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The good kids are already going to school with the bad kids. I am simply advocating that every child in the entire United States have the same quality of education that the best public schools offer, even if the kids "don't deserve" it.
I don't think you're really reading what I've been saying.
It's not that they "don't deserve" it. It all still comes down to who's going to pay for it all?
Again, we all work very hard and make sacrifices so that our children will fair better and have more opportunities than we did. My parents made a lot of sacrifices to ensure that my siblings and I would have it better than them. That's why we all have worked very hard to be able to afford to live in better areas and send our kids to better schools than the ones we attended.
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I am an outlier, I know, but I exist and I am accomplishing my fair share. I just want the funding to be there to attract people who want to teach as a profession, but not necessarily as a mission. We cannot effectively run an educational system on the backs of missionaries and martyrs, but as you say, no one wants to pay for high quality education for poor people's children.
Again, it comes down to cost. You're not going to find anyone here who honestly wants poor schools to exist. But reality is reality. These poor schools exist. And they have to deal with kids who have very unmotivated parents who simply don't care.
The world can't operate on volunteers and martyrs. It's not my opinion. It's a fact. I applaud you for your efforts, but know that what you do simply cannot be applied to society at large. It's also not sustainable.
I used to volunteer to work for habitat for humanity. The most frustrating thing about working with the perpetual/generational poor is the complete lack of motivation on their part. Over time, I realized that I was wasting my time. There are better ways at helping them than volunteer and be a martyr. But that's a different topic.
I will simply agree to disagree on this topic. I simply don't think that throwing money at the education system will change anything. It takes more than money to change long valued family tradition of undervaluing education.
So, your philosophy is that the rich don't deserve to live in bigger houses? Don't deserve to drive nicer cars? Don't deserve to take more luxurious vacations? Don't deserve more attractive romantic partners? Don't deserve more scenic views from their living room window?
What incentive is there to make money, then?
During much of World War II, a number of food staples (meat, cheese, milk, etc) and a few other consumer items (gasoline) were rationed. Did the rich deserve to have access to all the meat and gasoline they could afford?
The problem with schools is that kids didn't do anything to deserve better - or worse - schools, so it is difficult to justify unequal quality of taxpayer-funded schools.
In 1993, voters in the Kalkaska (Michigan) School District repeatedly rejected school millages, culminating in an early closure of local K-12 schools when they ran out of money. (As a retirement destination "up north" along I-75, Kalkaska was and is full of empty-nester retirees with no children to educate, and in many cases, not enough income to comfortably afford paying school property taxes.) The Legislature promptly repealed all school operating millages - the primary funding source for public schools - and spent the last half of that year struggling to agree on replacement school funding.
Both parties agreed to let voters decide between two competing funding packages in a March 1994 special election Both parties agreed on a modest state education property tax - statutory and thus permanent and not subject to periodic voter approval, as traditional local millages had been. Both parties agreed on sticking a hefty locally-voted millage on all but agricultural and owner-occupied primary residences - voter approval is assured because this tax is not levied on owner-occupied primary residences. The major difference in the proposals was whether school funding would be restored primarily with a higher income tax or a higher sales tax - with school districts maintaining their previous spending with dedicated formula-driven School Aid distributed to school districts from the funding source chosen my voters - in this case, the package with the higher sales tax won, as its state property tax was much more favorable to homeowners, plus the sales tax increase was better for most homeowners than the income tax increase.
So Michigan has demonstrated that it is feasible to fund local schools without having to ask homeowners to pass a school millage on their homes.
I don't think you're really reading what I've been saying.
It's not that they "don't deserve" it. It all still comes down to who's going to pay for it all?
Again, we all work very hard and make sacrifices so that our children will fair better and have more opportunities than we did. My parents made a lot of sacrifices to ensure that my siblings and I would have it better than them. That's why we all have worked very hard to be able to afford to live in better areas and send our kids to better schools than the ones we attended.
Again, it comes down to cost. You're not going to find anyone here who honestly wants poor schools to exist. But reality is reality. These poor schools exist. And they have to deal with kids who have very unmotivated parents who simply don't care.
The world can't operate on volunteers and martyrs. It's not my opinion. It's a fact. I applaud you for your efforts, but know that what you do simply cannot be applied to society at large. It's also not sustainable.
