And that couldn’t possibly have any unintended consequences. :rolleyes:
I’m very much in favor of a vigorous union. I just want administrators who aren’t total wimps, who don’t whine, “But it’s so HA-A-A-A-A-RD!” when asked to do their jobs and fire incompetent teachers. I no more want incompetent co-workers than anyone else does. If there’s an incompetent specialist (e.g., music, PE, etc.) teacher, when I pick my kids up from their class, the kids are wild. An incompetent classroom teacher pushes the whole school’s test scores down, and when I get their kids next year, I have to do a lot of catch-up work. Most importantly, won’t someone think of the children? This isn’t my get-rich-quick profession of choice: I’m here because I think it’s damned important, and it’s horrible to see a kid with promise go into the classroom of a teacher who isn’t going to help that kid achieve her promise.
Don’t curb the unions: step up to the unions. Let the unions offer a vigorous defense of every teacher, playing the role of defense attorneys; and make your case better than they make theirs, to fire the bad apples.
And pay teachers better, dammit.
Wrong time of the year for that. The idea that teachers are underpaid only gets traction during election campaigns. Once elections are over, the energy is all put into demonizing them, cutting their salaries and firing them , while taking their pensions away.
Well yes, I agree with all of that. Most folks probably aren’t aware of it, but the law requires that once a doctor has classified a child as disabled in any sense, the public schools are required to provide anything that the doctor says the child needs, regardless of cost. I would be interested in seeing what percentage of total public education money goes to special needs kids.
If we were to re-orient our education system around the goal of giving all kids a good education rather than merely maintaining the status quo, that’s one of the issues we’d have to tackle. There are many others as well: overemphasis on testing, money wasted on administration and bureaucracy, irksome paperwork that takes up so much of teachers’ time, and so forth.
A couple years ago, this country had a little debate about health care. Those on the liberal side generally took the need for reform as a given. Our country spends more on health care than any other yet our health care system is terrible in comparison to others; the need for reform was obvious. Why shouldn’t the same logic apply to K-12 education? We outspend every other country. Ours kids are stupider than most. Why is it that on this issue, the same people who support health care reform will resist any attempt to overhaul the system.
Opposition to school vouchers is not opposition to reform. School vouchers is a pretty poor means of reform - they don’t change anything except to throw more tax dollars at the problem. If public schools have problems we should be fixing those problems, not ignoring them.
You mean as opposed to my money that currently funds our schools?
Emphasis on “our schools” . We spend far too little on this common resource. We need to raise taxes, and spend more on public education. Public education does a far better job of educating more people than private schools can ever hope to. Private schools are by definition exclusionary.
Your money doesn’t fund our schools in the sense that you’re saying: once you pay your taxes, the only sense that it’s “your money” is the sense that you’re a voting member of the republic to which the money not belongs.
Society is the primary client of the school, and society is the primary funder of the school, and and society should therefore make the educational decision. If you want to fund a different school for your own kid, that’s awesome, but you need to do that with some money that’s still yours, not with the tax dollars society requires from you.
They really should make public school much more like private schools since almost all folks are in agreement that private schools actually do a better job “educating”
i.e. bonds are actually voted on by the school district
Isn’t this basically what people do who homeschool their kids? They are still funding everyone else’s schooling, yet they are funding additional resources towards their own children’s education. (And seem to do a better job at educating than the public ones)
Of course it is, and I have no problem with homeschoolers. And if they’re doing a worse job of it than a public schoolteacher, they’re absolute morons.
Give me a situation where:
-I have very little paperwork
-I have a tiny class size
-I control curriculum and pedagogical methods
-I’m not limited to specific hours of the day
-I have absolute disciplinary authority
-I control my students’ schedule 24 hours a day
-I control my students’ diet
-I control what my students experience emotionally at home
and I will blow you away with my results. My students will be much closer in academic levels than those in a public school classroom, so there’s not as much differentiation necessary; I can differentiate for individuals much more effectively; I can teach wherever is most appropriate; I can leave students alone for a few minutes while I go to the bathroom; I won’t have emotionally or physically abused kids coming into my room; I won’t have malnourished kids coming into my room; and on and on and on.
If you can afford to homeschool your own kids, by all means do so. I salute you sincerely. Public schools are available because not everyone can afford to do so (or is willing or able to do so for other reasons), and we as a society don’t want those kids cleaning chimneys. They’re a service to society at large first, to the kids second, and only to the parents third.
I’m glad you put “educating” in scare quotes, because private schools do a terrible job educating those students it refuses to admit. You cannot compare their results to public scuools, who do not have the luxury of cherry-picking students that meet their entrance requirements.
Don’t forget one essential point of schooling (public or private): socialization. In school you’ll meet people richer than you, or poorer than you. In school you’ll meet black kids, white kids, yellow kids, brown kids. Girls and boys. Smart guys and dumbasses. In school you’ll have to do lots of administrative crap that you’ll have to do all over again because form 22A.B got lost by the admin staff. You’ll learn that the admin room is only open from 14:00 to 15:30, because fuck you that’s why. You’ll learn that there are bullies out there and no, nobody but you gives a crap about them. You’ll learn that there are suck-ups and that yes, more often than not they do get favoured, despicable as they are. You’ll learn that people are mean, dirty, violent selfish jerks - but that some of them are a’ight.
