[macintologist]

Holy sweetness! I knew Steve Jobs was da man, in one respect, but now in another. He makes complete sense when talking about how great privatized education would be.

http://americanhistory.si.edu/collec.../sj1.html#role

here are some memorable quotes

Let's go through some economics. The most expensive thing people buy in their lives is a house. The second most expensive thing is a car, usually, and an average car costs approximately twenty thousand dollars. And an average car lasts about eight years. Then you buy another one. Approximately two thousand dollars a year over an eight year period. Well, your child goes to school approximately eight years in K through 8. What does the State of California spent per pupil per year in a public school? About forty-four hundred dollars. Over twice as much as a car. It turns out that when you go to buy a car you have a lot of information available to you to make a choice and you have a lot of choices. General Motors, Ford, Chrysler, Toyota and Nissan. They are advertising to you like crazy. I can't get through a day without seeing five car ads. And they seem to be able to make these cars efficiently enough that they can afford to take some of my money and advertise to other people. So that everybody knows about all these cars and they keep getting better and better because there's a lot of competition.

SJ: And there's a warranty. That's right. But in schools people don't feel that they're spending their own money. They feel like it's free, right? No one does any comparison shopping. A matter of fact if you want to put your kid in a private school, you can't take the forty-four hundred dollars a year out of the public school and use it, you have to come up with five or six thousand of your own money. I believe very strongly that if the country gave each parent a voucher for forty-four hundred dollars that they could only spend at any accredited school several things would happen. Number one schools would start marketing themselves like crazy to get students. Secondly, I think you'd see a lot of new schools starting. I've suggested as an example, if you go to Stanford Business School, they have a public policy track; they could start a school administrator track. You could get a bunch of people coming out of college tying up with someone out of the business school, they could be starting their own school. You could have twenty-five year old students out of college, very idealistic, full of energy instead of starting a Silicon Valley company, they'd start a school. I believe that they would do far better than any of our public schools would. The third thing you'd see is I believe, is the quality of schools again, just in a competitive marketplace, start to rise. Some of the schools would go broke. Alot of the public schools would go broke. There's no question about it. It would be rather painful for the first several years
DM: But deservedly so.

SJ: But far less painful I think than the kids going through the system as it is right now. The biggest complaint of course is that schools would pick off all the good kids and all the bad kids would be left to wallow together in either a private school or remnants of a public school system. To me that's like saying "Well, all the car manufacturers are going to make BMWs and Mercedes and nobody's going to make a ten thousand dollar car." I think the most hotly competitive market right now is the ten thousand dollar car area. You've got all the Japanese playing in it. You've got General Motors who spent five million dollars subsidizing Saturn to compete in that market. You've got Ford which has just introduced two new cars in that market. You've got Chrysler with the Neon.

[Blasphemy]

wow. It's not often you see Steve make this kind of commentary.

[Kerrigan]

Although we do see fake Jobs interviews from time to time, just sayin'.

[macintologist]

Originally Posted by Kerrigan 

Although we do see fake Jobs interviews from time to time, just sayin'.

From the Smithsonian?

[Helmling]

Yeah, except, using the car market as an analogy for education is a pretty flawed comparison. In market economics, there are winners and losers. I'll readily admit that there is inequity in education, but surrendering education to the private sector would be to forever surrender the ideal of egalitarian education and be tantamount to throwing up our hands and saying, "well, can't save 'em all."

I, for one, am not willing to surrender the fight for every last kid. But then, I'm a teacher.

[CRASH HARDDRIVE]

So what's next, Al Gore going off about what a disaster nationalizing heathcare would be?

Have to say, it does seem like a fake, though it would be nice if it were real. It's always a nice thing when lefties get around to recognizing the obvious.

[macintologist]

Originally Posted by Helmling 

Yeah, except, using the car market as an analogy for education is a pretty flawed comparison. In market economics, there are winners and losers. I'll readily admit that there is inequity in education, but surrendering education to the private sector would be to forever surrender the ideal of egalitarian education and be tantamount to throwing up our hands and saying, "well, can't save 'em all."

I, for one, am not willing to surrender the fight for every last kid. But then, I'm a teacher.

I've changed the way I see education. I think it's far worse when the good students are pulled down by being forced to be in the same school with the loser bad students. If education were completely privatized, schools would have more freedom to segregate the loser kids into a more technically-focused education with job training in mind, whereas the smart kids could elect to go on with college prep and eventually go to a killer liberal arts college.

Private education seems to work pretty well in higher education. I'm so glad I go to a private, rather than public university. Why couldn't secondary be any different?

[macintologist]

It's no fake, here's Steve Jobs talking about private education again with Wired

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/4.02/jobs_pr.html

Could technology help by improving education?

