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Do you support school choice?

Do you support school choice?


  • Total voters
    88
Fair's fair. Many, if not most, school buildings heat/cool larger areas and not specific rooms. Therefore, simply having less students does not equate to a savings in heating/cooling as unused areas will still be heated/cooled as the occupied areas are heated/cooled. The same goes for maintenance cost. The whole building still needs to be maintained even if it is unoccupied and unused. There is no doubt that many cost would go down, but other costs will remain the same simply due to their nature.

Which is why school districts would consolidate schools, shutting down entire unused buildings, and in the future, design smaller, more efficient schools.
 
You really can't use the word "failing" without defining which schools fall under this category. That is why I asked you if you felt that these were mostly schools where there are large pools of disadvanted kids. Obviously, you said no so I'm going to ask you to give me some examples. TIA

Baloney. I gave you a definition of what a failing school is--at your request. If you are interested in applying that definition to specific schools, do your own homework. Which schools are failing are no more important to identify in the context of this thread topic than it it is necessary to identify which specific children are not being educated. What is important is the principle that parents should have the choice to choose the best school available for their children. How about we focus on that.
 
Truth be told, that is the issue in a nutshell. Ed reform people want to use the 'we can improve outcomes' when in reality, this hasn't been done because there is a reason that not all kids can perform the same on a test. I do believe we should educate all students whether they have good or bad parents and that we need to stop punishing public schools who try to do this on a daily basis. I always believed those working in the most needy schools should be praised. Also, should be paid more. Those are some tough working conditions. I chose not to do it anymore but God bless those that do. I think it's a travesty they are getting scapegoated.

But you also punish students who could be doing better and getting an education by forcing them into schools that fail them. Note here, that unlike AlbqOwl, I am not automatically assuming that the school in and of it self is failing. There are, as I noted, times of simply the school and the student not meshing. Additionally, if you have a school in an area where there is a large number of students who don't want to try and bully/peer pressure other kids into not trying (Bill Cosby talk on length on this particular issue), then why can't the students who want to try have an escape to a better school for them. School Choice, or lack thereof, isn't the only problem with our schools. Between large country wide, one size fits all, programs like Common Core and other that have proceeded it, and all of the social mandates (social promoting, lack of letter grades, etc. Note not all systems have the same mandates), there is much that can be done to improve our schools. Reader's Digest had a recent article on various types of learning environments that were highly effective. I have an idea on an environment that does not rely on grade levels and would allow for a larger range of socialization than occurs in the standard environment.

I have repeatedly agreed that teachers for the most part are not the issue. There are only a few bad apples, which sad to say are hard to fire in many systems. New York seems to be the worst.
City will spend $29 million on salaries, benefits of educators it can
Judge: NY School Can't Fire Teacher for Heroin Possession
Disgraced teacher is worth $10M, makes $100,000 a year, does nothing, & refuses to leave | New York Post
Child Molesting Teacher Can’t Be Fired Thanks to Union | Publius Forum

Mind you I don not believe that a teacher should be fired on accusation only, as is the case in some stories out there. However, if the teacher admits to the crime/misconduct and/or is convicted, then there should be nothing maintaining them in their position. Sadly though, it is this type of perception that causes teachers in general lots of grief.
You really can't use the word "failing" without defining which schools fall under this category. That is why I asked you if you felt that these were mostly schools where there are large pools of disadvanted kids. Obviously, you said no so I'm going to ask you to give me some examples. TIA

Never should you be defining which schools are falling under failing. You define failing as a set of established parameters and then apply those parameters to all schools and see which ones met them and which ones don't. The way you worded the sentence implies that AlbqOwl should be calling specific schools out, with the implied premise that you expect him to only name schools with disadvantaged kids.

Which is why school districts would consolidate schools, shutting down entire unused buildings, and in the future, design smaller, more efficient schools.

Depending upon the size of the population, designing a larger school would be more efficient. It's not easy to predict what the future holds and thus planners have to try to guess while planning for future expansion if needed. Repurposing parts of buildings no longer being used by the school would help defray costs, but your whole premise is just not that simple.
 
