Portland, Ore.—On any given weekday here, the residential streets are clogged with parents driving their kids away from neighborhood schools. Harboring visions of creative and challenging academics, upwardly mobile mothers and fathers head for one of the district’s 20 special focus and language immersion schools, or other schools deemed superior by virtue of test scores or socio-economic enrollment patterns. As of… return to article
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Reader Comments (80)Page 1 of 1 pagesLinda Baker contends that “school choice policies sacrifice universal education in favor of personal freedom”
Some interesting snippets from the article.
Under the district’s open enrollment policy, over 35 percent of the Portland public school population now attends a school outside of their neighborhood….
Most schools are harmed by school choice,...
Ask some of Portland’s transfer families why they left the neighborhood, and you’ll hear an invocation to academic achievement and freedom of choice…
Sounds to me that Baker has just proved the point that public schools aren’t delivering quality education.
And the parents of Portland know it.
Posted by Jay Cline on Oct 3, 2005 at 2:17 PM Jay:
They do know it, but there is a limit to what can be accomplished by an exodus of students from low performing schools.
The migration reduces funding for schools that need to make improvements. Improvements tend to require investment so what we have is a deterministic system where better schools have the ability to improve, while lower performing schools do not.
Suppose, for a moment that all of the non-native speakers of English from all of your neighboring schools took advantage of the school choice policy and went to your child’s school. Imagine what that might do to your school’s test scores. Imagine the additional resources that this might consume to bring them up to par with the rest of the student body.
Of course, policy makers know that these aren’t the kids who leave the school. This ultimately increases the proportion of kids who have special academic needs at schools who are already struggling with their average test scores. How do they chart a course out of such a vortex when the federal response is to lower their funding levels?
Closing the low-performing schools would be more fair than starving them, but don’t believe for a minute that this is the goal. The goal is, apparently, to create more disparity rather than to eliminate it.
Posted by GrayArea on Oct 3, 2005 at 3:21 PM So when was school choice implemented in Portland?
It seems to me that Baker is suggesting that school choice is inherently the problem, not in how school choice was rolled out. The subtitle of the article, School choice policies sacrifice universal education in favor of personal freedom bears out the impression that choice (personal freedom) is detrimental to universal education. Nowhere does Baker fault merely the implementation.
I disagree that school choice itself caused the problem. How can giving parents a voice in determining which schools should be rewarded for succeeding and which schools should be put on notice for not performing be a bad thing?
Certainly, any major change to any system requires a proper implementation, but neither Baker nor GrayArea offer any information on why the implementation was faulty?
How long was school choice in force, before schools were held accountable for non-performance? Most successful school choice implementations, that I know of, do take that into consideration.
Posted by Jay Cline on Oct 3, 2005 at 3:38 PM rather than improving education over all we encourage people who can afford it to go to alternative schools
welcome to the dumbing of America
Posted by cnote on Oct 3, 2005 at 4:48 PM My kids are now ages 43 and 40. We began bussing kids to “achieve racial balance” when they were in grade school. We are still spending thousands each year on busing, per student spending and our taxes continue to rise, yet the quality of education continues to fall.
“Most schools are harmed by school choice,” says the author. Well, judging from reports of the U.S. versus other countries, our educational level is being harmed by our public schools.
If my kids were still of school age, I would not sacrifice their education to prevent “the demise of public education”.
Our honors classes have been destroyed due to the need to fill them according to racial quotas. The term “women of color” in this article reminds me of the progression of accepted euphemisms for Negro we have passed through since the 1964 Civil Rights Act was supposed to do away with such categorizing.
We have been playing racial games in the guise of equality. In Alabama in 1963, I saw all the disgusting “Whites Only” and “Colored Only” labeling, but shifting to Blacks, African Americans, People of Color, Hispanics, Latinos or changing the name of a sports team is all eyewash. (Hmmm, how come they call hurricanes “Katrina” and “Rita” and no one cares?)
Our neighborhood over the 38 years we have lived here has become integrated with no protests, but none of the kids can walk to school they are assigned to distant ones even though I can see the grade school from my house, middle school is 1/2 mile away and a high school is only a few hundred yards from here. The bussing farce goes on forever.
It is no wonder parents are choosing to opt out.
Posted by whattheheck on Oct 3, 2005 at 5:28 PM Wouldn’t it be nice if there was enough room in the honors classes for everyone who wanted to take them?
It is interesting that the hardest thing to move, the people, has been tried in the past. The results, of course you can see for yourself. Now with NCLB, we are dealing with bussing as a sort of do-it-yourself solution.
Meanwhile, the easiest thing to move, little green pieces of paper are ever-anchored to the well-to-do communities so that everyone else has to move around to where they are.
It is shameful. There are, quite simply, not enough resources to go around. So them thats got hoard. Folks tell me that throwing money at the problem is not the solution, but it seems odd that we never actually try that option with any serious problems besides the military.
I had a great school. We had a great computer lab, chemistry department, a terrific music program (where instruments were free to check out if you needed one). We also had excellent facilities and wonderful teachers. Lots of money seemed to work well for my school. Maybe we should try it elsewhere and see what we get.
Posted by GrayArea on Oct 3, 2005 at 5:45 PM Jay:
The implementation of school choice is part and parcel of the program. You make it voluntary and you make it dependent on the ability of people to get their own children to different neighborhoods to a better school.
By design, what you leave in the low-performing school are those with less flexibility to ferry their kids out of town. Kids who live in poor families and kids who’s parents don’t speak English, etc. These folks are not going to be in as good a position to take advantage of the program. What you *take* from the low performing schools, is the funding required to take the corrective actions that they would take.
How would a different implementation solve the problem, exactly? It depends on how you view the problem. If you view the problem as *my kid needs more opportunities*, then this modern version of bussing may seem like a solution. On the other hand, if you view the problem as *the kids in my community who live in poor families need more opportunities*, then it doesn’t.
Which sort are you?
Posted by GrayArea on Oct 3, 2005 at 6:11 PM In the town where I live the local school board has created ” traditional public schools “. Sort of like public private schools. Students wear uniforms, stand up when an adult enters the room, and receive intruction in behavior and values. There are now waiting lists for enrollment at these “traditional schools”.
Now teaching children respect for their classmates and teachers is a good thing. But, rather than bringing the child to a school where these traditional values are taught, shouldn’t we be bringing the traditional values to all schools and all children.
Posted by David in Canada on Oct 3, 2005 at 6:22 PM I’m the kind that says shut ‘em down if they can’t perform and then they get to go to schools that do perform.
Only someone who has a vested interest in the current monolithic system that can’t, or won’t, hold schools accountable would think that non-performers would continue to blithely exist in perpetuity.
Posted by Jay Cline on Oct 3, 2005 at 6:54 PM “Wouldn’t it be nice if there was enough room in the honors classes for everyone who wanted to take them?”
The honors classes were actually college level classes in math, language, etc. When it was made a requirement that the classes be racially balanced rather than academically measured, it meant placing some kids in the awkward situation of not having the abilites needed to participate — yet being there.
Then the program was dropped so now no one gets the advanced instruction.
Picture a pro basketball team with a short white computer geak as center to balance it racially.
