Tom,
>It also removes their means. I pay decent taxes to keep my kids and
>others in a decent school and I pay attention to schools around here. If
>my taxes pay not only for public schools but also so people who can't
>otherwise afford it get paid to take their kids elsewhere, then it puts
>pressure on me to also fight for vouchers.
My son currently attends an 'ok' school. Not at the bottom, but no where
near the top in his district, or even in the county. He gets excellent
grades and is a teacher favorite, so I don't personally see us taking
advantage of vouchers were they to be offered, unless something changed
drastically. The hassle of delivering him/picking him up every day, not to
mention the loss of friends for him, etc. wouldn't be worth it. Both his
mother and I take a great deal of interest in his studies, and he has yet
to disappoint us.
Point being, my support of vouchers is not for me.
>Then my taxes pay for my vouchers, for someone else's vouchers _and_ for
>public schools or else my kids suffer.
Let's go back to school, with a simple story problem (i'm not trying to be
flip, bear with me ;).
If a school with 3 classrooms and 100 students recieves $10,000 per student
per year, that's a $1 million budget, and a student/teacher ratio of 33/1.
Now, if 20 of those students recieve $4,000 vouchers to attend a private
school, that's 80k less a year budget, and the school still has $920,000 to
spend (now $11,500 per student) and thier student/teacher ratio has now
dropped to 26/1.
who loses in this scenario?
>I'm finding less and less reason to accept a voucher system the more I
hear.
>The voucher system is clearly worse than working to improve the public
>school system.
but what can be done to improve the system? No one can agree on something
as simple as standardized testing! Political Correctness has made
disipline impossible in public schools, the worse kids are ruling the
classrooms and bringing the best kids down to their levels. The teachers
unions are so powerful, and so resistant to change, that nothing even
approching reform can be attempted.
>There is the argument that private schools compete and thereby survival
>of the fittest can weed out those that are unsatisfactory. But it
>doesn't work that way. Some will flourish because they spend money on
>apparent improvements; those will also be the expensive ones that
>vouchers will not be enough to gain entry. Others will adapt; those will
>be cheap enough but there's no reason to expect them to be any different
>from public schools. Whatever niches exist, schools will adapt to fill.
but if they don't produce, (and any parent interested enough to want to go
through the hassle of moving a child to another school will do at least a
bare minimum of research) who will send their kids there, regardless of
where they come from.
Not to mention, being private schools, they don't have the teachers unions,
and other groups breathing down their necks telling them how they HAVE to
teach.
>The lasting problem is that there is no way to monitor private schools
>satisfactorily. Public schools are hard enough. You don't know if a
>private school is doing well until enough years have gone by and the
>damage is long since done.
If private schools are recieving public money, you can be damned sure that
kids produced will be monitored by someone.
>In other words, private schools offer nothing permanent that public
>schools don't already, and public schools at least have a monitoring
>system in place and a legal means of change.
The current monitoring system consists of testing kids at the beginning of
the year, after 3 months of vacation. The first 4-5 weeks of my sons
school year consists of teachers cramming test questions down his throat.
What should be done is to test at the end of the year, with no time for
cramming - just find out what the kids know, so that teachers can be
'graded' on what they've taught.
But just try to make that rule. The unions would be at your throats in no
time.
>Inner-city schools have problems? Hmmm... I guess the answer is to move
>the kids into other schools. Problem solved. As if. You just move
>everything to different buildings and raise costs (and that means taxes)
>in doing so.
Private schools do not have the 5-10 layers of buracracy above them. they
aren't bound to the teachers unions. They already do a better job with
less money than any public school system could ever dream of doing. How
can this be bad?
>It ain't the schools that are the problem; it's the parents. And the
>parents who think that moving their kids to a different school will
>solve anything are some of the biggest part of the problem.
but if parents are given a choice, don't you think they'd become more
involved? at this point, they're simply going through the motions.
they're stuck, can't move, can't effect change. give them a choice.
>Public schools do need change. To me, one of the changes ought to be the
>availability of a couple different categories of public schools. I see
>no reason why there shouldn't be vocational public schools for example.
>There is absolutely no reason why every kid ought to have to take
>english composition or algebra classes if they're not suited for it.
>Basic reading? arithmetic? Sure. But what's _wrong_ with carpentry?
>What's wrong with road construction? Iron work?
At what point are you going to make a kid decide what he's going to do for
the rest of his life? At what point do you skirt OSHA and child labor
safety laws to teach a kid to climb walls, cut iron, or run heavy
equipment? What if a child's been placed (choice or not) in the wrong kind
of school for his talents and can't get to another one till next year -
he's lost a whole year.
Not very practical.
Here in central Indiana (and I'm sure elsewhere) we have magnet schools -
elementary and middle schools that specialise - science and math here,
foriegn language or liberal arts there, etc. but there's a waiting list
and only about 2%-5% of kids actually get to switch schools. The switch
adds an hour in the morning and at night to their day in transportation.
It's a very expensive deal, (for public schools anyway) for very little
gain. The 5% of kids who make it can benefit, but the rest are stuck.
yet the waiting list is always 3 to 5 times larger than the kids accepted.
What does that tell you? It tells me that parents want a choice.
>Like it or not, most kids will go that way anyway. Why make them hate
>and resent the school system along the way? Let them choose and let them
>learn responsibility for their choices.
YES! Let them and their parents choose!!! That's the essence of
vouchers.
>As long as public schools
>continue to offer an education in addition to teaching a trade, a choice
>can be made at a later date to go back and learn. If it's done later _by
>choice_, there's a chance of success.
Tom, This was a pretty long email you put together, yet I see only one
real idea on how to improve public schools. You got any more? HOW will
you change them, when throwing more money at them is no longer viable?
Rick
Tom Liotta
