untaken_name: I just wish that we could declare the horrible experiment of State-sponsored education a terrible failure and rip the whole system out. Of course, as more people matriculate through that horrible system, that becomes less and less likely.

Do you mean "state sponsored" in the sense of "local, state, and federal government," or do you mean in the sense of "government sponsored?"

As someone close to, but not in, the education industry I can say that privatization is the absolute worst thing to happen to education in my area. As a for profit enterprise, private schools seek to maximize profit. This is their incentive structure: they get money per student per day they're in school, and they get bonuses for achievement on standardized tests. The result is this- private school administrators maximize student rolls, minimize spending on students, and what spending is there is first focused on standardized tests. In particular, this leads to large class sizes and very little personalized instruction.

With government funded education there is more administration and bureaucracy, I won't deny it. The difference is that in public education the principal makes XXX dollars per year, and that's that (plus, maybe, bonuses). In private education, the principal gets a new Lexus if he can avoid hiring another teacher, because (in at least one case I can think of), he directly pockets a percentage of any money that isn't spent on education.

In my area, even the poor public schools are fantastic compared to the privatized ones. Some of them even have administrators that have stood up, to a degree, and promised to pursue teaching of skills and whatnot to the detriment of standardized testing scores (AYP in particular), and the community has gotten behind them. The privatized schools are only funded through headcount and test score results, so they have no reason not to toe the government line on whatever stupid assessment they want to maximize.

The teachers see it to. The private schools I'm thinking of have extraordinarily high turnover. Every time there's a job fair they have a dozen vacancies each because the teachers want to get out so badly, and the bulk of them are only there to begin with because they're largely new teachers who can't get a better job without a few years of experience in this economy.

I understand there's a wide discrepancy between public school systems across America, and that some of them are bad. That said, the solution isn't privatization, it's local involvement. People need to hold their current school systems accountable instead of ripping them out and replacing them wholesale. They need to be involved and vote out school board members who aren't willing to make changes for the better. They need to create their own standards for assessment and then vote for tax levies that reduce the dependency of schools on state and federal funding via standardized test scores.

Then, if they can get all that done, they need to go lobby their state and the federal government for performance-independent money meant solely for the purpose of equalizing student spending across different locales. It's better to have a poor local school district teaching good things, but it's better for every school district to have a equal chance.

Also- the best school district in the area has a ton of administrative overhead compared to other districts. Why? They have a much higher teacher/student ratio than surrounding places, and the layers of administrators work together to effectively target resources and solve problems. It's not the presence or lack of bureaucracy, it's how it's used.

Britney Spear's Speculum: 1) RICO is federal
2) Charging people who run guns and kill people over drug selling turf is now, according to you "reactionary"

Oh man federal prison is just so much farking better I forgot. Real solutions there. Bravo. And you know recidivism is so much better in federal prison. Oh but nevermind they are going to jail for life because that will just make things better and not cost us money.

And yeah, charging people who do stuff is reactionary. You are reacting to events that have occurred.

The problem has to be proactive. F*ck the war on drugs, legalize. Invest in the educational infrastructure, which doesn't just mean pouring money into what doesn't work. Fire worthless educators. Use real metrics to measure progress and determine statistical inefficiencies. Provide healthy breakfast and lunch options. Pay teachers more. Give some focus and help to single parents, who must have a hell of a time.

I'm just brainstorming here, but in bad areas, are there no options to transition military members to teachers and put them in these environments? I'm not talking about being physical or turning classrooms militant, just being a presence.

untaken_name: Education should be a parent's responsibility. If a parent does not want to meet this responsibility, that is their choice. However, it's a whole lot easier to hold a parent or set of parents responsible for failing to educate their children than it is to hold the public education system accountable for failing to educate everyone's children.

Yeah but you can't always blame parents. In some cases, rightfully so. Something like 40% of poor families are single mother households. 80% of those parents work. And in low income houses we're probably not talking about a job where you do something fun or even meaningful. As a father, I have no idea how single parents even manage. And with little or no support and lots of hours it's even harder.

