Why is education seemingly such a non-issue?

The BBQ Pit
41

Oh, and if there’s any doubt… Republican politicians ARE arguing in bad faith. What they say and what they want are completely different things. They argue for “accountability” in public schools, but what they really want is to set schools up to fail by slashing funds, instituting dumb testing programs, etc., all so they can say “see, we tried, but the schools are no good! We better just close them down and send the money to private schools where our kids go, and the rest of those kids can go to hell.”

The scheme has included pet programs in cities like DC and Milwaukee where inner city kids are hand selected to get a “real” education and then their improvement is used to sell vouchers. No doubt, this is how the DC mayor was brought on board. But it’s fallacious because (a) those kids are hand-picked and represent the smartest kids in the public schools, and usually have involved parents, which makes a huge difference anyway, and (b) there’s no way those pilot programs can be replicated on a large-scale level, for all kids, including the average and below-average kids with uninvolved parents. Of course the tapping of the better students from involved families will continue the process of making public schools attractive to teachers or involved parents, and all the problems facing public schools snowball.

42

Well, riddle me this.

Who says that a private school has to be the alternative to the student in a failing school. Why can’t a successful public school be an option?

Why couldn’t a DC student take his voucher and use it in the vastly better Arlington County, Alexandria, Montgomery County, or Fairfax County schools.

Or even use it in a better DC school, if they ever get their act together?

The option could be used even if a school isn’t failing. Maybe a school is near a parent’s workplace, and moving a student there would smooth out transportation needs.

This model of funding is highly successful in higher education. Loan and grant dollars can be spent at public colleges, schools with a religious affiliation like Notre Dame or Brigham Young, and secular private colleges like Dartmouth. Large and small colleges are an option. Medical school, if you qualify, can be paid for. So can truck driving school, or aeronautical training.

There’s a world of choice in higher education that’s just not available in primary education. I think choice can be made available without sacrificing public education.

43

Because you don’t pay tuition at public schools. So how are you going to use a “voucher” to attend a public school? You’re talking about open enrollment, which most urban areas have (mine does). That’s not a voucher program, and I think it is a good idea, but I would still think that given that all students can’t attend those ritzier suburban schools, there still needs to be the basic problems of the inner city schools addressed.

The inner city schools in my city are not bad, or at least weren’t bad, but have recently been cutting funds and laying off teacher because of our Republican governor’s asshat taxcuts. He also wants to do with research-based pedagogy and introduce widespread testing. He doesn’t know shit about teaching. His education secretary is reviled by most of the education establishment because of cutting funds, closing schools, laying off teachers, her open hostility (budgetarily and rhetorically) to teachers, her support for pedagically unsound widespread testing, a right-wing agenda manifest in science and history curricula (i.e., teaching creation as a science and whitewashing history), and so on. Oh, the Republican governor and legislators think she’s brilliant. Just imagine what she could do if the educators got out of her way and REALLY let her go to work.

I’m honestly unable to see any vision there for how public schools should be better. Bigger classes, less money, fewer teachers, testing and more testing, a 19th century style curriculum, and all of that is supposed to make schools better? It’s obvious in the practice and the rhetoric that they are against publuc education.

44

I mean do away with, and public, not publuc. I’m a product of private schools, so what do you ekspekt?

45

Well, if the DC student could get to the better school system (apart from moving to them, which many have done), why aren’t they there?

DC students are trapped within the boundaries of the District of Columbia. The other schools I mentioned are in nearby Maryland or Virginia.

I expect any comprehensive voucher program would open up enrollments at other public schools, and make that voucher truly portable. At least that’s how it should be.

46

Please, skutir, what state are you in?

I’d like to become more familiar with the subjects you raised.

47

I don’t see how instituting tests is setting a school up to fail unless they are failing anyway.

And if by “slashing funds”, you mean having school funding follow the student, as it would under a voucher system, this is not “slashing funds” at all, merely redirecting them away from an inefficient system to a more efficient one.

Don’t these two statements contradict each other? “Research-based pedagogy” AFAICT means using methods of teaching that have been shown to work - not this “self-esteem” nonsense, which does not correlate to increased learning in any study of average students I have ever seen. And to say that a desire to test students to see if they are learning or not means that someone “doesn’t know shit about teaching” would seem to contradict basic notions of every school system I have ever been part of.

No, “open enrollment” is something different, at least in my district. Open enrollment means that you can enroll in any public school that will accept you. A voucher system is different.

You would use a voucher system somewhat as follows:

Suppose the average per-student spending in a district is $3,000. Under a voucher system, that amount could be used by the student to pay “tuition” at any school that will accept him - public or private. (Disregard homeschooling for the moment, which is a different issue.)

If the student chooses to attend a public school, the amount of money that school receives to educate him is $3,000. If the student chooses to attend a private school, that $3,000 is used to pay his tuition - but the amount the public schools in his system receives is reduced by $3,000. Thus, if a school (public or private) could not attract students, they would have to shut down.

Keep in mind that the total amount of spending on education is not slashed at all, it remains at $3,000 per student, just as it is now. The idea is that, once the public schools no longer can count on a monopoly on school funding, they will be forced to compete and innovate to attract parents. The power of the marketplace, and all that.

