rjung, some public school systems and individual schools are excellent. Others are in the ditch. I’m not certain that NCLB always measures which is which. It certainly is not a good measure of teacher competency.
NCLB may have been well-intended, but it wasn’t well-planned.
Teachers and the public in general have access to information regarding which schools are “failing” and which are not. They don’t always have a choice about which schools they are assigned to. That often depends upon the needs of the individual school and the seniority of the teacher. (Placement may vary from one school system to another.) Some teachers may also prefer to work in the more challenging situations.
Exactamundo! I don’t know how much of the local school budget is federal dollars – school officials I talk to are very vague about the percentage, but I get the feeling it’s not that big. But whatever it is, it isn’t enough to support the federally mandated programs. So it seems to me that it shouldn’t be that hard to “kick the habit,” since declining the federal dollars would allow the district to also refuse to provide the federally “mandated” programs. Somewhere along the line, someone once told me that, constitutionally speaking, federal “mandates” aren’t all that mandated, but that local governments who refuse to go along can be punished by having federal money withdrawn. I guess if we want our local schools to provide day care, hot lunches and special education, we can make the decision for ourselves to choose between those things and new biology textbooks. As is, the feds offer us money to do those things, then require us to provide a host of expensive services at our own expense in order to keep the federal money. It’s a wash. If the federal government wants to offer a poor school district funds to do things the rich districts do, fine, but cut the damn strings first.
Thanks … took double dose of Keith Olberman last night … listened to NPR … pushed huge pins into Bill O’Reilley doll … slept with two Al Franken books under my pillow … feeling stronger today. I’ll recover. Your cyberhug was most appreciated.
I hate to say it (nothing personal, just a sad reflection on reality), but I think you’re absolutely right. I’m from a relatively poor state, and these are precisely the relevant issues. I know people who’ve quit over NCLB, taken the pay cut, and defected to private schools, or even gotten out of teaching altogether, and were sufficiently fed up with the Feds’ previous meddling they needed little new incentive to do so. The mandates would be fine if they were any good, but the strings are attached to so much rubbish (one man’s trash, etc., of course) it’s really worse than a wash.
Part of the problem, as I see it, is that NCLB is a wrecking ball without a construction crew follow-up. Teaching right now is not an attractive field for most folks; you either have folks going into it with missionary zeal, or you have folks going into it because they’re not savvy or motivated enough to succeed in a more lucrative field. The first group has a lot of burnouts; the second group has a lot of really pathetic members.
I’m not convinced that privatization is going to do much good. Has that been tried anywhere else with any success? I’d define success as success in educating the vast majority of a country’s children in a rigorous, acceptable fashion. The only country I know of that’s privatized schools is Saudi Arabia; I don’t define that as a success, and I worry that something less severe but similar might happen here (i.e., folks with an agenda would pick up the education ball in order to indoctrinate children).
That said, semiprivatization, in the form of charter schools, seems to me like a decent idea. For selfish reasons, I’d hope that the schools receive enough funding such that teachers can be well-paid (it drives me crazy that teachers aren’t paid enough to support a family). But the charter school movement is one that I feel vague support toward.
I believe there has been an attack on the public schools since the commissioning of A Nation at Risk during the Reagan administration. The Arizona School Board provides answers, albeit biased, to most of the current and past attacks on the public school system. The Manufactured Crisis: Myths, Fraud, and the Attack on America’s Public Schools, by Berliner and Biddle, provides lots more information.
Government schools are islands of socialism in a sea of competition and choice. Visit Heartland’s School Reform Issue Suite to learn how choice and privatization would improve K-12 schools.
When profit is the motive, I doubt the best interest of America’s students is part of it. What we could end up with are factory schools, with standard operating procedures to go along with standardized tests. Trouble is, people do not come standardized.
Of course we must have public funding of schools. Taxpayers aren’t paying for the education of everyone else’s kids, they’re paying back for the public education they got back when they were children.
That said, there’s a lot to be said for allowing failing enterprises to fail. It’s evolutionary improvement. We may not know why one school fails or another succeeds. We don’t know how to fix broken schools. So destroy the broken school, don’t force students to attend a broken school! Schools exist to serve students, students don’t exist to serve schools.
Evolution’s a bitch, man. You have to be careful with this kind of thing, because evolution isn’t particularly interested in any particular child’s welfare.
While I’m all about improving the schools–while I agree that an unacceptable number of American public schools suck–I’m not convinced that letting schools fail is an acceptable solution. Those failing schools are filled with kids, and if we let them fail, the kids fail with them.
