Just finished reading through this thread, and I thought this metaphor summed up my position nicely:
And I think this post sums up the selfishness, apathy, and yes - even hatred - I see continuously insinuated by those on the other side. This post just happens to be a bit more honest and direct about the loathsome views presented:
The American mania for mixing capitalism, education, and religion has serious long-term effects on the society as a whole. Especially religion. I think much of the fervor for vouchers comes from religious types who, wanting to maintain “American exceptionalism” in the level of credence given to Biblicalidiocy, are aware that the future is slipping away from them and their benighted ideals and they are fighting tooth and nail to maintain, and if possible, extend their jaw-dropping ignorance of reality.
I haven’t been at a computer and direct-to-PDF links from Google get screwy on my phone, but it’s the first return when searching for:
median school district size
“Characteristics of Public School Districts in the United States: Results From the …” From ED.gov
Even if some sort of alternate schooling system turns out to be wonderful, I think it’s going to be very difficult to implement in rural settings or in districts with only 1-3 schools.
That’s a good metaphor. As for the Titanic analogy - the fundamental concept here is that the reason the Titanic is sinking are causes I can’t do anything about. It’s too big, and there are too many forces on it. Things like “zero tolerance” rules, where a mistake or unintentional possession of a small knife used for sharpening pencils is enough to get a student expelled. Every school district does this, and god help you if your kid is a victim of said bullshit rules. Teachers calling the cops on elementary school kids being disobedient.
The thing is, these outrages are things the publicly funded schools will just get away with. Nobody will go to jail or lose their jobs. They’ll still keep collecting your tax money every year. If they screw your kid over, and later reverse on repeal, generally you won’t collect enough in a lawsuit to punish them in any meaningful way.
So no, the proposal here isn’t to flee the sinking Titanic. It’s to jump from a ship run by North Korea to one run with a more reasonable philosophy. It isn’t sinking, it is actively being run in a direction I don’t agree with and many other people don’t agree with. Our voices aren’t being heard, and clearly it’s a waste of time to attend any local PTA or school board meetings.
Are the private schools actually any better? Maybe not, but the point is, some choice at least means they might be.
I fully agree that we need to provide students alternatives to their local school, particularly at the middle and high school level. It is not an answer to tell kids who are about to enter gang riddled local high schools that they ought to be patient while the folks who couldn’t solve the fucking problem over the last 30 years spend the next 30 years trying to solve the problem.
The concern really ought to be the kids and not some institution or interest group. Does school choice benefit kids or does it harm them? Done correctly it almost certainly benefits kids. IF done correctly. The problem is that the folks most likely to do it correctly are in the pockets of a teacher’s union that is more interested in their members than the mission.
But a voucher system is much harder to do correctly than almost any other viable alternative out there. The main problem with a voucher system is that it offers almost nothing that a charter school system doesn’t provide and it provides an vehicle for gutting the public school system in a way that charter schools do not.
The DC “voucher program” is really a federally funded need based scholarship program. I cannot think of any other type of “voucher program” that has had decidedly positive results, if you can point to one, I would like to see it. The ones that do not inject new money to fund the vouchers almost invariably end up subsidizing local parochial schools for middle class families or subsidizing rich families sending their kids to fancier private school… all at the expense of the broader public school system. This isn’t school choice, its rent seeking.
I think it is much harder to structure a good voucher system than a good charter school system.
Perhaps it would be useful if you told us exactly how you think a voucher system would work. Because the devil really is in the details.
Bullshit. I’ll bet you haven’t even tried. It’s a lot easier to bitch about things than to actually get off your ass and actually show up at meeting and let your voice be heard. It’s even harder to volunteer to do the stuff the PTA tries to do but fails because of lack of support. If you aren’t part of the solution…you are part of the precipitate.
You’re not going to be able to go to an ordinary PTA meeting and convince a school board or teachers that some tolerance for weapons or drugs should be allowed. Think about how the idea even sounds. It’s politically incorrect.