I think we have hit on a basic disagreement.

I do not believe that a commitment to education necessarily equates to a commitment to public education. The commitment is to the students, not to the system. Let me put it in an extreme way to clarify.

Suppose they implemented a voucher system, such that every student got $3000 to apply to any school that would take them. Further suppose that every single student chose to go to a private school, and therefore every public school in the district had to shut down for lack of funding.

My reaction would be, “So what?”

All the students are getting educated. Thus, the single purpose of the educational system is being met. All the teachers and all the administrators who are currently employed in the public school system have a choice;
[ul][li]Get jobs teaching in the private schools, or [/li][li]get jobs doing something other than teaching.[/ul] [/li]
In other words, the purpose of the educational system is not - or at least it should not - be for the benefit of the teachers or the unions. The purpose is to educate the students as efficiently as possible. It is an educational system, not a jobs program.

Now in my opinion, the voucher system as implemented above would force public schools to innovate in imitation of the other schools that are out-attracting them long before legislators, parents, teachers, and union officials would allow the public school system to shut down altogether. But that is a good thing, because it leads (in theory) to better education. Even students who choose to stay in the public school systems benefit if the public schools are forced to improve to compete. It’s a win-win situation - except for the unions, who are losing their monopoly on public funding, and being subjected to all the hassle of improving the way they do things or lose market share. Just like every corporation in America does every day of the week.

The usual objection to this is that schools will then attempt to skim off the cream of their student populations, and students at the bottom, behaviorly and academically, are going to be left at the bottom of the barrel. And I can envision some kind of public school who is compelled by law to accept anyone who applies, where the students who can’t get accepted anywhere else would wind up. And I suspect that school is going to be as bad as the worst of the failed public schools are now. But that is an improvement, as you then have only a few schools where nobody learns anything. And in some schools, practically any change is an improvement. Even if the number of students who are not abject failures goes from very few to a few.

I would even go so far as to say that students with special needs would receive more funding to take with them, to prevent all the schools in a district from shuffling off the special-needs students onto someone else. I would resist very strongly the urge to try to compel schools to accept anyone who applies, regardless of standards. This would basically defeat the purpose of allowing schools to teach at all levels from highly advanced to Breathing for Credit 101.

Regards,
Shodan

48

The federal program set up schools for failure because it requires schools to meet an impossible standard. To over simplify (but to my way of thinking, fairly), the federal statute sets up the Lake Woebegone standard – all the children must be above average. For instance, in my state the program requires all children, children in special education programs, children from deprived homes, children who do not speak English, to achieve at a level equivalent to the 44th percentile on the state’s every student test. You can see that, as was mentioned above, there are two ways to meet that standard plus a third that is too draconian to consider seriously. The first is to cheat, just lie about the test results. The second is just to rote drill every kid, every day, on the critical test subjects, reading and mathematics. The third is to simply arrange to expel or suspend or otherwise drive out every kid who is likely not to test at the state wide 44th percentile level. Any one of these approaches or any combination of them betrays the mission of public schools.

Back to Mr. Moto, I don’t know what more I can say to persuade you that your question about who educates better, some generalized and unspecified private school, some unspecified and generalized home school, or a specific and failing and economically and socially deprived public school, is unfair. It makes no difference whether the specified school is in Washington DC, or Chester, PA, (where ever that may be) or East Harness Buckle, Nebraska. You cannot fairly compare and contrast the specific with the general. I don’t doubt that you know that. I do suspect that it’s a lot more fun to load the question. I’m not rising to the bait.

49

Shodan makes an excellent point; the schools are for the benefit of the students. Nobody I know would deny that.

Generally, the argument against privatizing the school system has nothing to do with the teachers. A good teacher can find a job anywhere, if there are jobs to be had. If all American children are guaranteed a free, public, appropriate education (as is currently the case,) then privatizing the school system won’t change a thing as far as the availability of teaching or administrative jobs, at least at first.

The problem lies in the matter of rights. You see, the idea here is that all American children have a right to an education. It’s mandatory. What happens when there are no longer any public schools to serve that requirement?

The obvious answer is, “They’ll attend private schools, paid for by tax vouchers.” And for years, educators – and people who understand public education – have been saying, “This isn’t going to work.” And I could fill a book explaining the reasons why. The simplest reason is this: private schools aren’t responsible to the community in the same way public schools are. They can pick and choose their students, and they don’t have to meet the same standards. Hell, let ME pick my students, and I will show you test results in one year that will amaze you!

Lastly, private schools don’t have to build or locate in areas responsive to community needs. They can set up shop anywhere. What happens when we get rid of all these downtown DC schools **Mr. Moto ** is talking about… and no private corporations want to build schools there to replace them?

It basically boils down to this: some people will not be able to access private schools… unless the private schools are made to accept the same restrictions, responsibilities, and accountabilities, EXACTLY THE SAME as public schools.

