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I said I didn't have the answer, not that the answer was to leave the kid in the classroom.
I pointed out that a proposal to have a separate facility for these kids would be expensive, contrary to the idea that it wouldn't cost any more than we are now spending. Schools haven't figured out the answer to this problem in the past 200 years or so of universal education. Some private schools put up with a lot to keep a student's tuition money; this is not just a problem with public schools. I did suggest online education. Sometimes these "alternative" schools help such kids as well.
The separate facility solution does not need to be nearly as expensive as you think.
In regards to private schools, I'm sure there are some scenarios where awful students remain enrolled because parents write big checks, but that's the exception, not the rule, as a big part of the allure of private schools is the exclusivity they offer.
Okay, NOT intended to be a political post, I just want to hear from those well-versed in the education field. I posted on a thread in the politics forum and did not get an answer. I want to know what to expect now that Betsy DeVos was elected? Specifically, what's going to happen to areas which already have an excellent public school system? Are they going to be affected and lose a lot of funding, or will the local/ state levels compensate for it? I don't know enough about how school funding works, so I'd love to hear from someone who does. As a family with very young kids who just settled and bought a house primarily for its fantastic schools, just how concerned should we be?? I'm worried to be honest.
I don't think you will notice much change.
We have seen Common Core and No Child Left Behind and neither of those programs changed much, except that students were tested more. Or less.
In the end it all breaks down to who is teaching and who is administrating your particular school.
Good schools will remain good; bad schools will remain bad.
In due time, depending upon where you live, you may be given an option of sending your kids to a school outside their "district".
The separate facility solution does not need to be nearly as expensive as you think.
In regards to private schools, I'm sure there are some scenarios where awful students remain enrolled because parents write big checks, but that's the exception, not the rule, as a big part of the allure of private schools is the exclusivity they offer.
You've told us that before, but you haven't shown how.
One of the complaints about charter schools is that they take a few kids out of each classroom, meaning there's no real reduction in the number of teachers needed. This is the same situation. Plus there is the building of said facility. Where is the money going to come from? Then the facility will need to be maintained for forever, one more building for the district to take care of. There may not be enough kids in every grade level to have a full class at each level, so lots of half-full classrooms but there needs to be a teacher for each one.
It's hard to find data about private schools vs public on discipline, but I've heard many stories through the grapevine about disruptive kids of big donors getting a pass. Private schools are exclusive in that they charge tuition, sometimes a lot of it, but that doesn't always mean the education is any better.
ETA: Well, whadda ya know? As soon as I put in some different search words, I found some info. http://kidfriendlyschools.blogspot.c...te-school.html
My allowable three, well, four: "One reason is that in the recession, private schools are struggling to keep up their enrollment, and misfit kids who might have been counseled out in the past are being strung along today.
The teachers at private schools are generally accustomed to working with "easy" kids -- bright, verbal, compliant types. It's one of the perks of working at a private school, to make up for the lousy pay. So they are ill-equipped to deal with difficult kids."
Plus there's this, from the comments: "Something happened after I left that school, and my sister was still there. One of the administrators wanted to suspend some kids..so that they would miss graduation. The parents threatened to sue....and guess what, no suspension."
Last edited by Katarina Witt; 02-12-2017 at 03:46 PM..
The separate facility solution does not need to be nearly as expensive as you think.
In regards to private schools, I'm sure there are some scenarios where awful students remain enrolled because parents write big checks, but that's the exception, not the rule, as a big part of the allure of private schools is the exclusivity they offer.
The overwhelming majority of private schools in the US don't have selective admissions and are religiously affiliated. There are nearly 34,000 private schools in the US. There are maybe 1,000 private schools in the US (basically the top half of the NAIS member schools) that have the type of selective admissions and expensive tuition to be considered exclusive. As a group private schools are full of average students. As someone who attended highly selective and very expensive day and boarding schools I can tell you that those schools admit a limited number of mediocre students in return for hefty donations or to admit children of celebrities.
