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And the for-profit 'educational' warehouses that are sure to open.
That's an interesting skew. Most NYC public schools (the bottom 60%) are warehouses for children during the day. The graduation rate in NYC is a tad over 60%. That's right - 4 out of 10 kids don't even finish HS.
The charters, which are 90% minority, exceed those schools on every level. They have entry by lottery and virtual all are oversubscribed.
I wonder if any of you who think vouchers are a good idea are teachers? I'm guessing you're not. Charters and vouchers are exactly why I quit working as a teacher: the pay at private schools is abysmal and charters go through teachers like I go through cheap underwear. By applying business models like "the customer is always right", we will see the death of the career-teacher, and your kids will only be taught by newbies who will be thrown in the trash in a few years. And don't be fooled if your child's teacher is older: there's lots of insta-teacher programs for people with degrees in other fields.
I don't know how good schools can be when all the teachers are inexperienced. We want our doctors, lawyers, and mechanics to have years of experience, but for some reason not the person we trust with our children. Strange.
Glad I quit teaching when did. All I can do is shake my head at the short-sightedness of all this.
Again this is only a limited thing until 2017. Basically it is unlikely that the Republicans will hold the legislature particularly if it turns into a strong Democratic year. Sandoval will remain governor so he will protect this stuff but he can only do so much. It may be impossible for a Democrat majority to repeal the vouchers...but they can likely do other things like refusing to fund them.
If the voucher program survives 2017 then we may begin to see some serious implementations to take advantage of it.
It will be interesting to see if any group tries to take advantage of the law though.
That's an interesting skew. Most NYC public schools (the bottom 60%) are warehouses for children during the day. The graduation rate in NYC is a tad over 60%. That's right - 4 out of 10 kids don't even finish HS.
The charters, which are 90% minority, exceed those schools on every level. They have entry by lottery and virtual all are oversubscribed.
Are you of the opinion that if all the students from public school went to charters, that graduation rates would improve?
Quote:
Originally Posted by TurquoiseSky
I wonder if any of you who think vouchers are a good idea are teachers? I'm guessing you're not. Charters and vouchers are exactly why I quit working as a teacher: the pay at private schools is abysmal and charters go through teachers like I go through cheap underwear. By applying business models like "the customer is always right", we will see the death of the career-teacher, and your kids will only be taught by newbies who will be thrown in the trash in a few years. And don't be fooled if your child's teacher is older: there's lots of insta-teacher programs for people with degrees in other fields.
I don't know how good schools can be when all the teachers are inexperienced. We want our doctors, lawyers, and mechanics to have years of experience, but for some reason not the person we trust with our children. Strange.
Glad I quit teaching when did. All I can do is shake my head at the short-sightedness of all this.
I was very onboard with charter and vouchers. I haven't seen anything with vouchers, but the charters have not panned out with few exceptions. Like most things, you cannot anticipate everything that could happen. The best charter school I've seen has been rife with scandal over hiring and firing practices. The only reason the students do well is that the school is exclusive. It's great for neighborhood's, high performing children who have had to go to their zoned school along with all the kids that the schools must accept. At least it gets them out of that environment.
I wish vouchers would work. That is for the students that need it the most. The students who come from families that don't value education. It won't help the students who are failing.
We do it for hospitals, too. Medicare and Medicaid is used in private and public hospitals.
It isn't privatizing education. Hospitals and colleges have private and public entities. The obvious winners are poor kids who wanted to go to private schools but couldn't afford it. The obvious losers are publice schools which are certain to lose students and, presumably, some amount of funding.
Will it make a huge difference in the end as far as improving education is concerned? Our public school system is about average even those it's the most expensive in the world (except for a couple of minor league countries). Our college system is the best in the world and kids from every country want to attend it.
"We do it for hospitals, too. Medicare and Medicaid is used in private and public hospitals."
Well, in terms of private hospitals (which for specialized care may give the best there is), yes and no. The private hospital that I used to go to would, if you didn't have any insurance, or only had Medicare/Medicaid, if you did not have a life-threatening issue when you arrived there, they would gladly call you a taxi to send you to whatever other hospital you wanted to go to (and let them deal with it). This is becoming more and more common. The hospitals cannot afford to constantly lose money, so that is where the entire Obamacare is a fallacy... it requires that you have insurance, but there is no guarantee of the quality of the insurance, nor what places will take it.
I can see an uptick in "home schooling" by those who want to pocket the money.
Same problem the Catholics have. Kid has to be in public school for 100 days which practically means a year. The real home schoolers won't do that.
You might be right though. Single Mom with three kids in public school could pull them out and pick up a sizable sum...wonder if that works? If it is additive to other benefits it could be very popular.
The private sector(or non profit)almost always can run a given entity better than the government. How many local or state governments, not to mention the federal gov't, would actually be profitable if they were a private business?
Eh... keep in mind that businesses are masters of passing costs onto the taxpayers, the customers, and even the government itself - remember the Bailouts in 2008 and beyond, for example. Let's not go down the "business good, government bad" fallacy any further.
As for this idea, just another way for somebody to make a buck at the expense of students. We'll no doubt see fundamentalist lunatic schools teaching nonsense and probably some corporate BS schools teaching similar drek. But if you have enough money, you can still get a decent education - but that's the only way. Typical.
The state has passed a new law allowing any family at all to withdraw their kid from public schooling and instead get cash ($5,100 to $5,700 each year) to attend the private or church school of their choice. Other states mainly limit this ability -- if it's there at all--to the very poor or to kids with disabilities. But in Nevada it will now be available to ALL parents, including home-schooling parents, regardless of income, disability, location, or whatever:
Eh... keep in mind that businesses are masters of passing costs onto the taxpayers, the customers, and even the government itself - remember the Bailouts in 2008 and beyond, for example. Let's not go down the "business good, government bad" fallacy any further.
As for this idea, just another way for somebody to make a buck at the expense of students. We'll no doubt see fundamentalist lunatic schools teaching nonsense and probably some corporate BS schools teaching similar drek. But if you have enough money, you can still get a decent education - but that's the only way. Typical.
Yup.
The "best schools will rise to the top under a free market" thing is a fantasy.
It will be the schools who can sell parents on their idea of an education while still making a profit who will rise. So of course, kids with parents who are savvy about real education and have money to supplement the vouchers will be fine. Everyone else will get what they get.
And screw the kids who are expensive to teach. You can't make a profit off those kids so they are out of luck. Ditto the difficult to teach. Why take them on when you don't have to?
This is not comparable to colleges. Colleges are largely public or non profit and they do not have to educate everyone, only the "best" and most willing from high school. And they can turn down who they want. The for profit colleges tend to be the WORST options. They market dreams to unsuspecting people and fleece them for cash. Why we want to unleash that on our K-12 system is beyond me.
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