Our public schools are failing our children. I am not saying that all children are failing; some are doing very well. Rather, overall, public education has some major problems. Consider that 30 percent of our children drop out and international tests prove that the United States seriously trails other developed nations in education.

Recently, Jack O'Connell, state superintendent of education, was quoted in the North County Times: "I have begun an intensive effort to find ways to close the gap that exists between successful students who are often white or Asian and financially well off, and struggling students who are too often poor, Hispanic, African-American, English learner or with a disability." Rather than concern himself with ethnic or economic differences, perhaps the state superintendent of public schools should begin by holding public education employees accountable!

Mr. O'Connell is looking for an excuse rather than a solution. I have heard this excuse many times before in various forms from educators. One was so bold as to say "those children (referring to English learners and poor children) just can't learn; this is the best we can do." This is what is known as "soft prejudice of low expectations." What a sad state for our children if their teachers feel this way about them.

Public education's poor results over the years are not because of poor families. It is because public education is an organization that does not hold employees accountable for results. Jack Welch is one of our nation's foremost CEOs and the former leader of General Electric, an extremely successful large corporation. GE holds the philosophy that each employee needs to be evaluated on a regular basis. The top 20 percent of employees in an organization need to be rewarded, the bottom 10 percent need to be let go. This may sound harsh but this is the philosophy used in most successful businesses and corporations today. Those individuals who do not produce are encouraged to find work where they can be productive and successful. The basic problem with O'Connell and the education establishment's philosophy is that they blame children for the shortcomings of adults. They need to look at their own public education structure and the way it encourages mediocre performance.

When you do not reward high-performing employees and at the same time treat them the same as the poor performers, you discourage excellence and professionalism. Human nature also plays into this. When those who produce results are treated the same as their non-producing colleagues, they often lose their motivation.

Mr. O'Connell and those who agree with his philosophy are the problem in public education. Teachers unions refuse to allow school boards to reward the top-performing teachers financially. Then they make it difficult and sometimes impossible to let poor-performing teachers go. When an employee is never rewarded for results but is rewarded only for time in the job, excellence is not the result.

I once heard a teacher claim she was an excellent teacher but her students were not capable of learning. My definition of an excellent teacher is one whose students learn.

When administrators are not accountable, they do not hold teachers accountable. When teachers are not held accountable, we get unprofessional and sometimes quirky programs that are foisted on children as creative teaching. One quirky idea was the "environmental cheeseburger." A teacher once spent a whole year in math class talking about the environmental impact of a cheeseburger. Test results at the end of the year proved that all the students in that math class went backward rather than progress in that year. And yes, some administrators in that district praised this as creative teaching.

Our job in education should be preparing students for real life and to be successful as adults. This requires teaching the core subjects of math, science, history and English by teachers and administrators who are held accountable for the results.

Col. Marshall, an Army evaluator, made several recommendations that were loudly criticized but later proved to be highly valuable to the military. His response to the criticism was insightful, "It is time to despair of an institution when those who serve it and profess to love it no longer challenge their own system, or become less critical than those who speak with the valor of ignorance."

It is not the children who are not learning, it is Mr. O'Connell and the adults who profess to love public education who do not learn. Public education is not a jobs program for adults; it is an organization that should be educating our children.

The solution does not require spending money; it requires those paid to lead to hold the employees within our education system accountable for results with no more excuses - including Mr. O'Connell.

- Jim Gibson is president of the Vista Unified School District Board of Trustees.