the new mathFollow

*Shrug*

I could just as readily argue that placing the entire educational system under Federal control and funding would remove the disparity between small rural schools with low tax bases, impoverished urban schools with low tax bases and wealthy, successful suburban districts full of $2mil McMansions.

You would, of course, have conniptions at the idea of a single Federal district. But, as I said previously, the basic problem seems more one of individual districts being beholden to the wealth of their inhabitants in order to provide quality education. The issue isn't "monolithic" control, it's that the system is composed of a million little fiefdoms, each with varying resources but all expected to create an exceptional product out of what they have.

Is a single sweeping Federal district the way to solve the issue? Probably not. But I'm not sold on privitization either and out of the studies I have read on it, none were willing to say "this is a significantly better way" (and, to be fair, none were really willing to blast the programs as worthless). But it takes more than whining about liberals and "monolithic schools" and "standardized testing" prove the worth of vouchers over the existing system.

Then why be in favor of transfer programs and vouchers and opposed to levelling the economic status of the schools? You may have ideological and political reasons for doing so but, educationally, each idea should be equally sound.

If you can't noodle out why wealthy schools full of high paid instructors, the latest technology and a full slate of extra-curricular activites are outperforming impoverished schools with teachers making $25k, an 8mm film projector and who have to close the building down at 3:20 because they cancelled any activities, I'm not sure what to tell you.

I can go down a list of schools on various forms of negative status with NCLB in the Chicago and suburban area. Want to take guesses on how they compare to the economic status of the neigborhoods where they're located?

Edit added -- I had to reboot partway through
You can go deeper into it than that but the root remains money for programs is tied to tax base. For instance, poorer district schools are more likely to have children with learning disabilities, limited English proficiency and other special issues but, because of location, they have less money available to pay for the additional tutors and instruction to help these children get up to speed. There's upper class white suburban schools out here loaded with the latest security but urban districts with a real violence problem can't afford to take money away from instructional purposes to pay for metal detectors (and God forbid a child get hurt because they DIDN'T have a metal detector). So on and so forth. But, for all this, the standards to receive Federal funding are the same for school to school and those schools with an excess of capital are able to excel and those without are forced to hone back to the bare minimums just to continue getting Federal monies. It has nothing to do with "love of teaching" to "devotion to education over profit" and everything to do with geography and local economic status.

Just so I'm not misunderstood, I'm not actually saying we should switch to a total Federal control over school funding. I was just pointing out that Gbaji would have one think that we're at some evil liberal end of the spectrum and that's why things are fu[/i]cked up and only this brave conservative idea of privatization can save us. In reality, you could go either way to try to address the basic issue.

[i]Edited, Fri Feb 3 21:28:55 2006 by Jophiel

I'm not advocating anything. I only said that two or three times now but add once more to the tally.
Total or from specific sources? For obvious reasons I would expect them to receive more state or federal money.Given the studies I've read on vouchers, I could say the same.

I'm not opposed to vouchers at any core level although I could rattle off some common critiques of the programs. But I have yet to see any data of them actually solving the problem where they've been used and the debate is just as much about one side of the political aisle trying to prove their agenda as it is the other.

Actually, I am.

Not even to prove a point in this argument since I don't know what it says yet but I am interested in the subject.

What? the rest of us don't get to see it?

You're intelligence is stupid.

Rounding is partially a short cut, but it also helps your child to learn the works more quickly, not to lose it entirely.

If your child knows that 10 + 10 = 20, and 9 is close to 10, then their brains make connections and find the answer more quickly.

Rounding helps because 0 and 5 at the end of a number are easier to divide, multiply, subtract and add. When your child knows this and uses it to make connections it makes your brainwork more quickly, also making things simpler.

Don't think your child doesn't know numbers besides 10 and 5, but think that they are close and can be put together.

Making connections gets things done faster, time is money.

Then again, hell, my classmates never understand the way I do math when I'm asked to do a problem so maybe I just think differently.