And the day this becomes the case, I expect we will hear a sucking sound. It will be the sound of thousands of private schools vanishing into nothingness… because the way the system is set up now, private schools cannot be made profitable. All research and evidence points to this conclusion. Rather than list cites, I will simply offer the term EDISON SCHOOLS. Type it into any search engine, and read some of the stories. They’ve been trying gamely, but they’re not even breaking even, last I heard. And no one seems to be accusing them of mismanagement or criminal misconduct.

And if private schools are exempt from some of the same regulations as public schools… and if the public schools are drained of funds, or dissolved… then you will see a situation far worse than anything you can point out in DC, I suspect. And it will be nationwide.

This is also the weakness in Shodan’s reasoning that schools will be forced to “compete, innovate, and attract.” You see, public schools have NO CHOICE about whether or not to accept students who live in a given geographic area. They HAVE to take the kids, like it or not. PRIVATE schools can take or reject anyone they please.

There can BE no competition, given that kind of playing field. And if you level the playing field, private schools will begin to fold within a few years. And in that few years, you will see all hell breaking loose in MOST schools, since they won’t know what kind of funding they’re looking at until it’s much too late, since parents will begin shuffling their kids from one district to another, hunting for the best deal for themselves. Seen it happen once already, during a recent experiment with vouchers in San Antonio, Texas.

Anyone who thinks that schools for children, schools for teenagers, schools for the gifted and talented, schools for the disabled, schools for the special needs children, and so forth will just spontaneously erupt from the ground when they are needed… well… we in the education biz call that “magical thinking.” Somehow, short of mandating it by law, I just don’t see it happening. The only thing I’ve ever seen erupt sporadically from the ground whenever local need dictated it was a Wal-Mart, and I’m really not sure I want THEM educating our kids… no matter HOW good their prices are.

As to Skutir’s remark about “slashing funds,” I didn’t interpret that as a voucher thing. I interpreted it as “loss of funds due to low test scores,” a thing that happens when the gov. doesn’t like what’s happening in a given school district… and yes, it IS “slashing funds.” The money doesn’t follow anyone anywhere. It simply ceases to be paid to the district, despite the same number of students still having the same needs. How this benefits anyone except the government is a mystery to me.

I do rather agree with Shodan, though, in that it would be nice to isolate the “bottom of the barrel” kids, scholastically and behaviorally. Unfortunately, we are prohibited from doing that by law. Let us do that, and I guarantee you’d see a hell of a jump in test scores! The best we can do now is “alternative school,” where a kid is sent after he accumulates enough behavioral referrals for being a pain in the butt.

Y’know what? The kids in Alternative still have to participate in all this mandatory testing, and are factored into the district’s numbers. So we get screwed anyway.

I’d love to see “special needs” kids get extra-special funding from the government or somewhere. I mean, we need extra resources to deal with them, right? So we could test them, determine their needs, their functional levels, and apply for government grants for extra money on a case-by-case basis! Yowza!

Whoopsie, no we can’t. We’ve tried. It constitutes “unfairly singling the little dears out.” So, instead, we simply have to meet their needs with our resources at hand. By law. No extra funding, tough bananas. In fact, we are required by law to mainstream the little darlings as soon as humanly possible, so’s not to scar their little psyches by having 'em in SPED classes.

…which bleeds money off from the regular curriculums and other students. Tough. It’s the law.

As to “open enrollment”… well… durned if I can see any problem with that. I’ve known several schools that used it, and I have yet to see any of them spontaneously combust. Federal funds are partly based on headcount anyway, so the funds simply follow the kid, and who needs vouchers for that, anyway? Admittedly, it sounds like a pain in the butt for Mom, but if she’s willing to drive the kid to Maryland, well…

Lastly, a word on civility: I am more than prepared to be civil. I tend to return the treatment I recieve from others. Since **Mr. Moto ** has demonstrated an actual wish to discuss the issues, as opposed to a trollish glee in agitating argument, I am more than happy to cooperate on that level.

…but to accuse teachers and administrators in general of theft, corruption, and malfeasance is by far not the smartest statement I’ve heard in the last decade. It frankly ranks right up there with “Black people commit most gas station robberies in Elephant Fart, Nebraska, so all black people should be restricted from access to all gas stations.” Moreover, I am a teacher, sir. Accuse me at your own risk, unless you are prepared to produce better evidence than you have, so far.

I know very little about the schools in Washington, DC, and I never claimed to know anything at all about them. In this matter, I must respectfully bow to Mr. Moto, who seems to have done his homework, there.

However, I must reiterate that simply because the Washington schools are screwed up… how does this require national education reform? Yes, I know. A school in one place had a riot. Another school had a corrupt school board (elected officials, by the way – not educators). A third school has drug problems.

Precisely what national reforms and regulations are you proposing to impose on us all, due to a few isolated incidents?

Oh, and I’ve tried hard to stay away from partisan arguments, here… but… it has been my experience that Republicans, in general, are in favor of deregulation of industry and business, in general.

Why, then, do they insist on further and greater regulation of the school system?

50

Ok this one is easy. Do you know what means testing is? All scores are averaged and a center is found. The way the system works Someone has to fail. If everyone gets better, You still have to fail someone. This is the method of testing proposed in the “No Child Left Behind” program.