Posted by whattheheck on Oct 3, 2005 at 7:01 PM A proper implementation would be to 1) set the standards, 2) provide a 2 or 3 year grace period so schools can use the money they currently have to start fixing the problems before parents start pulling their kids out, 3) put low-performers on probation for a year, 4) if, after a one year probation, force a reorganization of the school’s non-teaching staff and put them into some sort of trusteeship or receivership, 5) give a reorg’ed school a set time limit to shape up, 6) close down the school if it doesn’t.
Now, ideally, schools would, or could, be privately run. Or perhaps I should say should be. If a school hits levels 4-6, the reorganization could be in the form of a buy-out.
But most school choice programs I have encountered get hobbled by not introducing market forces, even the whole point is to provide educational consumers (parents) choices.
Is this how it was implemented in Portland?
Posted by Jay Cline on Oct 3, 2005 at 7:03 PM In Minnesota, when I was in the meat grinder, honors classes consisted of busy work, if it was even offered. More homework for the same exact classes. In my senior year, I only had class 3 hours a day, because I had all the credits I needed to graduate, and no more classes were available.
Minnesota still has a long way to go, but because there is competition, albeit limited, most schools now offer free college courses at the U for qualified juniors and seniors (in fact, I think that might even be mandated by the state).
My wife’s two nieces both got their bachelors degrees before they were 20.
A neighboring school district has grade schools set up into colonies. Colony 1 is 1-3, Colony 2 is 2-4, Colony 3 is 3-5, Colony 4 is 4-6. If a child who would normally be ready for 2nd grade is doing advanced work, they could advance to Colony 2, etc.
In my time, it was unthinkable to advance a child to their academic potential because that would mean putting them into a socially inferior position. Of course, that logic only applies if you are still thinking in terms of traditional K-12 grades.
Competition forced (enabled?) schools administrators to think of real solutions, instead of real excuses.
Posted by Jay Cline on Oct 3, 2005 at 7:15 PM When I was in the Air Force two or three decades ago, there was a legend that circulated the barracks that seems particularly appropriate to the resistance school choice is getting from entrenched educational interests.
It seems a certain General Creech had come up with a new methodology for aircraft maintenance. Before, each specific maintenance group was vertically integrated. For example, jet engine mechanics would all have the same OIC, regardless if they worked in-shop rebuilding engines, on the flight line making quick repairs in the aircraft, or in preventative maintenance, doing routine and regularly scheduled maintenance and systems checks. If fact, a single engine mechanic would be expected to work in any one of the three very different areas at any given time.
Other units of command would be created for hydraulics, avionics, etc.
Creech decided that it would be more efficient to separate command responsibility by function rather than specialty. So all the engine mechanics, all the hydraulics mechanics, all the avionics technicians, etc. who would work the flight line turning aircraft would be in an Aircraft Generation maintenance unit; all those rebuilding engines, fixing avionics equipment, etc. once removed from the aircraft, would work in Component Repair maintenance units; those doing work on support equipment or preventative maintenance would be grouped in Equipment Maintenance units.
Long story short, the General took his idea to an Air Force base in California and had it implemented. It failed. Why? Because the people responsible for the implementation did not want anything to do with it. Creech’s solution was to dismiss and replace the maintenance officers in charge. Guess what he told their replacements?
This will work.
Guess what?
It did.
Posted by Jay Cline on Oct 3, 2005 at 7:46 PM Hmmm, for-profit public education… what a concept. How much of a profit would you like your neighborhood high school to be raking in? If you believe the margins are so wide, and there are that many corners to be cut, you are fooling yourself. I’m just sure that Wallmart High School is in the final planning stages as we speak.
Re-organization is essential, but I find it interesting that Mr. Cline uses the military (a strictly not-for-profit organization) as his example of entrenched attitudes and what to do about them.
General Creech’s transformation of aircraft maintenance program when he was in charge of TAC was largely about decentralization. He was averse to the standard cost-cutting technique of centralizing authority and creating larger bureaucracies where people could hide. He thought that by restructuring, he could save more money on the back end by improving eficiency and quality at the same time. He was certainly correct. Incidentally, how much of a profit do you think the Airforce ought to make?
Now, a kid is not like an F-16. F-16s are considerably simpler. However, the problem is not about finding effective models. There are plenty of well-documented strategies for improving test scores as well as English proficiency. Cutting funding is, oddly, not among them.
The basic problem we face is one of disparity. Properly educating every child in the country with any degree of uniformity is more expensive than people are willing to support. You can’t re-organize yourself out of that issue. Meanwhile, everyone is apparently willing to pay for F-16 maintenance no matter what the cost. Every F-16 gets exactly as much attention as it needs, or it doesn’t fly.
Posted by GrayArea on Oct 3, 2005 at 8:54 PM GrayArea clouds the issue with a lot of irrelevant questions, but does make a couple very neat points.
“for-profit public” education? I believe you could rephrase that with “private” education, which could arguably be the whole point.
Has anyone made the case that private education is ineffective, or merely expensive? And is that not GA’s second point, that education is more expensive than most people realize? Why doesn’t the public realize it? Because public education has been sold as the only effective way to educate, yet it has failed.
So, if we go for a solution (private, for-profit) that has demonstrably worked since the time of Plato, a solution where people aren’t fooled about the actual cost of education, wouldn’t that address GA’s concerns?
Unless you think there is something wrong for paying for what you get and getting what you pay for?
As far as reorganization, I am glad that GA is familiar with the example of failed entrenched attitudes and what to do with them, although he doesn’t really explain his objection to them.
Every child gets exactly as much attention as it needs, or the school doesn’t make money. I believe that is Baker’s central objection, that parents are taking kids out of schools that are not living up to expectations.
Posted by Jay Cline on Oct 3, 2005 at 9:19 PM I missed this little jewel:
<u>However, the problem is not about finding effective models.</u>
No, that is exactly the problem.
Posted by Jay Cline on Oct 3, 2005 at 9:27 PM Private schools, run by relgious societies, are numerous in my town. Mostly owing to the extremely conservative and traditional population in this area that demands them. Home schooling was very popular and still is but is declining as more private schools get built through the various religious societies, mostly German and Dutch churches.
More recently the local School Board, after being taken over by more conservative types, has created ” traditional public schools ” as I described in a previous post. Part of the reason for making these traditional schools was to create schools that got the job of educating children done without the private school religious overtones that some people didn’t like. It works, these kids in the public traditional schools are thriving, parents like it because they see better grades and behavior. I just hope, given their popularity, that the day will come when all of the schools in this area will be transformed in the same way.
Posted by David in Canada on Oct 3, 2005 at 10:04 PM No, it is not about finding effective models, it is about employing them for all children nationwide. In my dealings with education professionals, I have not seen widespread resistance to change. This assumes that the changes are based on research in the field instead of political games aimed at chanelling public money to parochial schools.
Many private schools are wonderful if you can afford them. However, cheaper isn’t one of the adjectives that comes to mind. If you can only afford McDonalds, you are going to get what you pay for. In the private model, this has to be dealt with at the individual household level.
As I see it, the private model causes greater disparity, not less. Just as some folks drive Maseratis and some folks drive rusted out datsun pickup trucks. Don’t confuse my objection to vast disparity with any objection to efficiency. I fear that Mr. Cline actually desires this disparity which is why we aren’t having a very efficient exchange here.
It may be that he just wants parochial schools to get government funding via vouchers and let public education as an institution simply sink with everyone aboard who can’t make up the difference - I really don’t know.
