Exactly. There is always demand for quality schools. Vouchers make it harder for any school, over the long term, to get complacent for any reason. The goal is to allow schools to meet this demand by injecting some flexibility into the system.Originally Posted by Ominous Gamer
There are areas that don't demand quality schools?
That means that quality schools will be built in areas where there are quality schools because those schools will become crowded
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
Your "simple" logic isn't. "Free" does not automagically cause "better quality". That's your error.
Your basic false assumption lies in this "Freedom over anything" dogma which in reality couldn't be further from the truth. Freedom by itself doesn't mean anything and changes nothing. Responsibility does. You're confused about terms, cause and effect, and generally anything. You've latched onto a concept without ever actually thinking about the underlying mechanisms. In fact, you're part of the sheeple who applaud everything as long as it promises them "freedom".
When the stars threw down their spears
And watered heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the lamb make thee?
I wonder what scale you're using for "long term". Voucher accepting schools don't have to worry about becoming complacent either, they only need to worry about not being considered worse than a public education. Much like Khen is addressing above.
You want to meet the demand of quality schools by taking money away from the already existing system and instead transfering that over to vouchers. Which, in the long term, would create the same problem of:The goal is to allow schools to meet this demand by injecting some flexibility into the system.
thank you
What you two are prophesying really doesn't make sense. You don't really need to have that much business sense to understand that quality schools will see the greatest opportunity in areas that don't have good schools.
Methinks you are a bit too hung up on the Sim City world of urban planning.
Khend's issue is separate. I don't think that the mere existence of a choice will solve all problems. The concept of school choice is meant to solve a number of issues, including bureaucratic creep, inflexible labor and the inherent inequalities that crop-up when schools rely on local property taxes to raise funding. The issues of teaching standards is a separate and more complicated problem.
I don't have such a big problem with school choice itself but rather the underlying assumptions associated with it. School choice is meant to solve something like "inflexible labour"?
That's great. Why exactly don't you attack the cause for said inflexible labour in the first place? I mean, what chance do schools have if you deprive them of funds (through the school choice) while at the same time denying them the means to help themselves by making labour more flexible?
However, if you removed those restraints, then school choice wouldn't be be as important since schools now have the proper means to better themselves.
Or, to make it more clear: It's like a dog whose legs are tied - and you take away his food because he can't run as fast. And then you berate him for starving instead of loosing the ties.
School choice is not a solution to anything - not as long as you don't attack the real problems.
If you set up school choice and don't change anything else you simply set up some schools to fail. And when they inevitably do, you simply smirk: "Told ya so."
When the stars threw down their spears
And watered heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the lamb make thee?
and you're assuming that the schools being not good is strictly the fault of the school. Its usually not. Which is why I made my original claim of the haves fleeing from the have nots. Vouchers allow the "undesirables" to mingle with those outside of their sphere. Once that happens the haves flee and the schools resort to increasing volume since their original clientele has moved on.
and then the cycle continues.
This ties back to the original article in this post. The mother lied about her child's living arrangements not because of the school, but because of the neighborhood.
Post #2 asked why they can't just take the money the mom paid in property taxes to the school district she lives in.
But anyway here is the issue. If the child is going to go to a school it costs money for that school to educate them, right? So if the child doesn't go to that school that is a net benefit for that school district. However the purpose of that child is not so the school gets money it is so that the child gets an education. Why would the government be opposed to having more children get a quality education? The answer is the unions hate the idea.
Some liberals also dislike the concept of letting children not be forced into the curriculum that they approve. But the majority of it is, the interests of the teachers union competing with those of the child.
The voucher system is funded by taking the money the student would have cost the district away from the district, no?* So the the district isn't benefiting at all. At best they are breaking even, at worse they reach a point of not being able to reach that plateau of expensives that any business would have. Schools spread the per cost expense of educating children across their entire population. Some kids simply cost more than others. The more children you remove from the system, the less room you leave the district to work with.
No one is opposed to what they consider a quality education, but that was a bullshit line on your part anyway. Hell, I'm willing to bet that there are numerous members on this board that would accuse you of keeping your children from receiving a quality education.
*If its not, then you could just as well dump the voucher funding into the education system, and you're still supporting a better education.
I don't see any real data in those articles, and especially nothing on Massachusetts schools.
