As I understand it, the amount of the voucher is less than the per-pupil expenditure for Cleveland schools. Therefore, when a voucher student leaves he takes with him less money than was being spent on him in the public school. Thus the school district is actually making money on the deal since it has one less student to teach but the full per-pupil expenditure did not leave with the student.
Test scores aren’t everything. People choose private schools for a variety of reasons. For example, in DC the private schools are much safer than the public schools, so even if the schools do not produce higher test scores the parent may be happy for safety reasons alone.
In the end, it doesn’t really matter if test scores are better or not. If a private school is not meeting the needs of the student (bad test scores, bad teachers, unsafe environment, bad facilities, etc.) then the parent takes the student out and the school loses money. Eventually the school will either reform or close if enough parents are dissatisfied. Public schools, on the other hand, do not have this sort of accountability. If they have the problems mentioned above (as DC schools do) they receive even more money and have little incentive to fix their problems. It’s a perverse system that rewards failure.
No - saying “it’s not fair for my parents to pay for someone else’s education” is an in it for yourself mentality.
Really? Do you conceive of the problems that aggregate in certain school districts to be the result of the school building itself? If the best chance that a whole community of kids has for a good education is to go to another school, why not just take that good school to those children? If it’s the building - tear it down and build a new one.
Of course, infrastructure is only part of the problem. But there is no reason that good schools can’t happen anywhere. Or maybe we should have vouchers that allow anyone to choose what neighborhood they live in. I like that!
Since your motives are so altruistic, will you support my voucher program? Based on a means test, vouchers are provided to parents to allow them to send their children to any school they like. The vouchers are paid for out of federal funds, and the school district experiences no change in the level of funding that they would have had. It meets your stated goals, and doesn’t result in the poor outcomes I am afraid of. Are you for it? How about you Mr. Moto? Anyone?
The real hubris is having the balls to become so very concerned about the welfare of poor children only when it serves the purpose of putting some tax dollars back in your own pocket.
“We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our prosperity do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
I’m not at all sure how this anecdote serves to undermine my point. I think it works to support it, unless you are saying that Clairton has been improved by splintering apart. Wouldn’t the schools in Clairton have been improved if there were a concerted effort by the community to make better Clairton schools rather than to have the residents go to Peters Township?
I think Pittsburgh is a perfect example of the importance of the community coming together. Pittsburgh, under the steady hand of private enterprise, was regarded as “hell with the lid off,” and remains indelibly identified with blackened buildings and soot stained arms. However, when the people, in the form of the local government stepped in, they had a renaissance, changed the way the city worked, and made it into one of the greatest places to live in America (see Rand McNally, 1985).
I don’t object to the means test, per se. I’m not thrilled with it, but I can see it. Leaving the district unaffected, however, is not acceptable. I’ve said part of my support for the idea of vouchers is to punish the school systems that can’t serve their constituents, so I doubt this is a surprise answer.
The number one thing that affects a child’s education is not the school. It’s the parents.
Involved parents make for better students. And they make for better schools.
Sadly, not all parents have the capability to be involved. Maybe they have to work. Maybe they are addicted to drugs. Maybe they arn’t so smart themselves. It doesn’t matter why. Some parents arn’t as involved as others.
There is a town nearby called Piedmont. It is a little donut hole of a city marooned in the sprawl of Oakland. Piedmont is 70% white. Oakland is 80% not white. Piedmont is 1% Black and 3% Hispanic. Oakland is 35% Black and 21% Hispanic. Piedmont is rich. Oakland is not rich.
All of the parents in Piedmont send their kids to public schools. The district boundaries encompass just their affluent, mostly white neighborhood. Just a two mile by two-mile island that the riff-raff can’t get to. I’m pretty sure there are no apartment buildings there. Their web page mentions their proximity to the cultural offerings of Berkeley and San Francisco. They don’t mention Oakland, which they are completely encircled by and which their campus has a beautiful view of.
And their schools are nice. More than that, their schools are palatial. They have dance studios and fountains. They go on long-weekend field trips to exciting places to celebrate homecoming. They have all the arts and computers and foreign languages that anyone could ever want. They resemble a small New England liberal arts college more than a public institution. 92% of their grads go to 4 year colleges.
And the parents are involved. The campus is full of plaques and benches dedicated to big donors. There are dozens of parent volunteers at even the smallest events. When I worked there on school picture day, they brought us brie and strawberries.
What I am saying is, when the income, education, leisure time and general homelife of parents and students is so different, there is no easy way to achieve equality in schools. But as long as the parents who are active, are willing to donate time and money and work hard to build strong schools isolate themselves and work hard to exclude the kids who really do need help, we aren’t going to see any changes. When the good kids leave, when the involved parents leave, and when people stop caring about a school, those schools are going to fail. I think it’s sad that we consider it okay to have this “white island” school district in the middle of our city. I think it is criminal to consider encouraging that further. I think we need to reinvest ourselves- all of us- rich poor or whatever- into our schools instead of abandoning them.