But I do know, thay if we educated the same percentage of our population as they did at the time of Plato, I would have to declare it a complete failure.
Posted by GrayArea on Oct 3, 2005 at 10:13 PM No, it is not about finding effective models, it is about employing them for all children nationwide.
Employing them for all children nationwide would be a very good measure for the effectiveness of a model, no?
Posted by Jay Cline on Oct 3, 2005 at 10:25 PM The snide comment about the percentage of the population that was educated in the time of Plato is deceitful and GA ought to be ashamed.
Plato’s time didn’t have public taxation to support and pay for education. School choice is not about eliminating public educational financing. It is about who gets to make the decisions.
Posted by Jay Cline on Oct 3, 2005 at 10:44 PM GA is entirely correct in his McDonald’s analogy. Public education is the Big Mac to private education’s Sirloin Tip Steak.
“Free” public education doesn’t cost a dime, at least in the context of individual parents making educational decisions out of their own pocketbooks. Taxes are taken out for public educational costs, whether you use them or not, so the effective cost of public schools for parents are zilch. Compare that to private schools, when you have to find additional money out of your own pocket does make the comparative cost between public and private schooling outrageous.
But, we are getting into entrenched mindsets again. The real point of choice is to give the parents the power to decide where their share of the public funding goes. That elevates the real cost of public education to a much fairer representation of costs.
For example, if the per pupil tax rate from property and income taxes is $10,000, and the parents have the choice of where that money goes, a private or charter school that costs $15,000 (at a net differential of $5000 additional family expenditures) is much more attractive than letting that $10,000 go to the public school and still paying an additional $15,000 (for a grand total of $25,000) for a private or charter school.
Schools of choice, private, charter, whatever, are thus penalized and disadvantaged financially by a multiple of five times! And this has nothing to do with religious parochial schools. That is a red herring argument that I will explore more in detail, if any one is interested.
The current standard practices of financing public education without direct control by the parents is artificially inflating the cost of private education and deflating the cost of public education to zilch.
Why do we thusly continue to subsidize substandard public education?
Posted by Jay Cline on Oct 3, 2005 at 10:45 PM In my dealings with education professionals, I have not seen widespread resistance to change
Then were does all this resistance come from? Misinformed reporters?
Last I heard, the NEA was adamantly opposed to ANY sort of privatization of education.
Posted by Jay Cline on Oct 3, 2005 at 10:54 PM You have only one solution. This is the only thing that qualifies as change for you. Was privatization the solution to General Creech’s problem? Definitely not.
Posted by GrayArea on Oct 3, 2005 at 11:06 PM As I see it, the private model causes greater disparity, not less.
Sounds like that Vonnegut novel, where ballerinas are shackled by heavy ball and chains so they can’t be better than anyone else.
Posted by Jay Cline on Oct 3, 2005 at 11:07 PM You have only one solution. This is the only thing that qualifies as change for you. Was privatization the solution to General Creech’s problem? Definitely not.
1) I never said this was the only solution. Only better than what we currently have
2) The Creech analogy was about entrenched mindsets. You are the one employing it to demonstrate the issue of privatization.
3) Please do not forcefeed me with the gruel you believe to be my opinions.
Posted by Jay Cline on Oct 3, 2005 at 11:10 PM Well hello there Jay, nice to see your real face. I can see that what you value is a system that is designed so that a very few, well-off members of society benefit the most from public policy. Pardon my inference of your opinions, but your mindset actually seems quite entrenched.
Consider this. If you can afford a 20K per child per year High School education for your family members, you don’t need a voucher. It wouldn’t matter if you had one either. Your children will be just fine. They are not the reason we have a public education system.
Posted by GrayArea on Oct 3, 2005 at 11:25 PM Yes, but what about someone who could afford the additional $5000 but doesn’t have the choice?
Posted by Jay Cline on Oct 3, 2005 at 11:32 PM I’d have to say that if you have 60,000 per child to spare for 12 years of schooling, you really aren’t the reason for the public system either.
For those of us who can’t afford a private school outright, we would do well to work together on the public system so it isn’t sabotaged and starved to death. If you want to home school your kids, please do, but don’t expect a cash bonus from the government.
Posted by GrayArea on Oct 3, 2005 at 11:50 PM Nice to see civilized debate here. Please and pardon me. Gentle sarcasm. Keep it up.
Posted by David in Canada on Oct 3, 2005 at 11:51 PM Actually, I’s like to modify that. If ou have the 60,000, you are an important reason for the public system. however, you shouldn’t be taking 120,000 out of the public system to pay for something else.
Posted by GrayArea on Oct 3, 2005 at 11:52 PM An observation about private schools.
Here in Canada, private schools do receive some funding from the government. The rest of the budget is raised through tuition fees.
The private school I went to for a few years in high school was very proud to point out that the per student budget at the private school was less than the per student budget at a public school.
Despite having less money per student at the private school they had students with better grades, better facilites and equipment while still paying the teachers what they would earn teaching at a public school.
Posted by David in Canada on Oct 4, 2005 at 12:51 AM ok, the debate is about choice, not privatization. Choice does not require privatization. Portland was about going to schools that succeed and fix or shutdown schools that don’t.
I have provided a successful six step implementation and examples of models that are succeeding. Why aren’t they valid?
Posted by Jay Cline on Oct 4, 2005 at 1:24 AM There is nothing wrong with the steps really, only the assumptions of what you are going to get for your money.
As David points out, there are private schools that operate on lower budgets than area public schools. It is important to compare apples to apples though. A local public school must accept every member of the community regardless of their academic achievements to date or their class rank. So far, a private school does not, hence the idea of ‘private’
I’ll accept your conditions though and change the model so that we are talking only about school choice, not private / public.
Delivering a ‘unit of education’ - however you define it - to a native speaker of Spanish is going to cost you a lot more than delivering that same unit to a native English speaker who already scores well on the standardized tests. Likewise, a lousy primary school education is going to be extremely expensive and distracting to correct.
As it is, schools with high proportion of minority and underprivileged students ‘fail’ at a much higher rate. You could either decide that this is because of some inherent inferiority, or that they system is not equipped to handle the extra expense of educating them. It is also a valid hypothesis at least, that performance in school is enhanced by a stable economic situation at home.
The conditions that lead to the divergent performance often has much to do with early education opportunities and external factors than they do with the specific variables you are measuring. So your plan, while tidy, will recognize performance gaps more easily once they have become difficult to remedy. You have given the elementary school four years or so to fix a problem that must now drag down the High School in terms of test scores.
It doesn’t matter where these kids go. They will be more expensive to deal with. You have outlined a system where a school is actually rewarded for high, but hard to meaure drop-out rates so it can focus on the middle 80% (probably the cheapest kids to teach)
I’m not making excuses, I am setting expectations. If you really want to educate everyone and set a truly world class example, we need to invest in very rich educational experiences for every person at the earliest points possible.
Posted by GrayArea on Oct 4, 2005 at 2:55 AM GrayArea writes : ” As it is, schools with high proportion of minority and underprivileged students ‘fail’ at a much higher rate. You could either decide that this is because of some inherent inferiority, or that they system is not equipped to handle the extra expense of educating them. It is also a valid hypothesis at least, that performance in school is enhanced by a stable economic situation at home.
