<p>The founders believed in separation of church & state, to refresh your memory, Freedom from religion as well as freedom of religion.</p>
<p>I think studing religions & philosophies, is appropriate however as part of a world study class.</p>
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<p>Do you understand what the term even means, EK? It does not mean what most Americans seem to think it means. All it means is that there is no official, formal alliance of the government with institutional religion. It does not mean that the U.S. government is officially “a-theistic.” It simply means that government, relative to its relationship with religion, is officially neutral.</p>
<p>Nor does it mean that religions, as institutions, have reduced status to exercise freedom of speech (vs. secular institutions). Religions in this country have always been, and continue to be, empowered to influence public opinion in whatever legitimate way they choose, as often as they choose. They are free, as institutions, to lobby governmental bodies regarding the direction of legislation.</p>
<p>Nor does it mean that government is values-free, or should be values-free. The country was actually founded on values and ideals. It could be argued that many of those values have religious connections, if not religious origins.</p>
<p>romany,
"K -12 in the USA does not work, period. Busy work, no analytical skills development, program is not challenging… "
Sigh. Another gross oversimplification and overgeneralization. It depends, like always, on your school district, child, etc.</p>
<p>-Unfortunately, I was referring to the best school(s) in region and the very top students. If parents do not input into k - 12 significantly, there is NO way and discovery at college is overwhelming (again, for the top kids in top programs). I am not familiar with “average and below”. If they are doing better than top students, good for them, but I have no background to discuss their situation.</p>
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<p>Ohio’s property taxes vary by school district and city.</p>
<p>In our small college town with an excellent public school system, it’s about $1270 per $100K home value per year. Average price of a home here is around $250K. </p>
<p>[Find</a> Ohio school district property tax rates statewide | cleveland.com](<a href=“http://www.cleveland.com/datacentral/index.ssf/2010/03/find_ohio_school_district_prop.html]Find”>Find Ohio school district property tax rates statewide - cleveland.com)</p>
<p>On the topic, I agree that a study that asks people about public schools in general is fatally flawed. Some districts are fantastic and some are terrible. This seems to correlate, often, with the financial resources of the resident families.</p>
<p>rmldad-out of the oh, 60 school districts in our metro area or so, I can think of 5 that I wouldn’t send our kids to. I wouldn’t live in those areas either. Two of those areas have the highest property tax rates in our state. Our current school district is constantly ranked one of the top districts in the country, Blue Ribbon schools, top test scores, graduation rates, etc, etc. Our per pupil spending is right around $9000, which is average across the nation. Property tax rates are right about 1% of home value. On paper our schools should not be good at all but what makes them different is that people here care about their kids getting a good education, it’s a highly educated area to begin with and that helps. Average home cost here is about $250,000, which is on the low side for our metro area. Average income, however is about $130,000–meaning people are pretty frugal here.</p>
<p>I don’t agree that the “public schools” fail to educate anyone. I agree that too many families that don’t care about education concentrated in one area makes public schools fail. Our state has a program that buses kids to higher performing schools from the inner city. They are stopping that program because it’s costing almost $100,000/student AND these kids are not doing any better academically at the other school. Now tell me, is that top school suddenly bad or is it the student that is the issue.</p>
<p>It simply means that government, relative to its relationship with religion, is officially neutral.</p>
<p>right, so that it would be inappropriate to teach one religion as the “right” religion to follow in publicly funded schools.
Rather than solve problems it would be likely to cause more.