I've had my share of problems with teachers and administrators, and I didn't drop out.
The effect different in different cities across the state, but I think MCAS has been positive overall. Not all states have the same mechanism. Some may be worse than others. Remember that even though there are still a lot of problems, Massachusetts schools are considered among the best, if not the best, in the nation.
* Public schools in large cities here still basically suck for a reason: no or little accountability. Unions. Arbitrary teachers and administrators are arbitrary, and it gets worse when there's so little accountability. Coaches becoming principles of schools in this city is the norm... it's a disgrace.
* Connected individuals getting the front row for the incredibly small amount of new school job openings. (while there are hundreds of teachers unemployed)
* We have forced districting in this city of 90,000. Minority proportions must be maintained by city law, upheld by the Massachusetts State Supreme Judicial Court. If the proportion is out of whack at a school, you can't send your child to that school if you live in another district.
* It's all bullshit, but there were still mostly very good teachers to be had if and only if you are in the top tier of students who are willing to learn. The lower courses, from my understanding of other students' reactions to them ("College Prep 2, 1") had lax teachers and no discipline. That's how it is done in this place... the worst teachers generally teach the worst students as a soft incentive to do better. (as opposed to the worst teachers simply getting fired) The reaction is that they basically don't teach at all.
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TL; DR: We need to reign in the out-of-control liberal authoritarian agenda. Charter schools and school choice is the way to go, and it has never really been done on a massive scale; on small scales it has been proven to work.
Khen:
You are making my point for me. Public schools are free. Therefore it will cost money for the parents to send it to a private school. If public school quality was equal or better then private schools no one would send their kids to the private school. Therefore private schools, by their very existence logically have to have superior quality. Not to say that all private schools are better then all public schools but we can definitely say some private schools are better then some public schools.Your "simple" logic isn't. "Free" does not automagically cause "better quality". That's your error.
At least you are an honest liberal. You believe people need to be guided and controlled by the government. It goes without saying that I disagree.In fact, you're part of the sheeple who applaud everything as long as it promises them "freedom".
bullshit, it could only mean that the private school forces a curriculum that the government doesn't. ie, every private school with a religious connection.
FTFYNot to say that all public schools are better then all private schools but we can definitely say some public schools are better then some private schools.
Guess you missed the peer reviewed research then
http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v16n3/v16n3.pdf
Currently it benefits the school district for having kids taken out and go to another type of school (private / home schooling). My point was that the point of educational costs is to educate the child not provide more money to a school district. Therefore having the parents choose where those educational dollars goes to is only fair.
Of course it will provide a better education for children. Parents have a vested interest to pick the best school for their kids. By allowing vouchers you enable all children not just the rich to enjoy a quality education. Furthermore you introduce competition into what is otherwise an almost ironclad government monopoly.
As a bonus you can snap the backs of the teachers union. The teachers union is one of the most vile legal organizations in America. Their purpose is to protect crappy teachers and extract more then a fair wage from the tax payers. I could post a bazillion links on why they are bad, from "Rubber rooms" to the termination rate in some districts of less then .1%
Its like talking to a brick wall.
A brick wall with a fetish for unionsTo the point that you're actively ignoring the connections you're missing, that you're willing to destroy the education of America's youth, just to see the union destroyed.
You understand its possible show the problems with vouchers without hiding behind union issues right?
Its dangerous to the point of being counter productive. Texas' current text book ordering changes and the attack on evolution teachings are two good examples.Therefore having the parents choose where those educational dollars goes to is only fair.
This is the Texas school system, and I don't think that the MCAS school system does this. As I said, my city does a version of this retarded affirmative action by not allowing students to choose what school they want to go to in their own city on the basis of "minority" percentages.
Another critical difference is that the MCAS system does factor in and reward performance changes, not just performance totals, unlike the Texas system.
Another problem, as I mentioned I think either here and/or elsewhere, isYes, this is pretty obvious, even for the MCAS. We were somewhat being taught to the test. I imagine that those with lower/easier courses such as CP1 or CP2 were being taught to the test 24/7, because they had nothing else to do and because the teachers in those classes had more to lose (really being fired, potentially) if their students' scores were poor. The fundamental problem is that there was a lack of substance in the lower performing students' and teachers' curriculum.the obsessive focus on test scores also rendered invisible to the public the ways the system’s incentive structures shifted school practice into the production of test scores, even when doing so reduced the quality of instruction.