Depending upon the size of the population, designing a larger school would be more efficient. It's not easy to predict what the future holds and thus planners have to try to guess while planning for future expansion if needed. Repurposing parts of buildings no longer being used by the school would help defray costs, but your whole premise is just not that simple.

Designing a larger school may be more efficient, definitely more efficient than 6 partially used schools. :shrug: New schools are being built all the time, while old schools are shut down. This is nothing new.
 
Designing a larger school may be more efficient, definitely more efficient than 6 partially used schools. :shrug: New schools are being built all the time, while old schools are shut down. This is nothing new.

This is true. Sandy Hook Elementary was recently razed not because the facility was lacking or because the kids were receiving an inadequate education there. But the history of the place was just too painful to cope with. And Maquiscat is correct that sometimes a student just doesn't find community or 'mesh' in one school but will blossom in another. I touched on that as being a justification for school choice in previous posts.

The best reason for school choice is the concept of individual liberty and recognizing the unalienable right for parents to do the very best they can do for their children. And that could involve getting them out of a school where they are not being adequately educated and into a school where they are being adequately educated. When our kids were home, my husband and I did research the schools in each new town--he was transferred a lot--to be sure we moved into the district with the best schools. We also asked around about teachers so we could utilize ability to choose teachers when that privilege was offered. After they got older, our kids knew which teachers they wanted and would do their damndest to get into those classes. And it was not the 'easy' teachers they wanted. It was the best teachers they wanted.

People who value liberty do not fear giving people the choice of what is best for themselves and their children.
 
Which schools are failing are no more important to identify in the context of this thread topic than it it is necessary to identify which specific children are not being educated.

Okay, at least you're honest. My question mostly had to do with cause and effect. What causes school failure and will vouches cure it? If you don't really care about that discussion, fair enough. I understand some parents want money toward their child's education to attend a private school of their choosing, even if I don't agree with it.
 
Never should you be defining which schools are falling under failing. You define failing as a set of established parameters and then apply those parameters to all schools and see which ones met them and which ones don't. The way you worded the sentence implies that AlbqOwl should be calling specific schools out, with the implied premise that you expect him to only name schools with disadvantaged kids.

Mostly because what has been deemed as failing are those disadvantaged schools. I've not heard of any wealthy ones being closed down. It's quite obvious why. Hint: it does as much to do with socio economics.
 
Okay, at least you're honest. My question mostly had to do with cause and effect. What causes school failure and will vouches cure it? If you don't really care about that discussion, fair enough. I understand some parents want money toward their child's education to attend a private school of their choosing, even if I don't agree with it.

It isn't that I don't care about that discussion. It just doesn't belong in this one. This one is whether parents should have the choice to place their child where that child will get a better education. It really doesn't matter what schools are failing or why they are failing. What matters in this discussion is the ability of the parent to make the best decision for his/her child and allowing school choice in which the money will follow the child will help many to do that.

However, it is my belief that most schools will do what they have to do to attract students and get that money. And that cannot help but be a very good thing in most cases. Obviously the schools that are unable to attract students will close. As they should.
 
Mostly because what has been deemed as failing are those disadvantaged schools. I've not heard of any wealthy ones being closed down. It's quite obvious why. Hint: it does as much to do with socio economics.

Hang on now, I've not seen him advocate that any specific school shut down. So in the end you don't know if there are or are not any wealthy school that fall under his criteria of failing. Your lack of hearing of such a school does not mean that such an event has not happened.

But here is the other question. If you have the chance to take 1, 2, 3, or however many kids out of their disadvantaged situation and move them to a school where they can succeed, then why would you deny them that simply because the others either cannot or will not leave that situation? Are you saying that we should maintain the fewer kids as disadvantaged because we can't remove that disadvantage from all of them?
 
Baloney. I gave you a definition of what a failing school is--at your request. If you are interested in applying that definition to specific schools, do your own homework. Which schools are failing are no more important to identify in the context of this thread topic than it it is necessary to identify which specific children are not being educated. What is important is the principle that parents should have the choice to choose the best school available for their children. How about we focus on that.