The founders also didnt allow for blacks or women to vote, so I don’t think they were the be & all of individual rights.</p>
<p>“My point is that good public schools are essentially private schools. Either they screen families through real estate prices and taxes or they are urban districts that pull the best and brightest from throughout the district. In either case, these students bring with them parents who are involved and offer their support to the self-selected talented students.”</p>
<p>You got the point. How can people just blame a school for its products while it has no right to select the material to start with?</p>
<p>We need to educate our kids no matter what … That means every kid should be exposed at early age for the different career opportunities. That means we should offer more career-related summer camps in stead of just sport and reading camps. We must inspire kids to measure themselves up to their career ambitions.</p>
<p>For the kids who kept saying that they had no clue, public education system should provide some “gap year” structure to help the kids finding motivation for working hard for their goals.</p>
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Steve, I assume you’re talking about METCO, or something similar? It’s too bad, because it was working at least for some kids in the 70’s and 80’s - but it might just be that our town was surrounded by Boston, and the cost to send them to our schools wasn’t nearly that high (I knew a few that didn’t even get a bus, but either walked or rode the T.</p>
<p>I can attest to the other side of the equation. My youngest attends a magnet school in the nearby city. 30% of the students come from outside the district, and they are generally the highest scorers on the state tests. That is changing in this particular school, because they are addressing the very issue of home life. It is less an issue of parental education or involvement, but of language barriers, because many parents speak primarily spanish, and little english. The families do value education, and many in fact work at Yale (University or Hospital). </p>
<p>Part of overcoming this is the instructional method at this school. It uses a dual-language model where half the class time is spent with an English speaking teacher, and half with a Spanish-speaking teacher, allowing the children from Spanish speaking households to learn in their native language. All notices are sent home in both languages, and the Vice-Principal is a native speaker. They have a headset system where she can translate for those parents during meetings, so they can understand what is happening and participate. </p>
<p>I do think this is a better model than bringing the city kids to the suburban schools. The suburban kids bring their involved parents with them to the city schools, while the parents of the city kids often do not have the resources to be involved at the suburban schools, which takes us right back to the level of parent involvement being so important.</p>
<p>Totally agree with you. Public schools from k-12 are simply obsolete, running on the cranks of an old, worn-out system. In this day and age of burgeoning social networks and rapidly advancing technology, one should be sworn to follow their dreams and experience the real world. </p>
<p>Many high schoolers that I’m used to spend much of their time on either school - clubs, study, sports - or their social live, rarely anything else in between.</p>
<p>My youngest used to attend a K-12 school. ( i tried to get oldest into it but it was too popular- she attended private school instead)It was great, Arts focused, good science program especially in the high school, families were involved for decades as they saw two or more children through K-12.</p>
<p>I wanted her to consider attending through high school, but she wanted to leave after middle school for a larger environment. I wasn’t sure if she was ready, but she was!</p>
<p>“Public schools from k-12 are simply obsolete, running on the cranks of an old, worn-out system.”</p>
<p>-Yes, they have to go way back in time when they used to teach, not filling the blanks…and prepare EVERYBODY for ALL majors in college, including engineering and any science related majors. They got away from that at the time when it is needed the most. And as a surprise, at the level of k -12, math, physics, chem., did not change in past century. There are advanced developments that do not affect level of k - 12 , not even close. It is not possible to teach physics in one year, it is simply ridiculous idea. And the best teacher will recognize it and teach only mechanics instead as other parts are simpler. This is just one example. Another is algebra has to be FINISHED. done in middle school and so is geometry and trig. so that they can move on in HS, by “they” I mean EVERY single student. There are many examples like that. If it is recognized that English should be taught in every grade, why math and sciences are so neglected. It is extremely important to be a strong writer and posses other communication skills…but NOT at the expense of complete neglect for math and science at the time when engineers and scientist are needed the most and great number is filled by those who recieve their school education abroad or who have significant input from parents who recieved their education abroad. This situation is wrong, it cannot go on forever. But if most are saying that there is no problem, then we deserve the system that we have now. I am talking about entire system, not public vs private, the best vs the worst, all of schools are below the level that they should be and they used to be.</p>
<p>Miami,</p>
<p>I don’t know that I’d agree with you that “all” schools have disintegrated (“are below the level they used to be and should be”). I don’t know that that’s empirically verifiable. However, the empirical evidence does point to this:</p>
<p>(1) Except in the small minority of public schools/districts which have premium staffs, premium households, and are run on the private school model, the vast majority of public schools continue to operate below a standard that most other First World countries consider a minimum standard. It is not just in the math and science areas, however. It’s a standard that pervades the entire curriculum and the entire approach to school attendance, performance, and behavior. So there are really several separate issues here, all of which affect the quality of education:</p>
