Public schools, private schools, vouchers....

[Really_Not_All_That_Bright]

[QUOTE=OtakuLoki]
I don’t think so. Considering that by age 11, I was having fantasies about bringing a gun to school and shooting the worst offenders, teacher and student, I’d guess that at least six of us would have died before 1986 if I hadn’t gotten out of that school district by 1980.
[/QUOTE]

Bloody hell. Sorry I joked about it.

If vouchers could move 80 % of the other students (or 70% or 50% or 20%, whatever percentage it winds up being) from their sphere of influence into an environment where they can get a descent education, then that’s an improvement over the current system. I fail to see why you would oppose that.

Most of the public schools which regularly fail to meet NCLB standards have student bodies comprised mostly of minorities. You are effectively advocating the resegregation of the school system.

[OtakuLoki]

[QUOTE=Really Not All That Bright]
Bloody hell. Sorry I joked about it.
[/QUOTE]

No worries. I wasn’t trying to dig for sympathy, just explaining the depth of the problem.

[Rubystreak]

[QUOTE=OtakuLoki]
No worries. I wasn’t trying to dig for sympathy, just explaining the depth of the problem.
[/QUOTE]

I went to a private Catholic high school (on scholarship, so I was not in their target demographic), and let me tell you, it had its problems too. Bullying happened and was ignored. The teachers were less educated and had lower salaries than the public schools. Our programming was limited because of the sized of the faculty (no music, no Italian, no sports teams). It cost what the vouchers would offer. I begged my parents to go to public school to get away from that place. So, I’m not sure how this private school idea would solve all our problems, including the ones OtakuLoki had. They couldhappen in a private school too.

[Zsofia]

[QUOTE=Weirddave]
First of all, a full voucher system would benefit everyone, not just “a privileged few”. Second, making up numbers here, let’s suppose that 10% of the kids in the system are “bad” (you call them “inner city kids”, lobotomyboy63 calls them “gangbangers”, whatever term you want to use). Right now, these kids are ruining the schools for everyone. If vouchers could move 80 % of the other students (or 70% or 50% or 20%, whatever percentage it winds up being) from their sphere of influence into an environment where they can get a descent education, then that’s an improvement over the current system. I fail to see why you would oppose that.
[/QUOTE]

An improvement for that 10%, 20%, whatever - but what about the kids you’ve abandoned to that bottom 10%? Their lives are now that much worse. Of course, they’re the kids whose parents aren’t interested/educated/involved/present - in other words, the most vulnerable children.

[Weirddave]

[QUOTE=Rubystreak]
Did you read my post? I actually have very specific ideas of where that money would go and why it would help if it went there. It’s not just throwing gobs of cash at the wall and seeing what sticks. Your idea seems to be “Just take money away from the public schools, then everything will be fine.” The problem is, as Jesus said, the poor will always be with us. If you want to help the people in the bottom SES group, and the kids whose parents aren’t very invested in their kids’ educations, you have to give a shit about public schools, because their kids will always be stuck there. Maybe you don’t care about poor kids, but I do. I care about why kids drop out and what the consequences are for our society. I don’t just want to bitch about them later, because they’re on the dole, pregnant in their teens, or in jail. Complaining is easy. Changing things is hard, costs money, and forces you to see the people in need as human beings.

If you’re complaining about kids who can’t read, guess what? Those kids are always going to be in public schools. I have actually worked with middle school kids who can’t read at grade level, and I have a good idea of what can help them get caught up, so they won’t feel like they should drop out in high school. And anything worth doing costs money. You need to hire specialists, you need to have smaller classes, you need new materials… unfortunately, the schools cannot get those things without money.

You think you’ll wave your magic voucher wand and the kids with real issues, the disadvantaged kids, will go away? I don’t see how, and I don’t see you address them in your plan. I’ve addressed them in mine.