Poverty and the cycle of poverty is a b*tch to beat. Holding parents responsible sounds great in principle, but it's a lot harder to pull off. I'm certain there are some programs we're missing here that could help us figure it out.

untaken_name: Fubini: Do you mean "state sponsored" in the sense of "local, state, and federal government," or do you mean in the sense of "government sponsored?"

I mean in the sense of "government-sponsored". Education should be a parent's responsibility. If a parent does not want to meet this responsibility, that is their choice. However, it's a whole lot easier to hold a parent or set of parents responsible for failing to educate their children than it is to hold the public education system accountable for failing to educate everyone's children.

First, let me emphatically say that parents DO need to be more involved with their children's education. It's a huge problem in this country.

That said, your attitude inevitably leads to two things:

First, children only receive as good an education as their parents are able to provide for them. This of a purely market driven system- assuming it is a fair market, there will be different schools charging different amounts for tuition, and that tuition number will directly correlate to the quality of education that child receives. There will be haves and have-nots, and we will be labeling them explicitly.

Also, it's a fact of life that not every parent will be great for their kid's education. The brief time I was in education I saw the whole gamut- we had well-to-do parents and we had poor parents, we had engaged parents and we had parents who literally didn't care so long as we took care of their kids out of their hands 8 hours a day. If you make education the sole responsibility of the parent, then you're condemning those kids to a shiatty education just by a roll of the dice.

Maybe you're OK with that kind of situation, or maybe you rationalize it by saying that their kids would be stupid anyway, or maybe you just don't care. I can tell you that all of those poor kids and kids of the bad parents are just as talented and capable as the kids of the rich and engaged parents. If we could deliver to them what their parents do not, they would have just a good outcomes as anyone. It's not an ideal situation, but as I said before, the alternative is to condemn these kids by a roll of the dice.

Second, government is just another name for anything we do together. The label doesn't matter. Even if all education was run for profit by private entities, we would still have educational problems that need solving. People change, curriculum changes, communities change- there is no perfect way to do schooling that will always work for everyone forever. The difference is that in a public system the school and the administrators are held publicly accountable, while the private school system is opaque.

To me, the whole privatization debate boils down to this: does the profit motive produce the best student outcomes? I would ask: is it in the best interest of this country to educate our children for the lowest cost possible? To me, the answer is no. There are lots of ways to assess education, but the raw cost doesn't capture the whole picture. Certainly, the profit motive makes things more efficient, and there are certainly school districts that need to cut waste, but at it's core, profit motive has nothing to do with how well children do later in life. It has a place in our school system, but total privatization is not the answer.

untaken_name: This is part of the reason that I fear public education is too entrenched to remove. We've become far to dependent upon public education to deal with our children for us, so we've forgotten how to actually raise children.

I think in part we've become way too comfortable in our lifestyle to admit that it's our lifestyle ruining our children. I'm not talking about video games and TV, though those play a part. I'm talking about the fact that even most middle class households nowadays require two parents to work to support living in a cookie cutter home and 2 cars in Burbia, which probably means your kid is raised by strangers, taught mostly by strangers, and essentially a stranger other than the few hours of the day you see them and maybe weekends - where you of course dote on them because it's the only time you have. It's not the kids that have changed, or really the people, but the way we live. And that has definitely affected the educational system, everywhere.

And then you've got all the technology which has changed how we communicate and socialize. Our educational system needs to change too.

Times like this I'm really glad I don't have children.

USA! USA! USA!


/let them fail

untaken_name: You don't have to have mastered the entire curriculum to be able to teach it to a child. You just have to have the ability to stay one chapter ahead of them. Also, I would like to point out that by the current metric, standardized test performance, home-schooled children perform FAR better than publicly-schooled children, which gives the lie to your claim.

If you do great in school then this might be true, but a lot of parents do not have the capacity to give their kids a rounded education in literature, math, science, statistics, history, etc. all the way through a high school level. If you can do this, then more power to you, but the large majority of parents can't.

Also, it is NOT enough to stay one chapter ahead of your child. If you were going to drive across country, would you feel OK following a guy who said he was going to figure out the route 50 miles at a time? The MAJOR lesson of education, the one lesson that trumps EVERYTHING else in educational theory: it is NOT sufficient to merely get kids to know how to get through a book. It is of the highest importance that you can set their education in the broader context of the rest of the subject and the rest of the world. This is something no parent can do, even at a middle school level.