You don’t have to tell me that funding isn’t what makes for good education - every other state pays more to fund education than NH does. If there were a direct collation things like the “smartest state” rankings would put us dead last, not in the top 1/3rd.
What may make the difference is greater accountability on all levels. Teachers need to be made to teach to the standards for their states. Schools need to be accountable for how they spend their allotted funds. Towns need to spend the money they receive for education on education. States need to allocate funds more rationally, make sure that their teachers are qualified, and enforce the standards they set… and this is something that needs to be worked on in all 50 states.
You see that part I underlined? Perhaps you’ve heard something about the funding mess in NH. The donor towns are furious, and though I think it’s mostly a lot of unjustified belly-aching, there are things that give me pause. The fact that there are reports that some NH towns have spent money earmarked for education on their police and fire departments instead, for example. I have a hard time believing that this is a unique problem.
I’m not a fan of creating more government agencies, but if commissioning people to do the necessary audits (of both spending and standards) is what it takes to improve education on a nation-wide level, I guess I’d have to accept that.
I’m not sure how to respond to furt’s question. If you honestly don’t think children learn any necessary skills that help them become self-sufficient after 3rd grade, I don’t think I could give you examples that you’d agree with.
It’s just as selfish for people to say “It’s not fair that I pay for my child’s education; everyone in the community should pay for it.”
The very nature of public schools makes them impossible to improve in some areas. The fact that teachers resist any innovative methods of teaching, bad teachers and administrators cannot be fired, and bad kids can’t be disciplined make your dream a little utopian.
Regardless, they do and they are not being fixed. I know, I know, then let’s fix them. Fine. But this never seems to happen. Why do you support forcing parents to send their kids to these crappy schools in the hope that someday, magically, they will get better? Don’t you think parents deserve better now?
Yeah, why not?
How do you know anyone who supports vouchers would benefit from them? I support vouchers and I don’t have any kids. I know many of the people in the DC voucher movement and they are either two classes: richer people who wouldn’t use them or poor people who need them. Feel free to look down your noses at them, though. I’m sure you’ll find a way.
Why not stick to debating the issue instead of questioning the motives of others and asserting your moral superiority?
You act as if a school system is something imposed on a community, to be punished as if it is commiting a wrong against the community. A school is of, from and integrally enmeshed with, a community. Schools don’t have to have free lunch programs for no reason - they are part of a community suffering from poverty. It isn’t that you would look at a community and see a crumbling school surrounded by a lovely new art museum and state of the art municiple building. Punishing the school punishes the community.
This whole thing smacks of a patriarchical approach to the welfare of certain children - “We know you are at a crappy school. Come away with us, and everything will be alright. We’ll let you come here, pat you on the head, and then send you back home to fend for yourself because we don’t really give a shit about what your community is like. It just serves our purpose to demonize your school so that we can get our tax money back in our wallet.”
You seem stuck on the point that vouchers are merely an evil trick of the rich to take away money from poor school districts to subsidize their affluent private schools. Of course it’s completely divorced from the reality of the situation. Please show me any evidence this is what voucher proponents propose or how a voucher system has been designed.
Let me save you some time, since your view is simply not based in reality. All voucher programs I know of have a means test. If you make too much money you don’t get a voucher. Vouchers aren’t a way to subsidize private school for the rich. They are a way to pay for private school for the poor. It’s not a diabolical scheme nor is it a sign of selfishness. In fact, many of the richer voucher supporters have created scholarship funds to help pay for private school for poor kids who don’t have access to vouchers. I don’t see voucher opponents doing anything so altruistic.
If my folks, in a quest for a better school, had been able to stay in Clairton instead of bugging out for Finleyville, the town would have been better off. Hell, they wanted to stay. The second my youngest brother graduated from high school, they moved back.
I think you’d agree not many people move back to Clairton, and this shows a love for and committment to the town.
As for this “concerted effort by the community”, good luck. My folks felt powerless to do anything other than what they did, a powerlessness felt by many parents, and most deeply by those who can’t leave.
Your cite is twenty years old there, friend. But I can see why you used it.
More current cites would show a soft economy, a bad climate for business, city finances at bankruptcy levels, poor schools, and a “liveable” city that nobody can live in. I love Pittsburgh, yet live and work here in the D.C. area because of this unfortunate addiction I have to eating.
Why am I not surprised that there would be someone who could restate a philosphy for the greater good as selfish? If one is doing something because it makes the community as a whole better it isn’t selfish. If one is for improving community schools because it will increase property values in the area, sure, there’s a secondary gain to be had there. But recognizing that we all benefit from having a better educated populace is not self-centered.
Again, here is an assertion that public schools arose whole-cloth as some sort of virus foisted on a community. There may in fact be obstacles presented by some entrenched groups, but the community ultimately determines how the school is established and run.
See below.
Then we agree, and that would help those parents you are concerned about right now. Let’s move forward with our proposition together. But, to respond a bit more to your point above, things never change because there are no changes made. There has been no substantial change to the way schools are funded for decades. Conservatives develop boogeyman stories of “black holes” where money is sucked up and misspent (and case studies of bat wielding principals) to allay the concerns that most Americans would have about the savage inequalities that exist in today’s schools, preventing us from considering whether there may be some other way to fund schools than local property taxes.