I'm not sure how true this is for the MCAS system, though. I don't think principals' salaries here are determined like that.The state’s response was not a massive investment in the instructional capacity of the high schools. It was, instead, the creation of a legal loophole to permit principals to exclude from the tested cohort those students they deemed to be liabilities to the school-level scores, thus insulating the school’s rating from the predicted scores of those students. This loophole was a waiver that permitted the alteration of grade-to-grade promotion rules.
Yes, students in my high school really didn't clamor for the higher-level courses, nor did the teachers or guidance councilors encourage it. It was recommended to me to take CP1 courses (the guidance councilor apparently didn't know my grades or didn't care?) It's up to the student to request an Honors or AP course (moderate difficulty, and extremely hard). If the student himself agrees that he will take the easier CP2 or CP1 courses, that's the parents' (culture's?) failure of not instilling any sort of work or achievement ethic.
The Texas school testing system has only a side affiliation with school choice and charter schools, anyway.
Its part of the NCLBA. If MCAS satisfies NCLA requirements then it does this to some degree.
I'm not trying to focus on just Mass. If I'm not mistaken Mass was one of the last states to yield to NCLBA (or was it Maine?), to the point that they were willing to go without Federal funding before the economy went to shit. You may very well be an outlier, but that still leaves the issue with the 49 remaining states.
^^ edited my post. TL; DR: "The Texas school testing system has only a side affiliation with school choice and charter schools, anyway."
and the issue of pushing students out to improve NCLBA funding is a different issue almost entirely. You wanted a citation, I provided, and you refuse to acknowledge; perhaps because you're unaware of how your own system works.
I acknowledge that a lot of precepts of the initial Texas program were found to be lacking; even MCAS didn't have individual student tracking for a long time. Still, I don't see how the general idea is bad (the implementation was just bad, in Texas), nor how it relates to at least "school choice", if not charter schools.
The comlpex funding structure for schools cannot be converted to a voucher system without first centralizing the funding pool. How would you possibly coordinate the pooling of district, city, state, and federal funds?
Faith is Hope (see Loki's sig for details)
If hindsight is 20-20, why is it so often ignored?
I dunno, but why are we necessarily talking vouchers here? There's the intermediate step of first allowing students to at least pick the freaking public school they want to go to.
I wonder how much our schools would improve if there was a semblance of discipline in the classroom. Even good teachers can't teach effectively when a third (or more) of the class is texting, talking to each other, or generally being obnoxious. It's not a coincidence that the worst schools tend to have the most behavior problems.
Hope is the denial of reality
Uh, no. There's also this thing called "perceived quality" which is not the same as "actual quality".
For example: Some of our big food producers sell the same food under two different labels - one is the more expensive "quality" one and the other is the "discount" version. However, the only difference is the packaging. There's also this kind of thing called "diminishing returns", which means that beyond a certain threshold simply pumping more money into something does not mean that you get an equally significant increase in results.
In short: The amount of money you spend does not correspond to an equal increase in quality. It also matters how you spend the money - if you put it into all kinds of irrelevant crap which looks good on paper then you have a school which is expensive but not exactly superior to its peers.
For instance, computers. Once thought the end-it-all of education it's now recognized that they're a nice addition but not exactly a requirement for good lessons.
Dude, that's not what I said at all. My point is that your precious freedom of choice is completely irrelevant as it doesn't attack the real problems.At least you are an honest liberal. You believe people need to be guided and controlled by the government. It goes without saying that I disagree.
When the stars threw down their spears
And watered heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the lamb make thee?
OG:
How would allowing school choice destroy the education of America's youth. In case you missed it the current state of education is absolutely dismal the last 20 years. And that is despite record spending on education.o the point that you're actively ignoring the connections you're missing, that you're willing to destroy the education of America's youth, just to see the union destroyed.
What are you talking about? Vouchers would prove an example of how parents can choose to avoid being forced to have their kids read the new text books the state of Texas mandated. Do you not see the problem with a monopoly on education? Right now parents who don't have the money must send their kids to public school and deal with the new Texas textbook you dislike so much.Its dangerous to the point of being counter productive. Texas' current text book ordering changes and the attack on evolution teachings are two good examples.