Or you could decide this is because of the circumstances the students are in, i.e. underprivileged. Not inferiority. Just the deck stacked against them. Plenty of very successful people have come underprivileged circumstances.
Performance in school is enhanced by lots of things, ability, effort, economics, family values, circumstances ..
Posted by David in Canada on Oct 4, 2005 at 3:36 AM I agree David. That the deck is stacked against them is a better way of thinking of it. I’d also suggest that some entire schools have the deck stacked against them. And yes, some need complete overhauls.
You are also right to note that people do emerge successful from an underprivileged start in life and I don’t want to diminish the important role of personal responsibility either. But the education system is one place where it seems that we should try and unstack the deck.Listen up Jay, how about this: If your kid is specifically not meeting the standards, then your kid can change schools. I’d even say that his or her siblings could change schools as well so long as they need to carpool.
On the other hand, if your kid is meeting the standards and you *still* want to change schools, then what is your rationale? Maybe you don’t like the math teacher? Nah, we shouldn’t allow kids who are meeting the standard to change schools for free.
The departure of kids who are at or above the standard cuts into the school’s revenue and performance rating. Schools should be able to take full credit for their successes as well as take responsibility for their failures.
What do you say Jay? We still need to address the issue of transportation, but I’d agree to this in principle. Can we shake on it?
Posted by GrayArea on Oct 4, 2005 at 7:03 AM Had to jump in with this :
When I was a little kid I walked, through the snow , in the winter at least, to a bus stop. The first few years with my mother, other kids from nearby and their mothers too. When I got older and had the good sense to safely ride a bicycle and had moved within bicycle distance, from the farm to the city, my parents allowed me to ride a bicycle to school or I walked.
I could count on my fingers and toes the number of rides in cars I got to school. When it did happen it was usually because of bad weather and the buses were not running and a neighbour would volunteer to drive the kids ie. carpool.
Sorry for the nostalgic rant but it goes back only 30 years to beginning of these memories.
Posted by David in Canada on Oct 4, 2005 at 7:38 AM When the eldest in our family was about to enter second level (high school), even though we didn’t have a lot of money, my mum and dad looked into the option of boarding school, because the local school did not have a good reputation - I’m not talking exam scores here, I mean drug use and teen pregnancy, the traditional problems of schools in an area with very high unemployment. In the end, they chose to send my sister to the local school anyway and myself and my younger sister followed.
A couple of things made this decision for them. They believed that education is as much the responsibility of the family as the school. They believed that it would be easier for them to be part of the school community if we attended locally than if we were in boarding school. They believed that they could affect, influence and help us with any problems we might encounter, and that problems of some kind or another were just as likely in a private as in a public school, but that, again, being part of our local community, they would be a greater part of the solution in our local school than if we were away from them. They believed in us, their children, that we would not be adversely influenced by what we encountered but that the principals we had learned in our home would stand by us. We all went on to university and are almost boringly well-adjusted people.
A couple of things happened because we went to that school: the parents of my eldest sister’s best friend decided to take the risk too, rather than separate them. Suddenly there were at least two children with decent academic backgrounds and good family lives in that class. By the time I attended, most of my friends accompanied me. Because my elder sister wanted to attend art college, three other girls in her class also sent in portfolios - two of them successfully, one winning a full scholarship - these were people who wouldn’t have even considered the option of third level if my sister hadn’t been applying. With a few of my friends, I petitioned for an honours maths class in our senior years (it was a single sex school and up to then maths was offered only at a ‘pass’ level in the final years - it was considered that girls wouldn’t really need maths - and David, this was NOT 30 years ago - scary, no?) and the six of us became the first honours maths class in the school, now taken for granted, of course. My younger sister didn’t have to innovate quite so much, although hers was the first class to enter two different national and one international competition in science and business, and our school achieved high commendations in all. There were still problems when she was at the school, but there was also a sense of pride in what could be achieved.
I’m not saying my family ‘made’ the school. I’m just saying that my choosing to commit to the community, we made a positive contribution from which everyone benefitted.
There’s an ongoing debate here in Ireland over the difference between being ‘taught how to pass exams’ and being ‘educated’. The attitude of a lot of people is that it’s okay for secondary schools to concentrate on exams, because it’s at third level that you really get an ‘education’.
From what I can gather of the system in the USA, getting to third level is even more dependent on across-the-board good grades and even the right mix of extra-curricular activity, so I can understand how parents feel under pressure to find schools that will allow/encourage their children to ‘perform’.
But what are you really teaching your children?
No wonder local jobs are being outsourced if the owners/managers have been educated to think that only their own success is important. Etc.
Anyway, nuff said. Sorry for the length, I’m grabbing the chance to contribute in the middle of my working day and I don’t have time to edit myself!
Posted by Tell on Oct 4, 2005 at 1:52 PM So, what is the solution?
I see a lot of explanations why education is expensive, but I see no solutions.
I see more than 1/3 of Portland’s parents, when given the chance, abandoning one school for another. Regardless of the impact of what they leave behind, they ARE leaving. Again, I refer to the shackled ballerina metaphor.
I, and at least 1/3 of Portland’s parents, don’t buy into that metaphor for our kids.
It just sounds to me that a lot of time and effort is going into explaining why it is tough, but is it so tough that we must accepting a minimalist approach and just stick with the status quo?
Why is choice not the answer?
Choice is about making a decision. The statitics being quoted, about how some students are socially disadvantage (disclaimer: which I do not dispute), that schools with high proportion of minority and underprivileged students ‘fail’ at a much higher rate, all theses statitics come from the current public school system.
I believe in excellence in education, at all levels and for all students, not mediocrity.
I say again, what is inherent about parents’ decision making process that makes them uniquely unqualified to make these decisions?
Posted by Jay Cline on Oct 4, 2005 at 2:08 PM Am a big fan of Vonnegut, and of his predecessor by many years, William Blake, who said: “one law for the lion and the ox IS discrimination”. How I’ve debated that one with myself over the years!
The money spent on education is an investment in the future. It’s not going to get any cheaper. Really, it’s whether or not you’re getting value for money - and you’re probably right that the current public school system isn’t good value for money - but then, if schools have to pay bus fare for ex-students to go elsewhere, on top of losing that captitation fee…. well, talk about a muddle!
So, schools in disadvantaged neighbourhoods must pay for their best students (with the most-involved parents) to leave and they are left with fewer resources for weaker students (whose parents at best aren’t clued in to the system and at worst don’t care). Now, isn’t that just plain daft?
In theory, of course parents should be able to choose to do what’s in the best interests of their children. However, I believe that with every right comes a responsibility. Parents have to realise that by choosing to desert their local school, they are de-financing it, disempowering it, making it worse. If any of the people making these choices ever dares in the future to complain of the “crumbling social fabric”, I hope their sense of their own contribution to its disintegration prevents them voicing their thoughts aloud.
It’s like parents have forgotten their own power and influence in their children’s lives and the impact their involvement could have on their local school.
If the clued-in people who care about their children’s future supported their local schools and teachers, made demands on the school board, made it clear to legislators that the funding of education is an issue that would win their votes in the next election, now THAT would be a public school system, not just paid for but backed by the PUBLIC and therefore benefitting everyone.
Posted by Tell on Oct 4, 2005 at 3:05 PM It is simply this. Scarce resources require rationing. We can talk about school choice *after* we can garantee a solid baseline for all.