One of the other difficulties my state has with the test that was supposedly writen for us, is that it doesn’t take into account what grade students are supposed to take subjects. Social Studies is generaly taught in a specific order all over the United States, with variations for Virginia and California. World Studies or Geography in 9th grade, Civics and or US history to the Civil war in 10th Grade, 11th grade the rest of US history, and 12th grade is Economics and electives. This is the curriculum that has been in practice all over the country for the last 70 years. The test we administer at the beginning of 10th grade tests on Vietnam, and economics as well as the Constitution and a host of other things that are not part of the courses they have taken. When asked, the company that wrote the test suggested we change the curriculum. Great. Lets see, New text books for every highschool student in the state. That will work with a 10% budget cut.

By slashing funds I mean slashing funds. We are looking at a direct, accross the board budget cut. We are down to the bone. We will lose 18 teachers next year. My classes will go up to 45 students in a classroom built for 30. The other problem is you are dealing with averages again. You need to understand how it works. Say my school district spends a 7000$ average per kid. That doesn’t mean each and every kid gets 7 grand spent on him. Part of the pool is the severly disabled kid who arrives in his own bus every day and needs two attendants full time. Funny thing is the schools that take vouchers wont take him. So you take the nice normal kid and send him off to a voucher school here you do damage to the schools because you are taking more than is spent on him because the averge may be 7k but that kid only really gets 4k spent on him the kid in the bus gets about 14k spent on him. See how that works? The public school, by law, still has to educate the disabled kid, the voucher school doesn’t.

I am in Milwaukee where the grand voucher experiment is (and where one voucher school got closed down last week because the administrator was using funds to buy 40k cars), and I can tell you the choice schools are taking the cream, and they get to spend tax payer dollars and are not required to meet any of the testing guidlines, nor are they required to have certified teachers. I think if we really want to go down this path, I want to see more accountability to the tax payer in that system.

51

To Mr. Moto:

The convenience for parents of school age children is true unless the children have to be at school later than the parent or if they get out earlier. Also, that doesn’t give the parent much time to spend with them in the evenings because teachers have to take their work home with them. Many have to moonlight.

I agree that teachers like to travel in the summer. Don’t forget that we have to keep up with continuing educational requirements, however, and many, if not most, earn higher degrees.

The best part of your post is that we want to work with kids and help them learn. I can honestly tell you that when things click and the light goes on in eyes of the students, teaching has to be the best profession on earth! It is heady stuff!

Where in the world are you getting your information bout NEA? The leadership and membership of the National Education Association are interested in whatever improves education. You say they aren’t interested in anything innovative. We have supported all manner of new programs and varieties of schools! I am probably one of hundreds of thousands of teachers who work on solutions that are quite different from the schools of today. If “power is measured in membership and dues dollars,” remember that it is the power to improve education in this country that is the reason that NEA has been around for 150 years.

I am 100% in support of getting rid of bad teachers. I don’t know of any dedicated professional who isn’t in favor of that. Bad teachers are not just bad for the students. They make our jobs harder and reflect poorly of the profession. And we CHEER when unnecessary bureaucrats get busted. Every school administrator/bureaucrat that gets sent back to the classroom lightens the load in our classrooms. Our student/teacher ratio goes down.

We also want to insure that someone isn’t branded a “bad teacher” because of inner-school politics. Did you ever see the movie Conrack or read the book by Pat Conroy? He also wrote Prince of Tides, the Great Santini, Beach Music and other marvelous novels. Pat Conroy was fired from his teaching position for political reasons and Conrack tells the story. That was happening about the time that I started teaching. That sort of thing goes on all the time. I recommend that you see it.

We would love to find solutions that represent cost savings. That is one of the reasons we don’t like school systems that are top heavy with administrative positions. When I retired in 1989, teachers were already digging into their own pockets for classroom supplies for their students at the rate of $200 to $300 dollars a year. We bought duplicating paper for the office, bulbs for the projectors, fans for the classrooms…

Do you know what it is like to be in a second story room in the South in August with the temperature outside at 101 degrees, high humidity, the sun streaming through the wall of windows, a classroom temperature of 110 degrees, 30 other people present and no air conditioning and no fan provided? Moto, if teachers bought their own air-conditioners for that room, contractually the unit had to stay in that room even if the teacher was moved to another room!

That was my classroom. Here is another rule of thumb from those days: The number of people in a room was inversely proportional to the chance of an air-conditioner being permanently installed.

What expenditures do you suggest be cut from school budgets that are already at bare bones levels?

52

More to Mr. Moto:

Do you understand that anecdotal examples do not prove widespread corruption?

You are missing the point. However…

The two additional examples that you listed still do not illustrate your point. I can assume that you didn’t read them.The first is a criticism of poor budget planning, not corruption. The second is an example of how employees with access to school board credit cards misused those cards and were held accountable. No teachers were mentioned. As someone pointed out earlier, teachers don’t have that kind of access to funding. Here is what the auditor said about the number of people in the Washington D.C. school system with access to those cards. It does not address the number who misused them:

But even if they had been examples of teachers stealing money from the Washington D.C. school district, *can you understand that that would not be proof of WIDESPREAD CORRUPTION among educators?

