I agree, our public schools are a mess, but the solution is not to use vouchers to disassemble them into a network of private schools, because that will inevitably lead to kids from wealthy families having very nice private schools, and kids from poor (and increasingly) middle class schools having crummy schools. I already here about charter schools cherry-picking students, I imagine the same thing will happen with vouchers.
I favor reform along the lines of theFinnish school system.
Well, it’s been said here many times that if you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to.
You posted in GD; I am attempting help you keep it in GD.
On the other hand, after attempting to correct for various factors that govern selection into private or public schools in observational data, the evidence that private schools outperform public schools is decidedly mixed. Without such correction you compare groups of students who differ in just the right fashion to mislead. Cite, cite, cite. In that third article the authors write:
A successful defense of a voucher system requires more than pointing to bare differences in test scores between public and private sectors. You haven’t demonstrated that shifting everyone to private schools — or even giving everyone the choice — will lead to better outcomes.
(And FWIW: although to hang one’s head in shame is the idiom, to hide one’s head is perfectly sensical, describing an action someone is very likely to do when shamed. C’mon, let’s do better than nitpicky sics.)
Can you distill the salient points from that 5 page article into something more digestible here? Serious question, not in any way meant as a gotcha.
Not to steal Evil Captor’s thunder but just because I’m a bit familiar with the “Finnish schools” education meme from reading about it in articles like his link and this one, it seems to come down to a few key factors in Finnish elementary/secondary education:
Very competitive and prestigious professional status of teachers, who are required to be in the top 10% of applicants to mandatory master’s degree programs in education.
Small school sizes and high teacher/pupil ratios.
A “whatever it takes” individualized teaching ethos where teachers and administrators consult about the best strategies for particular pupils, rather than a “one size fits all” emphasis on yardsticks of universal achievement.
No rankings or inter-school competition but a consistent level of public funding to all schools, meaning that they share basic resource levels and quality standards.
Less teaching. :eek: Compulsory education doesn’t begin till age 7, students spend less time in class and more time playing than their peers in other countries, and teachers spend less time in classrooms and more time working on their teaching plans and dealing with students one-on-one.
A smaller population with more uniform prosperity and a stronger welfare state (meaning that there are fewer hungry/homeless/abused/ill or untreated children for teachers to cope with), as well as more cultural/linguistic homogeneity.
Thanks. I have to wonder how much #6 makes the rest of it a lot easier, not just politically, but operationally. Certainly it’s easier to deal with students who all (or almost all) come in speaking the same language. Of course, they may have a dual Swedish/Finnish system, too, since there are large numbers of ethnic Swedes living in Finland.
Anyway, whatever they did, it made for some good cell phones! 
Wellbut, according to the article, there is some evidence from other small homogeneous Scandinavian countries to suggest that the size/homogeneity bit is not a crucial factor in Finland’s achievement:
OK. Could be that it’s a necessary but not sufficient condition.
I wonder if we’re too focused on average scores in the US rather than looking at variations across states to see which ones are doing better than the others and why. I’m generally suspicious of comparisons of the entire US to some small European country. We don’t have a federally run educational system in the US, so there is no reason to lump all the state together in the first place.
Is it even remotely possible to send every child in the US to private schools?
Well, not all at once. They don’t have the capacity. Presumably, though, capacity would grow to match demand eventually.
And I believe that the purpose of public education is to create a more informed populace, so that they can make better decisions in their democratic role as policy makers. Furthermore, it affords them more opportunity to use the knowledge gained to make more money, which gives the government greater revenue. I don’t understand why we would want to spend public money teaching people things that make them less informed. And letting the community who were taught the same thing decide to continue teaching only what they already know seems like a surefire way to keep people from becoming more informed.
In other words, I don’t see how one can support public education without supporting that people learn the same things. And I definitely don’t see how teaching that “Nessie exists therefore the Bible is true” in any way improves the intelligence of policy or creates a more competitive marketplace.
I was always told to stay in class and Finnish school.
Democracy often produces suboptimal results. If you have a democratic way of getting to what you want, fine. If you don’t, then too bad.
You can say that again! Louisiana’s politicians are just starting to figure that one out, and it is highly amusing.
http://thinkprogress.org/education/2012/07/06/511715/louisiana-republican-religious-islamic-schools/
http://thinkprogress.org/education/2012/06/12/498203/louisiana-vouchers-islam/
For them, I can only manage a hearty “Nelson Laugh!”
Not reading your link, I need to point out that many of those christians feel exactly the same way about your viewpoints being expressed.
Maybe, but as they are TOTALLY WRONG, their opinions don’t count for much. Maybe they count in their heads or in their churches, but is very hard to imagine anything that is as demonstrably incorrect as Young Earth Creationism. It is stupid beyond belief and how anybody in this day and age would think it should be taught as factual to children is insane to contemplate.
I think most Christians would be kinda peeved to hear that their funds might be used to buy texts that said the Loch Ness Monster was proof that evolutionary theory was wrong. I know a lot of Christian personally who would.
Indeed. There’s a lot of nuttiness in this country, but the Loch Ness Monster being taught in schools? And being taught as somehow refuting evolutionary theory? It is to laugh (or cry, as the case may be).