ETA: OtakuLoki, I know you had a bad experience in public school. I wish you could see past it, that all schools are not that way, and public schools in general do not deserve a cut in funding because of your personal issues.
[/QUOTE]

But your “specific ideas” are “more of the same”. The problem is that the status quo isn’t working. I addressed the problem too: the formation of specialty schools for special needs students. Your child has Autism? There’s a school for it. Your child can’t read at 10? There’s a school for it. Everything that you’re crying out for-specialists, smaller classes, new materials, whatever-is much more readily available with a voucher system as opposed to the warehouse system we have now.

[Weirddave]

[QUOTE=Zsofia]
An improvement for that 10%, 20%, whatever - but what about the kids you’ve abandoned to that bottom 10%? Their lives are now that much worse. Of course, they’re the kids whose parents aren’t interested/educated/involved/present - in other words, the most vulnerable children.
[/QUOTE]

They are lost now. What’s the difference? Under my plan at least the others get out. Besides, I already addressed this in the last thread. Troubled students are just another type of student. Schools would spring up to specialize in troubled students, and even if they didn’t and all that was left in public schools was the “dregs”, well, then public schools could focus on teaching just that kind of kid. Discipline, respect, uniforms, regimented classes, heavy emphasis on trades, ROTC training, whatever it takes. Seems to me that even the bottom benefits under my system.

[Rubystreak]

[QUOTE=Weirddave]
But your “specific ideas” are “more of the same”.
[/quote]

If they were, they’d already be in effect, right? But they aren’t, so they aren’t “more of the same.”

The problem is that the status quo isn’t working. I addressed the problem too: the formation of specialty schools for special needs students. Your child has Autism? There’s a school for it. Your child can’t read at 10? There’s a school for it. Everything that you’re crying out for-specialists, smaller classes, new materials, whatever-is much more readily available with a voucher system as opposed to the warehouse system we have now.

I don’t think you realize this, but people whose children have autism and other special needs kids WANT them in with the other kids. Most of them can function better than you think, and they and the other kids benefit from exposure to each other. Shunting all autistic kids (as if they were all the same and had the exact same needs, none of which could be largely addressed in a regular ed setting with some modifications) to The Autistic School is NOT going to solve the problems you say our schools have.

What you also don’t realize is that the kids with the major issues ARE ALREADY in separate schools. The extreme bad behavior, the extremely developmentally challenged, already elsewhere. The kids who are in regular public schools pretty much can handle being there, though some of them require more energy to accommodate. Some of them need program modifications. Separating kids as you suggest is not the solution.

Also, I’d like a cite that the voucher system is the answer to kids with lower reading scores, kids with autism, kids with serious behavior problems, etc. I doubt it. Teaching them how to function in society is much more useful for their education, and I don’t think it harms the other kids if the teachers are trained, supported, and effective (and I have no reason to think teachers in private schools are better trained, supported, or effective, and I’d like a cite for that too).

I also think you’d find a LOT of resistance from the parents of these kids at the idea of warehousing THEM in “special schools.” Are you going to force them to send their kids to these schools? Do you realize that a disproportionate number of kids who are in special ed are kids of color, esp. African American males(just one cite among many)? There is debate about why this is, but if you skimmed all those kids off, it’s going to look an awful lot like “separate but equal.” I just don’t think you understand the realities that would result in enacting your plan. It would not get the reception you think it would.

[VarlosZ]

@Rubystreak

Also, the school that you mentioned that charges $13,000 is automatically going to get students whose parents have a higher SES than the kid who goes to the public school. Even with a voucher that covers half the tuition, the kid with the parents who live on transfer payments will not be able to attend. Thus, it becomes a way of segregating poor students from wealthier students.

@Really Not All That Bright

It’s neither better nor worse than isolating the priveleged few from the inner-city kids, as an expanded voucher system would do.

I don’t understand. You’re arguing that a voucher system would increase the segregation between poor students and rich ones?

Voucher System: money available to inner-city kid for non-ghetto private school = $x,000
Current System: money available to inner-city kid for non-ghetto private school = $0

The current system completely segregates the inner-city kids from the middle and upper class schools: they can’t afford a private school, and they’re forced to go to their local (generally poor) public school.

