I'm not a big Stossel fan. He seems to me like the Michael Moore of the right. But like Moore he sometimes makes a good point, even if he has a dishonest way of making the point.
Private schools would have a lot more freedom to innovate and improve themselves then public schools do. Its almost impossible to suspend a student these days unless they bring a gun or drugs to school or something equally agregious. Private schools wouldn't have that limitation. Those students who were causing problems in those clips would not last long at a private school.
And private schools have total freedom when it comes to how they teach. They aren't beholden to some school board, aren't forced to try every lame brained new teaching gimmick that comes along. No discovery learning. No "new" math. Not if what the teachers doing is affective.
There are definately some advantages there to a more privatized system.
Doubtful. Here's a phrase: "the customer is always right". The private school's customer base is the world's most powerful school board: not only are they not elected or qualified, but they're responding to personal investment to the tune of thousands of dollars. They vote just like a school board, except their votes are measured in dollars.
This is why teachers in the private system are much more stressed: their disciplinary options are very restricted. They can't expel a kid (they'd lose a customer). They can't document incidents (the school's salespitch is that kids will stop misbehaving, so they have to have paperwork to prove it).
Hold the students accountable, but understand that disciplinary problems begin and end with parents. That's why some schools are worse than others: the neighbourhoods have different family demographics. You can move teachers around from school to school, but the schools will perform the same. Moving kids from school to school makes little difference in their performance, unless it coincides with a change in parental involvement (and it often does).
Private schools vary widely. Here in the Lower Mainland, they range from poor to excellent. The worst I'm aware of is a basement operation with five students, a priest who thinks he's an expert in everything (1), and no tuition. The best is probably St. George's with hundreds of students and a very high entrance requirement. They turn away 80% of applicants. The parents are screened. Repeat: the parents are considered the best predictor of student success.
And this is not surprising. Consider my friend's role in Vancouver: she designed and obtained funding for a special education program for kids with behavioral problems. There are two streams: the ones with organic problems, such as ADD/ADHD, Tourette's, schizophrenia, &c, and a second stream for non-organic disciplinary problems. A pilot program showed excellent results, and it was opened up to five highschools, where 300 kids were identified as those who would benefit. Only one parent wanted their kid in the program, everybody else refused to accept that their kid needed help. The program was cancelled.
A hundred years ago when the education system was private, people thought going public would solve behavior problems. Now that it's public, people think privatization is the answer. The problem has always been that the kids learn behavior at home, and it's just getting worse.
I coach a swim team, and I have watched my proportion of attention and time dedicated to 'class management' increase from trivial to over 50% since the 1980s. I have gone from kicking out one kid per year to one kid per workout. I filed a police report against one in December, and the parents stand behind the kid (2). These statistics are typical for teams across Canada. I'm glad I'm not in soccer, because they've gone from 1 parent-parent assault per year in Canada to approximately twenty per weekend. The parents bring knives to the games, and think this means they're setting a good example.
The system is doing its best to work with the good parents and work against the bad parents. Unfortunately, these don't make good TV because these incidents are protected by ordinary confidentiality. Teachers would be fired on the spot if they went to the media with specific examples.
(1) Anecdote: my housemate was interviewed by this guy to take on the science curriculum and the challenge was to teach the three laws of thermodynamics in terms of the Trinity. My friend, who is a physics major, corrected the guy to tell him that there are four laws of thermodynamics, and the guy said he'd have to omit one from the program or the Trinity thing won't work. My friend turned down the offer.
(2) Their theory: I have an irrational grudge against the kid, so I snuck into his house, stole a knife from the kitchen, and planted it into his swim bag, then made up the story about threats. Nobody believes them, but if I were the kid, I'd interpret this as carte blanche.
I refuse to dumb-down my classes.