Nobody is shackling the ballerina here. If your child is gifted and you care about your child’s education you are likely to take advantage of all opportunities available to you. Additionally, nobody is stopping anyone from hiring tutors or from providing private lessons if they want to challenge their children further. You could certainly do this for less than the 5k/year you were talking about.
You seem to acknowledge in your post that the impact of what is ‘left behind’ might not be desireable. So what, exactly, is the problem that is solved by abandoning schools that would not be better solved by working within your school system to improve it?
What is wrong with the compromise I suggested in my last post? If your child meets the standard, why should they be able to abandon the school that is serving them adequately? If test scores are what we are using to determine a school’s adequacy, then let’s use them on an individual basis.
Posted by GrayArea on Oct 4, 2005 at 3:27 PM I agree with everything that Tell and GA say, except,
I am a clued-in person who cares about every child’s future, not just mine, and have the battle scars with entrenched teachers, school boards and admin staff to prove it. It is a political issue, not one of grand politics, but the everyday politics of life.
Give me a lever and I’ll move mountains. Give parents leverage, and local school boards will work the way Tell and GA infer they should. But with all the criticism about nonparticipatory politics, why does anyone think voting once every few years is sufficient leverage?
I am all for the integrity of local communities. Give parents the leverage they need, give parents a responsive school district, and the mere threat of abandoning the local schools will ensure that integrity.
But that threat needs bite.
The parents of Portland are biting, but the only response seems to be is to take that leverage away.
Posted by Jay Cline on Oct 4, 2005 at 3:43 PM If your child meets the standard, why should they be able to abandon the school that is serving them adequately?<i>
GA is right, they shouldn’t.
But, what if the school is NOT serving them adequately? What recourse is there? Again, 1/3 of Portland parents believe they were not being serving.
Why is their democratic assessment being trivialized?
As far as the shackled ballerina theory, I was a National Merit Semi-Finalist. My SAT scores were in the top 1/2%. I graduated 8 out of a class of 300. When we looked into colleges, our school counselor’s only response was to quip, “If my daughter can’t get college loans, what makes you think you can?”
Gifted? Yes I was. My folks couldn’t find those “opportunities” you claim are in abundance. And the school was no help.
The changes since then have only been in response to the push for choice. The bar is getting raised. Grudgingly, incrementally. But, how many generations of children must suffer before we fix the problem?
The core issue is, why is it the notion of giving parents a voice considered to be an untouchable subject in the whole debate?
These two sentences contradict themselves:
<i>We can talk about school choice *after* we can garantee a solid baseline for all.
Nobody is shackling the ballerina here.
Choice gives parents voice.
If one were to go in hyperbolics here, if I were to start frothing at the mouth, isn’t the argument of working with school boards not much different than objections against the Civil Rights Act? What kept minorities from expressing and getting redress to their grievances? Or why was it necessary for the Colonists to revolt, instead of working with their democratically elected representatives in Parliament?
The parallels, from the point of view of many parents, are uncanny.
Posted by Jay Cline on Oct 4, 2005 at 4:00 PM So let me see if I understand your point Jay. You think you should have been able to go to a better school because you had awesome SAT scores? Apart from a lousy counselor, what was wrong with your school that you should be able to leave it.
Either schools performance is connected to test scores or it is not. Clearly in your case, the quality of your education was unrelated to your SAT scores. So on what basis shall we decide which schools need to be closed?
Having worked in the admission office at a small, private college for a couple of years, I would have to say that being in the top 1/2 percent in reading and math shows that the system did not fail you. Did you actually fill out any college applications? Why in the hell not? Bad advice? That’s bull.
Posted by GrayArea on Oct 4, 2005 at 4:30 PM Tell wrote: “In theory, of course parents should be able to choose to do what’s in the best interests of their children.”
Hopefully in actuallity too!
“Parents have to realise that by choosing to desert their local school, they are de-financing it, disempowering it, making it worse.”
Or the schools hsve to realize that parents will avoid sending their children to lousy schools?
“If any of the people making these choices ever dares in the future to complain of the “crumbling social fabric”, I hope their sense of their own contribution to its disintegration prevents them voicing their thoughts aloud.”
Yes and also for anyone who has dared move out of a ghetto or high crime area. They should be ashmaed of themselves! Perhaps we should be proactive and move into the worst neighbourhoods we can find, so that we can “repair” them. . .
All of this is a bit of a red herring, when you *really* think about it. The problem with poor schools is largely caused by parents who are incompentent or uncaring or both. The schools end up as dumping grounds for children who have not been properly disiplined in their homes and consequently have poor behaviour. Perhaps giving the schools in bad districts the ability to effectively displine unruly students - or expel them - could be a start to fixing the problem, since the parents are effectively absent or ineffectual.
Posted by wolf on Oct 4, 2005 at 4:47 PM “Either schools performance is connected to test scores or it is not. Clearly in your case, the quality of your education was unrelated to your SAT scores. So on what basis shall we decide which schools need to be closed?”
Quick note. The obvious fallacy in the above post is to confuse statistical quantities (schools that have better test scores are better) with particular individual results (all schools have high and low ranking performers). One cannot draw *any* conclusion from a sample of one. . .
Posted by wolf on Oct 4, 2005 at 4:50 PM Great idea! We could post military recruiters just outside the door thus solving all our problems at once.
Posted by GrayArea on Oct 4, 2005 at 4:52 PM Wolf: We can draw the conclusion that Jay could read and write very well. We should also infer that armed with test scores like that, he should have been clever enough to take care of himself. When we talk about expanding the limits of public policy, we shouldn’t be overly concerned about poor Jay.
Posted by GrayArea on Oct 4, 2005 at 4:54 PM Thank you for painting me an elitist. I am sure everyone else who coulda woulda excelled but had their wings clipped appreciate the deprecation. I gather that you believe those who have native talent should be left to just fend for themselves….
College applications were filled out, acceptances offered (one from Caltech), but funny thing was, they wanted money.
To counter your derisive comments, yes the school failed. My scores, which you sneer at, came from native ability and two parents who actually cared. I learned my math and science and literature skills from books they provided, and the time they spent with me, but not from anything the compulsory schooling provided. Just as we offer our four year old girl, who is already skilled at addition, reading, writing and speaks two languages fluently.
The only thing I learned in school was to have low expectations of bureaucracies. Very useful skills, I am finding out.
Question. What responsibility do you believe schools have with students who show talent? I could bore you to tears of missed opportunities in my own experience, but I fear you would twist that into some elitist argument that only proves my shackled ballerina theory. Maybe I should just let compulsory schools bore my little girl and dumb her up, along with any aspirations she might have.
Poor little rich white boy.
Who said I was either? Is it not conceivable that those of us who come from lower-middle class neighborhoods of color could actually have native intelligence? Should we condemn children of color who excel with schools that can’t and won’t do anything about it? Is not education supposed to lift us up?
How dare you criticize me with your snobbery.
The question, which never gets answered but keeps getting asked, why are parents inherently able to make intelligent considered decisions about their children’s education?
Posted by Jay Cline on Oct 4, 2005 at 4:55 PM Correction:
The question, which never gets answered but keeps getting asked, why are parents <u>not</u> inherently able to make intelligent considered decisions about their children’s education?