Pretending that there aren’t moral issues or ulterior motives is quite naive. How else can one judge whether defunding some schools is a good idea without including a moral argument? Is it right or wrong to let some kids suffer in favor of others is a moral question.
Apart from that, you can’t seem to avoid calling my own morals into question above.
And we’re right back to money, when it should be clear to anyone that more funding does not automatically help.
Again, per pupil costs are higher in D.C. than anywhere in the country, Hentor. Yet that money is not well spent at all. Poorer results follow poor results there.
There are many things that are done by private funds that make the whole community better. Hell, in my area of DC many new private businesses opened in the past five years. All were private businesses but the community as a whole benefitted. Just because the community benefits does not mean the taxpayers should pay for it.
True, but the community in many areas seems incapable of reforming schools. DC has been trying to improve its schools since at least the 1950’s. It has failed miserably. Why should another generation of kids be held hostage to those who have the utopian dream that one day schools here will be great?
I’d love to do it. Let’s head to Capitol Hill tomorrow and start knocking on doors.
Incidently, the DC voucher program conforms to your standards. It involves only federal funds and there is a means test. Of course this did not stop most Democrats from opposing it.
Two different issues. Schools do not need a change in funding to improve. Funding for education, at all levels, has risen the past two decades. Educational achievement has not. What needs to be changed is to reward the education of students. This would mean, in part, rewarding good teachers and penalizing bad ones. Of course the teachers don’t want this so no real changes get made.
Again, lack of money is not the problem. Most inner-city schools receive a substantial amount of per-pupil funding and have abysmal test scores. Most poor school districts also receive both state and federal money to make up for any shortfall in propety tax revenue.
No, imputing motives to your opponents is a stupid way to debate.
Fine. On your terms you are an evil person because you want kids to suffer in horrible public schools and not allow them a way out (vouchers).
You’ve missed my point, which was focused on the primary concern of Pittsburgh through the first two thirds of the last century - private companies had turned the environment of Pittsburgh into a devastating health hazard. By using the collective force of the people in the community, the city was able to change that to such a degree that by the last quarter of the century, it was of such quality that it was named the number one most livable city in America.
I do not disagree that it presently has many economic problems, but it no longer merits the label of “smoky city.” (As to economic factors, I would suggest that we rank better than DC in terms of poverty rates; see here, for example.
I live here, and I eat just fine. Most Pittsburghers do. No offense, but it seems you are simply keeping up with your history of bugging out rather than staying to make things better.
Do you have a cite, with some sort of indicator of the elements that were included to determine what funding was included?
Apart from that, you yourself have identified a greater need shown by the DC schools. How do you conclude that the amount that was spent should have fixed all the problems? Alternatively, how do you include the existing inequalities in your comparison of per pupil spending between a given school district and DC.
You haven’t specified what the problems of the DC school system are, only that the problem is they spend too much money. If you start and end with money, how are you surprised that it comes back to money?
Making some kids suffer so that others could benefit is indeed a moral question. Too bad it has sweet fuck all to do with what we are talking about. The question is, given the assumption that education is the right of every citizen of the U.S.(an assumption that I whole heartedly endorse), what is the most effective way to deliver this promise of education to the maximum number of students?
Why should these figures be disbelieved? How does DC continue to support your argument that poor schools are simply black holes upon which more money is wasted? If these figures are accurate, how do you explain your claims regarding DC spending so much more per pupil than it should?
I said the problems were structural, and this data supports fully that contention.
For instance, why does the District have far more square footage per student and why does it have such greater energy ineffeciency? Closing some old schools and renovating or building new ones would go a long way toward closing that gap.
Another large cost, from the cite, is the large number of special education students who have to be placed in private facilities. That cost could be greatly reduced if the District did a good job with special education. It does not, and thus these placements are won in the courts.
If they were sought through a voucher system, a competitive process would keep the costs down more than now, where the school system acts as a big cash cow.
Security costs are high. They would be lower for a private school where the threat of expulsion is real.
You said that the problem wasn’t money, and that the DC schools were already paying more per pupil than other schools. This cite shows that the claim is false. DC is paying less per pupil than surrounding school districts. Before we can run amok claiming that schools such as the DC school district are failing because there is some inherent defect in the school apart from money, we better prove that there is a greater per-pupil expenditure over and above that required by the fact that the school is in a poor neighborhood.
I suspect because they don’t have the funds to do that. Let’s give them the funds to have “palatial” schools and see if that changes.
How does having more special education students equal doing a poor job with special education? Do you have some evidence to help clarify your point? What this shows is that the DC system is sapped by having more students with special needs than other schools. Again, do you want to get the federal government to defray the costs of APS placement by 60%? Great, I agree.
How? Would they make the needs lesser somehow?
I forget, Mr. Moto, did you weigh in on my voucher program? Renob is already on board.
How? Would they make the needs lesser somehow?