-Pyro

Why would they be more expensive? You are aware that private schools typically outperform public schools by significant amounts, and do so for a fraction of the cost, right? Even if we assume that cost savings is due to being able to select which students they take, and in a fully privatized system we'd have to account for managing "problem students", I simply don't see a valid argument to suggest that it would cost us more per student under a privatized system then we spend today on our public schools.
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private schools are not the answer, and never will be because the only people who could afford to send their kids to school would be the top 20 percent. and they pretty much already send their kidss to private school anyway.

vouchers are not the answer for the same reason it dosnt work in Florida. having the tuition paid for does not mean an average familey can ponie up for books, supplies and other fees associated with private school. not to mention, the voucher system IS NOT CHEAPER than public school. all it does is take your tax dollars and give it to a for profit bussiness. for profit bussiness DO NOT PAY teachers LESS money.

if you want to educate the masses, schooling MUST be inherantly government run.

why?

because for profit bussiness dont give a crap about the public need, they only care about making money. and if you cant afford to pay them, they WILL NOT teach your children.

the current system attaches school funding to the FCAT testing. all this does is GUARENTEE schools in poor minority districts will not only remain disfunctional, they will now get LESS MONEY to work with trying to improve.

what it also does by attaching funding to the tests is guarentee schools will be teaching kids how to pass standardized tests and not what they need to be teaching them.

the whole purpose of standardized tests is to evaluate how much a child has learned. teaching kids to GUESS at the CLOSEST answer instead of finding the solution defeats the whole purpose of the test to begine with.

school funding SHOULD NOT be attached to standardized tests, EVER. the ineviatable result is kids being taught how to do standardized tests and not how to solve problems, which invalidates any conclusions gained from the testing to begine with.

private schools WILL NOT work for 80 percent of the population of this country.

vouchers are a miserable failure in florida. just because you pay for a poor kids tuition does not mean his mom can afford uniforms, books, materials, and other associated fees. and even if they can, most private schools are religious which violates the seperation of religion and government, a rule made for a very good reason.

and these privatly run schools getting paid by government tax dollars? every one of them has filled for bankrupcy in florida, some have already closed in the middle of the school year leaving hundreds of kids out in the cold and scrambling for space in public schools that are already overcrowded. why? because for profit companies operate for a PROFIT. no profit, no school. bottom line. the state wont pay them more because they are already soaking up more funds than public schools, so they close the doors and ***** the kids. they ARE NOT CHEAPER than public schools.

EVERY charter school in florida is in bankrupcy and fighting court oders to stay open after 2 of them closed its doors in the middle of the school year.

and EVERY ONE OF THEM has a HIGHER operating budget than ANY public school of the same size and grade level.

they DO NOT WORK.

we have tried them. vouchers. charter schools. a whole lot of money wasted that could have been put use to building more public schools.

and as such, attaching funding for public schools to standardized tests is putting pressure on public schools to teach standardized tests instead of solving problems.

it is a STUPID idea. it is the DUMBING DOWN of America. all it is doing is guarenteeing wealthy neibhorhood schools will have plenty of money and poor minority neibhorhoods will have poor schools.

the republican dream. the best for the top, and ***** the rest.

and here i am. a typical father of two HELPING my kids learn how to AVIOD solving problems and instead look for easier fast CLOSE solutions.

HELPING my kids learn how to become FAILURES.

this addministraition is the worst thing that has heppened to this country. worse than 9-11. they are destroying the very foundation of this country, our future, our children.

STUPIDITY.

my kids are lucky. i WILL pay for tutors and whatever else they need to learn what they should be learning in school. so they will be doing their learning at home, and learn about socializing and passing standardized tests in school.

what about your kids?

Nah. There were enough spelling/grammar errors to verify that it was indeed shadowrelm. Also, everything he wrote was wrong, but that's the shadow we've all come to know and despise.

Well. I'll attempt anyway...



Huh? Let me repeat this for you again:

Private schools typically provide a better education at a lower overall cost then public schools. While I'm sure you can find some exceptions, the majority of them do.

