<p>The article is indeed sad. The one or two times my S was not in school by 9 AM (because he was sick), the Dean of Students called home to check on him. I cannot imagine a student skipping 60 out of 90 classes and not being missed by someone.</p>
<p>
[quote]
I cannot imagine a student skipping 60 out of 90 classes and not being missed by someone.
[/quote]
No one cares about these kids. This is one reason why I think the idea of vouchers is worth looking at. I know it's not a perfect solution, but maybe market driven forces would push the adults in this situation to sit up and DO something.</p>
<p>I must come back to a point I made earlier on this thread. This is a big school (3,900). It's too easy to get lost in that situation. I wonder how much possibility there was for a lot of one-on-one counseling, consoling, overseeing, cajoling, or whatever. It does appear that having a "team" to connect to played some positive role in keeping the kids active in school, though ultimately it wasn't enough. There really does have to be something else at the schools -- other than the classes themselves -- that provides incentives for attending and performing well. This may be clubs, teams, or other extracurricular activities. When the peers themselves become negative role models and there is nothing to counteract it, then things are likely to cascade downward.</p>
<p>sjmom, I don't think vouchers or any other method of payment matters nearly as much as class size and the availability of support staff (counselors and the like). California public schools are massively underfunded, IMO.</p>
<p>I don't claim to be an expert on vouchers, by any means! I agree that class size and support is the crucial issue. But I wonder -- what if there were a financial motive for helping these kids succeed? I attended HS in California, and I agree that funding was pathetic even 30 years ago. I don't know how many went on to 4 year colleges, but if it were 30% I'd be surprised. There was a large population of AA and Hispanic students, and I don't remember many of them in my college prep classes (which were pathetic, by the way). A few really ambitious kids aimed for USC, and I only remember 2 or 3 kids who went as far away as northern California.</p>
<p>Mackinaw's point is well taken.</p>
<p>S's school had 1800 students or so, divided up into 4 smaller learning communities, each with its dean of curriculum and dean of students and secretarial staff. It certainly made keeping track of individual students easier. I do recall, in fact, a controversy several years back over too rigidly enforced attendance policy. It was the parents, not the students, who were up in arms. What a difference with the high school in this series!</p>
<br>
<blockquote> <p>This is one reason why I think the idea of vouchers is worth looking at. I know it's not a perfect solution, but maybe market driven forces would push the adults in this situation to sit up and DO something.<<</p> </blockquote>
<br>
<p>I think vouchers would be a great idea if the size of the voucher payment was actully big enough to provide students with a real choice. Then the top prep schools and mediocre public schools really would be competing for the same students. The public schools would be forced to improve or lose all their good students. Great theory.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, the size of the actual vouchers doesn't even come close to paying for tutition and fees at the local Snotty Country Day School or even a decent Catholic school. Voucher students have merely the illusion of having a market choice.</p>
<p>Often the only ones who actually benefit from vouchers are religious fundmentalists who are eager to pull their kids and their tax dollars out of the godless, humanist public schools and put them both into their unaccredited, home-grown, Bible schools -- where they would be sending their kids anyway, vouchers or no.</p>
<p>Thus, in practice, the vouchers often only serve to further weaken the troubled public schools, funnel public money to religious institutions, and provide no real choice for smart but poor students seeking a market-driven solution.</p>
<p>One couple built a lucrative business using state funding to provide dropouts with classes that could -- but often don't -- lead to diplomas.</p>
<p>
This does not seem like a good solution. These at-risk kids need more structure and oversight than a program like this offers.</p>
<p>Once again, I'm not an expert on vouchers. But in doing a quick search, here is a link which says that the per pupil spending in California (I know it may be different for the LAUSD) is almost $11,000.
<a href="http://republican.sen.ca.gov/opeds/31/oped3087.asp%5B/url%5D">http://republican.sen.ca.gov/opeds/31/oped3087.asp</a></p>
<p>Here is a link to one Catholic High School where the tuition and fees are less than $9,000 per year. <a href="http://www.loyolahs.edu/Jesuit_Preparatory.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.loyolahs.edu/Jesuit_Preparatory.html</a>
I'm just suggesting that the money that's going to be spent on educating students actually achieve some objectives.</p>
<p>"I know this isn't politically correct, but I've long held the view that once you have children, your rights to personal fulfillment and happiness take a back seat."</p>
<p>You know, this is the only forum I participate on, and I am still new to it. But I can see I had better not read here very much because I am finding too many encouraging people. I'm tempted to just sit around all day reading and feeling good.</p>
<p>What you have said here has really touched me because it affirms my own belief. I think once you marry and have kids, personal fulfillment should come firstly through the happiness and fulfillment of one's spouse and kids. There will be room for fulfillment elsewhere, but still-- our spouses and kids need to know that the main reason we exist is to support their dreams. Knowing this, it becomes pretty hard for them to just quit at anything.</p>
<p>I am very much saddened by the high school dropout problem. It exists also in colleges, particularly among minority students. I think the main reason it exists is because a lot of these kids just lose sight of what is at stake, and they have no one who they cherish rooting for them, and reminding them of what is at stake.</p>
<p>Wonderful articles! :)</p>
<p>A great example why any educational reform in the USA is impossible without certain immigration and social reforms.</p>
<p>They just forgot to mention how many of these immigrants (students and parents) are illegal and explain why these illegal immigrants should care about education in the country where they have very limited rights, including right to work. (well, I almost missed it, I was told here at this forum that the only foreigners' job was to operate a lawn mower :)) </p>
<p>They also forgot to mention how old were many of these kids when they were first enrolled in American schools and what level of English they had. </p>
<p>And they forgot to ask the question how children with limited English (not only after living outside the USA, but also after attending bilingual classes inside this country) can succeed in science and math taught in English.