Actually, Spavined Gelding mentions that the generally good schools of the Upper Midwest are being hampered by the imposed standardized testing. He also mentions the problems that his friend, a retired administrator, describes in Texas. He has not at all implied that there are not major problems in public education. His point has been that Washington D.C. cannot be used as the example of what all public schools are like.

I don’t think that skutir said that about you. But your response in no way answers my question anyway.

I have not accused you of being a troll. I have said nothing to you that is uncivil. If you think that I have, please quote it and point out how it was “uncivil.” I am pleased that the subject of education is important to you! That indicates to me that you are going to be involved in your children’s education. So a viewpoint founded in reality is crucial to the education of your twins!

You said that you have solutions. Again, I would like to hear them.

53

Zoe, I know you didn’t accuse me of trolling.

Others did, though.

Now, I’ll throw out a few of my thoughts on the subject at hand.

Mr. Moto’s Musings

First off, there is a major problem looming with the education inequality between girls and boys. Girls are finishing school at a much higher rate than boys, and are attending and finishing college in greater numbers. Boys, meanwhile, are overrepresented in special education and in disciplinary problems.

Exacerbating this problem in the elementary grades is the shrinkage or disappearance of recess. Some schools in new construction have gone so far as to not include a playground in the design at all, and leave no room for one to be built. This eliminates a critical time and place for students to burn off energy in the middle of the day, and this affects naturally more fidgetty boys far worse.

The implications of this in the massive uptick of ADHD diagnoses should give one pause.

One of the reasons for elimination of recess is the overtesting of students and the consequent need to teach to the test. I’m skeptical of much testing, and would like to add another concern to those mentioned.

If much of the school day is taken up by teaching to the test, a politician or political group can have a tremendous impact on the curriculum by having edits made to the test. Silly political correctness, creationist theory, radical feminism - if the questions are on the test, the answers will have to be taught. And this may all depend on the whim of the party in power.

Lastly, I think a shift in attitude in the schools is in order. Schools in general do a good job of teaching educational fundamentals to students. But for decades, the character development of children has been neglected, replaced by an emphasis on a student’s self-esteem.

This leads, in many cases, to a self-confident and proud child who really has nothing to be proud of.

This approach should be replaced be a non-religious morals training, taught at appropriate times seamlessly within the curriculum. It should be joined with basic training in manners and etiquette, with the lessons enforced through daily use. Older students should receive life training, which would include lessons on financial management, retirement planning, and the implications of debt.

I’ll start with these. Anybody care to discuss?

54

Well, yeah. You insulted me first, bud. Or, at the very least, my entire profession.

I was not aware of this. Cite? In the years in which I have been teaching, and the localities, boys and girls are roughly equally represented in SPED programs. I can’t speak quite as knowledgeably for disciplinary programs, but I hadn’t heard anything of this sort. Not accusing anyone of anything; merely confessing my own ignorance.

I am inclined to agree. There’s WAY too much pressure on the elementary grades, these days, at least part of which is due to this test-to-destruction nonsense.

As a Special Ed teacher, I find this extremely hard to argue with.

Yes. It’s also another reason I’m not wild about privatized education. Certainly, private schools are going to have their place, but the whole point of public education is to provide a situation where government and local citizenry cooperate to acculturate and educate the young. That’s why school boards are elected from the local populace, not appointed by state or federal officials. The local folks have GOT to have a say in the education of their kids. Failure to provide this is going to have blowback in a lot of different ways.

I see one potential drawback of privatized education as “The Wal-Mart choice.” When a Wal-Mart opens up in a given area, local business dries up. It can’t compete. Wal-Mart is then free to dictate what prices are paid, and what products will be available in that area.

In terms of capitalism and consumerism, this could be construed as good; Wal-Mart charges low prices and offers a good selection of goods. But if a given item does not sell, Wal-Mart ain’t gonna carry it.

I’ve ranted at length about how education is not business. The idea of allowing one corporate entity to decide what will be taught in a given locality strikes me as insane… in much the same way Mr. Moto has pointed out that total federal control of the schools could result in flipflops in curriculum, based on the whims of the party in power.

…or a kid who becomes convinced that his elders routinely spout bullshit to encourage him, and develops an overblown sense of skepticism way too early. True enough. The attitude you speak of, though, is not entirely the fault of the schools. Keep in mind that the schools are what we make of them. There was a time when a teacher could stand up to an unreasonable parent, safe in the knowledge that District Policy and the doctrine of In Loco Parentis would protect them from a crazed crusade by a loony parent.

Such is not the case today. School administrators FREAK when some idiot files a lawsuit these days, be it frivolous or not. I’ve seen teachers have to run screaming to these unions and professional organizations you deride so heavily in order to save their jobs when some administrator decides it would be easier to fire one teacher than to ride out some asshead’s lawsuit.

Oh, man. That idea’s so good, I’m becoming sexually aroused. Absolutely brilliant, and quite necessary, I think. Unfortunately, it’s also unfeasible.