I used to think that technology could help education. I've probably spearheaded giving away more computer equipment to schools than anybody else on the planet. But I've had to come to the inevitable conclusion that the problem is not one that technology can hope to solve. What's wrong with education cannot be fixed with technology. No amount of technology will make a dent.

It's a political problem. The problems are sociopolitical. The problems are unions. You plot the growth of the NEA [National Education Association] and the dropping of SAT scores, and they're inversely proportional. The problems are unions in the schools. The problem is bureaucracy. I'm one of these people who believes the best thing we could ever do is go to the full voucher system.

I have a 17-year-old daughter who went to a private school for a few years before high school. This private school is the best school I've seen in my life. It was judged one of the 100 best schools in America. It was phenomenal. The tuition was $5,500 a year, which is a lot of money for most parents. But the teachers were paid less than public school teachers - so it's not about money at the teacher level. I asked the state treasurer that year what California pays on average to send kids to school, and I believe it was $4,400. While there are not many parents who could come up with $5,500 a year, there are many who could come up with $1,000 a year.

If we gave vouchers to parents for $4,400 a year, schools would be starting right and left. People would get out of college and say, "Let's start a school." You could have a track at Stanford within the MBA program on how to be the businessperson of a school. And that MBA would get together with somebody else, and they'd start schools. And you'd have these young, idealistic people starting schools, working for pennies.

They'd do it because they'd be able to set the curriculum. When you have kids you think, What exactly do I want them to learn? Most of the stuff they study in school is completely useless. But some incredibly valuable things you don't learn until you're older - yet you could learn them when you're younger. And you start to think, What would I do if I set a curriculum for a school?

God, how exciting that could be! But you can't do it today. You'd be crazy to work in a school today. You don't get to do what you want. You don't get to pick your books, your curriculum. You get to teach one narrow specialization. Who would ever want to do that?

These are the solutions to our problems in education. Unfortunately, technology isn't it. You're not going to solve the problems by putting all knowledge onto CD-ROMs. We can put a Web site in every school - none of this is bad. It's bad only if it lulls us into thinking we're doing something to solve the problem with education.

Lincoln did not have a Web site at the log cabin where his parents home-schooled him, and he turned out pretty interesting. Historical precedent shows that we can turn out amazing human beings without technology. Precedent also shows that we can turn out very uninteresting human beings with technology.

It's not as simple as you think when you're in your 20s - that technology's going to change the world. In some ways it will, in some ways it won't.

pwnage

[Helmling]

Originally Posted by macintologist 

I've changed the way I see education. I think it's far worse when the good students are pulled down by being forced to be in the same school with the loser bad students. If education were completely privatized, schools would have more freedom to segregate the loser kids into a more technically-focused education with job training in mind, whereas the smart kids could elect to go on with college prep and eventually go to a killer liberal arts college.

Private education seems to work pretty well in higher education. I'm so glad I go to a private, rather than public university. Why couldn't secondary be any different?

Does it really work all that well? Are we really providing college opportunities to all of our young people? I have a student who just got accepted to Georgetown. Now, I'm hopeful, but even under the best of conditions, she's going to have to accrue some serious debt to put herself through that school. My cousin, though, didn't have any problems because her family was wealthy and my student's family isn't.

I think this push for privatization represents a rather rosy excess of faith in market forces. The invisible hand of the market does not right all wrongs and does not provide the best of all possible worlds.

Economics is cruel, our education system should not be.

[Kerrigan]

I didn't say it was fake, but it certainly "felt" fake.

The funny thing about all this is that Steve is coming off as a conservative. Bashing unions? Saying that the market fixes social problems? He's obviously thought this through a lot b/c he had to justify in his head sending his daughter to private school.

As an aside, his ideas seem rather good, but I would worry about a scenario in which the industry is only partially privatized, and the incentives to improve become unclear... similar to the NHS.

[Helmling]

Well, stands to reason...I mean he is a monopoly now, isn't he?

[Helmling]

Originally Posted by macintologist 

It's no fake, here's Steve Jobs talking about private education again with Wired

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/4.02/jobs_pr.html



pwnage

Well, that is, quite frankly, nonsense.

The reason the private school environment is so successful is a little thing called selection bias. The families that send their children, by their very nature, are those that believe in the value of education. Believe me, nothing is more important in student success than the family support. So shafting teachers as Jobs seems to propose is not going to improve education, but going to a "total voucher" system will destroy the selection bias for most private schools--except those for the rich, of course.

That's the ultimate result of privatized education: fixing the have's and the have-not's right where they are.

The current system really doesn't address that inequity either, but as I said above, to abandon public education would be acknowledge defeat in the struggle to fight that inequity...and while it would serve the interests of the rich, to whom Jobs is unwittingly catering, it would do nothing for the bulk of students in the schools today.