@RubyStreak

If you want to help the people in the bottom SES group, and the kids whose parents aren’t very invested in their kids’ educations, you have to give a shit about public schools, because their kids will always be stuck there.

But the whole point of vouchers is to provide a means for them to get unstuck from public schools.

Maybe you don’t care about poor kids, but I do. I care about why kids drop out and what the consequences are for our society. I don’t just want to bitch about them later, because they’re on the dole, pregnant in their teens, or in jail. Complaining is easy. Changing things is hard, costs money, and forces you to see the people in need as human beings.

Do really think the difference of opinion here stems from the fact Weirddave doesn’t care about poor kids or see them as human beings, but you do?

You think you’ll wave your major voucher wand and the kids with real issues, the disadvantaged kids, will go away? I don’t see how, and I don’t see you address them in your plan. I’ve addressed them in mine.

I find fault with this argument, because there’s no reason it couldn’t be applied to any private endeavor which could conceivably be performed by government. For example, you could have a detailed plan for improving the efficiency of hybrid cars that requires the state to take over all such research and development, but the plan that consists solely of “waging a magic free market wand” would still be overwhelmingly superior.

[Rubystreak]

[QUOTE=VarlosZ]
Voucher System: money available to inner-city kid for non-ghetto private school = $x,000
Current System: money available to inner-city kid for non-ghetto private school = $0
[/quote]

If the kid in question’s family can contribute $0, then your $x is not going to make a difference unless it covers the entire tuition.

Do really think the difference of opinion here stems from the fact Weirddave doesn’t care about poor kids or see them as human beings, but you do?

He seems to lump all autistic kids together, all special ed kids together, and has some amorphous idea of what a “problem kid” is, though they should be separated too. I’m not sure who he thinks will administer who these different kids are, and what schools they should be made to go to. It seems like he’s categorizing without much awareness of what these categories entail, and what public reaction would be to this. It’s much more complicated than he seems to think, for reasons I’ve pointed out in my previous post.

Also, do you realize what kind of infrastructure is necessary to create new schools? How much it would cost to privatize the entire education system? That $13,000 per kid wouldn’t cover start up costs, I don’t think, do you?

[Jayn_Newell]

[QUOTE=OtakuLoki]
I don’t think that it is necessarily an argument against vouchers to say that they’ll take the money from the public schools. IMNSHO that’s part of the purpose of vouchers.
[/QUOTE]

Fair enough. I just worry that all this emphasis on private schooling skirts the issue of why public schools aren’t doing so well in the first place. For me, number of teachers tends to come to mind, as the school I went to was relatively small and as a result, often had teachers teaching subjects they weren’t very fluent in (the math teacher got physics, the science teacher–dunno what they were giving him, but he left because he wasn’t going to be teaching any more science, the french teachers got stuck with whatever courses the school decided to offer for the immersion students, which they may or may not know anything about). Part of that was because as a smaller school, they were often called upon to take classes regardless of their experience, because someone had to teach them. And don’t get me started on our music program. Reducing the number of students=reducing the number of teachers=making it harder to provide qualified teachers for all subjects, reducing the quality of the education the remaining children get.

The thing that really bothers me about the voucher system is that it doesn’t address the issues with public schools at all. Unless the public school system were to be scrapped altogether (and I don’t see that happening), there are always going to be kids who can’t get into private schools for whatever reason. And as has been mentioned, the private schools aren’t necessarily better. The voucher program doesn’t solve anything, it just tries to avoid it by giving students an easier ‘out’.

I have to admit a bit of a knee-jerk reaction to the subject, coming from a small rural school where vouchers could not have helped. But we can either make things better for everyone, or make them better for some and worse for others. I think that’s what this argument boils down to.

[Rubystreak]

[QUOTE=Jayn_Newell]
Part of that was because as a smaller school, they were often called upon to take classes regardless of their experience, because someone had to teach them. And don’t get me started on our music program. Reducing the number of students=reducing the number of teachers=making it harder to provide qualified teachers for all subjects, reducing the quality of the education the remaining children get.
[/quote]

This is true. Larger public schools have an economy of scale that allows them to have class offerings that are superior to smaller schools… including the enriched classes that do separate kids by ability levels.