Being:
Well we could eliminate federal funding all together and make it a local issue and only mandate minimum requirements. But that is a big side issue.The comlpex funding structure for schools cannot be converted to a voucher system without first centralizing the funding pool. How would you possibly coordinate the pooling of district, city, state, and federal funds?
To start with as a pilot program just take the actual *cost* of each student going to the public school and provide those funds to be used only for educational tuition and costs for the parents to use. Regardless of the source of funding the cost of a student can be calculated and the cost savings for having one less student can be passed on to the parents to go find another school. If the pilot is successful then funding can be merged and it will be less about the cost but more about each student having equal dollars.
And oh yeah, property taxes as a source of school funding is absolutely retarded.
Heh, we had to read a book by a German teacher (Bueb, "Lob der Disziplin" i.e. Laudatio on Discipline) who lauded discipline into the high heavens. He was the director of a private boarding school in Salem.
I stopped taking him seriously after he made the following two statements:
a) We have to trust our pupils and forgive them for errors they might make.
b) We have to randomly test for drugs - anyone found taking drugs will be expelled from school immediately. (Yes, that includes alcohol)
Trust & forgiveness and random drug tests & expulsion don't play well together in my mind.
When the stars threw down their spears
And watered heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the lamb make thee?
Corporal punishment in schools would be a plus. Immediate consequences act as better deterrents. My only problem of course is that it would be in the hands of teachers and so many of them are incompetent. Difficult issue.
Yes, both ridiculous extremes. It's not the school's business what students do at home, and trusting students is a recipe for disaster in many schools. I think teachers need to be trained how to deal with unruly students, and students need to face immediate, escalating punishment for improper behavior (and no, I don't mean physical punishment).
I read a story about cameras being put in classrooms. Wouldn't hurt to have those put in all classrooms and then being randomly examined. Then base salary on proper teaching technique (as well as test results).
Hope is the denial of reality
The inflexible labor issues in urban public schools is entirely the result of our insane teacher's unions, who oppose any real reform and flexibility in their labor arrangements. New York City for example needs to lay-off a few thousand teachers because our budget has finally reached a breaking point due to high teacher salaries and pensions. The teacher's union contract stipulates that layoffs can't happen based on competence. The first teachers to get laid-off must be the least senior, not the lead competent.
I could go on and on, but these insane rules are due to the de-facto monopoly the teacher's union has on schooling. It's why they've become political targets. But ultimately they won't go away anytime soon, they are a highly entrenched and irredentist political interest.
School vouchers break that monopoly by allowing parents (instead of politicians) to control the funding associated with their child. I believe breaking that monopoly is important. When these decisions are shifted to parents, accountability will be decentralized and focused towards a healthier relationship with measuring performance. But historically, there's not been a lack of funding for schools. Their budgets have increased beyond the rate of inflation; it's just that the money goes down a black hole of salaries and benefits
You're suggesting some kind of "white flight" scenario that doesn't really compute. Vouchers allow parents to pull their tax dollars going to education for their kids, and put it towards whatever school they want. Sending your kid to a school in a much better neighborhood isn't easy; you have to physically get your kid somewhere that's probably far away. And some parents will do that if they have a choice. But it's more likely that new, quality schools will be set up where there is more demand.
pretty sure I already said I'm againist replacing a shit idea with a shitter idea.
Texas is a perfect example because those are publicly elected officials. They make a decision thats counter productive and there is a chance that the public will react (much like what did happen in Texas). Voucher programs, or the home schooling idea you keep sliding in, remove the checks (or extremely delay them) that balance out these extremes. Education should be handled by those who were trained (and continously trained), just like so many other areas of American society. Voucher programs, especially ones that would pay or deduct for home schooling, take the task out of the hands of professionals and place the future of the next generation in the hands of possibly ignorant amateurs.What are you talking about? Vouchers would prove an example of how parents can choose to avoid being forced to have their kids read the new text books the state of Texas mandated. Do you not see the problem with a monopoly on education? Right now parents who don't have the money must send their kids to public school and deal with the new Texas textbook you dislike so much.
new schools perhaps, but again, there is nothing to suggest better quality, which would again push parents towards white flight; because (again), its not a problem with the school, but the population. Schools are being sacrificed because the bigger issue is more complicated.
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