[Kerrigan]

What I find interesting is that, for next to nothing, I can go to a church, in a pleasing building, run by people who really care, drop my kid off at Sunday school (well I'm a uni student I have no children), and go get free coffee and food afterwards. If my kid is a teenager, he can go to social meetings on the weekday, where they will have entertainment (TVs, music, etc).

And all I'm paying into this system is a few bucks each Sunday (if that).

I'm not saying that Uncle Sam should fork over the whole education budget and let churches open more schools. But I do think that we could learn a lot from churches how to have effective, quality social services which aren't provided by the government.

[Kerrigan]

Another aside: I think the solution lies more in curbing the power of unions, in order to liberalize the labor market for teachers. I have met some absolutely terrible teachers, teachers who don't teach, or teachers who have a strong paedophile "vibe", and because of unions, they will keep their jobs indefinitely.

That is where the problem is, and this can be fixed without privatizing (and wrecking) the current system.

[CRASH HARDDRIVE]

Originally Posted by Helmling 

Now, I'm hopeful, but even under the best of conditions, she's going to have to accrue some serious debt to put herself through that school.

Join the club for most people. And lo and behold, she'll probably get more out of it, and appreciate the education she gets more than your cousin who doesn't pay her own way.

Economics is cruel, our education system should not be.

Our rotten education system already is. Does anyone really believe that a kid stuck in some rotten public ghetto school, or one overrun with illegals, gets the same quality of education as a kid who lives in a better/wealthier neighborhood? Please.

What's 'cruel' is that parents who live in bad neighborhoods have to work their asses off to pay taxes to pay for their rotten schools that fail their children miserably, or work their asses off to BOTH pay those taxes AND then on top of it send their kids to better private schools. I know and have met many people that at great expense compared to their income, do this.

People in poorer neighborhoods pay huge amounts to send their kids to Catholic private schools and others, -even when they aren't members of the religion- just to give their kids the hope of not being completely robbed by their local public system (that they STILL have to pay for). Give these people vouchers from the taxes they pay into a system that they don't even use, and that would go a long way toward paying tuition elsewhere. It would also encourage the public schools to get their acts together, or risk losing more and more money to their WORST fear: parents with OPTIONS.

By the way, for the record, I don't blame the teachers for the public schools being bad, I place blame where it should go- rotten administration that only cares about the money coming in, not the quality of education going out, rotten teachers unions that only care about petty partisan politics, and rotten, greedy politicians who don't want to give up the power they have with their near monopoly on the public school system. Teachers should benefit too, and share in the rewards of a more competitive system- more completive pay, more bennies, more say in the administration of schools, paired with less influence of corrupt, power-hungry unions and politicians.

Would there still be problems? Of course, because no human endeavor is ever perfect. But I think the problems would pale in comparison to many of the blatant injustices the public school system forces on people now.

[Helmling]

Originally Posted by CRASH HARDDRIVE 

Join the club for most people. And lo and behold, she'll probably get more out of it, and appreciate the education she gets more than your cousin who doesn't pay her own way.


Our rotten education system already is. Does anyone really believe that a kid stuck in some rotten public ghetto school, or one overrun with illegals, gets the same quality of education as a kid who lives in a better/wealthier neighborhood? Please.

What's 'cruel' is that parents who live in bad neighborhoods have to work their asses off to pay taxes to pay for their rotten schools that fail their children miserably, or work their asses off to BOTH pay those taxes AND then on top of it send their kids to better private schools. I know and have met many people that at great expense compared to their income, do this.

People in poorer neighborhoods pay huge amounts to send their kids to Catholic private schools and others, -even when they aren't members of the religion- just to give their kids the hope of not being completely robbed by their local public system (that they STILL have to pay for). Give these people vouchers from the taxes they pay into a system that they don't even use, and that would go a long way toward paying tuition elsewhere. It would also encourage the public schools to get their acts together, or risk losing more and more money to their WORST fear: parents with OPTIONS.

By the way, for the record, I don't blame the teachers for the public schools being bad, I place blame where it should go- rotten administration that only cares about the money coming in, not the quality of education going out, rotten teachers unions that only care about petty partisan politics, and rotten, greedy politicians who don't want to give up the power they have with their near monopoly on the public school system. Teachers should benefit too, and share in the rewards of a more competitive system- more completive pay, more bennies, more say in the administration of schools, paired with less influence of corrupt, power-hungry unions and politicians.

Would there still be problems? Of course, because no human endeavor is ever perfect. But I think the problems would pale in comparison to many of the blatant injustices the public school system forces on people now.

