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This should not be a "race" issue. All people should be able to have choices for their children's education, and not just richer people. I do not see why this should have anything to do with the predominant skin color of a community in question. Clearly, that is how Democrats have been approaching this, however.
Everyone should have choices regarding their children's schools. The lack of alternatives has been nothing short of catastrophic on generation after generation of lower income students who the Democrat left has intransigently refused to allow to escape this cycle.
This is the civil rights issue of our time. There is literally nothing being proposed that has the power to do more to transform the lives of disadvantaged communities over the longer term by giving their children access to educational alternatives and the improved career and economic prospects that comes from a quality education.
Then do you suggest using busing to send low income children to better schools? Busing has been tried before, but a lot of people didn't like it.
Blah, blah, blah. 50 years and more, the Democrat left has been singing this song. And during that time - with Democrats in control in these cities and school districts - most of the worst of these schools have only gotten even more worse.
The conservative right supports these ideas, as they would like to see everyone receive the benefit of a quality basic education, which clearly has not been happening in these lower income Democrat run districts for 50+ years. It is the Democrats who are blocking progress on this, because they are control freaks and want centralized, bureaucratically top-heavy school administration, which is pretty clearly being run for the benefit of the administrators and the teachers unions, and not for the children.
If the Democrats would support these changes, they would happen. But the inconvenient truth is - as demonstrated by the results - that they just do not care. What is important to the Democrat left leaders of this cabal is that their control of this mess, results be damned.
But are you willing to pay higher taxes to come up with the money to level dilapidated schools in poor neighborhoods and replace them with new ones?
Then do you suggest using busing to send low income children to better schools? Busing has been tried before, but a lot of people didn't like it.
No. Allow charter schools to set up locations in these neighborhoods, which parents can then apply to send their children to. There are already quite a few charter schools up and running around the country.
Charter schools are public schools. They are regulated by the state, but they are not run directly by the local school district. They are funded on a per student basis the same way as traditional public schools, many of which have been failing their communities consistently for decades.
It is time for a change. It is time to provide an alternative to these failed establishment public schools. Enough time and money have been spent already experimenting with this. Doing more of the same things and expecting a different result is the definition of insanity. It is now time to seek an alternative solution that has a chance to produce the desired results.
This should not be a "race" issue. All people should be able to have choices for their children's education, and not just richer people. I do not see why this should have anything to do with the predominant skin color of a community in question. Clearly, that is how Democrats have been approaching this, however.
Everyone should have choices regarding their children's schools. The lack of alternatives has been nothing short of catastrophic on generation after generation of lower income students who the Democrat left has intransigently refused to allow to escape this cycle.
This is the civil rights issue of our time. There is literally nothing being proposed that has the power to do more to transform the lives of disadvantaged communities over the longer term by giving their children access to educational alternatives and the improved career and economic prospects that comes from a quality education.
Not all school boards are democratic-- this one falls on MONEY - follow the money .
We have been hearing this same song from the Democrat left for 50+ years now that they have been in control in these areas. State taxes are high, educational spending at the district level is very high. We have been blindly and indiscriminately throwing money at these problems for decades under Democrat party leadership. The result has been straight up failure.
Another 50 years of protecting the "heritage" of the failed schools in these poverty stricken areas by throwing money at them is beyond stupid. The metric of success has to be educational outcome, not "how much are we spending?" Which is already a lot, by the way.
It is time for some academic re-gentrification with regards to education of children in disadvantaged areas. More of the same tried and failed policies is not the answer. There have already been multiple generations of people who have been deprived of these basic opportunities - many times not even being taught how to read. Generations of lives have been wasted by Democrats who have championed these consistently failed policies.
There has to be another way. There is in fact. School choice. Give them choices as to where to send their children to school, and do not put them into 12 years of academic lockdown with not even a chance to learn, develop and to grow.
Our state has been Republican-controlled since Ronald Reagan kicked off his first presidential campaign here. I literally passed him on my way out of the Neshoba County Fair as he was on his way in. State taxes are extremely low and our public roads, schools, and nearly everything else shows it. The school district barely spends $9,000 per pupil, while the private school tuition is over double that. No one has ever tried throwing money at anything here since the 1960's when the schools were just fine for the majority of the population. It's not only Democrats who don't institute successful policies.
I agree that outcome, not input is the metric of success. The question is the tool or tools that will be used to measure it. My point is not that we don't spend enough for public schools. Rather it is why say that per-pupil funding doesn't matter when clearly for people who can choose to spend more money on schools than many people earn working two jobs, it absolutely matters. That is unless you believe that the only reason that private schools charge two to four times as much as public schools is just to control their students' dating pool. Either it takes a lot of money to educate children properly and some children simply don't warrant having so much money spent on their educations, or parents are spending small (or large) fortunes for reasons that have nothing to do with education at all.
The word "heritage" here can be a code word. The heritage of the school where I teach is that it was at one time the only high school in the state where some students were allowed to attend. Whole communities would get together to enable a deserving child the chance to live with a family and attend high school because they were not allowed at any other public school in the state. The heritage of the school is one of excellence and I am one who is trying to restore that legacy.
I know more intimately than you might imagine that generations of children have not even been served by learning how to read well. By now I have dozens and dozens of "grandchildren," students who are the children of my former students. In all that time, the average reading level has been about half what it should be by high school. I consistently assign as homework for my students to read and read to the little kids, so that they can help change the world for the better. Some do. In fact, I had an epiphany this year when I thought that perhaps our enrollment drop has come about due to the better education that we had been providing for our students who then moved their children out of the ghetto.
As I've said before, school choice only exists on the side of the school. For choice to truly be authentic, a high-quality neighborhood school is essential. Anything else accedes to the belief that not all children's lives matter.
But are you willing to pay higher taxes to come up with the money to level dilapidated schools in poor neighborhoods and replace them with new ones?
Everyone should want the kids to progress. We have a HUGE problem in FL with snowbirds not wanting to pay the taxes for kids schools. They raised theirs and paid the high taxes in their own state, and neighborhood and now they do not want to pay the next kids. We pay our school from property tax and the all have Exemptions. So...
Inner-city school districts spend more per pupil than any other school districts. The additional spending hasn't fixed the problem. Give everyone a choice. No more trapping kids in high-spending but low-performing schools.
Are you OK with spending your tax dollars to make sure that those schools are equally accessible to all? It means having buses running all over town, or maybe giving vouchers for public transit too. But unless you are willing to put your money where your mouth is, then it's all just lip-service. Giving people options that they can't take advantage of is really giving them nothing (more likely taking what little they already have).
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