A highly professional teacher understands the entire development of a child from early childhood all the way up through college graduation. A middle school teacher, for example, will understand what concepts a child should by the 7th-8th grade. They will understand what the child needs to master to be successful in high school and college. Although not central to my point, I'll also mention that they will have years of experience teaching these exact concepts to students, and they can follow their previous students as they progress through the educational system, they can assess the OUTCOME of the student, and they can see how their action affect the broad swath of the child's life.

You cannot do this as a parent teaching your own kids.

How can you possibly teach Calculus without understanding the ins and outs, understanding why it was developed, what needs it met at the time, and how people use it in practice today? You can't get this stuff merely by staying one step ahead in the book.

Finally, your statement about homeschooling is totally misleading. Home schooled children are a self-selected group in the following sense: the only parents willing to home school are those who know they are smart and capable of handling the task. Hence, the vast majority of home schooled children are taught by highly intelligent and capable people, their parents are overwhelmingly more likely to have college degrees and be otherwise successful, as well as being financially able to support one parent not working. All of these things are necessary for homeschooling, and all of them are highly correlated with performance on standardized tests.

The conclusion is thus: homeschooled kids universally have good upbringings, involved parents, plenty of food on the table, and good teachers. Of course they do well in life. If you take away even one of those factors then any child will do poorly.

Think of it in terms of Bloom's Taxonomy- a child cannot begin to learn until their basic needs for food, shelter, protection, and socialization are met. The realities of homeschooling imply that those children will have all of those by default.

TheShavingofOccam123: Pull the gang-bangers out of schools. Pull the gang-bangers out of their families who are just raising a new generation of bangers and proud of it.

Deport illegals.

Force parents not teachers to be accountable for what their kids learn.

You say that like it would be such an easy and cost-free task. I'm sure we can have it done by tomorrow.

We *could* fix the core problem of a broken economic system that cheats the working class, resulting in everything from "less time to spend with the kids" to "the disincentive to give a single f*ck"... but that would be way too homosexual.

Instead? I say we



OBEY THE AYN

untaken_name: Fubini: I can tell you that all of those poor kids and kids of the bad parents are just as talented and capable as the kids of the rich and engaged parents. If we could deliver to them what their parents do not, they would have just a good outcomes as anyone.

If we could. But we obviously cannot..

As I pointed out above, homeschooling is not an option for the vast majority of parents. This is true for many reasons, but the biggest two are that many families could not afford to homeschool their kids, and many families would not have the ability to homeschool their kids.

Also, as I pointed out above, the observation that homeschooled kids do better than general population public school kids is wholly insufficient to convince me of anything. Perhaps you have some source of information I'm not familiar with, but the essential problem is that homeschooled kids just aren't comparable with non-homeschooled kids in meaningful ways.

I can tell you've rarely, if ever, worked in a real educational environment. Realistically, homeschooling for everyone is right up there with cars that run on water. It would be great if it worked, sure, but the practical considerations just don't permit it. Outside of a perfect world we will require some kind of corporate education, and the primary differentiation in this day and age is public schooling versus private schooling. Forgive me for harping on plausible alternatives.

I take particular exception to the statement I quoted above. I have seen a gamut of school districts in my time, but in particular, I have seen school districts that are actually able to educate all of their children without regard to parental involvement. Certainly there are still differences in student outcome, but certainly the large majority of them could go to college if they wanted.

It is entirely possible to take any child, regardless of their background, and give them a college-prep education. It takes time, money, and attention, but it is more than possible. If you disagree it must be out of your ignorance, as I have seen it. The key ingredients are an apt administration, enough money to differentiate education for students, and a community involved enough to hold the district accountable and provide the first two.

I don't have anything against homeschooling, but it's not a feasible general solution. On this point we will have to disagree. Thank you for the discussion, but good night.

untaken_name: Fubini: If you do great in school then this might be true, but a lot of parents do not have the capacity to give their kids a rounded education in literature, math, science, statistics, history, etc. all the way through a high school level. If you can do this, then more power to you, but the large majority of parents can't.