No, you should place the blame with a culture that doesn't value education and would sell it off piecemeal to the highest bidder.

The tear-jerker stories of families struggling to put their kids through private school are used as a smokescreen by people intent on destroying the public schools. Instead of trying to fix the problems in the public schools, they want to dismantle them in order to ensure that nothing threatens the social hierarchy. Privatizing education will not make it easier for those families, it will only narrow the range of possibilities for kids from lower socio-economic backgrounds to escape their circumstances.

As I said above, I know we are far from an ideal meritocracy and that there are serious flaws, but to privatize education would only install that inequality as a permanent--and "inevitable"--fixture in education.

[Helmling]

Originally Posted by Kerrigan 

Another aside: I think the solution lies more in curbing the power of unions, in order to liberalize the labor market for teachers. I have met some absolutely terrible teachers, teachers who don't teach, or teachers who have a strong paedophile "vibe", and because of unions, they will keep their jobs indefinitely.

That is where the problem is, and this can be fixed without privatizing (and wrecking) the current system.

So, we're already desperate for teachers, throwing them to the wolves in a field where the attrition rate is already 25% the first year, 50% after five, and you think the solution is to rob teachers of their job security?

I am a teacher, and a due-paying member of NEA. I assure you, I'm not "the problem." Go ahead, strip away the union and see how many teachers there are left. That's, of course, exactly what most of the advocates of private education want: no teachers. No teachers means no public schools. No public schools means stepping back a hundred and fifty years in the struggle for a just and equitable society.

The problem is a lot bigger than teacher unions, my friend. It's a culture that doesn't really believe in education.

[macintologist]

Now hold on a second. A "just and equitable society", at what price? Sorry to break it to you but college and the dreams of a liberal arts education is NOT for everybody, nor can it be. Somebody has to be a janitor. Somebody has to be an auto mechanic. Somebody has to be a security guard. Somebody has to be a plumber. Somebody has to be a cook/waiter. Somebody has to be a construction worker. These are all technical jobs that require technical training, to which a liberal arts education would be a useless money-wasting endeavor. SOMEBODY has to do those jobs. I think that kids who are losers and bring down the smart motivated kids should be segregated into a different type of education that focuses only on reading, writing, basic laws and civics such as what the bill of rights says, basic US history and mostly technical job training so they can leave school being productive peaceful members of society, while the smart motivated kids with strong family-backing or whatnot can then continue onto higher ed. and become a lawyer, politician, administrator, scholar, and such types of careers that require that kind of educational path.

I await your response.

[CRASH HARDDRIVE]

Originally Posted by Helmling 

No, you should place the blame with a culture that doesn't value education and would sell it off piecemeal to the highest bidder.

Highest bidder? The LOWEST bidder won. Heck, somehow we all just let the lowest possible bidder TAKE the thing without there having been a chance to bid! Here you are blaming "the culture" while defending those that have undersold education the most: greedy politicians and unions.

The tear-jerker stories of families struggling to put their kids through private school are used as a smokescreen by people intent on destroying the public schools.

The public schools have done a good job of destroying themselves, thanks to the aforementioned sellouts.

People struggling to do better than letting their kids get short-changed by default in horrible public schools is a reality, and one that people like you clearly don't want to deal with other than to deman: "don't change the status quo, no matter how bad it is!"

Instead of trying to fix the problems in the public schools

Gee, you mean what the politicians, unions and sellouts in charge HAVEN'T done, (while they've in fact done THE OPPOSITE?)

Privatizing education will not make it easier for those families, it will only narrow the range of possibilities for kids from lower socio-economic backgrounds to escape their circumstances.

Total denial of reality. Right now, today, in the REAL WORLD (that you seem to want to avoid dealing with at all costs) countless people use the private system to escape from the wrecked public system that they know won't properly educate their kids, and will in fact endanger their kids and rob them of their futures. I'm in full agreement with those that do this, that on top of having been robbed of safe, competent, decent schools, must then (to add further insult to injury) FUND those same wretched schools systems with their tax dollars. Talk about shameful. But hey, don't upset the status quo. Heaven forbid!

As I said above, I know we are far from an ideal meritocracy

Now there's an understatement!

[red rocket]

Originally Posted by Steve Jobs

But in schools people don't feel that they're spending their own money. They feel like it's free, right?

It should be free. There are plenty of people who cannot afford to buy a new $20,000 car every eight years. That is no reason to deprive their children of a full education.

Originally Posted by macintologist

If education were completely privatized, schools would have more freedom to segregate the loser kids into a more technically-focused education with job training in mind, whereas the smart kids could elect to go on with college prep and eventually go to a killer liberal arts college.

"Loser kids"? What a despicable attitude.

And you're confusing smart with rich.