<p>(a) the prominence of social services in the public schools. I know I’ve talked about this before, but I don’t just mean the issue of “education” $ spent within the schools, and by education departments, on social services for students. Nor do I additionally mean what I’ve mentioned before about the role of teachers in public schools (as often rarely spending time on education, versus social services for which they have no licensing). I mean the entire mindset which assumes the school site as the replacement household for the student, with teachers and administrators as parental rescue figures and caretakers (of the students and their parents). </p>
<p>Such an attitude indirectly impacts whatever work ethic is assumed by those in charge. Johnny, Jose, or Jamar can be “expected” to underperform academically because he and/or his family is just so stressed out with home issues (poverty, family dysfunction or substance abuse, etc.). If another teacher or an adminstrator inquires as to why 50-85% of the class are failing (including never studying outside of class), the “answer” provided is invariably that these particular students “can’t,” because of their individual environments. </p>
<p>Here I’m not speaking of the positive replacement model of the high-achieving ethnically homogeous charter schools, which are both supportive and which feature a work ethic, but the non-charter “traditional” site schools. Except that they’re not very traditional, in terms of the U.S public school system historically. They’re post-modern; they’re (local and state government) -controlled, and the ethos is very far from the traditional public school.</p>
<p>(b) the curriculum itself. This speaks partly, but not entirely, to some of your points about neglect of the higher-level thinking skills and the planned trajectory of the curriculum (non-repetitive and increasingly complex). If Johnny, Jose, and Jamar are presumed to be stressed out on a permanent basis, then the curriculum not only will reflect that, it does reflect that – certainly in my State. </p>
<p>(2) The evidence of public site-school failure in most urban and most suburban locations is the sustained and increasing experimentation into different forms of schooling: public charters, public homeschools, and tutorial-format schooling. If the U.S. public school system were doing reasonably well as a whole, there simply would not be this kind of exodus and “desperate measures” by families of all income levels throughout the country.</p>
<p>Just to re-iterate by personal knowledge/example:</p>
<p>Several years ago (this century!) I responded to a teaching ad for a local public middle school, teaching English. Meeting all of the qualifications, I was interviewed by the Principal and Vice-Principal. They asked me what my goals were for the class and how I would meet those. I stated that my goal was mastery of the subject matter, and I explained how I would execute that. They both stared at me with disbelief on their face. The Principal spoke up: “But they’re not going to do that. They’re simply not going to read, nor will they do any of the homework you assign.”</p>
<p>I was astounded that this person was the school “leader,” as that hardly represents leadership in my book. It would be as if your private doctor “assumed” that you would never bring your Rx slip to the pharmacy, or that a hospital administrator had no “assumptions” that that his or her medical staff were competent enough to achieve results against difficult odds. </p>
<p>I’m 100% committed to English literacy and fluency, for 100% of the student population. I’m telling you that I am not the only exception in education, but definitely an exception.</p>
<p>There are public schools and then there are other public schools.</p>
<p>I have just begun a part-time job as Site Manager to the afterschool program in our suburb’s district. Although S-2 only attended here for h.s., when we moved in, I had the impression it was a toney, well-managed district (it is) with strong percentages of grads going on to college (they do).</p>
<p>My area of expertise is in Elementary Education. Before moving here, I taught First and Second grades in a poverty rural elementary school in upstate NY (Catskill Mountains) where students’ demography is roughly equal by thirds: African-American, Latino, Caucasian. There are no significant commercial/industrial tax sources in the community to generate resources for quality schooling. That tourism industry fell on hard times since the l970’s and hasn’t recovered.</p>
<p>Many children were being raised by rural grannies who live upstate, whose children went to NYC and fell apart financially or druggily there. The grannies are descendants of the largely AA and Latino labor force from the resort industry that thrived in the l950’s-60’s. The grannies are saving their grandchildren, but are sometimes angry at their own children (for making them child-raisers again). They contribute a swat to the behind and admonitions to mind the teacher, but it’s a fear-based view of school. </p>
<p>Those children that stay in the community and become parents are often young themselves, rarely married, and in the early stages of coupledom where the daddies are still hanging around. So I usually had a single mom and curious/interested dad who attended various school events. The parents had recent memory of a crummy high school experience themselves, so they also were wary of coming back into a public school building, this time to shepherd their little 5-year-old into the same poor school community. Although a lot of the attitude was fear-based, they too echoed the admonition to “show respect for your teacher.” </p>
<p>With this baseline of family support, I worked with some burned-out and some gifted young teachers who had family ties to the community - went off to state teachers colleges and returned to work at schools they had attended themselves. </p>
<p>Last week, as I walked through the elementary school halls in my “toney” district, peeking into classrooms just being set up, I saw the stunning difference in physical resources. The rooms were TWICE as large, bright and sunny. Centers were abundant, 6x as many computers per child as in the poverty district. It was clean and looked happy, even before the children arrived for Day One. I saw areas for quiet reading, and school-owned resources for manipuatlive math and science. I recall how much the other teachers and I purchased and brought into our classes to supply more than just the workbooks and curriculum binders. I recalled the pennies-type budget we were allowed to purchase Level Reading books, and our scramble to find books at garage sales prior to school opening day for our classrooms, levelling them by our training so students would have age-appropriate reading matter in the class. </p>
<p>I can write about it descriptively now, but honestly, last week as I peeked into all these attractive modern suburban classrooms that teachers were setting up for a new year, I remembered the leaky-roofed dingy schools of our previous home where I’d taught. I choked up. The difference in resources was too great, and palpable. </p>