Posted by Jay Cline on Oct 4, 2005 at 4:57 PM Hi Jay,
I identify with you because we had a crappy career guidance teacher in our school too - really, if you didn’t want to work in a bank, she didn’t know what to do with you. We used to purposely tell her we were interested in bizarre careers just to throw her.
It seems to me, though, that ultimately it was lack of money that prevented you going to college, not lack of good schooling - as with my own parents, yours may have been the reason you excelled, but certainly your school didn’t hamper you, except for the disheartening careers counsellor. It was lack of money that did that.
I only got to go to university because Ireland has a grant aid system where, based on your parents income (or lack thereof), you receive financial assistance - not a loan, a straight payment for your education. I appreciate this. I am happy to pay my taxes now in the job I earned as a university graduate so that more people can benefit from a similar arrangement (although our current government who are big in to the whole privatising of everything are doing their best to dismantle the grant system - I shall fight them every step of the way - even though I’m now on the paying rather than receiving end, because I can appreciate the value of this system - which also allowed a good friend of mine, currently lecturing in the USA, to rise from the Dublin equivalent of ‘the projects’).
My heart goes out to you because academically you deserved to go to college. Your school didn’t let you down, though. The US education system did, because only those who can afford it (or play really good football) can get a third level education.
And that would be my problem with the downgrading of the local schools - it just means financial starvation of areas that most need investment in education.
Anyway. Quittin’ time for me here in a different time zone.
Been nice talking to you guys.
Wolf - sorry I’ve not had a chance to reply to you - although, where you appear, Ghost Rabbit is sure to follow, and I ain’t got the time for THAT!
Posted by Tell on Oct 4, 2005 at 5:10 PM Tell is absolutely right. Financial aid is critical. If we could have gotten financial aid, I would have gone to college.
But it was not merely funding that hampered my primary school experience. It was a system that was unaccountable for failures. It was a system that had no incentive to do better than show up for work.
Wouldn’t it have been great if my folks could have qualified for financial aid for primary school? Wouldn’t it have been great if the school lost funding, funding that kept them extant into perpetuity, because they failed? How quickly would they sing a new tune if their jobs depended on them doing their jobs?
And don’t worry about no ghosts. They fade away like bad memories when ignored.
Posted by Jay Cline on Oct 4, 2005 at 5:20 PM In our school district we have had a truancy problem which has been increasing for many years. Recently the school board and city hall have instituted a day time curfew with fines for parents of students found off school grounds during class hours.
I believe there is a major educational problem which is not being addressed here and fines are not the solution. That is the lack of value placed on an education. My grandfather, a coal miner and naturalized citizen with little education urged his nine children to study. They all did well and the youngest graduated from Northwestern University during the great depression at an early age.
My father had to leave his formal education in his last year of public school to care for the younger family members when his father was disabled. He continued to learn on his own and advanced to a supervisory position after years of hard work.
My mother was a teacher and both she and my dad encouraged me to get an education. My sons went even farther in school. Nobody ever expected our learning to be solely the responsibility of the school system. We were unquestioning in the value of learning.
As a former designer, I am accustomed to reducing any problem to its simplest form as a starting point. It seems obvious in our city that many kids, especially some racial minorities, do not see a future for themselves where education is important.
As more jobs disappear this attitude is likely to spread rather than diminish. First it was manufacturing and now it is spreading in the white collar areas. While those with the most ability will still get the best jobs it will be increasingly discouraging to the least educated.
We keep hearing how we need to keep kids in school and are now trying to force them through levying fines. However, if they do not want to learn is it important they be there?
This is a problem complicated by anti-discrimination rulings, by funding based on the number of students attending classes each day, by single parent families and probably some others of which I am unaware.
If the most basic step, the valuing of education by the student is missing, I fail to see schools able to be designated anything except “failing” and there is little that more money or a different model will improve.
Posted by whattheheck on Oct 4, 2005 at 6:35 PM “That is the lack of value placed on an education”
I totally agree. I further note that this has been one of the main sources of the misery of the black community - don’t want to be “too white” and excel in school. . .
Your grandfather was a wise man. My wife has a very similar story too.
Posted by wolf on Oct 4, 2005 at 6:59 PM This is not a thread where Rabbit has anything to contribute beyond mentioning all the same things could be translated to Oz and said of our schools also, this is being said as a generalisation of the main direction of the thread’s discourse.
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Posted by GhostRabbit on Oct 5, 2005 at 9:17 AM A lot has been said about how expensive education is; a lot has been inferred that it is going to take money to address the problems illuminated by the abandonment of the school system exemplified by 1/3 of Portland’s parents. But those who believe in the status quo are still offering real excuses, not real solutions.
Yet, in communities where choice has given parents a real lever, as real as Title VII was in forcing schools to deal with special needs, solutions started to happen. Real effective solutions that didn’t cost a dime!
I have previously described what one school system implemented, in response to the threat of losing students. Reorganizing the 1-6 Grade structure with a 1-4 multiyear Colony structure opened the way for children to advancement as well as allowing children to spend more time on difficult subjects, without the traumatic jerk of being held back a grade or put into the next grade where EVERYONE was at least one year older. Colonies are composed of children from three age cohorts (just like the proverbial one-room school houses of our grandparents) so when a child advances or slows down, their social environment remains intact.
Now, how much do you think this cost? In terms of time and energy and sweat, a lot. Financially, nothing. Sure, there were one-time implementation costs, but they were minor and well within the scope of the annual budget.
Choice gives parents the leverage they don’t get from PTA meetings and distant elections fraught with politics to force school bureaucracies to start thinking, to start questioning, to start coming up with real solutions. Not real excuses.
Posted by Jay Cline on Oct 5, 2005 at 10:52 AM There is a quote from Samuel Adams, that famed American Revolutionary Street Fighter and Rapscallion, that I can’t remember exactly, but certainly applies here. He would trust the instincts of the common man over the learned thoughts of an educated man. Jefferson, that consummate educator, held similar beliefs on the validity of the intelligence of the instinctive common man.
This is not to argue that learned education is a bad thing. Education, itself, is morally neutral. But, like every other tool that man has created for himself in the past 100,000 years, the telling is in the utility. It is intrinsic to human nature to use advantages to, well, your advantage. School bureaucrats are no different than any other technocrats.
“Listen to me. I know better.”
Parents are so often bamboozled by the technocrats of school bureaucracies that it is often difficult to make successful arguments against their learned wisdom at PTA meetings, before school boards, etc.
But when common people start voting with their feet, they should be the ones that are listened to.
Tony Blair alluded to that in his speech at the Labour Annual Conference last week.
“real people in the real world think instinctively”
Blair also justifiably crowed about the success of choice in British education that the Labour government had fought for.
“Specialist schools, denounced at the time, have performed better than traditional comprehensives. Fact.”
The liberals in Britain have accepted the advantages of choice; when will that happen in the Land that first personified that word?
Posted by Jay Cline on Oct 5, 2005 at 11:17 AM Wolf,
“The problem with poor schools is largely caused by parents who are incompentent or uncaring or both. The schools end up as dumping grounds for children who have not been properly disiplined in their homes and consequently have poor behaviour. Perhaps giving the schools in bad districts the ability to effectively displine unruly students - or expel them - could be a start to fixing the problem, since the parents are effectively absent or ineffectual.”
