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Right, that makes a lot of sense. I think you clearly did not benefit from public education enough. Have you ever been to a country where public education is not widely available? Do you understand the effect that has on a society? I'm guessing no.
No amount of education will overcome a self-centered personality coupled with denial.
Criticism of public schools comes from predictable sources. In general, these include all the free-rider piglets -- naked self-servers who want to partake of the full measure of society's bounty while helping to pay for exactly none of it. Down at the pixel level here, we have people who (in fear of things like evolution, global warming, diversity, positive self-image, new math, and whole word language instruction), have already decided to home-school their children or pack them off to the safety of sectarian schools. Now they want to feed at the public trough so that, instead of them, the rest of us can be the ones to pick up the tab for those personal choices and decisions. Did I mention piglets already?
Well said! My sister-in-law home schooled their kids. An act of protectionistic hubris that did not serve them well. While their test scores were adequate, their social development and exposure to outside positive influences was sadly under emphasized.
I've tried to stop complaining about wasted tax dollars a long time ago. You're never going to stop it. My wife and I were Assessors, and on the Select Board of a very small Town, and nothing could be done there, so I could only imagine how much waste is going on in larger Towns. Government, just like individuals, can nickel and dime themselves into poverty or prosperity. We were told not to micro manage, so poverty it is.
We now have nine students with a $200000 school budget and 16 miles of road with a $300000 dpw budget and only 63 homes to tax, with a split mill rate that rips off the one business in town. Without State and Fed funding, it would never work.
My Grandfather told me 40 years ago," don't complain about taxes, just figure out ways to make more money so you can pay them with a smile".
What really needs to happen is that all states need to have some sort of requirement to fund public education at some meaningful standard level (I have no idea how this would be determined, I admit). The over-reliance on local referendums to continue funding public education for the last 30-40 years has been a disaster. It's a system that only serves to tear down quality public education.
I've got a better idea; we do away with public schools. We start using technology instead of the outdated concept of a classroom in which the students are held back by their less capable peers.
The Khan academy https://www.khanacademy.org/ is a perfect example of what education could be. Students would follow a lesson plan for each grade level and test out to the next level. There would be no formal "grade levels", students would graduate when they pass all of the required courses.
Government would fund the content providers however that content would be available nationwide. Rather than pay hundreds of thousands of teachers we have a small group of educators recording content.
We would save billions in teachers salaries.
We would no longer need school buildings.
We would no longer need to feed children at school.
We would no longer need to transport children to a central school location.
There would need to be some educational infrastructure with this plan. There would be a tutoring building in each school district staffed by a few teachers where students could go to get additional help. It would be limited in availability to one day a month per student so as to prevent parents from using it as a daycare center. Students would have to provide their own transportation to and from the center.
Parents use the current school system as "daycare" more or less. If they want someone to watch their kids while they work a job the private sector would step up and provide local "learning centers" at a cost to the parent. If that cost is too high the parent always has the option of staying home with their child.
No more high school sports. Big deal. If kids want to play sports they can join private sports leagues and have their parents pay the costs. No more "band" or "Cheer squads". All these extras cost money and if they are important to the child the parent can pay for it.
We owe children an education however our current system is too expensive and ineffective. You put 30 kids in a classroom and the teacher spends the majority of their time catering to the bottom 5% of the class while the other students that understand sit there bored and not learning.
I've got a better idea; we do away with public schools. We start using technology instead of the outdated concept of a classroom in which the students are held back by their less capable peers.
The Khan academy https://www.khanacademy.org/ is a perfect example of what education could be. Students would follow a lesson plan for each grade level and test out to the next level. There would be no formal "grade levels", students would graduate when they pass all of the required courses.
Government would fund the content providers however that content would be available nationwide. Rather than pay hundreds of thousands of teachers we have a small group of educators recording content.
We would save billions in teachers salaries.
We would no longer need school buildings.
We would no longer need to feed children at school.
We would no longer need to transport children to a central school location.
There would need to be some educational infrastructure with this plan. There would be a tutoring building in each school district staffed by a few teachers where students could go to get additional help. It would be limited in availability to one day a month per student so as to prevent parents from using it as a daycare center. Students would have to provide their own transportation to and from the center.
Parents use the current school system as "daycare" more or less. If they want someone to watch their kids while they work a job the private sector would step up and provide local "learning centers" at a cost to the parent. If that cost is too high the parent always has the option of staying home with their child.
No more high school sports. Big deal. If kids want to play sports they can join private sports leagues and have their parents pay the costs. No more "band" or "Cheer squads". All these extras cost money and if they are important to the child the parent can pay for it.
We owe children an education however our current system is too expensive and ineffective. You put 30 kids in a classroom and the teacher spends the majority of their time catering to the bottom 5% of the class while the other students that understand sit there bored and not learning.
This is the way forward, not all of it, but alot of it. The nation as a whole needs to modernize its outdated education model. Cash strapped districts will start to bring this about whether we like it or not.
If we would ever privatize schools it would take several generations to do it. Every time someone comes up with a solution that seems drastic people think it would happen in one day. If we started now people over 30 would not live to see it.
One small step at a time. A start could be club sports instead of school teams. If that works out take the next step. It could be turning the cafeterias over to a private company or janitorial to a private company.
Everybody always panics and think the poor will have to start writing a check tomorrow. The parents of the children that could happen to haven't been born yet.
Instead of everyone paying for public education, we could have a public school tax. Those who use public schools and services would pay the tax to the extent of the services they want. The right people, paying the right tax, for the right services. We need particularization.
I wonder what the tax rate would actually be once all home owners not using public schools are out of the picture. Are we talking 25% higher property taxes or 100% higher? If birth rates decrease, does this shift the combination of home ownership/parenthood to more of a upper middle class venture?
The tax rate would be dramatically higher.
It is typical for a public school system to spend about $10K per student per year. That means a family with two children in school would need to pay $20K per year in property taxes. I'll guess that in most parts of the US that is three or four times what they pay today.
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