Teachers across the country are upset they’re wages are so low, with increasing cost of housing due to inflated prices from urbanization and chinese billionaires buying our real estate some teachers are spending over half their income on housing alone. In some states teachers have protested due to pay raises going entirely to higher ups instead of teachers and other staff.
With the Betse Devos and the strong republican presence, tax payer money is systematically being funneled into private schools. The trend appears to be this, a decent education and educational environment is going to become more exclusive to the privileged. I imagine as the number of uneducated people increases the amount of innovation decreases. So it’s in everyone’s best interest to eliminate the private option. If a group of religious fanatics want their kids taught a certain way then they can home school them. If there’s special private schools for children, then there should be a public option for them.
If we only have a public school option, then more funding will go towards the public schools. I also don’t believe we should have schools competing with children academic scoring in our grade system either. Although private schools seem to be doing just as bad as public schools according to what I’ve seen.
No, I think we should have the option for parents to send their children to a private school, including a religious based school, if they wish to do so.
However, I think we also have a duty to provide enough funding to run a good public school system. And we should not be diverting public money into any private schools unless we have a surplus left over after the public school system is fully funded.
When our economy was more or less focused on agriculture it was reasonable for formalized education to end at 8th grade.
When we moved toward manufacturing, we found that to be inadequate. So, we made high school a requirement and provided public means to attain that.
Now, our economy is moving beyond manufacturing toward high tech, information, automation, etc., with change happening at an increasingly rapid rate, high school is just not enough. Other countries are recognizing this challenge, with Germany and others working to ensure that all those capable and interested can attend college without incurring the risks of debt.
We can’t afford to have kids not being well educated anymore.
It’s not a matter of what the kid thinks. It’s a matter of what we know.
Consider this: public schools, though funded by taxes, are basically free for the parents and are not meeting the standards of many parents. Those parents are either choosing in the best interest of their children to: 1 move to a area with a highly rated public school which is very limited and few options and very expensive tax wise, 2: private school 3: home schooling options.
Since all other options, Moving to a more expensive area and paying more taxes, paying money to the schools, spending full time in teaching their children, are common tactics of parents to get a decent education for their child(ren), I would conclude that the free public school system has to be called into question when free is having trouble competing with paying dearly.
Or, y’know, we could treat the goddamned problem, which is that public schools are inadequately prepared to deal with children coming from a violent and unequal society.
When we have cities devastated by institutional racism, where there are poor, ghettoized communities rife with violence, where many of the men are locked up, where cops are brutal, the kids come to school deeply traumatized. They have an even harder time sitting still and learning fractions than a conscripted soldier fresh from battle would have.
But middle-class parents tsk and whisk their own kids out of this setting, leading to even more segregated schools, leading to less support for schools from the politically powerful, leading to even fewer resources available to kids coming from trauma. Then those same middle-class parents have the audacity to turn around and blame the schools.
For getting their own kids out of public schools if those schools are failing? Not really.
But it’s short term thinking if all those parents are doing is avoiding the problem with their own children’s education. Those parents have to remember that their children will graduate and go out and live in a society alongside the children who did attend public schools. So while parents might prioritize the education of their own children, they can’t afford to write off the education of children in general. And that also applies to people who don’t have children. Inadequate public education is an issue that affects everyone so it’s a problem that needs to be solved not just avoided.
I really don’t have a succinct answer, just an opinion based on experience and I am very biased due to my experience with them so take what you will from this:
I completed all of my education through them and despite the fact that most of the teachers were excellent, the schools were run down and administered like a prison, truants were handcuffed and taken to the police station (near old Cabrini-Green projects/18th district) massive fights (gangs) broke out all the time, drugs everywhere, gangbangers with firearms and knives everywhere (yet they turned off the metal detectors because it would be “racial profiling”) even after incidents had occurred. It was like that movie “The Prinicpal” and I’m not even kidding.
It would be really difficult for people to get or want an education somewhere when they have to worry about getting hit with bricks, rocks and batteries during freshman hazing. FFS One of the security guards at my high school knocked up a 14 year old and I knew people that sold weed and coke at my grammar school. No doors on the stalls because the school refuses to fix them when they break or when someone breaks them. Pissing in the soap dispensers. Nope. By the way these occurrences were at a school that was so highly praised as becoming one of the best… chhyeeaah, right.
I can only wish and hope more private schools spring up and that people can afford them. The public school system AFAIK is total shit. in the inner city at least. If city public schools are like what I’ve described in any other place, I’m completely against the idea. Imagine dealing with a DMV/Secretary Of State facilities (Chicago) that is run like a prison every single day and then expect to want to go to school. Nope nope and Nope.
They “whisk” them out of the schools because they want what is best for their children and could afford to do so. From what I’ve experienced, I say good for them if they could. They don’t want their children being corrupted or put in danger to attempt to get an education. That being said I do feel sorry for those who get stuck, but if they have a way out, they should go for it. The middle class are not contributing to segregation in the terms you are envisioning.
If you’re talking about the federal government, this is flatly untrue. There is no federal voucher system that gives money to private schools. When you say that “Betse [sic] Devos” has funneled taxpayer money to private schools, you are simply wrong.
There are at the state level, and voucher approaches are so popular and successful among parents and taxpayers that they’ve spread rapidly in recent years, and most states now have some form of subsidized tuition for private schools. That’s the good news. The bad news is that in most cases, options other than public schools are only available to a tiny number of students, and most kids from poor families are still stuck in failing public schools.
Au contraire. Private schools provide better education than public schools. Therefore, if you want the number of well-educated people to increase, you should fight to move as many kids out of public schools and into private schools as possible.
There’s a notable contrast between your stances and your user name. When Barack Obama was President, he sent his own children to private school rather than public school. So did Bill and Hillary Clinton. So did a great many other politicians. When it comes to their own children, they acknowledge the fact that private schools are better.
So what? Do you have any evidence that increased funding for public schools generally leads to better education for public school students? In your first paragraph, you said, “In some states teachers have protested due to pay raises going entirely to higher ups [sic] instead of teachers and other staff.” That’s the one claim in your post that’s actually true. If the government gave more money to public schools, the administrators at the top of the chain would pocket most of the money. So why bother?
I am going to ask for cites for the above as well.
What are teachers’ wages compared with other college-educated professionals who work the same number of hours, what is the average amount teachers spend on housing vs. everyone else, and in what states do pay raises go entirely to higher-ups?
For a slightly less extreme attempt to solve the same problem, could we agree that each school in the state should be funded equally on a per student basis? Rather than wealthy communities having wealthy schools with highly paid teachers and high rates of student success, and poor communities dealing with dilapidated schools and teachers who stopped caring long ago? Or is there something I’m missing here?
Why across the state? Some states will have geographic regions with greatly different costs of living. Even if you isolate to a given school district this could be the case, but typically district level per pupil funding is consistent. In my kids’ district this is the case, but there are schools in the district that are in more affluent areas. In those schools, the parents will pool together and donate funds to their school but not others - should this be prohibited, or pooled with all the other schools in the district?
For example, my school donations pays the wages of the staff for the reading intervention program. It pays the wages of the school aids that are in the classroom. It pays for the school supplies for all the classrooms. There are funds set up on a grade level basis for grade specific activities. It pays for field trips, buses, etc. So yes, all the schools in the district will get the same district level funding, but the parents will make sure that their kids are taken care of.
What?