Students do better in public schools

[pgwenthold]

I’ve seen up to $5000 per kid in most proposals.

Is this for each student? Or just for the students who come from families that pay property taxes?

 

[drkitten]

I think all schools teach to the test right now. Remember Bush implemented those required tests a couple years ago. I don’t know what the repercussions to the school/teacher/student are if the students do poorly, but get the impression it’s severe. Right now the students at the school are studying for this test which occurs in 3 weeks.

This is incorrect. The provisions of the recent legislation (formally the No Child Left Behind Act) do not apply to private schools, and there's some question about whether or not Congress would even have the authority to establish standards for private (or at least church-related private) schools. Certainly the only real "stick" that Congress has at its disposal is to pull Federal education funding from underperforming schools. Schools that have no Federal funding in the first place are therefore not in a position to be threatened.

From the official White House summary of the NCLB Act:

Protects Homeschools and Private Schools. Federal requirements do not apply to home schools or private schools. Protections in current law would be maintained.

This is actually being sold as an advantage of private schools (which in some regards it is).

 

[Meadmaker]

But this is the problem: why are they GIVING it to them?

They aren't giving me, the parent, anything. If I were to take advantage of a voucher system, what would I "get"? I would get a piece of paper. When I put my kid into a voucher-accepting school, the school would get some money. My kid would get an education.

What do I get? Nothing.

Today, I pay zero to send my kid to public school. If we had vouchers, I might pay Max(Private Tuition Cost - Voucher Value,0)
to pay for the cost of a private school. Either way I don't get anything.

The only parents who might be able to be said to "get" something out of a voucher program are people who have already chosen to send their kids to private school. Those parents have more money in their pocket at the end of the day under a voucher system, but I don't see a problem with that. As a member of my society, I have an obligation to contribute to the education to the next generation. That includes rich kids. I'm willing to pay for a big, public school in a rich neighborhood. Why should it make any difference if instead I give a somewhat smaller valued piece of paper to the parents of the rich kid, and let them use their own money for the rest of the cost? I save money. They're happier. Who loses?


Vouchers are not given directly to the private schools, they are given as tuition deductions!

The only difference this makes is the path the check takes before being cashed. Either way the school ends up with X government dollars in exchange for educating my kid, and I end up with 0.

And the only difference between vouchers and traditional systems is what teacher ends up with a paycheck.



Here's something I don't know: are "voucher" sizes tied to the size of tax payments?

No existing voucher program does this. In my opinion, this would make no sense. Why would the cost of educating my kid have anything to do with the amount of taxes I pay? I'm not getting back "my money", so there isn't any connection to what I paid.

(Some people advocate tuition tax credits, which would effectively tie benefits to taxes paid. I don't like that idea.)

The Milwaukee program is limited only to low income families. I don't know about Cleveland and Florida.

 

[Meadmaker]

The original post brings up an interesting point.

I was thinking about why any parent would leave their kid in an underperforming school, when there was a free, higher performing, school available to him.

I noted one reason earlier. The curriculum at a Fine Arts academy wouldn't appear on a standardized test, so the appearance of underperformance is just a reflection of inaccurate measurement.

But upon further reflection, differences in curricula are just one aspect of a more general issue. It is possible that some parents simply don't care whether or not their kids get a real education.

When contemplating school choice programs, I think it is necessary to attach strings to the schools that receive the money. If my tax dollars are being spent educating a child, I think I ought to have some control over what that child is learning. Substandard schools shouldn't get the money, even if parents like those schools.

 

[DavidJames]

It is possible that some parents simply don't care whether or not their kids get a real education.

I'd go way beyond possible, there is no doubt in my mind some parents don't give a damn about their kids education.

Substandard schools shouldn't get the money, even if parents like those schools.

Again I must quibble with the terminology. Let's understand why the "school" is substandard first. If the teachers/administration/location/etc are not working, fix them, if they can't be fixed then alternatives must be implemented.

I believe the real issue is the kids are not learning at the level they should. We must understand and address the reason(s) why.

 

[jay gw]

And another reason why I would never send my kids to US public schools:

DALLAS, Texas (AP) -- The shooting last week of a Texas high school football coach -- allegedly by a player's father -- was just the latest and most extreme example of the threats and assaults that teachers around the country say they are increasingly being subjected to by parents.

"I know teachers really feel they're in a pressure cooker," said Aimee Bolender, president of Alliance/AFT, a Dallas teachers union. "The respect for authority has definitely changed. Teachers are no longer respected in general."

In Philadelphia in September, a mother slapped a teacher three times in the face after he told her she needed to get a late slip for her daughter, state officials say. In Dallas, police say, a mother stormed into a classroom, grabbed a teacher's hair, and punched her and kicked her after the teacher scolded the woman's daughter for loitering outside a locker. The mother is herself a teacher in Dallas.