I believe the point he is trying to make is that most so-called "failing" schools have poor results because they are under-funded, have difficulty retaining experienced teachers and have a concentration of especially challenging children-low income kids from violent neighborhoods, from families with little history of academic success and/or with parents that do not speak English well. If these kids get scattered to other schools there is no reason to think that they will do better since the other schools are not accustomed to dealing with that type of student.
 
I believe the point he is trying to make is that most so-called "failing" schools have poor results because they are under-funded, have difficulty retaining experienced teachers and have a concentration of especially challenging children-low income kids from violent neighborhoods, from families with little history of academic success and/or with parents that do not speak English well. If these kids get scattered to other schools there is no reason to think that they will do better since the other schools are not accustomed to dealing with that type of student.

Failing schools are not failing because they are under funded. Some of the worst schools in the country receive the most funding per capita in the country and still they produce miserable results. At the same time a homeschooled kid who receives absolutely no funding can receive an excellent education. If funding was the issue, the USA would be at or near the top of the list in excellence in education. Instead we are way behind most other developed countries and even some developing or so-called third world countries. Throwing more money at a bad system isn't going to make that system better.
 
Amen.

It's not funding, it's not class size necessarily, and it's not technology either.

Raise your hand if you remember the famous Newsweek cover "Why Can't Johnny Read?"

In 2008 both candidates had very good potential solutions to the education crisis. Then-candidate Obama spoke specifically about how education begins in the home. It does. Little Johnny never did learn to read very well and didn't "model" reading to his own kids.

Now academia faces a second generation of non-readers, defined here as those who read only what they must and who consider it a suffering. The weakened and sometimes absent critical thinking skills are shocking. And measurable.

A Lack Of Rigor Leaves Students 'Adrift' In College : NPR

College Students Lack Critical Thinking Skills, But Who’s To Blame?

Critical Thinking Is Best Taught Outside the Classroom - Scientific American
 
Hang on now, I've not seen him advocate that any specific school shut down. So in the end you don't know if there are or are not any wealthy school that fall under his criteria of failing. Your lack of hearing of such a school does not mean that such an event has not happened.

But here is the other question. If you have the chance to take 1, 2, 3, or however many kids out of their disadvantaged situation and move them to a school where they can succeed, then why would you deny them that simply because the others either cannot or will not leave that situation? Are you saying that we should maintain the fewer kids as disadvantaged because we can't remove that disadvantage from all of them?

My point is the real problem in all schools (rich, poor, public, private) is the achievement gap between wealthy and poor. It continues to grow. If we want real solutions for this very real problem, we certainly aren't addressing it by shuffling kids from one school to another. Even wealthy schools that contain poor children are not closing the gap. Those schools have a much lower chance of closing for the simple reason the higher concentration of children that come from relatively median to high incomes will appear fine while schools with high concentrations of poor students can't average those scores to look higher. If we want to address the real issue, perhaps catching these children at a very young age and offering an enriching environment may change things in the future fir tgese kids. Not furthering to stratify the system.

Of interest-
In this chapter I examine whether and how the relationship between family socioeconomic characteristics and academic achievement has changed during the last fifty years. In particular, I investigate the extent to which the rising income inequality of the last four decades has been paralleled by a similar increase in the income achievement gradient. As the income gap between high- and low-income families has widened, has the achievement gap between children in high- and low-income families also widened?

The answer, in brief, is yes. The achievement gap between children from high- and low-income families is roughly 30 to 40 percent larger among children born in 2001 than among those born twenty-five years earlier. In fact, it appears that the income achievement gap has been growing for at least fifty years, though the data are less certain for cohorts of children born before 1970. In this chapter, I describe and discuss these trends in some detail. In addition to the key finding that the income achievement gap appears to have widened substantially, there are a number of other important findings.