Some classes that were offered at the local public school that I missed out on by going to the small, “elite” private school:

–Any sort of music class, including choral, band, and orchestra
–A theatre program with school plays in a real theatre
–Any foreign language besides French or Spanish (our local school offers 10 or 11 language choices)
–Sports teams that compete in area-wide leagues
–A photography program with dark room
–A gym with a pool
–A wide variety of AP and accelerated learning programs, including the IB program and college-level classes (we had some but the public school had more)

And this is in a district that has some funding problems, but the infrastructure is already in place for all these programs because they have to serve the needs of1,700 kids. Do you think voucher schools could operate on this scale? Would the kids get the same type of programming?

[OtakuLoki]

Rubystreak, I’m not actually trying to argue for vouchers. As I said in the postscript in my original post, there are a number of very good reasons to oppose them. I tend to favor them, but I also know it’s largely an emotional reaction on my part, and as such not one that I’m comfortable trying to present as a rational argument.

The big plus to vouchers, in my mind, is that it offers the public schools an incentive to try to police themselves. Even today, for the most part, if someone can prove malfeasance on the part of a teacher, school administration, or school district as a whole, what happens is that the associated municipality is assessed with a one-time charge from a lawsuit, or settlement. And it never touches the school’s normal operating budget. Which means, on a day-to-day basis, there’s no incentive for people to police themselves.

I’m not trying to claim that private schools are all run by angels, nor even that they’re all effective schools. I just think that fact that the public schools have no financial incentive to police themselves is a part of the problem.

Is it the only problem with public schools? Hell, no. Is it the largest problem? Probably not. Are vouchers the right answer? I don’t know.

[VarlosZ]

[QUOTE=Rubystreak]
If the kid in question’s family can contribute $0, then your $x is not going to make a difference unless it covers the entire tuition.
[/quote]

Why wouldn’t there be schools with a tuition that was covered by the basic voucher amount?

Also, do you realize what kind of infrastructure is necessary to create new schools? How much it would cost to privatize the entire education system? That $13,000 per kid wouldn’t cover start up costs, I don’t think, do you?

It’s a legitimate concern, and the main reason you’d have to ease into a voucher system very gradually, but it’s not insurmountable. Well capitalized corporations that can make a profit with volume over the long term would have the resources to sink into buildings, school buses, etc. Also, I wouldn’t be surprised to see lots of storefront schools pop up. There’s no reason a school has to have 1000 kids and take up half a city block. For example, one could rent a large-ish commercial space big enough to accommodate 100 students – at $10K per that’s a $1M gross income, which should be enough to cover rent and teacher salaries with enough profit left over to provide a healthy incentive for lots of similar schools to be formed.

I’m just spitballing. Like I said before, no one can be sure exactly how it would turn out. Maybe you’re right and voucher’s wouldn’t significantly improve the quality of education or draw lots of kids away from failing public schools. I’m just not seeing the downside you apparently do. Yes, it would be taking money away from public schools, but only in proportion to the extent to which it reduces their population of students, so the public school system would contract but still spend roughly the same amount per pupil. Sub-optimal, perhaps, but hardly a catastrophe.

[Weirddave]

I don’t understand why this seems such a difficult concept to you Ruby. Each parent would get a postcard the summer before their kids start school:
Dear Parent,

The following schools are available for your child to attend this fall. Please select which one you want him/her to attend, detailed information about each school is available at our website:
Springfield Academy (default)-general education
Cathedral of the Immaculate Infection
Adam Sandler Talmudical Academy
The David Hasslehoff Center for the Performing Arts
The Black Canyon Montessori School
Kanya Cemiasscrak Vo-Tech
The Wanda Trossler School of Beauty
Donald Trump Future Farmers College
Yale (a college)

If your child has any special needs, please contact this office at (410)555-1212 for assistance with specialized schools in your area.

How hard is that?