If you're providing vouchers to pay for kids to attend the private school, then it wont be too expensive, now will it?



You are making some incredibly incorrect assumptions. Yes. Right now, a good percentage of private schools are tailored to the wealthy. So yeah, they cost more per student then a public school, and they hire better teachers (ie: more expensive as well). But if you were to privatize the whole system, you'd have private schools tailored to provide education for more then just the wealthy people, and they'd do so in a more cost effective manner. Pay scales would range.

I also think you're missing another key issue. I'm not talking about just tuition. I'm talking about the entire cost to run a school, calculated on a per-student basis, and handed to the parents to "buy" their child's education.

If it costs X million dollars to run a school today, take that money, divide it by the students who attend the school, and that's the amount each voucher is for. The idea is that the vouchers alone pay for the school. The buildings. The books. The desks. The computers. The sports facilities. Everything. Obviously, the money calculation will be a bit more complex then that, but the basic idea is that you put the entire funding of k-12 education into a voucher system. So any school that can operate at a total cost of X*num_students, will be a viable school. If they do it well, they'll be in demand and will expand their operations. If they do it poorly, parents wont send their kids there next year and they'll go out of business (and/or someone else will take over running the school).

The voucher systems proposed to date don't work, not because the concept of vouchers is wrong, but because they are a being implemented in a half-as[/b]sed manner. Private schools operate 100% of their total budget off the tuition of the students. When voucher systems are proposed today, they separate the "tuition" for a student from the "operating cost" of the school. The result is a lower value for the voucher then that typically needed to attend a private school, so it's seen as insufficient when in reality it's just poorly implemented.

But no one wants to do it "right" because they want to make sure that students that use the vouchers only take away from the cost to actually add that student to an existing public school. They want to make sure that the overhead cost for the public school they just left is still covered. This is the part I think is wrong because you're still locking yourself into the idea that our education system is about funding public schools instead of funding education.

Hehe. All three *and* the Supreme Court?

First off. I *love* how the perception is so far off reality in the case of the Supreme Court. There are 9 members of the court. Prior to Rhenquist and O'Connor leaving, there were 4 Liberal justices, 2 "swing" or "moderate" justices, and 3 Conservative justices. The Liberals have had a near majority of the court for quite some time, and were one justice away from locking the court up.

Rhenquist was a Conservative justice (and by some arguments the most conservative of the bunch). He was replaced by Roberts, also a conservative, but arguably not *as* conservative as Rhenquist. O'Connor was replace by Alito, also arguably a Conservative, but pretty darn close to moderate (despite desperate attempts to paint him otherwise by folks like Kennedy).

So. At worst. If Alito is a raving Conservative, we've got parity in the court, with 4 Liberal, 4 Conservative, and 1 swing/moderate. The reality in this case is far off the public perception (gee! Wonder why that is?...). The Dems desperately wanted to win the presidency in 2000 and/or 2004 so they could finish stacking the court with justices that would rule in their favor. It's just bizarre that the claim is leveled at Republicans "stacking the court", when in fact it was the Dems doing it and who were darn close to succeeding.

Secondly. Are you trying to suggest that the entirety of all public K-12 programs were created in the last 5 years? The Dems have largely controlled the house and senate for the last 50ish years. They've had by far the most impact on the design and structure of our current day public education system.

The Senate was controlled by Democrats for the entire period from 1955 to 1981, then again from 87 to 95. The Republicans have held it since that point (with some brief skirmishes in the 2001-2002 time frame). So... Basically, for the last 50 years, Democrats have controlled the Senate for 34 of them.

The House is even more historically tilted. The Dems controlled the house for the entire time period from 1955 to 1995, with Republicans controlling it since that point. So, out of the last 50 years, the House has been controlled by Democrats for 40 of those years.