You’ll also pick up lots of great musical tips, lots of bad fashion ones, and probably learn how to break copyright so hard it’ll run to its mommy crying. And if you’re very, very lucky, you might get to sniff a pair of panties or two along the way.
I’d like to see a Mommy homeschooling little Timmy on all this.
In my (admittedly limited) experience, little homeschooled Timmy comes into the adult world thinking he’s a very special snowflake and with exactly zero experience on how to deal with other people. More often than not, that makes him a total douche, but by then of course it’s too late for him to learn all of this.
Worse consequences than actually increasing funding for these schools which look like they came straight off of the set of the movie Escape From New York?
The teachers and administrators have proven that they can’t even control the students at the school. That isn’t a problem of funding.
We our going to pour more money down the rat hole and not give the kids in those schools, who do want to learn, the opportunity to get the hell out? Imagine what you are saying. We have mandatory education. You are mandating, by force of law, that parents must send their kids (if they can’t afford private school or home schooling) into New Jack City every day to be exposed to the wonderful cultural influences of drugs and violence. To me that is just dressed up child abuse not only sanctioned, but mandated by the state.
You can’t imagine anything worse than that? Not an entire underclass of completely uneducated, poor young men, in the prime of their strength, with no jobs and no prospects? And worst thing you can think of is wasting your taxes?
You have led a sheltered life.
No. No. No.
Disclosure: I went to a private school K-7 and my son is in one now. I teach with a private company for public schools (they kick their kids out and pay us to educate them).
I agree that socialization is wonderful for children (or can be…) but I have a tiny nitpick: Public schools today are still heavily segregated thanks to white flight, school choice and vouchers. For some of my students, the only white people they see are their teachers.
What ?! NO ! Didn’t I make that part clear ? Socialization is a horrible, horrible thing. Socialization sucks hairy donkey balls. But it is necessary, so, y’know, whatever, deal with it, son 
As for your actual point, I agree - it’s not ideal. I myself went to a somewhat privileged school (my parents actually pulled some shady tricks to go around districting rules, including making me enlist for god damned Latin… ) and there were very few “coloured” children among us. Maybe a couple per classroom, tops - I reckon the school board tried to spread 'em around, which is at the same time a good and a bad thing.
Still, the odds of meeting the Other are markedly better in a school (be it public or private) than they are in one’s living room, wouldn’t you agree ?
This conversation is very nice, but it totally misses the point. Vouchers have nothing to do with school reform. They are simply a way to funnel public money into private coffers.
Here’s a radical thought: If you want better public schools, then devote resources toward improving them. Diverting resources is not the way to improve schools.
The hell it isn’t. It certainly is a problem of funding. Of course the teachers and administrators can control the students at the school. Make it a 1:1 ratio and you’ll have control oozing out that school’s pores. Buuuuuuut, we don’t want to devote the resources that 1:1 would cost. (I’m not saying that 1:1 would be the only way to effect improvement in the “control”. It’s probably not even the best way. But it would be an effective, albeit expensive, way.)
While we’re talking cost, let’s also talk about salary. I have a M.Ed. and work in a public school in Texas. I make $57000 per year (SY2011-12). I do a good job. I want to be a school band director, regardless of the salary. However, suppose that salary were doubled to $114000. Do you suppose that might make a difference in who applies for my job? Do you suppose that more young people might study music education in college if they thought they would have a six-figure income when they leave school?
Let’s double it again. Now, the salary is $228000 per year. Are we making a difference yet? Do you think the communities expectations might be different? Do you think my expectations would be different?
Hell yes it’s a problem of funding. Tell you what: If you or a loved one needs brain surgery, take him/her to the surgeon who makes $57000 per year. Does money make a difference? You bet your ass it does!
Look, I love being a school band director, even at $57000 per year. I truly do love what I do and I’m good at it. I am also realistic enough to know that if this were a six-figure job, my investment in preparing for it would have had to be different. My undergrad GPA in my major was only a 3.0. If I knew I was going into a highly competitive, six-figure career, I might have pushed harder for a 4.0, or I would have found a major in which I could have more easily reach a 4.0.
So, in conclusion, if you want better schools, invest in them. Schools are expensive. I mean, they are EXPENSIVE!!! A proper education for the masses (and all their foibles) costs far more than we are spending. If we want to properly educate everyone, in every neighborhood, it will cost LOTS of money. I cannot stress that enough. LOTS AND LOTS AND LOTS AND LOTS AND LOTS AND LOTS of money. Tons. Unless we want to start devoting Department of Defense levels of money at schools, stuff like vouchers and union bashing and whatever other crap we can come up with is just so much smokescreen.
Are these the same one room schoolhouses where kids were whacked for misbehaving or messing up their times tables?