community colleges. Well, today the colleges have more students than ever before, and the current fee is $20 per unit. For an average class load of 15 units, the cost of one semester’s tuition of college is $300. Nearly half of community college students get their tuition waived anyway due to their low-income status.

Look, nobody enjoys paying for services that used to be free. However, a generation of people has grown up with cable television and don’t even remember that TV used to cost nothing. Paying $360 a year for a child’s education is half of what the average person spends on watching television. Which is more important?

Attaching a price to “free” services will help students and parents understand the value of education. Psychologically it’s interesting how people view something that is “free”: they tend to place less value on it than if they have to pay for it. Walk onto campuses right after lunch, especially at high schools, and notice the garbage strewn around. Kids would less likely trash their schools knowing their parents had a vested interest in the property.

Beyond charging for tuition, parents should be billed whenever their children are truant. Since schools receive funding based on average daily attendance, parents should foot the bill whenever their children miss school for non-illness reasons.

The Scotts Valley School District in Santa Cruz, California is doing just that. The letter sent home entitled “If You Play, Please Pay” informs parents that one child absent for one day costs $36.13. In 2005-06, the district lost nearly one-quarter of $1 million due to students missing school other than legitimate illnesses. While paying the bill is voluntary, many parents, perhaps out of guilt, gladly pay it, further proof that there are parents out there who would pay for school tuition.

A holiday season just ended where scores of parents spent hundreds of dollars on video games, I-pods and cell phones for their children. Is $360 going to break their backs?

Almost a half a trillion dollars is spent on K-12 education each year and look at the results.

One out of every four American children reads below grade level.

One out of every three high school students do not graduate, a stagnant figure for thirty years.

In New York City, less than half of students graduate.  In Detroit that figure is one-fourth.  That’s a staggering number that puts new meaning to the term “dropout factories.”

The problem is not all the bad students; rather, all the bad schools.

Who decided that taking standardized tests was going to revolutionize public education?

Why does such a critical job as teaching require only minimum training and pay?

When did parents decide to stop believing the teachers’ point of view, that teachers are the enemy, to be doubted and questioned?

Why are we amazed that kids who are forced to sit still in uncomfortable plastic chairs for six hours a day easily get bored, distracted, defiant?

Like a dilapidated ramshackle fixer-upper that is more cost-effective to scrap than to renovate, now is the time to bulldoze America’s public school system.

The change that is needed in public education must be huge, along the lines of the civil rights movement.  The same fervor people exert in anti-smoking campaigns needs to be replicated in efforts to transform public schools.

The teaching of America’s youth should be viewed as a bulwark against democracy’s demise.  It’s no good to just let students “get by.”

We must demand excellence.  Our country’s economic future rests on it.

What’s needed is a cohesive vision of a new kind of public school system.

Lengthen the school day and the school year.  There is not enough time to cover all the material in 180 days.  By adding 4 more weeks to the school year and an hour and a half to the school day, children will have an additional year and a half of education between kindergarten and 12th grade.  And they will still get 11 weeks off.

Increase class sizes and teacher salaries.  Schools can’t find enough highly qualified teachers so have fewer of them.  Yes this will mean more crowded classrooms but better teachers can handle more kids.  The money saved from fewer employees can be added to the salaries of those instructors who prove themselves invaluable.

Eliminate homework.  With the longer day students and teachers will have more time to go over the work during class.  Kids can leave work at work and spend more time with their families at home.

Place a moratorium on No Child Left Behind.  Enough with the testing.  Put the focus back on where it should be: the work students perform in the classroom day in and day out.

Bring back vocational education.  Instead of shoehorning everyone into college, provide those students who demonstrate non-academic skills with alternative programs.

Kick out the bad kids.  The concept that no matter how badly behaved a child is he still has a seat waiting for him in a school is incredulous and the main reason why parents pay money for private schooling.  If a child can’t meet a certain degree of decorum, let his parents deal with him so that those children who do want to learn can learn.

A four-day work week for teachers.  Other public servants such as police and firefighters work four sometimes even three days a week due to the stressful conditions of their occupation.  Teachers should be afforded the same perk.  On the fifth day highly qualified paraeducators can run the classrooms taking students on field trips and job shadowing expeditions.

Do away with tenure and teachers unions.  Let bad teachers be easily fired and not cloak themselves in the teachers union armor.  It is time to elevate teaching to a real profession with rewards and punishments.

Go back and teach students the Golden Rule and have them employ it in mandatory community service.  Look at our society and the mess it’s in.  Much of this has to do with lax parenting and non-existent social teaching in the schools.  Students can become better citizens if schools mandate community service as a graduation requirement.

Put a lid on special education funding.  Nothing has wreaked more damage to the funding of schools than special ed has.  It costs twice as much money to educate a special ed student than a non-special ed student.

Start charging for public schools.  Too many people take public school for granted:  free learning, free books, free supplies, free child care, even free food.  No wonder many kids disrespect their place of learning.

Will there be heated discussions about implementing these changes?  Absolutely.

Do details have to be ironed out?  Of course.

But if we don’t get started with a sound vision of solid public schools, every new school fix-it plan whether it’s more testing, block scheduling or the latest computer software will add up to nothing.

Yes, national security is a top priority (though many people can’t locate Iraq on a map), but the best form of homeland security is education security.  Do we want our military to have poorly educated people in its ranks?  You can’t outsource an army.

Every day forty-seven million children attend public schools.

Every day three thousand students drop out of high school.

What type of experience do we want to provide America’s youth?

The time has come to act.

We must provide a public school system worthy of them.