First, the income achievement gap (defined here as the average achievement difference between a child from a family at the 90th percentile of the family income distribution and a child from a family at the 10th percentile) is now nearly twice as large as the black-white achievement gap. Fifty years ago, in contrast, the black-white gap was one and a half to two times as large as the income gap. Second, as Greg Duncan and Katherine Magnuson note in chapter 3 of this volume, the income achievement gap is large when children enter kindergarten and does not appear to grow (or narrow) appreciably as children progress through school. Third, although rising income inequality may play a role in the growing income achievement gap, it does not appear to be the dominant factor. The gap appears to have grown at least partly because of an increase in the association between family income and children’s academic achievement for families above the median income level: a given difference in family incomes now corresponds to a 30 to 60 percent larger difference in achievement than it did for children born in the 1970s. Moreover, evidence from other studies suggests that this may be in part a result of increasing parental investment in children’s cognitive development. Finally, the growing income achievement gap does not appear to be a result of a growing achievement gap between children with highly and less-educated parents. Indeed, the relationship between parental education and children’s achievement has remained relatively stable during the last fifty years, whereas the relationship between income and achievement has grown sharply. Family income is now nearly as strong as parental education in predicting children’s achievement.

- See more at: The widening academic achievement gap between the rich and the poor: New evidence and possible explanations | Center for Education Policy Analysis

Also if we are looking for solutions: Closing The 'Word Gap' Between Rich And Poor : NPR
 
Failing schools are not failing because they are under funded. Some of the worst schools in the country receive the most funding per capita in the country and still they produce miserable results. At the same time a homeschooled kid who receives absolutely no funding can receive an excellent education. If funding was the issue, the USA would be at or near the top of the list in excellence in education. Instead we are way behind most other developed countries and even some developing or so-called third world countries. Throwing more money at a bad system isn't going to make that system better.

A home school has better funding than a public school. In a public school one teacher has to teach 20-35 kids. A home school teacher might have just one student, or as many children they have. (probably under 12 kids)

Most schools in poor communities get less funding than schools in prosperous areas because the main source of funding is property taxes. Bonds are also used for facility repairs and new facilities and buildings, and they are more likely to pass in affluent areas. Yes there is state and federal funding, but that is a small part of a school's overall budget. Another reason for the quality disparity is that teachers with seniority get to opt out of the difficult schools, leaving the least experienced teachers teaching the most difficult students. Comparing the performance of public schools with private schools is not meaningful because public schools have many bureaucratic, procedural and reporting requirements that private schools don't have, they have to provide subsidized lunches, public schools can not turn away a student living in the district, and they have to accommodate kids with learning disabilities, psychological issues, mental and physical disabilities.

It should be noted that the supporters of vouchers don't seem to know or understand many of these basic facts about how public schools function.
 
Someone please provide proof that the "worst schools in the country receive the most funding per capita in the country and still they produce miserable results." I doubt that claim and never saw it documented.
 
"...Public school funding in the United States comes from federal, state, and local sources, but because nearly half of those funds come from local property taxes, the system generates large funding differences between wealthy and impoverished communities. Such differences exist among states, among school districts within each state, and even among schools within specific districts.

In 1998, for example, the state with the highest average level of public school funding (adjusted for differences in cost of living) was New Jersey, with an annual funding rate of $8,801 per student, whereas the state with the lowest average level was Utah, with a yearly rate of $3,804 per student (see fig. 1). This means that the typical student attending a public school in New Jersey was provided more than twice the fiscal resources allocated to his or her counterpart in Utah.

Disparities in per-student funding levels are actually greater within some states than among the states as a group. To illustrate, in 1998, public school districts in Alaska that were ranked at the 95th percentile for per-student funding received an average of $16,546 per student for the year, whereas school districts ranked at the 5th percentile received only $7,379 on average. Other “winners” in the inequality derby included Vermont (where school districts at the 95th and 5th percentiles received an average of $15,186 and $6,442, respectively), Illinois (where the figures were $11,507 and $5,260), New Jersey ($13,709 and $8,401), New York ($13,749 and $8,518), and Montana ($9,839 and $4,774).

In contrast, differences in funding were quite small in such states as Nevada (where better-funded and not-so-well-funded districts received an average of $6,933 and $5,843, respectively, for each student), as well as in Hawaii and Washington, D.C., each of which is served by only one large school district (National Center for Education Statistics, 1998).

Nor is the practice of inequitable public school funding confined to the district level. Schools within a given district or classrooms within a specific school may also experience massive differences in funding (Rothstein, 2000). Such inequities appear because the needs of disadvantaged students are less often heeded in debates about programs, facilities, and funding allocation in local venues.