<p>I thought: How can we possibly think that being in K or First Grade is equal for both sets of American children? It’s worlds apart. The resource gap between rich and poor districts, always based on local tax base of housing and businesses, is a huge problem. It hurt to see it right in front of my eyes.</p>
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<p>Well, not only did you think with your heart, but also with a very clear head. The problem, as you stated, exists and will only get worse. In a separate thread, I introduced the extravagant expenditures in the Allen ISD, a suburb of Dallas. If you’d draw a circle around Dallas and compare the districts to the South and East to the districts to the North and Northwest, you would see incredible differences. A direct result of the citizens (who can afford it) either made the sacrifices to send their kids to private school, or moved to the new suburban Shangri-Las that allow for an effective, and perhaps covert, economic, and let say it, racial segregation. There is a world out there that find it justifiable to spend 60 millions on a football stadium for high schoolers, lavish the same students with grand pianos, or even find a way to spend close to 40 millions on a glorified bus barn. </p>
<p>The justification hinges on the fact that the people of that district approved the lavish expenses --even if a cynic could point out that the pro voters were pretty much as numerous as the … staff and faculty of that district, as just over 2,000 did cast a supporting vote. In a way, you cannot blame the citizens of that district to direct their educational exenditures in a manner that should DIRECTLY improved the lifestyle of their offspring. After all, they looked around and made a decision to move to such districts for the precise reasons of obtaining an education that rivals the more glorious (and richest) private schools.</p>
<p>However, what one could (and should) blame are the generations of corrupt politicians, clueless school boards, and academic “leaders” who have rejected measures that would change the current system in deliver the justice and the equality that public education pretends to deliver. In Texas, there is a Robin Hood plan that “robs” the richer districts and redirects some funding to the poorer districts. Unfortunately, just as Allen found a way to justify building a football temple in the Dallas boonies, the poorer districts often used their “windfall” for projects that did not improve the education per se. </p>
<p>Those stories highlight two distinct problems. The first one is that the finding based on local property taxes is one that deepens the chasm between the have and have-nots; the second one, and one that is even more nefarious, is the lack of spending controls and the misdirection of funds in the entire academic system. While there is a debate about the need for more money (as the results of increased spending are nebulous at best) there is no doubt that the districts are ravaged by corruption, wasteful spending, and dragged down by the “need” to fund numerous programs, including social programs, that only exist because they sounded good to some interested parties. </p>
<p>Our system is based on denial and excuses, and it will only get worse.</p>
<p>Where I live in CA, money allocated for teaching in public schools is set by the State, not the local taxpayers, and the teacher union does not allow parents to fund teacher positions. The result is that parents who are anxious to improve the public schools donate money and approve bonds that can only be spent on “resources” other than teachers. Unfortunately, regardless of how many thousands of dollars are raised, the quality of teaching cannot be improved.</p>
<p>After reading through the pages of this thread 2 things stand out for me which are getting lost. One is that even in many “toney” surburban dustricts the public schools are failing quite miserably. Hence the loads of recent college grads either unemployed or under employed. Secondly, the task of fixing inner city schools has been ongoing since the 60’s and has been un utter and nearly complete failure. At what point do all those involved admit that the systems is just not working and throwing more money into a broken system won’t help.</p>
<p>"At what point do all those involved admit that the systems is just not working and throwing more money into a broken system won’t help. "</p>
<p>-I am very glad that some, even if very few, think this way. Recognizing the problem is the firt step in solving it. It has to be recognized at all levels. Even if there is no clear plan of how to attempt to change it, problem needs to be recognized. Then if most agree that there is a problem, we can attempt to brainstorm options to fix it. I am sure there are many. I am also sure that if something has been tried and completely failed, then there is no reason to try it again, is there? So, again, why are we requesting more and more $$? Out of habit? Or maybe requesting voices are the loudest ones? It did not work, it will not work.</p>
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<p>Because that is how public education --and all other public services-- work. Regardless of the districts, nobody is happy with the budgets and the salaries. When teachers are paid $60,000 for about 1,000 hours of performance, they think it should be $80,000. When the benefits packages cost an extra $20,000, someone will think it should be $24,000. The only items that are not subject to such inflation are the work hours and work days.</p>
<p>The system is extremely top-heavy and generous for the fat cats who have been there for a while. People who enter into the system hardly enjoy the benefits of seniority.</p>
<p>There are so many ways by which politics can help our education system, but fixing teachers, facilities, etc. will not solve the problem at hand completely. </p>
<p>From my experience with public schools, I can say that culture is perhaps the greatest challenge that kids face in receiving a great education. There is a pervasive feeling in public schools that it is cool to be rebellious and to receive bad grades. Kids who strive to do well in school are considered nerds and social failures. The causes of this can be found in the media and can even be traced back to our nation’s very inception. After all, the pursuit of happiness comes before the pursuit of a great education and the pursuit of a better future.</p>
<p>Correcting this problem is just as complex and important as increasing the quality of instruction in our schools, for a group of children who lack the motivation to learn won’t learn in spite of their teacher’s efforts.</p>