If we can let the schools fail without dragging down the kids, that’s wonderful. Just make sure that’s what’s happening.
This arguement always baffles me to be honest. You seem to be saying that private schools, who are motivated by profit, would turn out an inferior product. Yet the very motivation for profit would pretty much ensure that if they DID turn out an inferior product of robot like students, parents would take their ‘business’ (i.e. their children) elsewhere. See, no customers=no vast profits. Its only when there is a semi-monopoly on education (i.e. our current public school system) that the choice is limited…and we get such crap. Or at least such inconsistency in the end product (SOME public schools are quite good…others are complete crap). I find it interesting that, at least in my area, the good public schools seem to be in the same area where there are some very good private schools. Maybe thats just luck or chance…
We currently HAVE private schools. Is it your opinion that they are turning out an inferior product to whats being served up by the public school system? Do you have anything to back up that opinion? Because I have to tell you…the private schools I send my children too seem to be doing a hell of a job…a much better job than the public schools they were formerly in. YMMV…
BTW, I agree with Left Hand of Dorkness about the Charter Schools. They seem to be doing pretty well, at least here in New Mexico. Most of my school clients are Charter Schools.
You see, we’ve copied the US system as much as we could. The TVmovie version of it, too. More and more choices earlier and earlier, curving (don’t get me started on that), special-ed classes (my special-needs classmates were spread out in the regular classes) and some notion that children shouldn’t be “forced” to retake a grade even if they’ve failed 8 out of 10 courses because it would traumatize them.
Add in having allowed several regional governments full control over the syllabus (illegally; the central government simply doesn’t call them up on it when they redo the whole thing); add in all these PC revisions of our history (which I already suffered - a series of 6 civil wars in which my family participated during the XIX and XX centuries was never mentioned in my classes) and well, we’re getting there.
Not wanting to get bogged down in the debate here (I’ve certainly not made up my mind on the ‘cure’ for the state of public education), but in any discussion of private vs. public schools, it is ridiculous to not acknowledge 2 things: 1) parents that pursue private education are certainly already concerned with and involved in their children’s’ education, an incredibly important factor in a child’s performance; and 2) private schools can operate as they wish and make a profit because they can be selective as to who they admit. No special ed students, no handicapped students, etc. It truly is apples and oranges.
So your solution is to keep the kids in the failing schools and hope the school will somehow get better? By “letting schools fail”, I mean the death penalty for failing schools. Y’know, like those old elementary school songs. Fire the school board, fire the principal, fire the teachers, fire the janitor, sell the school equipment on eBay, burn down the school, and sow the grounds with salt.
Then open a new school and hope it doesn’t fail. Or increase the size of other non-failing schools and send the kids there.
The point is, I’m sick of the argument that if a school is failing, we have an obligation to keep trying to fix it. No, we have an obligation to close it and start over. How can we send kids to a school that we know is horrible, on the off chance that maybe someday the school will get better? Is the school more important than the kids? Do we sacrifice the kids’ education for the good of the school?
Couple of things here. First off, what do you mean no handicapped students? Are we talking physical or mental handicapped…not that it matters, we can discuss either. Where do you get the idea that there aren’t private schools for such kids? Though none of my children are mentally handicapped (thank the gods), my middle daughter has SMA…and guess what? Thats right, she goes to private school.
As for the parents thing, is your point that most parents don’t give a shit about their kids and will send them to whatever is easiest…and therefore its better to just leave well enough alone and stay with the current public model?
On your point about profit, I’d say they ‘make a profit’ not by being selective (at least not the way you mean…financially selective in the current model, at least the schools I send my kids too…yeah, I’d go there), but by delivering a superior product than whats served up by the public schools…namely they provide a better education for the kids.
You could of course speculate that this is because they are niche oriented…their potential customer base has more wealth. But I’ve seen models where even poor schools could be profitable if privatized…or there is the Charter model, which a LOT of poor schools out here go. Sort of a semi-privatization that seems to work really well.
But when it was the educators pre-NCLB that were declaring disasters you obviously WEREN’T listening, ehe? Because you were under the impression things were bumping along nicely prior to Bush ( :smack: ). So, whats that say to you, rjung (hint: put ‘partisan’ in there some where in your self analysis and you’ll have hit the donkey on the ass,er, so to speak. ).
:rolleyes: Right. 'Cause you know, I’m SUCH a Bush fan and just believe every little thing he spouts off about.