Originally Posted by macintologist

Private education seems to work pretty well in higher education. I'm so glad I go to a private, rather than public university. Why couldn't secondary be any different?

It works well because you have a two-tier university system; the public ones aren't inferior because they're public, they're inferior because they have less funds available. Even if your folks didn't send you to a private secondary school, the existence of a public school system does not prevent rich people from sending their offspring to private schools.

Originally Posted by macintologist

I think that kids who are losers and bring down the smart motivated kids should be segregated into a different type of education that focuses only on reading, writing, basic laws and civics such as what the bill of rights says, basic US history and mostly technical job training so they can leave school being productive peaceful members of society, while the smart motivated kids with strong family-backing or whatnot can then continue onto higher ed. and become a lawyer, politician, administrator, scholar, and such types of careers that require that kind of educational path.

So you want a caste system. Proles condemned forever to doing all the dirty work, snobs such as yourself living the high life off the back of them. And you expect the proles to remain peaceful? That's just asking for a revolution.

[macintologist]

How about we make it voluntarily then? The loser kids who don't want to work hard can elect to take the technical route.

And you know exactly the kind of person I'm talking about.

[goMac]

There is one huge problem with a private school system. And fortunately it directly affects Apple.

I work for a school district. We just started deploying laptops on a massive scale. Now, we could have never afforded this on a public school budget. The amount of money we get from the state definitely could not have covered the laptops. So how did we get the laptops? As a public institution, we can put public bond proposals in front of the voters, and they can assign us extra money. Private institutions can't do that.

Now you might say "But private institutions can afford laptops too! They just have to raise tuition to afford them!" And yes, you'd be right. But now suddenly you have classism. Only the kids that can afford the technology will be able to learn it. The kids that couldn't afford to go to a laptop school won't have the same exposure to technology and won't be as competitive for getting into colleges and getting jobs. As a public institution, we can offer this sort of technology to everyone, rich or poor.

My guess is Steve doesn't understand this because it's pretty easy for him to supply his kids with what they need.

[CRASH HARDDRIVE]

Kids don't need freakin' laptops and iPods and other assorted bullshit that's little more than the trappings of a spoiled consumer society in order to learn. Kids from much poorer nations that don't have 24/7 access to anywhere near the level of consumer bullcrap that kids in this country have run CIRCLES around them.

[macintologist]

I think the real learning happens in elementary school and college. I'm looking back at middle/high school and realizing that most of the learning was done on my own time reading books and wikipedia and keeping up with the news. School was just for socializing. What a waste.

goMac, while you may have the best of intentions, frankly I don't think giving the kids laptops is going to help them learn anything. If you want them to learn technology, why not just make a computer skills class mandatory on the cirriculum and put the kids in a computer lab?

[lpkmckenna]

I haven't read these articles yet, but I wanted to make some, perhaps irrelevant, points.

1. Most techies are highly motivated self-starters, who learned C++ or VB on their own. High school was a drag for most of these people: a pubescent fashion show with interludes of tiresome poetry essays and jock-driven dodge-ball humiliations. They don't have fond memories of public school nurturing their strengths, but rather wasting their time. Steve Jobs may not be a techie himself, but his natural leadership of them tells me he understands what they're like and identifies with their values (rarely conservative or liberal, but rather classical liberal, libertarian-conservative, or just plain libertarian).

2. The tech industry succeeds despite the lack of tech-focused content in public education, and because of a lack of public regulation. IMHO, anyway.

3. Jobs may be a Democrat, but he's not a whiner for big government, just personal liberty and fair treatment.

[Zeeb]

Who cares what Steve Jobs thinks about education? Does the fact that someone who is successful in business suddenly make him the expert in everything? I'm not saying his ideas aren't good or bad, but he can't do for the education system what the ipod did for the mp3 player market.

You're also making a very broad generalization about "techies" Ipkmckenna. God forbid you should have a well rounded education with a little poetry rather than spending all day learning C++.

[lpkmckenna]

Originally Posted by Zeeb 

You're also making a very broad generalization about "techies" Ipkmckenna. God forbid you should have a well rounded education with a little poetry rather than spending all day learning C++.

I never said I was against a well rounded education or poetry. And I don't know a thing about C++. I was commenting about how your typical techie remembers high school.

As for broad generalizations, did you notice the usage of words like many and most in my post?

[Zeeb]

Originally Posted by lpkmckenna 

I never said I was against a well rounded education or poetry. And I don't know a thing about C++. I was commenting about how your typical techie remembers high school.

As for broad generalizations, did you notice the usage of words like many and most in my post?