From the preceding data we learn that a few students from wealthy communities or neighborhoods within generous states attend public schools with funding of $15,000 or more per student per year, whereas some students from poor communities or neighborhoods within stingy or impoverished states attend schools that must make do with less than $4,000 per student per year.


What proportion of students attend well-funded and poorly funded schools? We can get some idea by looking at the school districts that report various levels of per-student funding. Figure 2 on page 54 provides this information for the 7,206 districts that enrolled 1,000 or more students in 1995. Of these districts, 1,425 (or 20 percent) received less than $5,000 in 1995, and 451 (or 6 percent) provided $10,000 or more per student (National Center for Education Statistics, 1998).

Other data show that communities where student poverty is rare tend to have well-funded schools, whereas schools in communities where student poverty is rampant tend to receive much less funding. Figure 3 on page 57 shows the relationship between funding and student poverty rates for school districts with enrollments of more than 1,000. Districts reporting higher levels of funding are more likely to be located in communities where student poverty is minimal, whereas those reporting lower levels of funding are more often located in communities where student poverty is sizable (National Center for Education Statistics, 2000b)............

Bearing these cautions in mind, can we locate strong studies, and if so, what have those studies found? Indeed, we can find such studies (see, for example, Biddle, 1997; Dolan & Schmidt, 1987; Ellinger, Wright, & Hirlinger, 1995; Elliott, 1998; Ferguson, 1991; Harter, 1999; Payne & Biddle, 1999; Wenglinsky, 1997a, 1997b). Although we do not list all of them here, the examples we cite will indicate typical findings. As a rule, such studies report that level of funding is tied to sizable net effects for student outcome.

To illustrate, a study of 11th grade achievement scores among school districts in Oklahoma found that both student poverty and per-student revenues within schools were associated with achievement. Effects for the former were roughly twice the size of those for the latter (Ellinger et al., 1995). Similar results were found for the determinants of 8th grade achievement scores among school districts from across the United States that participated in the Second International Study of Mathematics Achievement (Payne & Biddle, 1999). And Harold Wenglinsky (1997a), using data drawn from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, found that average student socioeconomic status and per-student expenditures within school districts were both associated with level of mathematics achievement in the 8th grade, but that the effects for socioeconomic status were again larger than those for per-student expenditures.

Collectively, these studies have employed various techniques designed to rule out alternative hypotheses, and all of them have concluded that funding has substantial effects, although level of advantage in the home and community has an even greater impact....."
Educational Leadership:Beyond Instructional Leadership:Unequal School Funding in the United States
 
"Few Americans realize that the U.S. educational system is one of the
most unequal in the industrialized world, and students routinely
receive dramatically different learning opportunities based on their
social status. In contrast to most European and Asian nations that fund
schools centrally and equally, the wealthiest 10 percent of school districts
in the United States spend nearly ten times more than the poor
-est 10 percent, and spending ratios of three to one are common within
states. Poor and minority students are concentrated in the less well
funded schools, most of them located in central cities and funded at
levels substantially below those of neighboring suburban districts.
In
addition, policies associated with school funding, resource allocations,
and tracking leave minority students with fewer and lower-quality
books, curriculum materials, laboratories, and computers; significantly
larger class sizes; less qualified and experienced teachers; and less access
to high-quality curriculum.

The fact that the least-qualified teachers typically end up teaching
the least-advantaged students is particularly problematic. Recent stud
-ies have found that the difference in teacher quality may represent the
single most important school resource differential between minority
and white children and that it explains at least as much of the vari
-ance in student achievement as socioeconomic status. In fact, as we
describe below, disparate educational outcomes for poor and minority
children are much more a function of their unequal access to key edu
-cational resources, including skilled teachers and quality curriculum,
than they are a function of race or class...."
http://www.stanford.edu/~ldh/publications/LDH-Post-Inequality.pdf
 
I support vouchers as they're currently available via No Child Left Behind: you have to make a case for your child to attend private school. Usually when the school is unsafe.

I somewhat support open schools - there are different concepts and it's one of those things that I'm unsure of, success wise.
 
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