Here is another clue given to you for free, just 'cause I wuff you…I’m neither a fan of NCLB OR the previous system. In fact, I’m no fan of the public education model at all. I think NCLB has been a disaster…and I think public education IS a disaster. Fundamentally I’m neither a Republican NOR a Democrat…and frankly I think both major parties are full of shit. I seriously doubt I’ll EVER vote for either again. But, if you want to try to keep portraying me as a Bush fan because I don’t agree with you, thats your lookout.
On of the problems with NCLB is it is based on a faulty premise: that schools and their employees are driven by money. In this country, I think very few people indeed go into education (especially at the lower income neighborhood schools) for the money; there are few teachers who couldn’t be making more for doing less outside of the educational system. Those who do go in thinking it’s an easy job with good pay end up getting out fast, again, particularly in the inner city schools. The problem is, I don’t think the people who proposed or okayed NCLB have a clue that there really are people in the world who don’t do what they do because it’s the most cash.
There are precious few teachers out there who are indifferent to the outcomes of their students, and most of them bend over backwards to TRY to do the best they can. We as a society are holding teachers responsible for things over which they have no control - the environment from which a kid comes and the attitude toward education s/he is exposed to are going to have an enormous impact on performance. Further, problem kids can and do cause enormous discipline problems, that make a bad problem even worse.
Plus, our initial solution to the problem is, if I understand it properly, to CUT funds to the schools performing badly. This is brilliant. The kids at the local school my neighborhood goes to can’t bring home text books at night - there aren’t enough because the money isn’t there. Yeah, this is a school that should LOSE funding.
And no, I am not a school teacher for a living, nor am I related or connected to one in any way.
As for privatizing schools, here are my questions: 1) How does adding a whole for profit layer into the system reduce costs? 2) How many parents, particularly of the kids most in need (a few of whom DO end up getting inspired and breaking out of the poverty trap), would have the interest, time, or knowledge to evaluate a school? 4) How do you deal with the fact that schools expressing popular neighborhood attitudes are more likely to succeed than those with the best academic performance? 3) Where do they get the profit? If it’s not for charging more, it must be from paying less. Which means you have employees in some of the most difficult work going being paid less and less as the drive for more and more profit increases.
Well, that was a reference to the possibility that Bush’s whole idea behind NCLB was, as I said, to throw a monkey wrench into the gear box and make the American people rebuild it better. I think one of the things we liberals have to begin taking responsibility for (not blame, responsibility, and there’s a difference) is the concept that the U.S. government can provide magical solutions to a host of social problems. FEMA is a prime example – most Americans think FEMA is the U.S. government’s fast-response agency for disasters. It isn’t. It’s a clearinghouse for almost unlimited resources available at a moment’s notice to local authorities trying to respond to disasters. FEMA doesn’t provide turnkey solutions, it provides the raw materials from which local authorities have to build their own solutions. Local government leaders were supposed to know that – and most do. But in Louisiana, government leadership was sadly lacking or didn’t exist at all, so there was no way to use the FEMA resources that were randomly poured into the problem.
With NCLB, the government just said, “Get your house in order!” and gave states and schools a deadline (I know, it’s a lot more detailed than that, but that’s the gist as I understand it.) So now we on the local and state level have a chance to do whatever we have to do to meet that requirement. If that means deleting hot lunches or day care or driver education or gifted & talented programs, we can do whatever we want as long as we meet the deadline. Or we can just flip off Uncle Sam altogether, build the best schools we can with the property and sales tax revenues we can generate locally and get on with it. But we don’t have the guts to do the latter, and (at least here in Colorado) we’ve made a royal cock-up of the former.
And, speaking as a self-styled liberal and a registered Democrat, my peeps need to get shuck of the idea that entitlements pave the road to Utopia. They don’t. Liberals need to concern themselves more with education, justice, civil rights, human dignity and social responsibility and less with opening the federal purse and shoveling the cash out. But now I’m starting either a rant or a new thread, and I need to duck out for a few minutes to do some actual work.
First, no, of course that’s not what I mean. I mean that we need to be careful not to let kids slip through the cracks when we’re figuring out how to fix the system.
Second, firing everyone sure sounds like a great idea–but it ignores the many potential reasons why a school might fail. It also ignores the fact that you’re going to have a very hard time hiring new folks from scratch like that, and it’s ignoring the fact that schools tend to fail in neighborhoods that have a lot of other problems, and some of the staff may have expertise in dealing with those other problems.
In some cases there may be no way to fix a school. But firing everyone is only rarely a good idea. Better is to analyze the school ruthlessly, figure out where the problems are occurring, and focus there.
This may mean, gasp, pouring millions into a school, so that class size can be reduced and new, highly qualified teachers can be hired. Fixing education is not going to be cheap.