First of all, we get to somehow establish a curriculum of morals training – nonreligious – complete with manners, social skills, and so on – that all voting parents in a given district can agree upon.

THEN we get to make sure it passes muster on the state level.

THEN we get to find a way to keep the federal government from meddling. I guarantee you that what passes for the finest of etiquette in Texas would strike an upper-class Bostonian as flat-out bizarre, and a Californian once walked up to me and asked me what I paid for my trousers…

If you can find a way to make THAT many people all sing the same tune, then I will certainly congratulate you, and unsay all my unkind remarks. Hell, I’ll write you in for Secretary of Education.

Lastly, there needs to be some kind of incentive for the kids to DO something in the class. Every so often, some politician thinks up a program not unlike what you’ve suggested… and it gets kicked around… and because it’s not “academic foundation” (readin’, writin’, math, science, history), it gets chalked up as an elective. Meanwhile, someone in the community hears about it, and wants to know if it’s multicultural. A ruckus erupts. Finally, the school backs down… and says that the class will be offered as an elective… with no assignments and no grades.

Seen this happen with several different classes now. Etiquette, success strategies, study skills, all sorts of stuff. Y’know what? When children have no reason to listen to you, and you lack the power to assign them anything or fail them… they don’t listen to you. You have ceased to be a teacher, and are now a babysitter.

…which, in many ways, illustrates one of the basic problems with public education. EVERYONE gets a vote. EVERYONE’s an expert, or thinks they are. ANYONE can wander into my office and demand a complete rundown on how I do my job, what I think I’m doing, and what I mean to do about it in the future.

Not that I’m averse to constructive criticism, but that’s not always what I get.

That’s not even mentioning how, about every few years, a politician decides to whip me like a bad child, and ride me into office by generating an “education issue” because he doesn’t feel like dealing with any real ones.

…and y’know what? Sometimes I think about what education would be like if it were completely federally mandated… or completely privatized, handed over completely to corporate hands…

…and I think I’ll stick with the contained chaos of elected school boards and squawky parents. It’s freer, I think.

Now, if we could just do something about the damn politicians…

55

I don’t see how the second approach betrays the mission of a school.

Of course, I reject the notion that there is no other approach to teaching reading and math than rote drills, which seems to me to smack of an excluded middle. But yes, I expect the idea of the testing program is to push schools to actually teach critical skills such as reading and math, and to demonstrate that they are having success in doing so. Far from betraying the mission of a school, that would seem to me to be absolutely vital.

And I am not accusing you personally of anything, but it is distressing that professional educators cannot think of any alternatives besides[ul][li]cheating[]mechanical drills []expelling students[/ul] when actually asked to show that they are doing their jobs. [/li]

Which would kind of defeat the purpose of using vouchers.

As I said, I would support the idea of keeping some schools who have to accept anyone who applies, regardless of their record. And quite frankly, I expect most of those who attend such a school would fail to get much by way of an education, much as they do now. But by isolating the bottom-of-the-barrel students, you are not allowing them to drag down the rest.

I am agreeing with you when you posted this:

I would say we should change the law.

If you are saying that changing all private schools into public schools will cause them to fail as badly as the public schools (in many cases) do now, the point is so true as to be beyond discussion. What I advocate is to allow a diversity of approaches to education, and to allow parents to choose what approach they want for their children. And to remove the enforced monopoly on funding enjoyed by public schools now, and to expose them to the bracing effects of competition.

And another advantage of a voucher system is to discourage government bureaucrats from unreasonably cutting education spending. If they do that, and there is a voucher system, schools who cannot operate on the available funds close their doors or relocate. It’s a reality check on funding levels - can the schools really do their jobs on a given level of spending? If so, they do. If not, they close down and parents put pressure to have the funding increased.

What you do not see is what happened in my district. The schools proposed a tax increase to decrease class size. Intensive lobbying followed, and the increase passed. My wife was at the meeting at which they were supposed to discuss how to spend the first tax increase. Her suggestion that they should spend the money to actually decrease class sizes was actually met with laughter by the administrators. The school system then spent the money on new football fields and a housing area for their maintenance equipment - and requested another increase two years later.

Universities manage somehow, under just the same circumstances you describe, with parents hunting for the best deal for their children.

And again, the fact that it is difficult for the schools is not a persuasive argument to me if it is good for the students. If parents are indeed finding the best deal for their children, tough luck if it is inconvenient for the school administrators.

I have more faith in the free market than you do. And I think Wal-Mart is a good example of a highly efficient competitior grabbing market share away from less efficient competitors. I doubt there is less demand for educating children than there is for the goods Wal-Mart provides.

Suppose you lived in an area with three stores. One is very expensive, and sells high-quality goods. Another is very expensive, and sells mediocre goods. The third is very expensive, and sells crap. You have no choice but to buy in one of the stores, since you need groceries.

If a Wal-Mart was opening in your area, what would you think of someone who argued that it was a bad idea because it would be bad for the older three stores? Or who suggested a law that you could shop at Wal-Mart, providing you mailed a monthly check to the other three stores?