They also forgot to check how many of these kids can actually read the words like "perpendicular" or "proportional" (not just understand when the teacher reads for them but read these words by their own). </p>
<p>Otherwise...
<a href="http://www.latimes.com/news/education/la-me-dropout30jan30,0,3211437.story?page=4%5B/url%5D">http://www.latimes.com/news/education/la-me-dropout30jan30,0,3211437.story?page=4</a>
"This meant teaching algebra earlier, as soon as eighth grade for some students, even if instructors questioned whether younger students could handle abstract concepts."</p>
<p>Algebra and foreign language have to be taught at school much earlier, because the younger children can catch them much easier.</p>
<p>There were some questions in this forum about educational systems in other countries...
In most of the modern countries algebra and geometry are taught in middle school, not high. I personally started learning algebra in 5th grade (though it was some mixture of pre-algebra and algebra) and geometry in 8th. And it was and still is the state requirement for all the pupils around the country.
And what's called here IPC I learned in my country in several separate courses of chemistry and physics in 6-8 grades. State requirement, nothing extremely "talented".
There were several math experiments in my country, some kids were taught basics of programming languages in first grade. They were able to catch it very easily. It's getting more difficult when you get older. </p>
<p>The same thing about foreign languages. No problem at all when you are in ES. A lot of really hard work in HS.</p>
<p>from what i heard, education in the U.S. is very expensive, right?</p>
<br>
<blockquote> <p>Once again, I'm not an expert on vouchers. But in doing a quick search, here is a link which says that the per pupil spending in California (I know it may be different for the LAUSD) is almost $11,000. Here is a link to one Catholic High School where the tuition and fees are less than $9,000<<</p> </blockquote>
<br>
<p>That would work out great if the vouchers were for $11,000. But in practice it always comes out to far less than that. Everybody has a different way of counting the money. The $11K number arises from one way of looking at it and including everything they can think of. But the vouchers get calculated differently and usually end up being less than half of the full-freight numbers. </p>
<p>Like I said, vouchers would be wonderful if they actually made it financially feasible for students to attend any school of their choice. But sadly it doesn't work out that way. What you end up with is rich families get a little boost that they didn't need in paying their prep school fees, fundamentalists have a mechanism to divert public funds to their home schooling experiments, public school fall even further behind because they lose badly needed money, and poor but smart kids don't even come close to affording good schools. They are robbed of the market-driven choices that vouchers were supposed to provide.</p>
<p>LAUSD Chief Announces Anti-Dropout Measures
By Mitchell Landsberg, Times Staff Writer
<a href="http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-schools8feb08,0,1353262.story?coll=la-home-headlines&track=morenews%5B/url%5D">http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-schools8feb08,0,1353262.story?coll=la-home-headlines&track=morenews</a></p>
<p>"Los Angeles schools Supt. Roy Romer announced an array of measures today to keep students from dropping out of school, but said he didn't know where the district would find the money and teachers needed to carry out the plans. . . ."</p>
<p>
Then change the way vouchers work -- how they are implemented is a choice that is made. Who says they have to be for only half of the cost of per pupil spending? In California, especially, through the use of ballot initiatives, the people have a voice. </p>
<p>From the article Mackinaw references:
[quote]
Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa called the announcement "a step in the right direction," but said it would not deter him from his campaign to take control of the school district from the Board of Education. In an interview with Times editors and reporters, he referred to the school board, along with teachers and administrators, and said: "I am taking on all of these stakeholders because they are defending the status quo."