Sorry Ipkmckenna!, my last post came off bitchy and I didn't intend it to be. I apologize for my remark. It's just that with a private education, you set the stage for a "caste" system of sorts. Even giving each child's parent a voucher for the same amount as any child--the quality of the school will still vary depending upon where the child lives. Also, I'm worried there would be no guarantee that the voucher would cover the entire cost of the education.

Not that public education is equal by any means, but privatization would take us further away from an egalitarian system.

[dcmacdaddy]

Originally Posted by Kerrigan 

Although we do see fake Jobs interviews from time to time, just sayin'.

Originally Posted by macintologist 

From the Smithsonian?

It's legit. That's the official website for the American History museum and I worked there for the Computer History Division from early 96-98. And I've met Dan Morrow. He's a good interviewer but a pompous blow-hard in person.

As for the merits of SJ's argument, I don't think you can let market-forces dominate every aspect of public life. Because there will be losers in that case and what cost to society will there be from a new generation of kids deliberately left in the "loser" category when it comes to education.

[Blasphemy]

not having vouchers oppresses the poor. Do you think a poor mother or father would like to be able to send their children to a private school? You bet. But they can't afford it. And voucher opponents are looking out for the unions. It's not about giving up on kids.

[Railroader]

Originally Posted by macintologist 

I've changed the way I see education. I think it's far worse when the good students are pulled down by being forced to be in the same school with the loser bad students. If education were completely privatized, schools would have more freedom to segregate the loser kids into a more technically-focused education with job training in mind, whereas the smart kids could elect to go on with college prep and eventually go to a killer liberal arts college.

Private education seems to work pretty well in higher education. I'm so glad I go to a private, rather than public university. Why couldn't secondary be any different?

I thought you were a liberal. Oh that's right, you are! You use terms like "loser bad students". That's pathetic.

You don't realize you will cause a greater separation of the haves and have-nots with your ideas.

The "loser" students deserve the EXACT same education as the "good" students. I want my tax dollars spent equally on each student. I don't want some snot-nosed-given-everything-to-him-not-thankful-rich kid having an advantage with my dollars.

You do realize that "smart kids" should be taking vocational tech classes as well don't you? I used to berate upper-level university engineers who couldn't draw as well as high school first year drafting students.

But then, keep up your liberal judgmental attitude. You sure are feeding the stereo-type quite well.

[Railroader]

Originally Posted by Kerrigan 

Another aside: I think the solution lies more in curbing the power of unions, in order to liberalize the labor market for teachers. I have met some absolutely terrible teachers, teachers who don't teach, or teachers who have a strong paedophile "vibe", and because of unions, they will keep their jobs indefinitely.

That is where the problem is, and this can be fixed without privatizing (and wrecking) the current system.

This is not true. Bad teachers are quite easy to get rid of. It's lazy administrators who are where the blame lies for any school district having a bad teacher.

I know from experience. We have an excellent administration in our district and they have fired a few 20+ year seniority teachers for being inept lately.

[Railroader]

Originally Posted by Kerrigan 

What I find interesting is that, for next to nothing, I can go to a church, in a pleasing building, run by people who really care, drop my kid off at Sunday school (well I'm a uni student I have no children), and go get free coffee and food afterwards. If my kid is a teenager, he can go to social meetings on the weekday, where they will have entertainment (TVs, music, etc).

And all I'm paying into this system is a few bucks each Sunday (if that).

I'm not saying that Uncle Sam should fork over the whole education budget and let churches open more schools. But I do think that we could learn a lot from churches how to have effective, quality social services which aren't provided by the government.

A few bucks? I put 10%+.

[Railroader]

Originally Posted by Blasphemy 

not having vouchers oppresses the poor. Do you think a poor mother or father would like to be able to send their children to a private school? You bet. But they can't afford it. And voucher opponents are looking out for the unions. It's not about giving up on kids.

It's called "school of choice" in this area. You can take your child to any public school you want and the money follows them. It has caused some healthy competition in the area.

The problem with allowing private schools such an option is that private schools don't have to accept everyone. Kids with learning disabilities and physical disabilities are rejected. Luckily the public school system takes them in and educates them at a huge cost.

[subego]

Wow. Totally awesome thread!

[Railroader]

Originally Posted by subego 

Wow. Totally awesome thread!

Thanks for your invaluable contribution to it!

[subego]

Thank you.

It doesn't really count unless I've peed in the well.

Carry on.

[Railroader]

Originally Posted by subego 

Thank you.

It doesn't really count unless I've peed in the well.

Carry on.

I chuckled a little. Seriously, that was a little funny.

Thanks for making me smile.

[bojangles]

Originally Posted by Railroader 

Originally Posted by Kerrigan 

And all I'm paying into this system is a few bucks each Sunday (if that).

A few bucks? I put 10%+.