[Quartz]

[QUOTE=Rubystreak]
If the kid in question’s family can contribute $0, then your $x is not going to make a difference unless it covers the entire tuition.
[/QUOTE]

Isn’t this a case of perfection getting in the way of the good? Besides, there can be scholarships or home-schooling. Who knows, perhaps a group of parents might use the vouchers to set up their own school?

[Giraffe]

The problem I have with vouchers is due to the fact that I believe education is not one of the things that the free market is designed to do well. The free market works wonderfully at things that derive naturally from a company’s economic self-interest. Making high quality electronics at the lowest possible price, inventing new solutions to improve the way we cook, travel, communicate, etc – these are all natural outcomes of companies trying to maximize the amount of money they make.

If your goal is to maximize some other quantity for society as a whole, be it education, firefighting, law enforcement, etc., the free market model doesn’t work very well, if at all. Because, unlike with the purchase of an iPod, a child who needs an education doesn’t have the option of simply abstaining from the transaction altogether if the market presents options which are not satisfactory. Or no options at all – what if private schools elect not to set up schools in inner city neighborhoods, where the costs and liabilities are likely to be the highest yet one can only command the minimum price? You can’t force a business to set up shop somewhere it deems unprofitable – just look at supermarket availability in poor vs. middle class neighborhoods. Kids in these neighborhoods are least able to travel long distances to reach other schools.

Moreover, because a company’s only job is to maximize their profits, their goal has to be to provide as little as possible for the greatest price. Many private schools currently do a good job of teaching students, but how much of that is due to the selection bias of their student population? Parental involvement in education is often cited as one of the primary factors in academic success – any parent willing to pay for private school is far more likely to be actively involved in their kids’ education than the average person. How would a private school full of the same students currently in public school be able to do a better job with less money? And even if they somehow could, why would they? As long as you’re doing the bare minimum required to keep your federal accreditation and sufficient enrollment, where’s the incentive to improve the quality of education?

I think the net effect of school vouchers would be a small increase in the education level of middle and upper class families who are already succeeding in school (due to active parental involvement), and a significant decrease in the education level of everyone else.

[Shodan]

[QUOTE=Weirddave]

Dear Parent,

The following schools are available for your child to attend this fall. Please select which one you want him/her to attend, detailed information about each school is available at our website:
Springfield Academy (default)-general education
Cathedral of the Immaculate Infection
Adam Sandler Talmudical Academy
The David Hasslehoff Center for the Performing Arts
The Black Canyon Montessori School
Kanya Cemiasscrak Vo-Tech
The Wanda Trossler School of Beauty
Donald Trump Future Farmers College
Yale (a college)

If your child has any special needs, please contact this office at (410)555-1212 for assistance with specialized schools in your area.

[/QUOTE]
I want the brochures from these schools.

But all seriousness aside, I don’t see the drawbacks. The average cost per student is $X. Every student has a voucher for that amount.

The public school in his area is obliged to accept any student who applies. If the student can get into another school in his area who will accept the $X, or if his parents wish to supplement the voucher with their own money, he goes there.

Trouble-makers/disruptive/students whose parents are too stupid or crack-addled to care/whatever will tend to congregate in the public schools. Just like they do now. (Or they drop out altogether and become meth dealers or wear a paper hat. Just like they do now.) All the other students go to other schools. The other schools have 80% fewer discipline problems than the public schools do now, and the public schools have 80% more. Tough on the public schools, but at least the majority of the students do not have to deal with an atmosphere not conducive to learning, and the teachers have more time to teach and less to discipline.

It is emphatically not a win-win situation, certainly. But those who are less likely to succeed are in an environment which makes it even more likely that they fail, and the majority is in one that makes it even more likely that they succeed. The difference is that the losers are not allowed to spoil it for the rest.

Regards,
Shodan

[lobotomyboy63]

(Referring to post #17)

[QUOTE=Really Not All That Bright]

There’s a lot of falling-sky stuff here, and not that much of reality. Of course kids today have nicer stuff than kids 30 years ago- society as a whole has more disposable income than it did 30 years ago.