Education programs typically are funded through non-discretionary budget items. So their continued funding and operation is a matter of law and cant be changed without another law. So, we can either assume that the Republican's "screwed up education" in the handful of years they've had control, and place no blame on the Dems, who've had virtually complete control over it for the last 50 years, or we can go with the far more sensible argument that the Dems are largely responsible for the structure of our education system as it exists today.


Or are you trying to argue that the US public education system was all perfect up until 1995? Cause I think that would be an extremely hard sell...





Ok. What part of each student getting an identically valued voucher (perhaps with adjustments for things like special needs students, but nothing otherwise) do you not get?

1000 students living in the poor neighborhood will get a school that recieves *exactly* the same funding as 1000 students in the rich neighborhood. The difference is that due to the voucher system, if one school doesn't satisfy the parents of the children, they can choose to take their vouchers elsewhere. Each school will recieve the same amount of money per student though, so the difference in schools will depend on how well each school manages their money. Something that private enterprise is vastly better at then public ones.




And the government does? Given that we live in a democracy, and the way to "win" in a democracy is to convince the most people to vote for you, doesn't it become advantageous for those in politics to ensure that the public is as uninformed as possible? Dumb and ignorant people are a lot easier to control then intelligent and informed ones.


I think you're placing too much faith in the altruism of those in the education field. Giving parents the power to choose which school they send their child to, and via that power the curriculum their children are taught, we remove the issue entirely. It doesn't matter if a private business cares about Billy's education. They *do* care about getting Billy's parents voucher (and others), so they'll make sure the education is as good as possible.

That's the inate difference between a public and a private system. A public system requires that the government have the best intentions at all times (which isn't always going to happen). A private system does not. Do you honestly think that Ford puts safety features in their cars because they care about those who drive them? No. They care about making sure people continue to buy their product, so they have to put the features in the car that will entice people to do so. End result is that we get cars that are safer and safer over time.

Imagine how crappy cars would be if governments made them. That's how our school systems are... Seems pretty obvious to me.


Oh. And can we please stop saying "But the schools will only fight over the rich people"? That's silly. Put money on the table and private businesses will come up with ways to make it work. Not everyone is going to get the wealthy guy's money to run their school. But they can certainly compete for the vouchers held in the hands of the wellfare mom. By your argument, there would be no cars other then top end luxury models, because why would anyone sell a car for 12k, when they could sell one for 50k?

There's a lot of people who can afford the 12k car, but not the 50k car, so private industry will build a car that will sell at a profit for 12k. That's the "magic" of privatization.



No. Not even close. It's not about how much money we put into it. It's about the structure. And you're right to a point. No one's pushing that hard on this issue right now because there are other things going on. Let's face it. It would take a lot of work to *really* fix our education system. No one really wants to tackle it.

But at least the Republicans are looking in the right direction. The Dems just want to continue the current system as it is. I wasn't arguing that my ideas are the current policy of the Republican party. Just that it's silly to blame the Republicans for the current state of education in this country.

Edited, Mon Feb 6 20:39:11 2006 by gbaji

I think one of your rants in your previous post was "if only the repubs could have their chance", just exactly how much power do you need to make a change? And what exactly is your privatize the education system plan, since there hasnt been one good fair system brought forth yet.

You talk alot, and type alot, but its mostly garbage and silly rebuttles. Own up to the fact that democrats and liberals are not the evil plague of america, and the mighty repubs are not the saviors of the universe. They are just two parties with two sets of ideals. I agree with alot of what both parties says, and the only reason i get annoyed at conservatives is the recent religion card they seem to play every day. Introduce your own amazing education plan (more than just "hey guys, lets privatize..", and stop blindy supporting one of the worst presidents in our history.




So you want your kids educated at the cheaper "car", just because the company found a way to make a buck off it too?


heres your posts in a nutshell, minus the BS:

Repubs are god.
Demos are satan.
There is a magical plan that will perfect our education system, that consist of privatized education and magic vouchers that come from the sky, if only the dems would let it happen!



Edited, Tue Feb 7 01:35:03 2006 by EvilPhysicist