Which, I agree, is idiotic. And should not be continued under a voucher system. I would agree that voucher amounts should be higher for special needs students. Providing “this student is a mean little fuck-up who never met his father” is not defined as “special need”.

Well, no offense and nothing personal, but this is part of the attitude to which I object from the NEA and the public school establishment. “We are perfectly willing to discuss anything that doesn’t threaten our lip lock on the public tit.” They welcome change, providing it doesn’t change anything.

We want to test students to see if they are learning anything. The educracy screams that this is unfair. We want to have competency tests for teachers - the educracy screams until the tests are watered down so far as to be meaningless. The second tax increase requested in my area (see above) did not pass - the educracy made damn sure that they made cuts in areas most inconvenient for parents, to punish them for not forking over.

We are free market capitalists. We want to bring the self-correcting power of the market to the school systems.

It has been my experience that Democrats in the school system, in general, are in favor of burying the school system under an inefficient and quasi-socialistic bureaucracy. Why, then, do they insist on further and greater suffocation of schools?

If you want partisan arguments. :wink:

Regards,
Shodan

56

Master Wang-Ka, check out this article by Christina Hoff Sommers.

It’s pretty comprehensive on the subject of the boy-girl education gap.

Zoe, I had originally said that the DC public schools suffered from financial mismanagement and corruption. The subsequent discussion centered on the corruption. And there is a lot of it.

But the financial mismanagement loses the most money, as the links show. An $80 million dollar discrepancy in one city’s school budget can’t be excused.

57

Has everyone completely ignored furlibusea’s excellent post at the very end of page one? I’d be interested in hearing responses to it.

58

Well, furlibuseamade some comments about testing that I can’t fault. I’m skeptical of testing in general, other than its accepted use in establishing a measurable norm.

Education funding in America is higher than it’s ever been. The Bush administration certainly hasn’t cut the federal education budget. The problem, longstanding and intractable, is with the allocation of these massive resources.

There are two big culprits here. One is an inefficient, wasteful and (sometimes) corrupt bureaucracy that contributes nothing to the education of actual children in actual classrooms.

Another is the problem of local funding of most education, which inevitably means that wealthy areas get nice schools, and poor areas get bad schools.

I am open to the idea that funding for schools should be equalized to some degree. Education is a way out of poverty, after all, and a few dollars now can reap huge benefits later.

In addition to direct grants to urban schools, I think voucher programs can have a role here. Placing some challenging private schools, or public schools with magnet programs, in transitional neighborhoods and accepting voucher students can play a great role in the revitalization of a neighborhood.

I’d like to see more accountability in a DC public school system that can lose $80 million dollars.

And the choice schools, public and private, are already taking the cream of the crop. Their parents are moving to the good school districts, or paying the tuition.

I’m all for accountability, I’d like to see it imposed on whatever system we have, whether bureaucrats are held accountable to regulators or underperforming schools are held accountable to parents who have the power, finally, to pull their kids out.

59

Before I became a teacher I was required to pass the National Teachers’ Exam. I’ve mentioned this in several threads. I don’t know if this test even exists anymore. The school board here ended that requirement for a number of reasons. The teachers had no say in the matter.. But having competent colleagues makes our work easier. I am a strong advocate of competency testing for teachers.

Likewise, I support proficiency testing for students. I do see problems, however, in setting percentile goals, teaching only for the test, and judging a teacher’s performance based on her or his student’s scores.

Mr. Moto, you are confusing self-esteem with over-confidence. Self-esteem is always good. It is emotionally healthy. People with self-esteem are more likely to try to make their lives count for something.

As for teaching manners in school, I don’t know of a teacher who doesn’t work at it all of the time. I agree with you about life skills courses and more and more schools are offering them. But I agree with Master Wang-Ka that values are an entirely different matter. Whose values do we teach?

60

Shodan: I can’t really argue with you; durn near everything you’ve said makes perfect sense to me. Common sense, really. I can pick two bones–

(1) We disagree on some areas where “what would happen, if…”.
Y’see, I saw an experiment in San Antonio a few years ago that involved school vouchers. It was funded by a conservative group looking to prove that a voucher system could work. The idea was that vouchers would be made available to parents in given school districts – inner city school districts with troubles.

Unfortunately, state and federal funding is partly based on attendance. When kids quit attending your school, you lose funding. Meanwhile, a great many parents pounced on the vouchers in order to try educating their kids in new, hopefully more effective ways. One of the big draws was that public schools are smaller and have smaller classes, providing a teacher who can give each student more attention…

…and the experiment was a failure or a success, depending on who you listen to. What I saw was a lot of little private schools erupting from the ground, none of which were responsible to the law in the same way that public schools are. No less than six, in fact, were basically people’s garages with ONE teacher and a GED study manual. Give Me Your Money, Sit Down, And Shut The Hell Up, Students…

…whereas the funding group called it a rousing success. “Now we know what mistakes were made, none of which were OUR fault,” they said. “Now we can do it all over again, and make all those mistakes illegal!”

Meanwhile, the local public schools bled money, took a beating, had to lay off perfectly good teachers and cut necessary programs, and several thousand San Antonio children got their education turbofucked for a year. How many children and years are we going to screw around while we figure out how to do it right?