This is certainly of what we have been experiencing in our local schools. Twenty years ago, my wife worked as a first grade teacher’s aide in what was largely a minority attended school. There was one little girl who my wife judged to be very bright with a better than average chance at a good future. However, she was pregant by age 12!
It was common for kids to come to school having had a breakfast of Coke or Pepsi and potato chips. Seldom did these kids have a father at home, but told of several “Uncles” who came and went. Individual teachers bought warm winter coats and other items for kids who were in need, but when one responsible father (justifiably) brought a discrimination lawsuit demanding equal schools for that part of town his lawyers turn it into a huge gain for themselves. (Over $20 million in fees)
A federal judge’s rulings cost us large tax increases, forced us into busing to achieve racial balance and created a lot more prejudice both directions. Twenty plus years have passed and we have more schools not meeting standards, teachers who are afraid to disipline minority students and a high rate of truancy and dropouts (primarily minorities). About the only thing resulting in expulsion is being caught with a weapon on school grounds.
Family responsibility is a must. Without it schools are not only doomed to fail, but the dangers posed by the present situation will cause parents to fear for the safety of their kids and just say,”Goodbye to the public school.”
Education is NOT a Constitutional right — it is a privilege. Whatever the causes, kids from these disfunctional families are not receiving/accepting the education available and are lowering the level of education for all. I have no solution to offer, but I believe more government involvement is a sure way to increase problems.
This was generally a good school district and highly regarded 50 years ago when I graduated. We even took our own rifles for the R.O.T.C. rifle team to and from daily. Now there are police checking to be sure no one is armed.
I blame the well-intentioned government programs which encouraged unwed mothers to have more kids, a lifetime of welfare and did not hold fathers responsible for child support.
Posted by whattheheck on Oct 5, 2005 at 4:26 PM Magnet and focus option programs are inherently inequitable. It is in their very nature. They receive special treatment and special funding. Only a special few kids are lucky enough to get into the programs. And, inevitably, these are overwhemingly kids of privilege. Their parents have the wherewithal to research various educational offerings and apply to get into the programs they find most attractive, and the freedom to drive their kids each day to schools outside their neighborhoods.
The effect is to make neighborhood schools the schools of last resort. Here in Portland, we increasingly have a two-tiered system of education—one for the chosen few, and one for those who have no choice. Some neighborhood schools thrive and achieve, but many, especially those in low-income neighborhoods, struggle to meet the needs of their diverse student populations. Meanwhile, the District blithely continues to divert precious resources to special focus option programs and their privileged patrons.
We face huge funding shortfalls next year. Wouldn’t it be better to focus our dollars on neighborhood schools and leave the special offerings to the private sector?
Mike
Posted by mamiller on Oct 5, 2005 at 8:05 PM Kids definitely need more discipline. More at home, more at school and maybe most of all, more self discipline.
There are teachers who find themselves in the position of babysitters or prison wardens as opposed to real teachers. Disillusionment can lead to apathy.
Posted by David in Canada on Oct 5, 2005 at 8:10 PM CORRECTION:
(Over $20 million in fees) Should have been $2 million.
Posted by whattheheck on Oct 5, 2005 at 8:13 PM Mike from Portland says,
“Only a special few kids are lucky enough to get into the programs. And, inevitably, these are overwhemingly kids of privilege.
Why? It sounds like Portland’s experiment is a failure of implementation, not necessarily of choice. If the intent of the program is to provide choice for all, but not all are getting the choice, then let’s discuss why.
1)Their parents have the wherewithal to research various educational offerings and apply to get into the programs they find most attractive,
Why is this information not being provided to all parents? Is it impossible to gather this information and make it available?
and the freedom to drive their kids each day to schools outside their neighborhoods.
ALL parents who make the choice to move should be enabled with appropriate transportation. Why is this not happening?
Finally, in a properly implemented choice system, the district should not be the one divert(ing) precious resources, but the parents.
Posted by Jay Cline on Oct 5, 2005 at 9:49 PM Sounds like we are talking mechanics here, not policy.
Posted by Jay Cline on Oct 5, 2005 at 9:50 PM Jay, I think you miss my essential point. In my view, the District has an obligation to provide an excellent educational opportunity for all. That means good, safe schools in every neighborhood.
Portland Public Schools has veered off course. It consciously decided, as a matter of policy, to compete with private schools as a way to attract/maintain enrollment. These boutique schools can get great results, but they are expensive to operate—they require additional (scarce) resources. Some have been successful, some have not. But all are more expensive to operate and in the end succeed only at the expense of neighborhood schools.
The District could not afford to offer special focus-option programs at every school in the District. It is not a matter of implementation, but rather a matter of funding.
These special programs are in theory open to all comers, but on a lottery basis. Informed upper and middle class parents with the freedom to drive kids to faraway schools can apply, and sometimes their kids get in. But kids from less well-to-do families (and there are many of these), with parents perhaps less aware of options and without the means to drive their kids to school, are shut out.
Let the private schools offer the boutique programs.
Let’s concentrate on the great mass of students. That is our civic responsibility.
Mike
Posted by mamiller on Oct 5, 2005 at 10:35 PM Mike,
I am not from Portland, or anywhere near it. All I know about this particular situation is what has been said thus far.
My impression has been that Portland changed policies to allow more choice for parents. When you say boutique, what does that mean in Portland? What additional costs have been incurred to be a boutique school as opposed to, I don’t know, what?
Are we talking about schools that specialize in math or science or language or arts? If so, what is inherently wrong with that? Yes, there are educational basics, but one size does not fit all. What is wrong with providing education fitted to more specialized needs and talents?
But the biggest question I have at the moment is a query to one of your comments,
“ Portland Public Schools has veered off course. It consciously decided, as a matter of policy,”
Was this decided by school administrators, the school board, state legistlators or local city councils. Or was ther some direct parental push in the form of a referendum or something?
Thanks!
Posted by Jay Cline on Oct 5, 2005 at 11:41 PM Mike,
I agree wholeheartedly that ANY education system by lottery is not only stupid, but criminal.
That is the second worst way of allocating resources.
Posted by Jay Cline on Oct 5, 2005 at 11:57 PM For some reason we in the U.S. have come to believe if we pass a new law or spend more money any problem is solvable. I wonder if we are alone in this approach or if other countries make these assumptions.
Spend more per child — put them all on a computer, get them connected to the internet, make the world’s information available at the touch of a button.
After 9/11 we heard, “Look at our huge spending on intelligence — we should have known.” On poverty: “How can the richest country in the history of the world have people below the poverty level?” Economics — we get constant data and predictions. Weather forecasts into next week, next decade, next century, next ice age/heat wave.
The current rush to fix — global flu.
I’m all for parents doing whatever they are able to get the best education for their children. If that means a different form of schooling up to and including private tutoring — go for it.
However, liberty must be partnered with responsibility. Choosing a different school does not absolve the duty to pay for public education. You are not paying someone else’s bill — it is for the benefit of us all — including your children.
Education will not happen without the individual student accepting personal responsibility. Impressing the need for this primarily a parental responsibility, but the rest of us also must do whatever we can, or we will all pay a far greater price later.
Sorry for the sermon, but I’m sick of attempts to solve individual problems with mass solutions and increased spending. Some problems cannot be avoided, some cannot be sovled. But we won’t know which unless we try.
Posted by whattheheck on Oct 6, 2005 at 12:47 PM Money is most definitely not the issue.