The biggest attraction of private schools is religious education and segregation of children by religious denomination, not exclusivity.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Clevelander17
Again, the only way everyone would get vouchers is if your state decides to go that route. The Federal government could never afford such a policy.
Congress debated voucherizing Title I funds last year during the ESSA renewal. The idea was not brought to the floor and my guess is that the idea won't get revisited soon. IMO it would make rural voters (a key Trump constituency) extremely angry as their schools tend to be more dependent on federal funds than the average public school and their districts are already in poor financial shape. That said DeVos has spent tens of millions of dollars trying to get vouchers authorized, so it isn't completely out of the question that she would encourage Congress to voucherize some federal funds.
I think the much more likely outcome is that she'll consider creating an incentive for states to voucherize their funds. Think Race to The Top type grants. Since there are plenty of deep red state legislatures and the pool of money is much larger at the state level, that's where I expect her to focus. I think it's pretty much a lock that federal tax reform will include some sort of K-12 education tax credit.
Most parents who send their children to public schools rate them well. It's going to be up to we the parents of public school students to defend our children and our schools. There isn't any other alternative. The counterintuitive effect of DeVos becoming Education Secretary is that it has raised awareness of parents how much their schools are threatened. It's also forcing Democrats to back away from their twenty-five year alliance with Republicans on education. Corey Booker has been aligned with DeVos on education since the early 2000s. All of a sudden he's discovered that he supports public schools.
Last edited by BR Valentine; 02-12-2017 at 04:33 PM..
"DeVos, now confirmed as secretary of Education, is not just another inexperienced member of the president’s Cabinet. She is an ideologue with a singular educational passion — replacing our system of democratically controlled public schools with a universal voucher program that privileges private and religious ones.
If you care about our public schools and our democracy, you should be worried."
You've told us that before, but you haven't shown how.
One of the complaints about charter schools is that they take a few kids out of each classroom, meaning there's no real reduction in the number of teachers needed. This is the same situation. Plus there is the building of said facility. Where is the money going to come from? Then the facility will need to be maintained for forever, one more building for the district to take care of. There may not be enough kids in every grade level to have a full class at each level, so lots of half-full classrooms but there needs to be a teacher for each one.
Actually I think that the biggest cost factor would be transportation, at least in my metropolitan area. There are tons of empty school buildings in Greater Cleveland and the same is probably true in many locales that have overbuilt and/or lost population in recent years. But I get your point. My argument is simply that it should not result in many additional costs because it would just be about re-assigning students and staff.
And in regards to charter schools (which is why I bolded that statement), I wholeheartedly agree with you that the duplication of services creates added costs and loss of efficiency that few people realize. But my proposal is to head off the argument that many charter school proponents make that public school environments are not conducive to learning (and in many urban schools, that is true because of the bad apples). In a perfect world, we wouldn't be having this conversation about competition in education because it's ridiculous. However if competition is the direction we're headed, then public schools would be wise to "innovate" by using the same tactics, including sorting out these aforementioned bad apples.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Katarina Witt
It's hard to find data about private schools vs public on discipline, but I've heard many stories through the grapevine about disruptive kids of big donors getting a pass. Private schools are exclusive in that they charge tuition, sometimes a lot of it, but that doesn't always mean the education is any better.
ETA: Well, whadda ya know? As soon as I put in some different search words, I found some info. Coalition for Kid-Friendly Schools: Disruptive Kids in Private School
My allowable three, well, four: "One reason is that in the recession, private schools are struggling to keep up their enrollment, and misfit kids who might have been counseled out in the past are being strung along today.
The teachers at private schools are generally accustomed to working with "easy" kids -- bright, verbal, compliant types. It's one of the perks of working at a private school, to make up for the lousy pay. So they are ill-equipped to deal with difficult kids."
Plus there's this, from the comments: "Something happened after I left that school, and my sister was still there. One of the administrators wanted to suspend some kids..so that they would miss graduation. The parents threatened to sue....and guess what, no suspension."
