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People work harder and longer to beat the competition. Why put in long hours of practice, studying or class preparation if it doesn't matter?
The leap from "competing against myself" to "if it doesn't matter" is just off.
It matters and matters vitally - I want to do my best. I want a personal best. I want to be able to play better.
I am VERY competitive... but not the way you speak about.
I would rather lose a well played game than win a poorly played game, every time. And I play games I am poor at quite happily for the pleasure of playing it.
Many of my track friends ran to run. To set new personal best marks. A successful race was one in which they beat their prior record - and if they beat the other runner, that was good, too... but beating the other runner while running a moderately slow time was a disappointment.
Musicians, too. They play and practice to master their instruments. Some of them live for competition. Some of them live for recitals and performance. But plenty of them play to play - and to do so as well as they possibly can.
Have you met the parents? Most parents may want the best for their kids but most will take the path of least resistance and accept the best they can get witn minimal effort. Even I did that. I could have worked my butt off and bought a house in the best district around. Instead, I chose to live where I do and enjoy a level of financial security I couldn't have there.
That's your choice, and they have theirs. So what? *I* wouldn't chose a school of least resistance for my kids, but I certainly don't begrudge other parents the choice to do that. It's elitist to think that my way is the best way.
Apparently, proper use of capitalization is hard to get.
Anyway, I teach in a school of choice, we average 6 children per available space. So how do you pick who gets which spot?
The district I went to has a one "choice" high school. It's different than yours, though, in that you can either be zoned there or choose it because your high school is failing. It isn't the top school in the district, but it is the only in district choice. The school has hardly any openings every year. It chooses who gets to go by who has the lowest-income.
What could end up is that there would be smaller public schools and the students that are left there would be your typical vocational students, not academic students. Maybe a magnet school to house the academic ones in the system and the rest are taught trades.
You see, everyone is not equal and everyone cannot go to college.
But K-12 today says they are and they can. This is just backlash from parents fed up with the system.
I would be fine with lots of smaller, heavily tracked schools. My district is a proof of the outstanding success these programs can have (we have five magnets and a handful of voc programs and two of our schools made the top 20 list this year).
But, those programs should be public because the best way to save money is to share services, not put taxpayers money in the hands of private corporations.
You really have to face the basic Root Cause Analysis problem in all this.
I see you do 100,000 rationalizations, strawman arguments, poor-mouth any other options . . but there is really one thing this is all about . . . .
If the Public Schools were doing a Good Job -- we would not want to get away from you.
Summary Bottom Line. Public Schools in the US -- and especially some areas -- are doing Crap Work Product.
That is ALL that is driving this. Face it.
Why the low quality and why do you wish to maintain low quality?
Are you General Motors, or what?
Get away from us? I told you we turn away 5 kids for every one we accept.
So lets actually look at the problem instead of just proposing a known flawed solution. Go look at every district that has "vouchers". I posted links to several. It isn't working. Charter schools perform worse than there local public school more often than they perform better. That is a FACT.
The solution to fixing this real problem is not to hire private corporations to education children.
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