what is so dynamic about public schools,
and what is so static about private schools?
Now this is the exact right place to start the discussion. It isn't a
simple thing by any means, to take on the task of teaching _all_
children who live in your district, no matter how poor (they're never
rich), how broken their home life is or how bad their society life may
be. That's the task of the public school system. Can it be improved?
Sure! I'm not at all convinced that syphoning off the students with
any hope and leaving the completely lost to the public system is the
way to do it though.
As Rick sarcastically notes, there's nothing inherently dynamic about
a public school, nor is there anything inherently static about a
private school. I'm not sure we've been able to distill the elixir of
teaching or the magic pill of learning quite yet. We've seen stellar
successes at public schools: who here was privately schooled? Some of
us could count as a success, hm? We've seen some failures too. I
just posted a link to a failure in Schenectady (they're still giving
it a go for next year despite dropping their educational management
company. The 'how' is still up in the air for the moment.)
