myiW Current Conditions and Forecasts Community Forums Buy and Sell Services
 
Hi guest · myAccount · Log in
 SearchSearch   ProfileProfile   Log in to check your private messagesLog in to check your private messages   RegisterRegister 
Racism and America
Goto page Previous  1, 2, 3 ... 22, 23, 24 ... 455, 456, 457  Next
 
Post new topic   Reply to topic    iWindsurf Community Forum Index -> Politics, Off-Topic, Opinions
View previous topic :: View next topic  
Author Message
mac



Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17744
Location: Berkeley, California

PostPosted: Tue Jan 28, 2014 11:49 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Quote:
If a child is pulled from a public school and enrolled in a private school, would that have a negative or positive impact on that particular schools funding, thus hindering rather than helping that school?


In California, where much of the money comes from the state, the amount each school gets depends on the pupil census. Less students, less money. Because each school has a certain amount of overhead, one fewer student means more of the money from the rest of the school census pays for more overhead--and fewer books, teacher training, etc.

That ignores the politics of the upper class opting out--and taking their financial support of PTA's and political support for continued funding away.

Your thread also ignores a pretty well established fact--investments in education, all the way up through advanced college degrees, deliver more tax revenue over time and more than pay for themselves. This is the concept that conservatives, with their knee-jerk hatred of government programs, don't seem to understand. Some government programs--roads, airport, ports, waste treatment, and education--are investments that increase overall wealth. Track the indirect spin-offs from the Kennedy determination to put a man on the moon.

Or we can look at government and societal efforts to reduce smoking--which have been dramatically effective and have cut health care costs for the government and private sectors.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
swchandler



Joined: 08 Nov 1993
Posts: 10588

PostPosted: Tue Jan 28, 2014 1:44 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

When the debate becomes "the government should provide vouchers" to folks wanting send their kids to private school, and it has in many states, that's where I have a big problem. Like techno900 says, we all pay for education regardless whether we ever have kids. Everyone has to have some skin in the game.

However, if folks want to send their kids to private school, they should pay extra, and receive no tax benefits if they do. Unfortunately, there are many right wing social conservatives fighting for school choice, but they actually want to decide whether to fund or de-fund public schools. Essentially, the Balkanization of American education. A real bad decision for America.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
MalibuGuru



Joined: 11 Nov 1993
Posts: 9293

PostPosted: Wed Jan 29, 2014 12:11 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

So we get "cookie cutter kids" when they all get taught the same things in public schools. How boring. How 1984.

Home school kids consistently score higher on SAT's and AP tests.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
uwindsurf



Joined: 18 Aug 2012
Posts: 968
Location: Classified

PostPosted: Wed Jan 29, 2014 7:31 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

http://www.census.gov/population/www/documentation/twps0053/twps0053.html

Home schoolers are like their peers in many respects. Table 2 shows how they compare, using data from all three surveys under consideration. Home schoolers are not especially likely to be young or old. They are about as likely to be of one sex or the other, with perhaps a slightly greater percentage female. In some ways, however, home-schoolers do stand out. Home schooled children are more likely to be non-Hispanic White, they are likely to live in households headed by a married couple with moderate to high levels of education and income, and are likely to live in a household with an adult not in the labor force.

One of the strongest influences on home schooling from Table 3 is that of having a non-working adult in the household. The coefficient of there being a non-working adult is large and highly significant. The cross-tabular results of Table 2 gave a hint that this relationship was diminishing across years, but the interaction with year was not significant in the multiple regression framework. However, the main effect of non-working remains. Sixty percent of home schooled children have a non-working adult in the home, compared with thirty percent of other children. If home schooling is limited to a particular subgroup, it is probably this one.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
techno900



Joined: 28 Mar 2001
Posts: 4161

PostPosted: Wed Jan 29, 2014 9:56 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Mac said:
Quote:
That ignores the politics of the upper class opting out--and taking their financial support of PTA's and political support for continued funding away.


On the other hand, if one finds their family in a city with a lousy public school system, and have the finances to send their kid to a private school, what would you have them do?