[pooka]

The problem with public schools is that there isn't enough teacher/student asswhoopery going on. Seriously, I volunteered to assist with a local public schools math classes one year. Holy **** was that fun.

"We have aa basket with 15 apples. Now we add 20 more apples to the basket. How many apples do we have now?"

"Suck my dick"

Personally, I found it quite funny. The boys punishment (a quick lecture and mild loss of privileges) made me want to cry. It was then I decided that my children would not attend public school. Nor private. They would simply be aborted. Game over.

[besson3c]

There already is a sense of competition by the government underfunding schools that don't perform. Unfortunately, in many cases there is no shopping around option either, because at least around here where you go to school depends on where you live, and where you live depends on how much money you make.

We should be doing what Canada does, and that is regulate teacher's salaries just like any government job so that a teacher is guaranteed a starting salary that they can live and work with.

Republicans and pro-capitalists can whine and complain about free handouts, pulling ones self up by their bootstraps, blah blah blah, but to me this is not central to the argument. The argument is simply about resource allocation. There is a direct relationship between education, crime, and poverty. In other words, investing in education benefits ALL OF US poor and rich.

People not living in poverty are able to stimulate the economy with their spending and remove some strain from the operating costs of hospitals who are required to admit the uninsured. Low crime rates require less of a strain on funding police and other forms of security.

It may seem cold to put this issue in terms of pure dollars and cents, but I think this is the best way to disarm crazy-Joe far rightwing.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by pooka 

The problem with public schools is that there isn't enough teacher/student asswhoopery going on. Seriously, I volunteered to assist with a local public schools math classes one year. Holy **** was that fun.

"We have aa basket with 15 apples. Now we add 20 more apples to the basket. How many apples do we have now?"

"Suck my dick"

Personally, I found it quite funny. The boys punishment (a quick lecture and mild loss of privileges) made me want to cry. It was then I decided that my children would not attend public school. Nor private. They would simply be aborted. Game over.

What qualifications are necessary in your area to do substitute teaching? I've heard that in some areas they will accept literally anyone.

[Railroader]

Originally Posted by pooka 

The problem with public schools is that there isn't enough teacher/student asswhoopery going on. Seriously, I volunteered to assist with a local public schools math classes one year. Holy **** was that fun.

"We have aa basket with 15 apples. Now we add 20 more apples to the basket. How many apples do we have now?"

"Suck my dick"

Personally, I found it quite funny. The boys punishment (a quick lecture and mild loss of privileges) made me want to cry. It was then I decided that my children would not attend public school. Nor private. They would simply be aborted. Game over.

Some districts discipline philosophies being too lenient are actually harmful to the students.

When I substitute taught, some districts had a in-school suspension policy where if the student misbehaved they were sent to a study hall-type room. Their parents were never notified. Ever. For the most part the student would want to get sent there to get out of class or to hang out with friends because the person supervising the suspension room was lenient and let them talk or sit whenever they wanted. Students I knew who should be doing better in school and well-behaved were the opposite.

In my opinion™, the discipline standards were usually dictated by the principal of the school. In one district I worked in the principal would sit with a new substitute teacher for and hour or so and talk about ways to discipline and that he would support anything that didn't break the law. It was nice knowing he'd "have my back". The students were all very mature and well behaved there. Even kids I thought would be problems were educated and mature.

[Kevin]

Originally Posted by macintologist 

schools would have more freedom to segregate the loser kids into a more technically-focused education with job training in mind, whereas the smart kids could elect to go on with college prep and eventually go to a killer liberal arts college.

I've seen my share of losers in both categories.

[Railroader]

Originally Posted by Kevin 

I've seen my share of losers in both categories.

[shifuimam]

Again with the babbling.

[Snow-i]

Originally Posted by macintologist

I think that kids who are losers and bring down the smart motivated kids should be segregated into a different type of education that focuses only on reading, writing, basic laws and civics such as what the bill of rights says, basic US history and mostly technical job training so they can leave school being productive peaceful members of society, while the smart motivated kids with strong family-backing or whatnot can then continue onto higher ed. and become a lawyer, politician, administrator, scholar, and such types of careers that require that kind of educational path.

I am a college student at a (highly rated, not that it matters) public University. I went to a school system in a relatively weathly area.

The oppurtunities I have today are not because I've worked hard in any great capacity. They are because I was given the chance to apply myself and make something of myself. The same for you I'm more than sure. Now what about the kids that don't get that oppurtunity because they come from poorer areas? Should they be loser kids too? Hell they don't matter? Right?

As much as I accomplish in my life-time it will always be because my parents were middle-class, and worked hard to give me oppurtunities. Now what about those who's parents aren't capable of moving into a wealthy area, or who aren't capable of making 100k a year?