I am done with you. I have repeatedly pointed out that the State is not capable of this, either, and that home-schoolers currently outperform public school children across the board. Yet you cling to this strawman and refuse to answer my criticism of it. I don't know whether you're pushing an agenda for a specific reason or if you are just unable to grasp my arguments, but either way, I've wasted enough time on you. Good day, sir.

Hardly a strawman: I have given you two necessary ingredients for homeschooling:

1 - A family must be able to financially support it
2 - A family must have the competency to provide it

I defy you to tell me how any and every family can meet those two criteria. In particular, the first one- 40% of this country makes less than $30000 a year of family adjusted gross income. How can you keep three or four people clothed and fed on that, as well as providing for educational expenses out of pocket, while at the same time meeting the demands of laundry, dishes, and other household chores? How can you satisfy those demands while also having time to prepare the next day's lesson and meet the competency requirement?

I'm not saying that no one can do that, I'm saying it's not feasible for large portions of the population.

And, since you didn't answer my complaint of testing bias before, I went and looked up the data. When you consider self-selected tests, those tests that are optional for all children, homeschooled kids do marginally better, but not fantastically so. For the years I have data available, homeschooled kids had an average ACT score of 22.7, while publicly schooled kids had an average of 21. For SAT scores it was 1083 versus 1016.

To be sure, your statement is technically correct, but the only things SAT and ACT tests matter for are college admissions, and the difference between a 21 and a 23 or a 1016 and a 1083 is not going to make or break anyone's application. There is no functional difference in the outcome, at least for these two tests.

burning_bridge: "The district could face a flood of dropouts if it doesn't ease its policy that all students pass college-prep classes."

Should college prep be a requirement in the first place? Students should know they have options but not everyone is going to go to college.

Also, did anyone else here read the article or did everyone just read the headline and come in here to start on their pet peeve about education? "Deport all the illegals," one of you said. Yeah, that has like nothing to do with article.

College-Prep doesn't mean AP, IB, or even necessarily that the classes are designed to send the kids to college (which does make it a bit of a misnomer). At my high school we had three tracks - Honors (which was for the students who had definite college plans, and which also included the AP classes), College-Prep (which was for the average middle of the road students, some headed towards college, some not), and General (which was basically day care for the students who had no ambition nor desire to do anything academically).

Vouchers aren't the answer. Vouchers help concentrate the students who have parents that actually care into schools where they have a better shot, but by that same process it concentrates all of the derelicts into one place, which is usually the default public school which then begins to fail.

Parent involvement is absolutely critical. The parent doesn't need to teach or even understand the material, but they do need to follow their child's educational progression and take action when necessary. If a kid is not succeeding in class or is getting into trouble for behavior the parent needs to take action at home - put restrictions on time out with friends, take away phones/TV/games, take away any allowance and/or spending money, take out the belt, whatever it takes. Right now the problem is that the troublesome students might get detention in school, but instead of getting it 10x worse at home the parent comes in and fights the teacher for punishing their little 'angel'.

We also need to get rid of NCLB. Some students need to be left behind for the good of the rest. Not everyone should be going to college, and not everyone should graduate from high school. If the diploma is mandatory it no longer has any value. Schools should not be penalized for expelling students for perpetual poor academic progress or improper behavior. There will be a rough few years when many students are thrown out of the system, but eventually the ineffective parents will start to understand that school isn't a tax-subsidized babysitting service and that if they don't take the steps to make sure their kid handles themselves properly at school, that kid will become a full time problem to deal with at home. At the same time treat the failure to take part in your child's education as the child abuse and neglect it is. If the kid is truant, punish the kid and the parent. If the parent refuses to cooperate with the school to develop a plan to help their kid improve, fine the parent or place court ordered community service under penalty of jail time if they refuse.

Instead of lowering standards and perpetuating government mandated standards of mediocrity schools should devote the resources to help the exceptional students excel, the average students develop, and the below-average-but-willing students improve. Those who have no desire to learn and whose parents have no desire to take action about it can be thrown out on their rears.