Educators attribute the assaults and arguments, in part, to a general decline in civility and the intense competition these days to get into the right colleges.

Lisa Jacobson, chief executive of the tutoring and test preparation business Inspirica, said teachers have told her they are overwhelmed by pushy parents.

"They feel like the parents come in as CEOs and order them around," Jacobson said. "I've seen many cases of parents going into schools and coercing teachers to change grades."

While no national education organization keeps statistics on assaults and threats against teachers by parents, many educators say they have seen an unmistakable rise in tensions.

Lee Alvoid, a retired principal in suburban Dallas, said that toward the end of her 32-year career, parent-teacher conferences had become so tense that she sometimes asked security guards to stand outside her office.

The Issaquah school district outside Seattle adopted a "civility policy" in 2001 to teach everyone -- parents, students, teachers and administrators -- how to communicate courteously because conversations were becoming more confrontational.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/EDUCATION/04/14/aggressive.parents.ap/index.html

I remember a time when no parent would dare mistreat teachers.

 

[DavidJames]

And another reason why I would never send my kids to US public schools:

Can you clarify?

Do you believe the incident you quote is the fault of the public school where it occured, if so why?

Do you feel the incident could not occur at a private school, if not, why?

 

[Meadmaker]

Again I must quibble with the terminology. Let's understand why the "school" is substandard first. If the teachers/administration/location/etc are not working, fix them, if they can't be fixed then alternatives must be implemented.

I should clarify. When I said "substandard schools shouldn't get the money" what I meant was that if vouchers were used to fund private schools, substandard private schools shouldn't be allowed to accept them.

Public schools should be funded, although in areas where public schools are doing a lousy job, school choice programs have been shown to improve the quality of both public and private schools.

 

[Meadmaker]

Can you clarify?

Do you believe the incident you quote is the fault of the public school where it occured, if so why?

Do you feel the incident could not occur at a private school, if not, why?

I don't know what Jay would say, but I would say that such incidents would be much more rare in private schools because if the parent hates the school, they can take their kid out of it, and if the school hates the parent, they can kick the kid out of it.

When you have to pay for something, you are more likely to treat it with respect.

 

[Tmy]

I don't know what Jay would say, but I would say that such incidents would be much more rare in private schools because if the parent hates the school, they can take their kid out of it, and if the school hates the parent, they can kick the kid out of it.

When you have to pay for something, you are more likely to treat it with respect.

The story doesnt mention if those events occured in public or private schools.

You can also claim the opposite. Since parents ARE paying they are more likely to freak out if they think they arent getting their moneys worth.

 

[kerfer]

I do not want to be seen as slagging poor people as dumb, because I don't believe that. But I think that it shows that there is much more to education than what happens at school - which may be lost in a school voucher debate.

I agree that poor does not equal dumb any more than minority equals dumb or any other gross corrolation that could be proposed, and I think you made some good points.

However, I would posit that some of the things that drive people to lower economic strata are perhaps some of the same things that don't foster value in their children's education, so the kids get shorted on their education through no fault of their own.

For example, a single mom working her butt off to support her kids may not have the time available to dedicate to staying on top of her kids homework, parent/teacher meetings, helping in class, PTA, and some of the other things that some other parents are able to do. (and I'm also not trying to dis single moms/dads here...I have a tremendous amount of respect for a people raising a child alone--it's a tough job). Many single moms got that way by getting pregnant very young, not finishing their own education, not marrying the father, and never getting a shot at the life they'd rather have, and are working a low skill job because ot it. The case is perhaps slightly different for a divorced or widowed single parent, in that they may have at least had a chance to finish high school, and maybe go to trade school or college, and probably have higher earning power, which may allow them to buy some free time (hire the cleaning / laundry / lawnwork etc done, for example) to rededicate to the kids' education.

A couple, for whatever reason, may have an attitude that education is not inportant. They dropped out of high school, and they seem to get along fine. Whatever the kids are able to do in school will be good enough. Sad.

A couple may choose to have both parents work, and by the time they get home from work, run errands, shop for groceries, and perform all the other tasks that could have been performed by one spouse (usually the wife) while the other spouse (usually the husband) is at work earning money, and the kids are in school, they, like the single parent, just don't have the time.

You can tell, in my kids' school which parents are in which category. There are parents that are seemingly always there, helping in class, volunteering for PTA, going on field trips, and other such things, and others are never there. I think that the kids who have a parent there are getting a better education than those whose parents are absent (I didn't say these kids are smarter, although most of them probably are, but how much of this is correlated and how much is coincidental is another subject, perhaps). And this is highly due to the fact that the parents are more involved. Which, I have long argued, is the same scenario as the kids in the private schools.

Education of children shouldn't be seen as only the job of the schools, either public or private. Parental involvement is extremely important.

 

[jay gw]

Has anyone else ever noticed that the gang violence and mass murders happen in public schools?