Lets rewind time and put you in a single-mom home with 3 brothers and sisters, and see how well you come out of a inner-city Baltimore public school. I'd bet if you could even get access to a computer to respond to this thread, you'd sing a mighty different tune. You wouldn't make it past high school.

Simply forgetting about kids with less given to them than you is a very scary viewpoint to hold. One that if it came to I would fight with every part of my being.

[shifuimam]

I know you don't care what I said; why should I?

[macintologist]

Originally Posted by Snow-i 

I am a college student at a (highly rated, not that it matters) public University. I went to a school system in a relatively weathly area.

The oppurtunities I have today are not because I've worked hard in any great capacity. They are because I was given the chance to apply myself and make something of myself. The same for you I'm more than sure. Now what about the kids that don't get that oppurtunity because they come from poorer areas? Should they be loser kids too? Hell they don't matter? Right?

As much as I accomplish in my life-time it will always be because my parents were middle-class, and worked hard to give me oppurtunities. Now what about those who's parents aren't capable of moving into a wealthy area, or who aren't capable of making 100k a year?

Lets rewind time and put you in a single-mom home with 3 brothers and sisters, and see how well you come out of a inner-city Baltimore public school. I'd bet if you could even get access to a computer to respond to this thread, you'd sing a mighty different tune. You wouldn't make it past high school.

Simply forgetting about kids with less given to them than you is a very scary viewpoint to hold. One that if it came to I would fight with every part of my being.

That may be sad, and it's unfortunate that parents from lower income households have a more difficult time giving their children opportunities, but that should NOT be used to justify the smart and motivated kids being pulled down by the losers in school just because they were forced to be in the same school as everyone else in the district. That's the bigger sad story of the two. A kid who wants to learn but is discouraged to do so by punks and assholes who have fun making other people's lives miserable. F*** 'em.

[vmarks]

Originally Posted by Railroader 

This is not true. Bad teachers are quite easy to get rid of. It's lazy administrators who are where the blame lies for any school district having a bad teacher.

I know from experience. We have an excellent administration in our district and they have fired a few 20+ year seniority teachers for being inept lately.

Actually, the teacher's union in North Carolina makes this near-impossible. The only occasion I can recall in which a teacher with seniority has been fired in Wake County was after he showed up drunk at a heavily student-participated CROP walk event.

Originally Posted by Railroader 

It's called "school of choice" in this area. You can take your child to any public school you want and the money follows them. It has caused some healthy competition in the area.

The problem with allowing private schools such an option is that private schools don't have to accept everyone. Kids with learning disabilities and physical disabilities are rejected. Luckily the public school system takes them in and educates them at a huge cost.

The "school of choice" you describe is also pretty rare. We've been lobbying for it since 2000 in this area and never get any progress on it. I ran on Assignment by Choice as one of my issues when I got 34% of the vote in my run for school board, and it's just not something that's going to happen in this area as long as Democrats keep being elected. They see it as a means to destroy academically gifted schools and re-segregate, rather than seeing it as giving parents options.

In the charter school system, the school is a public school that has more liberty with the curriculum and teachers they hire, in exchange for not taking building funds from the state. Applicants are chosen via lottery.

At the charter school where I taught for three years, we did have disabled students and had a special needs teacher.

When you move to a voucher system, you really enable parental choice. It doesn't inherently mean that the world will come to an end and time will reverse 100 years, as some here suggest:

They should look at the facts in evidence. There is a voucher system in Wisconsin, where all the anti-school choice and anti-voucher arguments were heard, and they implemented it anyway - and all the fears of what would come to pass.... haven't.

http://dpi.state.wi.us/sms/choice.html

http://www.schoolchoicewi.org/issues/detail.cfm?id=2

http://www2.jsonline.com:80/news/sta...ch06090599.asp

Meanwhile, the voters of Washington D.C. have voted in favor of vouchers repeatedly, and the politicians refused to implement them for some time, because they think like Helmling - they know better than parents what's good for their children.

Finally those changes have begun to be made, and the voters got what they had voted for repeatedly.

http://www.nysun.com/article/22972 -- relevent quote -- "Ms. Walton didn't know what to do. The prospect of turning her daughter over to a public school was frightening.

"I didn't feel that was a good environment," Ms. Walton, a single mother of two, said. "But I couldn't afford to send her anywhere else."

Washington's mayor, Anthony Williams, a Democrat who bucked his party to push for the program, said he was pleased with the results so far - including the vouchers' effect on the public school system, one of the worst-performing in the nation.

"I think the good schools have gotten better, and the mediocre schools are getting on track because, I believe, we've had a charter school movement that's been very robust, and because of the vouchers," Mr. Williams told The New York Sun."