[/quote]
If they can fund $21M of additional spending on a $7M budget, then they should be able to pay for a decent voucher program. If the public schools want to compete with private schools, then they would have to do a better job. I just have a general suspicion of yet another government program, where I'm sure lots of money will be spent on developing plans and objectives, and the outcome will probably just be a lot of PowerPoint presentations.</p>
<p>What evidence is there that voucher programs improve public schools? It seems rather a declaration of faith, and some would say bad faith, to claim that vouchers have such an effect. If you can find good examples based on experience, please share them.</p>
<p>P.S. You haven't addressed Coureur's comments.</p>
<p>I'm not necessarily trying to make a case for vouchers -- I'm a SAHM (how else could I spend this much time on CC!!!) and I don't pretend to know enough to look at big policy issues and find large-scale solutions. I just see that public schools in the LAUSD are failing poor kids. If it were my child, I'd want better options, including private schools. I think there's a lot of waste in just about all public programs, including schools, and I don't like big bureaucracies. I can only see things on a child-to-child basis. If the school district is willing to spend $11,000 or so on each child's education (and these are public funds -- they don't belong to the 'government' as an entity) then I think those families have the right to expect more.</p>
<p>"Often the only ones who actually benefit from vouchers are religious fundmentalists who are eager to pull their kids and their tax dollars out of the godless, humanist public schools and put them both into their unaccredited, home-grown, Bible schools -- where they would be sending their kids anyway, vouchers or no.</p>
<p>Thus, in practice, the vouchers often only serve to further weaken the troubled public schools, funnel public money to religious institutions, and provide no real choice for smart but poor students seeking a market-driven solution."</p>
<p>Coureur, I do not believe that the evidence supports your claims. One of the reasons the almighty unionized leadership are so opposed to vouchers is that they end up working well in the communities that give vouchers a real chance. For factual conclusions, you may want to read the research and publications of Harvard's C. Hoxby -or talk to her when you visit your daughter. Another good source is to check the evolution of the voucher program in Wisconsin.</p>
<p>FWIW, students who receive vouchers do not use them to attend Snotty Private Schools, but to attend schools that usually have to compete with much smaller per-pupil-budgets and a fraction of the facilities found at public schools. </p>
<p>I am not a big fan of the current voucher system, mostly because it is too little and too late -just as giving Bayer Aspirin to a cancer patient. Despite all the efforts to put bandaids on wooden legs, we are slowly moving to the inevitable conclusion that many schools are not worth saving, should be closed,the officials reevaluated and reassigned ONLY if their past performance warrants it. To save a bushel of apples, you have to remove the rotten ones ... all of them. </p>
<p>Our country DOES have the resources -both public and private- to rebuild a system that works ... with people who want to see it working. We know who is part of the problem and who is part of a solution. Competition and accountability are terrible words for the leadership of the organizations that maintain a stronghold on our system by rewarding feudal allegiance and mediocrity.</p>
<p>in our area private schools already offer scholarships
I know my oldest daughter recieved scholarhips from K-12 for well over half of tuition
some private schools also offer bartering as a way to cover costs.
1/3 of all school age children in Seattle attend private school- and schools are very competitive for admission.
There is a need for additional choices.
I would like to see charter schools- where parents and teachers have more choices about focus and curriculum.
I attend board meetings regularly, and I see adult advocates, advocating for their job benefits, but change in the classroom is slow, and often counter productive.
I have seen the difference that adults can make in a community, between a school where the leadership was lacking, resulting in teachers who didn' thave high standards for themselves, so why have it for the students, and in a school where the leadership has very high standards, the teachers believe in their mission and the students are as a result more engaged.
The teachers get paid the same, whether they just scream into the parking lot minutes before the bell rings, and leave early if they have a free period, than if they stay after school 3 times a week to tutor.
But one teacher is treating his career as just a job, and the other as a profession.
Is it anywonder we see a difference in the students?</p>
<p>"What evidence is there that voucher programs improve public schools? It seems rather a declaration of faith, and some would say bad faith, to claim that vouchers have such an effect. If you can find good examples based on experience, please share them."</p>
<p>See above ^^^^ Or check the discussion we had on CC just a few weeks ago. Oh well, here are few tidbits worth chewing on ...</p>
<p>
[quote]
Family Research Council Ed Facts - Milwaukee's parental choice program
has positively affected student performance in the city's public elementary
schools, according to a recent study by Harvard University economist
Caroline Hoxby. Hoxby's research shows that students in
schools competing with voucher recipient private schools
improved more quickly than did students in schools lacking a
similar competitive environment.</p>
<p>"There's so many good people in every public school system
who want to do the right thing, who want to make sure
children learn," Hoxby told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
"In a way, what happens when there's a threat is those
people get empowered relative to those who have other agendas."</p>
<p>Hoxby determined a school's productivity by considering
higher test scores an improvement only if it was not
accompanied by higher spending. She found that productivity
in math, science, social studies and grammar improved most
quickly in schools where students had the option of
attending a private school with vouchers.</p>
<p>Hoxby's research lends strong support to the parental choice
movement, which has been arguing for many years that a free-
market education system improves the quality of education in
all schools, whether public or private.</p>
<p>Hoxby's research conclusions often contradict conventional wisdom and consequently have rankled teacher union leaders and members of the public education establishment.</p>
<p>Among her findings: </p>
<p>**** Competition among public schools improves productivity by lowering costs and increasing student achievement;**
** School choice results in higher pay for more effective teachers;
** The local property tax is one of the best and most stable methods of financing public schools;
** Class size has no effect on student achievement; and
**Teacher unions lead to lower student achievement.
[/quote]
</p>
<p><a href="http://www.educationnext.org/20014/68.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.educationnext.org/20014/68.html</a></p>