You see, one of the factors of the Free Market is called getting as much as you can with as little expediture as possible. This is one of the reasons I keep saying that–

(2) education is not a business, and treating it like a business is a mistake! Ultimately, business is about making money. Education is not and SHOULD not be about making money. Education should be about providing an OPPORTUNITY for high quality education for every child, period. Tying this to private enterprise is a mistake; there’s too much incentive to cut corners. It has to be about the quality. Some private schools are ENTIRELY about this… but I strongly suspect none of THEM were founded to fill an economic niche.

Of course, it’s not completely about that, now. No Child Left Behind ignores the word “opportunity,” and seems to feel that if we cannot turn every American child into a candidate for Harvard, then we are failing in some degree. If this is so, we are all quite fucked. Ain’t gonna happen. At best, we can provide opportunities.

Was it Shodan who remarked that mean little bastards shouldn’t be counted as special education students? Hee, hee, hee. You see, they are. By law. “Behaviorally Disordered.” Got one in a math class I teach who isn’t so much learning disabled as he is just a rotten little prick, but by law, I am required to do my damndest to hammer basic algebra into his violently resisting little skull.

And if he refuses to learn it, it’s my fault.

Testing, in cases like his, does not measure what he knows or what he has learned, you see. All testing measures is how much test he feels like putting up with before he gets bored and starts screwing around with the students sitting anywhere near him. All the rote drills in the world aren’t going to improve HIS scores.

But let’s talk mainstream, too. Let’s talk English. My wife teaches English. She teaches composition writing and literature. She hates testing with a passion. Why? Because rather than teach literary interpretation and a variety of writing styles and methods, she must ignore a huge chunk of curriculum in order to focus on what’s going to be on the tests. Only so much time, here, you know.

And when faced with unresisting demands that she ignore composition and literature that our entire culture is based upon… to teach the one style of essay that the children will be expected to write for the test… well… the “N” word comes to mind. “Screw literature. Screw composition. Teach them how to pass this test.”

You can test math this way, sure… but English? History? Science? Y’know, part of each of these subjects involves observation, judgment, interpretation. These things are not easy to teach, and they’re even harder to TEST for, objectively. Damn few standardized tests cover these things; they don’t adapt themselves well to the multiple choice format the Federal testing lords favor.

There is NO test that truly covers everything a kid ought to know upon graduation from high school, so far as I can determine. This is why it takes four years and a battery of teachers to determine whether or not a kid knows it all.

So… at this point… to oversimplify, a little, your kids may well be being tested using tests that do not accurately target the stuff they really oughtta know. And we can’t teach them the stuff they really oughtta know, because we’re busy covering our own asses, teaching them the stuff that will be on the test. See the problem?

Should we test the kids as a measure of accountability? Sure. Why not? Although the tests and procedures could use considerable reform.

Should we cut the schools’ funding if the kids don’t pass the tests? ARE YOU CRAZY? HOW DOES THIS IMPROVE ANYTHING?

Oh, yeah. Funding.

**Mr. Moto ** seems to be saying that all public schools everywhere have more funding than ever before in history, and that all that money is being badly misused, mishandled, and outright stolen. **Mr. Moto ** is, again, making statements based on a lack of information. Not all public schools’ funding has been increased. I am aware of NO legislation anywhere that increases the funding to all schools. And, for all that, many schools, nationwide, have less money.

I should not insult Mr. Moto, though. You see, if Bush gives us ten dollars, and then the state takes away twelve, our funding has been CUT, from my point of view, even though Mr. Bush can crow about being The Education President.

The school for which I work, for example, has had its total budget cut by five percent next year. We’re going to be laying off some people. I can point out a great many school districts in Texas – Bush Country, I might add – that are suddenly panicking because due to state budget shortfalls, education funds have been CUT.

I understand this is a national phenomenon, as well. A great many state budgets are taking a hammering, largely due to the crappy economy. I do not hear Bush’s speeches about funding increases; I am waiting to see the damn money. I have not seen it yet. And for every speech about funding increases, I hear three threats about funding CUTS if the test scores are not improved.

Oh, yeah, and let’s not forget all the massive changes we’ve had to make, the testing we have to pay for, the programs we need to implement, in order to comply with new Federal standards put in place by No Child Left Behind… that are completely UNFUNDED by the Feds. We pay for it ourselves. Out of what money we have. Thus draining funds we might have used elsewhere.

Overall, I ain’t impressed. We don’t need corrupt officials to lose our money for us; the government is doing a peachy job all by itself. And no, I still have no idea what’s happening in DC; I’ve got my hands full right here.

Re: equalization of public school funding: Anyone interested may wish to Google for “Robin Hood Law.” It’s already happening, although the rich districts scream bloody murder about it, fight it tooth and nail, and bring all the political pressure they can bear against it. As is only natural, really. It’s their money. I leave the “right” and “wrong” of it to your individual opinions.

Don’t even get me started on the priority funding of school football programs and athletic programs. Just don’t even get me started on that shit, unless you want to read a long and toxic rant that will short out your monitor screens and peel the outer layers of your eyeballs…