Never mind that when you say that, what you mean is “ordinary tools a kid might have that could theoretically be used as a weapon but aren’t and the kid has a good explanation, and medicine or some random OTC pill that fell in the bottom of their backpack”.
You’ll be shouted down and the very idea you said this used to paint you with the brush that you think weapons and drugs should be in the hands of kids.
Ditto any other idea that is “politically incorrect”.
What do you mean by tolerance? Giving schools discretion often leads to uneven application of that discretion. It provide an avenue for biases and prejudices to seep into the system. I agree that expulsion for every offense is a bad idea but you can codify a sliding scale just like we do with first degree murder, manslaughter and negligent homicide.
I’m sure crazy shit happens all the time (like when they suspend kids for eating their PB&J into the shape of a gun) but if THIS is your rationale for having school choice then its a bad one because political correctness is likely to be just as rampant at private and charter schools as at public schools. Are you under the impression that private and charter schools are going to be more lax on weapons and drugs?
You can at least choose the least bad option. That’s the whole idea. None of us advocating for private or charter schools are under the impression that they will be perfect, simply that competition means that :
a. parents can choose the least bad option
b. Administrators of the public option are on notice. They don’t get to sit back and do a shitty job with no possible recourse.
Here’s an example of a school where a parent had an issue with the school’s medication policy (hemp oil for a student with a seizure disorder); the parent complained, the news media got involved, and the school district changed their policy. Here’s another example, where the school board “made a hasty change to its code of conduct” after they concluded school officials didn’t use good common sense in handling a kindergarten student who brought a Swiss Army style knife to school. According to you, these couldn’t have happened, but in this reality they did.
EVERY school has some medication policy; in most places, it’s a formal written document, available upon request to any parent or concerned citizen. You don’t get up and say, “oh, I want the school to tolerate drugs”; you say, “I want to revise paragraph 6 of the medication policy to read this way” (or the weapons policy, or whatever other policy is an issue). If you get enough other taxpayers and school officials to agree, the policy gets changed.
(Oh, and private schools, especially those accepting any taxpayer money [like vouchers] are likewise subject to zero-tolerance policies.)
In my estimation, a first step in reforming US education would be to completely scrap the way it is currently (largely) funded: through local property taxes. What a stupid, short-sighted way to fund an essential service. Of course, the end result is virtual ghettoization and ever-widening social inequality. (A further pernicious aspect of this funding regime is that one never really has de facto ownership of their own homes.)
Ok so we have school vouchers so the private schools siphon off all of my A and B students that have plans for college after high school and so are motivated to do their best. What happens to those left behand?
a) Lower the standards so a C is the new A and the public can complain how our standards have gone down even more
OR
b) Keep grades the same with a few As and Bs but mostly Cs, Ds and Fs so the public can complain how we are failing kids
No, it’s a kind of bigotry, born of the notion that since public school administrators are paid out of taxpayer money, then they MUST be in it only for the paycheck, because “real” employees work in private enterprise. If you work in the public sector, you’re just a leech, sucking on the public tit and taking money from people who do the “real” work of America. In this mindset, there can be no other explanation for failures. Public schools are not bad because they are underfunded, or overworked with the job of righting all societal wrongs, or grappling with unmotivated or behaviorally challenged students, or any of the other problems actually facing American schools; they are bad because public employees are useless incompetents wastes of oxygen.
When you start from false premises, then all conclusions you draw are likewise false, and this is the underlying basic premise that is so very very wrong.
I don’t particularly like the idea of property taxes being the primary source of funding for government services of any kind - but I’m not sure that the problems of social inequality and ghettoization would be solved if school districts levied income taxes or sales taxes rather than property taxes.
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How about collecting the revenue (from income and/or sales taxes) on a state-wide basis, and then re-distributing it back to the various school districts, such that every student will be assigned the same amount of funding, on a per-capita basis, no matter where they live?
I’m aware that because of the US constitution, it would be unfeasible to do this on a federal basis, but here in the relatively tiny Republic of Ireland, for example, this is how it is done. It’s my understanding that this is done in a similar fashion through much of Europe.