[/QUOTE]

I beg to differ. I’ve taught at a variety of schools and seen too much of it. E.g. children raising children…just today, a fellow teacher was talking about a student: “Her mom is 28.” The kid is 14. Different schools have had different issues, but IMO issues in public schools reflect how parents are living their lives and raising their kids.

As for disposable income, the fact that my parents had some didn’t automatically entitle me to it, nor did they think they had to give it to show love. With the real estate situation today, I wonder how much disillusionment there is now that mommy and daddy can’t buy junior a car.

And then there are the twixters. I happened to catch the article in Time mag while waiting for my doctor’s appt. Twixters are children in their 20s who have decided they don’t want to leave home, often despite having a college degree. They usually take low-paying jobs and put all their earnings into luxuries.

When he finally got around to me, I mentioned it. He said, “I have patients whose kids are driving them into the poor house. They won’t tell them no.”

From an article:

There was a time when people looked forward to taking on the mantle of adulthood. That time is past. Now our culture trains young people to fear it. “I don’t ever want a lawn,” says Swann. “I don’t ever want to drive two hours to get to work. I do not want to be a parent. I mean, hell, why would I? There’s so much fun to be had while you’re young.” He does have a point. Twixters have all
the privileges of grownups now but only some of the responsibilities. From the point of view of the twixters, upstairs in their childhood bedrooms, snuggled up under their Star Wars comforters, it can look all downhill.

http://pasta.cantbedone.org/pages/6SVlUd.htm

I just hope the Super Nanny keeps straightening out kids before they come to my class.

By the way, as a frame of reference: as public schools go, I’d say mine is better than average. We haven’t had problems with test scores, and we don’t have fights very often. I know of one kid who was dealing some drugs, but there may have been more I didn’t hear about. I think we had something like 80% of kids qualify for free lunches. Our enrollment is around 1500 and we do have a police officer on campus.

One of the biggest differences I’ve noticed since I started teaching in 1986 is that kids care less and less if they fail. Honestly when I was 14, I probably didn’t care enough either but I knew my parents did. I’ve sat down with students and their parents and when the parent learns the kid is failing 50% or even 75% of their classes, I don’t see a major eruption from most of the parents. Often the kids are failing for dumb reasons. They did the work but didn’t turn it in, or they didn’t make up a test after an absence. It’s as if the parents don’t think they have any way of influencing the child. If they haven’t figured it out by now, I guess they don’t.

[D_Odds]

[QUOTE=lobotomyboy63]
As for disposable income, the fact that my parents had some didn’t automatically entitle me to it, nor did they think they had to give it to show love. With the real estate situation today, I wonder how much disillusionment there is now that mommy and daddy can’t buy junior a car.
[/QUOTE]
The bigger disillusionment will occur when Junior realizes he is earning more than Mom and Dad, but can only afford 1/2 the house he grew up in.

[Voyager]

[QUOTE=VarlosZ]
Why wouldn’t there be schools with a tuition that was covered by the basic voucher amount?

[/QUOTE]

I’m sure there will be. And how will these schools stack up against those with kids whose parents can afford twice that amount? Or a few thousand more?

How are the parents who don’t care now going to care when they can hand in their voucher? Are they going to suddenly make a great effort to find the best school where today they can’t be bothered to see if a kid did homework? Are they going to be able to resist the smooth talking school salesmen (your kid will get into Harvard! Guaranteed!) when they did such a great job resisting the mortgage salesmen?

My schools and my kids schools in NJ were great, mostly because the district had a large percentage of well educated parents who cared. In California our particular school was ok (we picked our house out so that would be so) but even here the HS teachers at parent meetings always mentioned that the parents of the kids doing well always came though there was nothing to really talk about, while the parents of the kids who needed help didn’t show.

I’m an elitist, so I’m all for kids being separated based on ability and performance. That’s how I got a fantastic education in a school where my graduating class was over 1500 kids. You don’t need vouchers to make that happen.

And if anyone thinks the vouchers would be adequate in our anti-tax environment, you’ve been asleep for past 25 years.