<p>I stated that the first article was highly biased. The second article was from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinal and there is no reason to believe that the statistics are not accurate. And the point is that it costs significantly more to provide services to students with special needs, which explains why it costs less to educate voucher students. Also, public schools in Wisconsin have certain staffing requirements, such as requiring districts to have reading specialists and having a registered school nurses. Private schools do not have these requirements. Again, the schools may choose to hire these people, but many do not. This will also reduce costs at voucher schools. </p>
<p>And I am not necessarily against voucher schools. I just think that it is very difficult to compare results from schools that educate some very different populations and operate under much different requirements. The argument that voucher school do the same thing for half the cost is not accurate. And again, parochial schools, the vast majority of voucher schools, pay lower salaries and significantly worse benefits than those at public schools. People choose to teach in parochial schools for a variety of reasons, but you will not be able to staff universal public education, with or without vouchers, at the salary and benefit levels offered by most parochial schools.</p>
<p>One way to eliminate a strong writing component in an english classroom is to increase class size. High quality feedback of student writing is time consuming and difficult to do. Put more students in a writing intensive class and you will see much less writing occurring. What you are arguing for here is less rigor. I have no problem with class of 25 but get above that and you will see less Writing and fewer science labs due to supervision and safety issues.</p>
<p>Book Budgets are usually very different than classroom supplies. Most science rooms have a very difficult time proving an interactive lab based environment in limited supply budgets. Decreasing supply budgets has a direct impact on instruction. Books are a bit of a different issue.</p>
<p>“And I am not necessarily against voucher schools.”</p>
<p>Great, we may actually agree on something. Why not try voucher schools; it’s not like the present system is working so well. It can hardly do any worse.</p>
<p>One other thing - do you notice how many politicians, like Obama and Clinton, who defend union-backed public schools, send their kids to private schools. It would be interesting to go down the list of Democrats in Congress and see where their kids go to school.</p>
<p>I don’t see why choosing a private school for one’s kids says anything about what’s good policy for the nation. Clinton and Obama are capitalists. That means they believe it’s OK for some people to earn more money than others and to spend that money on the luxuries of their choice. It’s perfectly consistent for a capitalist to fight for what he believes to be the best system of mass-market government service and still choose to buy luxuries for himself. The free market capitalist says, if you want your kids to go to a fancy school, get to work and earn a lot of money. The voucher idea – that everyone’s entitled to government help to pay for Sidwell Friends – seems to me far more socialist than that.</p>
<p>If Obama were actually a socialist, as he is often accused of being, this would be a good point. But he isn’t, so it’s not.</p>
<p>Assuming I agree with you that Obama and Clinton are capitalists ( although Obama has a strange way of showing it), I don’t think it is particularly relevant to what I am saying. Politicians like to tell everyone else what to do, but don’t necessarily submit to the same rules they impose on the American public. Health insurance is one area. Since Obama and the Democratic Congress denied the residents of Washington D.C. the choice of which schools to send their children, it might have been nice if they would have sent their children to the same public schools these children are stuck with. No way they are going to do that. Why - because the schools are terrible and no one sends their kids to them voluntarily. Even though it doesn’t seem apparent to you, it is pretty hypocritical to consign all the poor black kids to failing schools, why you send your kid to an exclusive private school. No, I don’t think I am a socialist because I want these poor kids to have the same opportunity as Obama’s kids ( notice I didn’t say the same outcomes).</p>
<p>*
At Castelar Elementary in Chinatown, Deasy congratulated administrators on their high state test scores and their clean campus. Then he questioned staff on how they were addressing the achievement of Latino students on campus, who are underperforming compared to their Asian peers.*</p>
<p>While there are different versions, essentially the “voucher idea” is that the amount of money spent per student in a given district (a number easily obtained from any state government education dept) is put into the hands of families to purchase the schooling of their choice. They can put that amount toward Sidwell Friends and such, or use it to enroll at a Catholic/Lutheran etc. school, or for a secular school organized and run by educators who once worked for public school systems, and so on. </p>
<p>Many voucher proponents like to point out the distinction between government-financed and government-operated education. The question isn’t whether or not socialism is involved, but whether freedom is involved.</p>
<p>And on the subject of politicians who employ school choice for themselves but don’t support the same opportunity for the less affluent: the ultimate in hypocrisy. Can anyone possibly be so blind to political reality not to realize that the anti-choice position is directly the result of special-interest financing and political support of the education status quo? </p>
<p>No, it is not ‘capitalistic’ to believe that each family’s share of the education payout must be spent at a government-operated, rather than a privately-operated, institution.</p>
<p>^^^A lot of poor people have security issues also. Their kids get shot and assaulted in their dangerous schools. But they don’t get to purchase an alternative.</p>
<p>EDIT: Jimmy Carter at least had the courage of his convictions in this instance. His daughter attended a public school while he was President.</p>
<p>I would support voucher schools under the following conditions: All students must have access to voucher program, including those with disabilities and those for whom English is a second language, and all voucher schools must participate in the state testing program and publish the results. I do not have a problem with limiting programs to families with lower incomes, but I might be convinced to open it up to all income levels. </p>
<p>However, you will find that once private schools start having to admit students with disabilities or language deficiencies, many would withdraw from any voucher program.</p>
<p>I saw Wendy Kopp from Teach for America being interviewed by Malcolm Gladwell recently on C-Span. While she is clearly no fan of the teachers union or our system of tenure she says the view that these two factors are overwhelmingly responsible for our low rate of teacher turnover is misplaced. She said that there is not a significant difference in the rate of teacher turnover whether there is a strong collective bargaining system or strong tenure system. In fact she said the rate of teacher dismissal in districts or systems without tenure or unions is not significant in comparison to systems with strong unions and tenure systems. She felt battling these areas was not the fight to wage to improve education.</p>
<p>Now this is only my opinion but I believe getting rid of tenure will ultimately make the teachers union stronger and cost public school systems more in the long run when terminating a teacher.
