But I don’t have a responsibility to my neighbor’s kids in the same way I have a responsibility to my own kids. Sure I’ll do what I can, but some battles aren’t winnable in the time available, and if there is an accessible high performing school, your suggestion is that moving or otherwise pulling your own kid out of a lower performing school is somehow a bad choice. If there is a better overall option for a kid, not taking it is a sacrifice - it’s a tradeoff - that something better for something worse in hopes that it will get better.
I think you have kids about the same age as some of mine. In my experience, they’ve had friends over the years that I didn’t think were the greatest influence. Not criminal or bad kids, just their parents didn’t have the same views towards education, etc. As a result, I encouraged them to do other activities than hang out with those kids. Not a big deal. But if the whole school was composed of students like the ones I was encouraging mine to avoid, then that’s when the small moves become bigger ones and we think about changing schools.
Well, we can’t just write it off that easily - one try and out.
I do agree that there is money that is improperly spent.
We see some high schools with sports facilities that look like one would hope to find at a university - superior to all other aspects of the school. And, we see teachers being required to supply fundamentals such as paper from their own paychecks. We see school systems that depend on more or lest direct funding by the immediate community of the school, leaving the wealthy neighborhoods to create adequate schools while the rest can’t function reasonably.
One bill adding a few dollars isn’t going to solve all the abject BS.
Comparing private schools against public schools can only happen when the students in the private schools are just as poor (financially I mean) as the ones in the public schools.
Money is only part of it. Parents who are working in an area can come and talk about it. Parents can help organize enrichment activities after school. Parents can be involved in fund raising for the things that do matter. And school board meetings are open to the public.
The problem is that districts with high test scores do all this stuff already, while it is a lot harder for kids in low score districts. But I’d bet not a lot of Dopers have kids in really bad schools, and most Dopers are definitely with it enough to help instead of wring their hands.
Sure it takes time, but a lot less than home schooling.
If it was really all about money, either spent on the schools or as a casual (not just correlated) factor in the students’ backgrounds, the whole issue would be really simple. Instead of devilishly complex, and intractable when it comes to certain groups’ underperformance in the US education system, as it is in the real world.
Comparison to advanced tribal societies (like in Scandinavia) doesn’t really illuminate the US problem very well.
That’s not to say school funding has nothing to do with school performance. Also, recognizing that, whether causality or just correlation, we aren’t necessarily doing anything wrong if poor kids don’t fully match upper middle class kids in academic achievement given the other elements of diversity in US society, can be welcome realism. As opposed to the idea some simple public policy is going to eliminate group academic achievement differences in a highly diverse society, which it just won’t. And which it doesn’t anywhere else either. Societies without those discrepancies have much more homogeneous populations.
I dunno. You’d have to ask them. I assume it is because they eschew technology so do not want their kids in a place with computers and TVs and smartphones and electric lights and whatnot.
I’m less concerned with teachers’ salaries than with children’s education. Forcing would-be private school kids into public schools to boost the wages of teachers at the latter is silly.
Sure, but public school isn’t the best solution for everyone. In my case, for example, I ran out of classes to take at the (overall quite good) public school system, and went to public school to take advantage of a stronger, more accelerated curriculum. What interest would have been served in throwing me under the bus and forcing me to go to public school? Neither my parents nor I would have been willing to sacrifice my education and happiness to make a marginal improvement in the public school system decades hence, and I don’t think any many parents would want to do that for their children either.
I can’t parse this sentence. Are you saying we shouldn’t have grades, or that public and private schools shouldn’t compete against each other?
You claimed “the Amish have a clear, unwavering historical record to point to for why they would not want their kids in modern public school.” and your response is “I dunno”?
Perhaps your public school teachers would’ve taught proofreading?
In any case, the interest served is that, if everyone is in it together, folks with the most power in our society have a much more vested interest in ensuring strong public schools. It’s not that I don’t want a rich smartie like you to get the accelerated education you deserve. It’s that I want the poor smarties to get the education they deserve, too.
I’m pretty sure the people advocating this approach don’t care about what’s best for you or your parents. Their concern seems to be with what’s best for the system. It’s more than a tad too impersonal for my tastes. The thinking seems to be that if we feed enough nice, good kids into the meat-grinder that is your typical inner-city school, eventually something resembling a decent product will come out the other end.
I sincerely hope you are right. I do not get the sense that a deep and abiding concern over what’s best for my child is at the forefront of leftist thought on this matter.
Uh, no, not for your child. Your child is not, indeed, at the forefront of my concern. Neither is any one child–that’s kind of the point, that putting one child at the front and saying fuck all y’all to the remaining children is a problem that’s leading to resegregation and concomitant problems.
But your child holds an equal place with all other children–including children in poverty–in the concern of most of the leftists I’ve talked with on this issue.
Also, here in Kansas City the public schools are so bad people with kids basically have to send them to private schools or they move. That hurts the local communities so what your left with are basically homes filled with people with no kids. Now here is where charter schools can come in. You start a charter school that will operate as its own little semi-private" school, running outside the influence of the local school district. In this case, the terrible KCMO schools. This is what a group of concerned families are trying to do with old Southwest High school. Basically turning it into a college prep school.
So why cant we have all black schools? Some of our greatest black leaders like Jesse Jackson went to one.
Here is Kansas city they actually have an all black school, designed to be that way called the African Centered Academy.
Dont forget we have all black colleges, in regular colleges are black fraternities and other groups, in fact in much of our society we have all black organizations.
So why not their own schools?
Or do you believe a black kid cannot learn unless they are sitting next to a white kid?
One issue you might not be aware of is many private schools offer scholarships to poor kids. My son used to attend a private Christian school and I think they did about 20 scholarships to inner city black kids from the KCMO projects.
Plus a factor your not considering is at least a FEW kids are getting a good education at private schools. You may not realize some public schools, like Kansas City Missouri, are so bad they are a futile waste of time for any parent to try. So why not give a few of them a chance? Sure, I wish all of those other KCMO kids could be given a good education but the system wont allow it so you have to weed out the best.
You might only know white people, but don’t realize that.
You might not know any liberals who live in urban areas, because you don’t live in urban areas.
You might think that the parents of those kids at “all black inner city schools” are mostly conservative.
You might not think black people are people enough to warrant mention in this thread.
I’m not sure what the hell’s going on in your head, but I assure you that many of the parents of children at "all black inner city school"s are liberals. And my white wife, for one, went to one of Charlotte’s 99% African American schools before they were re-segregated; the decline of the Mecklenberg school district is one of the reasons that she’ll never move back to her hometown.
So your limited experiences don’t actually comprise the gotcha that you might think they do, although they might provide opportunity for you to reflect on your preconceptions.
It’s at the forefront of his. And your child should be at the forefront of yours. Anyone who isn’t going to put their child first shouldn’t reproduce. Can’t afford to educate? Keep it zipped.