I used to volunteer to work for habitat for humanity. The most frustrating thing about working with the perpetual/generational poor is the complete lack of motivation on their part. Over time, I realized that I was wasting my time. There are better ways at helping them than volunteer and be a martyr. But that's a different topic.
I will simply agree to disagree on this topic. I simply don't think that throwing money at the education system will change anything. It takes more than money to change long valued family tradition of undervaluing education.
In Michigan, a six-mill school education tax is levied on all taxable real property, and there are NO local millage levies on owner-occupied primary residences. Other taxable real property (retail, commercial, rental property, etc) is subject additionally to a steep locally-voted millage which is extremely popular because owner-occupied primary residences are exempt and thus homeowners regard the tax as free school money.
The primary source of local K-12 operating funds is the state sales tax, which was increased from 4 to 6 percent in order to compensate for the legislative repeal of school operating millages.
The Legislature unilaterally decided that landlords and tenants were going to get soaked to pay for it, and allowed voters to decide between a higher income tax and a higher sales tax.
Wait ... Are you telling me that you prioritize your kids over others??
Greedy capitist pig!
Get with the program here! I'm sure your kids have had "enough" success already and you need to start working for the benefit of other people.
Well, at the risk of being seen as belonging to the other side (I vote democrat), let's all be honest here and admit that we all give priority to our own progenies over other people's. When my significant other and I have children, we will do what we can to get them into good schools and try to give them the best chances in life we could afford. And one of the things we will do to achieve this is keep them away from schools with disruptive and unmotivated kids. I went to one of those schools where the kids had no respect at all for the teachers. I sure as hell don't want my kids to be anywhere near those kids.
Ok I'm feeling frisky tonight so I will "go there".
People want equal funding for schools because they hope this will allow their children to rise in social rank. But even beyond environmental factors such as "chaotic families", poor people are also generally less intelligent than rich people. That's one big reason they're poor, and intelligence is hereditary to some degree. Ask yourself, when choosing a mate, do you consider their intelligence as a factor? Like marries like, and begets like. The longer a population is established in an area, the more pervasive this sorting becomes.
So in order to achieve some sort of equality of outcome, equal opportunity, which in education is often measured as equal funding, is not enough. You need positive discrimination to either use quotas to fill roles or use wealth redistribution to do an end-run around the sorting mechanism of the labor market. Both lead to less aggregate wealth for society. But that is perfectly fine for some people, because "if I can't have nice things, no one can have nice things".
Well, at the risk of being seen as belonging to the other side (I vote democrat), let's all be honest here and admit that we all give priority to our own progenies over other people's. When my significant other and I have children, we will do what we can to get them into good schools and try to give them the best chances in life we could afford. And one of the things we will do to achieve this is keep them away from schools with disruptive and unmotivated kids. I went to one of those schools where the kids had no respect at all for the teachers. I sure as hell don't want my kids to be anywhere near those kids.
Teachers don't want to be around them either. Their job is to teach not to discipline. But most of their day is spent trying to teach respect and disciplining children because their parents don't. That is not their job and it takes away from teaching kids who actually want to learn. This has nothing to do with being in a wealthy district or not. It has to do with how parents are raising their kids.
I don't think you're really reading what I've been saying.
It's not that they "don't deserve" it. It all still comes down to who's going to pay for it all?
We all need to pay for the education of the children in our community whether they are rich or poor, and the reason is a very logical one:
"The link between a poor education and incarceration is borne out in data. Dropouts are 3.5 times more likely to be arrested than high school graduates. Nationally, 68 percent of all males in prison do not have a high school diploma. Only 20 percent of California inmates demonstrate a basic level of literacy, and the average offender reads at an eighth grade level." Schools v. prisons: Education’s the way to cut prison population – The Mercury News
It currently costs $75,000 to keep an inmate in a California prison for one year. California spends $8,694 dollars a year per student on education. The numbers speak for themselves
I know it's going to come as a complete shock to a couple of people here, but most crap schools were, at one time, good schools. What caused those schools to decline was a domino effect of lousy parents raising disrespectful children who didn't place any importance on education - and teachers/administration with tied hands, even in cases where they hadn't grown apathetic.
The root of the problem isn't the school, nor the administration, or the teachers. The real root of the problem are the parents - and everything snowballs from there.
Until people start telling it like it is, you won't have any accountability on the part of these parents, and the unmotivated will continue to drain the teachers and the system, and drag down the rest of their classroom and school.
How is that fair?
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