I believe that because I do not fault tenure for keeping poor teachers around I fault poor management. Getting rid of tenure will only invite lawsuits that poor management will be unable to defend. The unions will be the conduit to support the teacher suing.</p>
<p>IN Wyoming 10% of the teachers are almost terminated every year tenured or not. (about the same as in the private world) The problem is the administration and how teachers are evaluated. People keep missing the target. LA and NY are not typical of the nation</p>
<p>I have no problems with voucher schools either as long as they have to take all the ADD, ADHD, Autisic, Special ed, and Handicapped kids as well. In addition if a kid gets an F they can’t just sent him/her back to the publics. They get them for the duration once they are accepted. </p>
<p>Otherwise the publics become a dumping ground for kids with special needs and problems</p>
I am not at all convinced that a higher quantity of written work is necessarily a good thing. Improving writing skills is an area our schools desperately need to improve in. But it seems to me that shorter written material is every bit as valuable for this task.</p>
<p>See below on labs.
Thanks for the info on budgeting terminology. However, I’d argue that we spend too much on labs as well. I know that the labs included in the standard AP Biology curriculum, for example, are really terrible right now. They are looking to reform that particular course, but I can think of numerous cases where expensive lab supplies are not necessary to teach either good lab technique or the concepts related to the lab.</p>
<p>I support vouchers but there is still the underlying fact that students that have parent using vouchers are most likely also involved in the students entire education. Since I am a big believer that parental involvement is the single most important aspect of educational achievement- all other factors being equal- this means that schools with high rates of students using vouchers would have greater achievement than schools that do not.</p>
<p>And I think the voucher system will end up costing more money in the long run. Because now your special needs students will start moving around so more schools have to hire special ed teachers. If you force a school to take a special needs kid, then it requires that school to have somebody who can handle that…</p>
<p>That may well be true, but it doesn’t strike me as fair–or as efficacious social policy–to make involved families suffer because other families don’t much care. </p>
<p>It is the loss of potential leaders among poorer groups that strikes me as the biggest negative of the current system.</p>
<p>One of the reasons I support big changes in school choice policies–not limited to charter or voucher programs–is because I hope that giving parents the power to play a larger role will help alleviate the malaise a lot of people feel about K-12 education. A lot of people who identify as ‘liberals’ like to talk about ‘empowerment’. So, let’s see some empowerment for parents, both those who already care and those who might care a lot more if they are really part of the system.</p>
<p>midmo- where did you get that I would make involved families suffer. My point is only in comparing schools. If you have one school with a greater percentage of parental involvement to one with a lesser amount of parental involvement the output for the school with the greater % will be higher overall. I still believe that a child in the school with less parental involvement could have an overall excellent educational experience at that school by the mere fact that that student’s parent’s are involved. I do not think you are denying involved families. You should note I support vouchers but I also support accurate data and fair comparisons.</p>
<p>^^^I’m sorry if that sounded like a personal attack; it was certainly not intended to be that. I think the current system does have negative effects on some involved parents if those families are assigned to schools that are heavily populated by people who don’t care. As it now stands, people who would like to do better for their kids are allowed limited, or possibly, no options. The reason many give for maintaining that system is a fear that allowing involved families to leave awful schools will make the schools even worse for those who choose to remain–even if they have options, too.</p>
<p>I understand that you, tom1944, are in favor of options, so I was not suggesting that you are one who makes that argument. Sorry if it sounded that way.</p>