For the most part, if any executive or family with above average income moves to Dallas, TX, they are very likely to choose a private school. The public school system at the secondary level is the pits, with the exception of two magnet schools that have pulled in the best and brightest in the city and do exceptionally well. The private school business in Dallas is thriving with a broad choice of non-sectarian and sectarian options for all levels and abilities. The other option for new folks in the community is to live in one of the many suburban cities that have good to excellent public schools.

I am not for vouchers, but I do see the logic behind the option. For the most part, the amount of the vouchers that I have seen offered in a few different cites is not much compared to the full cost of a quality private school education. A voucher would be of little or no benefit to poorer families as I see it, especially at the secondary level, but that would also depend on the amount of the voucher. Texas voted down the voucher idea in 2013.

Many of the private schools have skill/knowledge/ability requirements, and even if someone shows up on the door step with a voucher, there is no guarantee that they would be accepted.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
KGB-NP



Joined: 25 Jul 2001
Posts: 2856

PostPosted: Wed Jan 29, 2014 10:49 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

In business, if you provide poor service or poor quality products you loose business or cease to exist.
_________________
The universe is made up of proton, neutrons, electrons, and morons.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
uwindsurf



Joined: 18 Aug 2012
Posts: 968
Location: Classified

PostPosted: Wed Jan 29, 2014 11:32 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Education cannot be compared to a business model.

A teacher gets the students they get. They cannot pick and choose their students. There is little a teacher can do in the course of a school year with students that suffer low motivation, low IQ, substance abuse, physical abuse, sexual abuse, homelessness, hunger, etc. This is especially true for the older students.

Your example would be accurate it you took every client who came along whether they paid you or not. You don't. You work with people who have the ability to pay their bill. Not every student has the ability or desire to excel academically.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
mac



Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17744
Location: Berkeley, California

PostPosted: Wed Jan 29, 2014 11:40 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Yousurf--thanks for the post. Lots of stuff there to absorb, and I haven't yet. Techno--this has become a pretty interesting discussion, even if in the wrong thread. When I started volunteering, ten years ago, and then when I began doing it nearly half time when I retired, I had no preconceived notions. I was in the classroom for the kids, not the teachers, and I tended to agree (and still do) that charter schools were an appropriate solution for very bad public systems--as I faced when I volunteered in Oakland. I thought No Child left behind was a pretty good idea, and not a big deal in terms of difficulty. I have no vested interests in either teachers or teacher's unions. I've learned a few things, rooted in more hours with three teachers than the the principals have had.

First, Federal dictates like No Child Left Behind, even if born in the best motives of George Bush and George Miller, have been counterproductive. Indeed, the movement away from local control has complicated the administration of programs that are conceptually worthwhile. Punitive measures have encouraged cheating in some districts.

Second, American schools at the K-12 level will continue to be inferior to those in countries (Europe, particularly Finland, and Korea for example) which accord a high degree of honor to the teaching profession, and recruit teachers from the top quartile of college graduates. There are 4 million teachers in America, and even if 10% of them should be fired, that won't fundamentally change the quality of schools. I've worked mostly with good, but not brilliant teachers--and brilliant teachers do make a difference.

Third, in order to improve the quality of teaching, we do not necessarily have to have the brightest college students recruited into teaching. But we need to identify those with a gift for teaching, or working with kids, and train them well. To do that, we need to retain and utilize master teachers, and make sure that principals coach teachers in their critical formative years, and to a lesser degree, throughout their career. I think having relatively ordinary people teach who teach well, and an occasional stellar teacher, is enough. After all, until you reach high school sciences and math, it is not the mastery of the material that is difficult--it is reaching the student. This takes particular gifts and skills.

Fourth, many so-called reforms fall under the category of "they want the money", or ideology. Since the principal recruited me to teach advanced math, and I have been in fourth grade classrooms with the roll-out of the Common Core curriculum, I have been horrified by some of the responses--by both pundits like George Will who can't see quality beyond his loathing for central control, and teachers unions. The math part of Common Core is a stunningly good improvement--in content, concept, and manner of teaching. Few of those hating on it have actually looked at it. But I agree with Will that it should not be imposed at the Federal level--it should be rolled out the way it has been--held up as a high curriculum, and adopted by the States.