Hey, we agree again. Private schools offer exclusivity, which does not mean a better education, just a less disruptive environment (in some cases).
The overwhelming majority of private schools in the US don't have selective admissions and are religiously affiliated. There are nearly 34,000 private schools in the US. There are maybe 1,000 private schools in the US (basically the top half of the NAIS member schools) that have the type of selective admissions and expensive tuition to be considered exclusive. As a group private schools are full of average students. As someone who attended highly selective and very expensive day and boarding schools I can tell you that those schools admit a limited number of mediocre students in return for hefty donations or to admit children of celebrities.
The biggest attraction of private schools is religious education and segregation of children by religious denomination, not exclusivity.
I realize that, but even in most of those religiously-affiliated private schools, they're not enrolling seriously disruptive students or those with severe disabilities.
That said DeVos has spent tens of millions of dollars trying to get vouchers authorized, so it isn't completely out of the question that she would encourage Congress to voucherize some federal funds.
I think the much more likely outcome is that she'll consider creating an incentive for states to voucherize their funds. Think Race to The Top type grants. I think it's pretty much a lock that federal tax reform will include some sort of K-12 education tax credit.
In regards to the first part, I think the "voucherization" of any Federal funding is unlikely to occur given the renewal of the ESSA.
I don't know about the grant incentives. People on both sides of the aisle, particularly fiscal conservative, are still pretty raw about the methods by which Obama was able to convince states to take on Federal education policies.
In regards to the K-12 education tax credit, that's probably one of the more likely policies to be implemented considering similar credits are already in place for postsecondary education.
Actually I think that the biggest cost factor would be transportation, at least in my metropolitan area. There are tons of empty school buildings in Greater Cleveland and the same is probably true in many locales that have overbuilt and/or lost population in recent years. But I get your point. My argument is simply that it should not result in many additional costs because it would just be about re-assigning students and staff.
And in regards to charter schools (which is why I bolded that statement), I wholeheartedly agree with you that the duplication of services creates added costs and loss of efficiency that few people realize. But my proposal is to head off the argument that many charter school proponents make that public school environments are not conducive to learning (and in many urban schools, that is true because of the bad apples). In a perfect world, we wouldn't be having this conversation about competition in education because it's ridiculous. However if competition is the direction we're headed, then public schools would be wise to "innovate" by using the same tactics, including sorting out these aforementioned bad apples.
Hey, we agree again. Private schools offer exclusivity, which does not mean a better education, just a less disruptive environment (in some cases).
You still don't get it! Let's say you have a school with 100 kids per grade level. (This is common in elementary schools in my area.) So you have 4 rounds of 25 students in each grade. Take 1-2 kids out of each classroom, you have 4-8 kids. You're going to send them to this special school. You still have 4 rounds at the regular school, and 1 round of let's say 6 kids at the new school. So you have 5 teachers where you previously had 4. It would take 4 schools to fill up one classroom of these "disruptive" kids, and you'd still have an extra teacher, maybe two because they'd probably need some help with these kids.
I only brought up charter schools because the same logic applies there. And it's biased to say the bad apples are only in urban districts. Statistics are not on the charter schools' side, anyway.
I don't agree at all that private schools have less disruptive kids! BR Valentine pointed that out. Anecdotally, I know several people who sent their kids to private, usually religious schools to "straighten them out" when they were having behavior issues in the public schools. Generally what happened was the kids connected with disruptive kids at these new schools and continued with the same behavior. The private schools didn't kick them out either.
Transportation costs are a drop in the bucket. Drivers make less than teachers and only work a few hours a day. If the buses are already owned by the district, there's no extra vehicle charge, just the costs of running it. I agree if there are unused old buildings, they could be used. But they'd still have to be heated, electrified, have the water turned on, and be maintained.
Another thing-how would you decide who should be sent to these schools? What criteria would you use? I could just imagine the parental reaction to sending their kids to a type of "reform school".
Last edited by Katarina Witt; 02-12-2017 at 05:55 PM..
My entire family went to public schools and they were a tremendous benefit to all of us.
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