Anyone watch the show on PBS about Fixing Our Schools. They showed three or four school success stories and another three or four district wide success stories.
Bottom line was it wasn’t about the bottom line. In every case, it was about schools (principles, administrators, teachers) breaking out of traditional duties and trying something different.
To beat a dead horse, it is very difficult to impose change or force innovation if there is no motivation to break out of old habits.
Giving parents control over the purse strings and let them drive is the best way I know to make moribund schools work for them.
I got tired of the entrenched word, haven’t you?
Posted by Jay Cline on Oct 6, 2005 at 3:21 PM Correction:
principals, not principles.
Although, it is true either way.
Posted by Jay Cline on Oct 6, 2005 at 3:22 PM Reading through the thread again and this popped up from the memory banks in my brain so I decided to share it.
Learning is finding out what you already know.Doing is demonstrating that you know it.
Teaching is reminding others that they know just as well as you.
Posted by David in Canada on Oct 6, 2005 at 7:53 PM I know I am walking into the line of fire, but the deeper I get into childbearing years and as I contemplate buying a home, the more I question if I will stay in the city. Let me qualify this by saying that I live in a downtown gentrified neighborhood in a Midwestern city, while in my early twenties I worked for a housing non-profit that fought against gentrification. The reason I rent a home here is because it is one of the only communities in this conservative town that offers a cultural arts district, a critical mass of GLBTQI culture, and access to bike trails. The housing prices are outlandish, so my partner and I will probably not be able to afford to stay here long term on combined teacher/therapist salaries. There are few children in our neighborhood, and there is a public magnet school that does attract some kids from the neighborhood. I have been a committed urban dweller and I have worked in inner city public and charter schools. This is the problem and anyone involved full time in education will probably agree with me: the day to day job of educating children is so time comsuming and takes so much energy that is hard to imagine spending free time trying to reform the system. The job is rewarding, most teachers feel like we are doing critical work, but we are tired. Seventy-five percent of teachers leave the profession after five years. It is hard working in a system where as a teacher you start to question whether you are part of the problem. What more can we do? It feels as if we are the only ones who care about educating the future citizen republic. A big part of the problem is that unless you are a teacher, parent, grandparent, or caregiver, you don’t feel the direct impact of poor schools and it is easy not to care. Another part of the problem is the fact that cities will lobby vigorously for a new stadium for their city, and the money will mysteriously appear from somewhere (mainly in more sales tax that people don’t really complain about) , but meanwhile the local public school system has to cut 500 teachers because people don’t want to pass school levies.
I feel that if I am going to stay in the inner city as a way to keep my property taxes in the center city school system, that I shouldn’t feel bad about wanting to provide the best education for my future kids by seeking out the best options available in the public school system.
This was rambling and incohesive, but I just needed to put it out there.
We can debate about this all day long online, but the real way you could effect change is to spend a few hours a week tutoring someone who needs it. It is easy to have opinions about the situation online but not as easy to get involved at the grassroots level.
Posted by in the trenches on Oct 7, 2005 at 1:46 PM Tell, I agree absolutely, especially with these powerful words of yours:
“Parents have to realise that by choosing to desert their local school, they are de-financing it, disempowering it, making it worse.”
This is the issue I am most concerned about. As a community of citizens, we have an obligation to provide quality schools in every neighborhood.
Mike
Posted by mamiller on Oct 7, 2005 at 5:02 PM in the trenches,
One thing that often gets lost in debates like this is recognition of all the unsung heroes who are actually providing our children with an education.
And, yes, you are heroes. I have a four year old and I know how hard it is with just one!
God knows anyone reading my postings don’t hear much sympathy or appreciation as I argue my points. But it is there, strongly felt. I know several elementary teachers and count several as good friends.
They feel the same as you, dedicated, excited and frustrated.
So, if anything I have written sounds like I am saying otherwise, my profuse apologies. I just get really passionate about this and my own personal beliefs.
Posted by Jay Cline on Oct 7, 2005 at 7:02 PM in the trenches,
Also, any teaching advice would be greately appreciated. I start next week as a volunteer tutor in one of the local schools next week.
Posted by Jay Cline on Oct 7, 2005 at 7:04 PM Volunteering is where it is at. Be the change you want to see. I have been involved with a work experience program in my local school district and it is rewarding all around.
Posted by David in Canada on Oct 8, 2005 at 12:16 AM Hi ho,
Take a good look at what is happening to education,with the right-wing in power.It is their ultimate goal to privatize education and putit under corporate control.As a teacher I’ve watched the system’s quality erode while the demands placed upon teachers increases.
What will happen with school choice is the upper middle class will put their children into “private” schools and claim they don’t have to pay taxes for education.Furthermore those who teach at those"private schools will be manipulated into submission by the parents,their bosses,with the threat of job loss and being forced to work in public schools which,thanks to the right’s efforts,have gone downhill and will further accelerate downhill with school choice.
I’m teaching in a school in which we barely have the supplies we need and are constantly being lectured about economy on commonplace items.Guess which party controls my state and our education budget?
If I wasn’t so close to it,i’d find it hilarious.Once again,the dim-witted middle-class,the imagined players,are siding with the rich so they can be sodomized.Piece of the pie,my little red-stater?Maybe you’ll get a few crumbs,but guess who’s going to clean up the mess.Honestly,I’d have thought after the rich sodomized the middle-class with the whole Enron scandal,they’d wake up.I guess not.Meanwhile the Ragged Dick series goes into another run of print
Posted by wwoods on Oct 11, 2005 at 7:23 PM Check out the Edison Schools. They are a for-profit school system (NASDAQ EDSN) with 1/3 million students in half the states and successfully serve in disproportionately lower income school districts.
Who says profit don’t work?
Posted by Jay Cline on Oct 11, 2005 at 8:31 PM Once again I will make this point. I went to a private school for a few years. Compared to public schools this private school was proud to say it operated on a lower dollar budget per student and yet provided better education for the students, better facilities and equipment, and comparable salaries for teachers.
Now they were not doing it for profit although they did save a little each year as a contingency/future plans fund.
My concerns with “for profit schools” would be ensuring that education, facilites and teacher salaries and qualifications would not be compromised by the drive for profit.
Posted by David in Canada on Oct 12, 2005 at 3:49 AM I also attended a private school from grades three to six,a Catholic school with a students body composed of military brats.Talk about discipline!Although,academically,the standards were far more diverse than what one would expect and markedly superior.When I returned to the public schools,even at the age of twelve,the difference in my educational developement was apparent to me.I am thankful.
This point must be considered.My state’s public schools,at that point,were some of the best.If one paid money to attend a private school,one expected to get one’s money’s worth,or get a comparable education for free.what will happen with the large scale implementation of"School Choice"will be a brief flowering,enough to convince a few for a while and provide a sales pitch for the profiteers when the program begins to fail.How will it fail?It will through cutting costs,serving the customers,to maximize profits for one.Think of every slimy business practice of the private sector and apply them to education.That should give you a chill.
I understand,all too well,that we have major problems with education.Still,despite what the right will say,business does NOT have the solution to every problem,and certainly you do not want to trust someone interested in making a profit with a fundamental of your nation.If that were acceptable,we would feel confident in privatizing our military.
Posted by wwoods on Oct 12, 2005 at 12:49 PM Page 1 of 1 pages -
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