Finally, for now, we are left with the problem of the hard to educate. Good students are almost always happy kids with loving parents that value education. They thrive in most systems, and are a delight to work with. Every one that I've known had a great mother. But kids that are unhappy are almost always unhappy because of what goes on at home--and act it out in school. They are the hard to educate, and the tragic thing about charter and religious schools is that they don't take such kids. So they are often left to the jails.

There is more, but that reflects ten years in classrooms tutoring both gifted kids, and the hard to educate.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
isobars



Joined: 12 Dec 1999
Posts: 20935

PostPosted: Wed Jan 29, 2014 12:01 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

stevenbard wrote:
Home school kids consistently score higher on SAT's and AP tests.

The flip side of that is the millions of parents from all walks of life who virtually ignore their kids or even encourage and enable their asinine and even criminal behavior. Sounds like we need both types of education, one for education and the other for juvenile delinquents*. I remain appalled at the number of people who think it's acceptable to have kids they can't even afford to feed and the number of people who think it's acceptable for both parents to work full time while they have pre-K kids. And of what use is a sperm donor or womb who works 80-hour weeks? S/he's an ATM, not a parent.

Then there are the disingenuous politicians and ignorant populace who believe money will improve education on any large scale. Generations of facts and specific studies disprove that, but pols still lie about it and uninformed voters still eat it up.

And, of course, there are the teachers' unions. Of CA's 275,000 teachers, just 2 -- TWO -- are fired for poor performance each year, at a dollar cost of 10 times their salary and a time cost of four years of effort. Their "progressive" system compels schools to grant tenure to new teachers even before they complete training or get certified to teach. The schools that don't do that see good teachers, even "Teachers of the Year", getting fired because the tenured ones cannot be fired even if convicted of heinous crimes; it's far cheaper to just pay them huge bonuses to walk away. (NY state puts some of those teachers in "rubber rooms". Google them.

Of course there are individual (i.e., anecdotal) local exceptions to all the above. So?
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
KGB-NP



Joined: 25 Jul 2001
Posts: 2856

PostPosted: Wed Jan 29, 2014 12:23 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

youwindsurf wrote:
Education cannot be compared to a business model.

A teacher gets the students they get. They cannot pick and choose their students. There is little a teacher can do in the course of a school year with students that suffer low motivation, low IQ, substance abuse, physical abuse, sexual abuse, homelessness, hunger, etc. This is especially true for the older students.

Your example would be accurate it you took every client who came along whether they paid you or not. You don't. You work with people who have the ability to pay their bill. Not every student has the ability or desire to excel academically.


Agreed, but follow the money. Some would have us believe the motivation is segregation, racism, science teachings, or to defund the system. My motivation was so my kids could "learn" AND not be influence by drugs, alcohol, bullying, lack of discipline, disrespectful behavior, promiscuity and / or the idiot parents who condone their rotten kids behavior. Oh yes, and then there is the teaching that it is better to participate in moderation than it is to abstain. I don't think I'm alone in the FACT that so many choose to do so for the exact same reasons I did.

They got to experience all those delights of public education when they entered the local high school. It was / is so enlighteningly nice, NOT!

_________________
The universe is made up of proton, neutrons, electrons, and morons.


Last edited by KGB-NP on Wed Jan 29, 2014 5:35 pm; edited 1 time in total
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Display posts from previous:   
Post new topic   Reply to topic    iWindsurf Community Forum Index -> Politics, Off-Topic, Opinions All times are GMT - 5 Hours
Goto page Previous  1, 2, 3 ... 22, 23, 24 ... 455, 456, 457  Next
Page 23 of 457

 
Jump to:  
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum
You cannot attach files in this forum
You cannot download files in this forum

myiW | Weather | Community | Membership | Support | Log in
like us on facebook
© Copyright 1999-2007 WeatherFlow, Inc Contact Us Ad Marketplace

Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group