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Post 20 Nov 2017, 10:00 am

Geojanes,
Great posting. I enjoyed the numbers from the tax form. A million is a large number. Yet, your school did it. Do you think it could do more if the DOE gave the money to parents of students and let them create an education and structure that fit the neighborhood specific niche?

To answer your question, If the standard set by the DOE is not achieved, give the money to the parents and if it is so important (as you say it is!), then they will find a way.
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Post 20 Nov 2017, 12:34 pm

bbauska
People in the US are not oppressed.


Such a low bar you seek to achieve. Aren't you interested in the US competing with the nations that lead in terms of quality of life measurements?

People in the US do not have nearly the social mobility they had after World War Two. You should be concerned about the erosion in social mobility. A decline in the quality of education is part of the problem.

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/ar ... ca/491240/

One of the great engines of social mobility is a quality education. Unfortunately when education becomes funded by parents, or communities rather than general taxation ... the quality of education varies greatly. Money does equate, at least to some degree, to the quality of an education.
You increase the socio-economic divide over time, when elementary and secondary educational systems aren't equally funded and equally resourced.
You decrease social mobility...

The same thing happens when the cost of post secondary education moves out of the affordable range for many poor, working class and middle class.
Moreover, when the cost of a university degree comes with enormous debt, even those who manage to achieve such start their working life with a large handicap.

The problem with diminished social mobility is two fold. It erodes the meritocracy that private enterprise is supposed to both benefit from and cultivate.
It ultimately leads to an unhappy people. In the past, resentment towards economic disparity like we saw in the gilded age fueled the rise of communism. That economic disparity has already arrived again in the US, and policies that erode the general quality of education for the working and middle classes will only bake the disparity in.... leading to ?
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Post 20 Nov 2017, 12:38 pm

RickyP muted and opinion not read
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Post 21 Nov 2017, 6:49 am

bbauska wrote:RickyP muted and opinion not read


Can you explain what you mean by muted and why you did so?
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Post 21 Nov 2017, 8:14 am

Ray Jay wrote:
bbauska wrote:RickyP muted and opinion not read


Can you explain what you mean by muted and why you did so?


If RickyP won't answer questions, I will not even bother to read his posts. He will become as a muted TV..

Geojanes has been wonderfully conversational. RickyP wants to apply "personal responsibility" to me, but not everyone else. He has done the same with my Christianity. He uses that to say that I should act a certain way, but does not expect others to do the same.

Rather than argue and call names, I will just ignore and mute him in my mind and actions.
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Post 21 Nov 2017, 8:34 am

makes sense!
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Post 22 Nov 2017, 5:48 am

bbauska wrote:Geojanes,
Great posting. I enjoyed the numbers from the tax form. A million is a large number. Yet, your school did it. Do you think it could do more if the DOE gave the money to parents of students and let them create an education and structure that fit the neighborhood specific niche?

To answer your question, If the standard set by the DOE is not achieved, give the money to the parents and if it is so important (as you say it is!), then they will find a way.


No, I don't. Teaching is a highly skilled profession. I can't imagine having to be responsible for that entirely by myself.

Frankly, Brad, what you're suggesting is a recipe complete disaster. Most parents don't know the best way to educate their children, because they aren't educated themselves, Heck, I don't know the best way to educate my kids, because I'm not a teacher. We hire people to do that, like you hire plumbers and mechanics, because they know more than we do to do a job. Would you advocate for people to fix their own roofs when they leak? Maybe if they're handy, but you're not going to say everyone can do a better job than a roofer. Why are you treating teachers so differently? I don't understand it.
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Post 22 Nov 2017, 7:33 am

Geojanes, you don't understand me. I want the money to be attached to the student, and let the parent decide what school is best for their child; not that home education is the best and only option.

Using your example, the government should tell you what plumber/mechanic to be using. I certainly want to choose what plumber/mechanic to use, as I would think you would as well.

In that vein, there are plumbing jobs that a DIY person can do. Are you saying the government is needed to replace a faucet? Heck I have done that more than a few times. Also, I know, my limitations. I do not do hardly any mechanical jobs on vehicles. There are MANY who should not teach their children.

Are you saying that only a certified teacher will be a good teacher? Newsflash! there are bad professional teachers, just like there are bad private teachers, and bad homeschool teachers.

I want to be clear that I think the parents are the best choice in making the choice of what school to send their children to. Let me make sure I understand you. Are you saying that you don't want the parent to have the money to choose what school to send their child/children to?
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Post 22 Nov 2017, 2:36 pm

bbauska wrote:I want to be clear that I think the parents are the best choice in making the choice of what school to send their children to. Let me make sure I understand you. Are you saying that you don't want the parent to have the money to choose what school to send their child/children to?


I want every school to be a great school so that we did not have to have this discussion.

That said, I think the age of the child matters a lot in your question. Young children should go to school close to home. It's important for their social networks, it's important for them to spend more time at school and at home. Spending a huge amount of time commuting is bad for young children. High schoolers, on the other hand, you can argue can travel where they want to. Middle schoolers could be inbetween.

The choice model you describe exists in many places. In NYC every HS student can apply to any HS in the City they desire. There are so many students many schools end up specializing to attract kids who are interested in similar things. A performing arts HS, several computer science HS, Math and Science High schools, the HS of American Studies, Aviation HS to appeal to kids interested in working in the field of aviation! There are probably over 100 to chose from. Middle schoolers also have a large number to choose from, but not quite as many as HS, because there are some geographic limitations.

In Boston, elementary school kids had a large amount of choices only limited by one of the three districts in the City. It required a system where nearly 10% of the education budget was spent on transporting kids to school and, related, Boston public schools had the shortest school day in the state. Boston recently implemented a new system, and I'm not sure how that is going since I'm no longer involved there, but the idea was to reduce the journey to school by limiting choices to fewer schools that are only nearby, balancing choice and transportation cost.

Michigan has fully embraced schools of choice. Detroit public schools went from 150,000 students in 2002 to 50,000 students in 2012 as students fled the system. But the Detroit system has been an unmitigated disaster. The schools were crap, mostly, but what's happened is that people were allowed to choose schools in suburban communities that had room, but no transportation was provided, so only students who could transport themselves were given choices, creating a huge burden on those families, as the schools were almost always very far from home. But since so many students left the system, the DPS closed hundreds of schools around the city, and they were abandoned, hulks blighting already blighted neighborhoods. You might say, "well, they got what they deserved, and you might be right, but there was, and still isn't, any plan for the thousands of kids who can't get to a school and no longer have a neighborhood school. These are the kids of some of the poorest, least capable parents in the country, and their kids are completely screwed because someone (Betsy Devos, mostly) had the idea that choice is good, but didn't actually game it out to see what would happen.

The NYC system is crazy, but for a choice system in middle and high school, it works OK, but the testing and application system is much more rigorous than anything I ever did, including college. And it starts in the middle school process where the key test is in the 4th grade! That's awfully early to start high stakes testing! It also only works because there is a good transportation system. It's a rite of passage: getting their metrocard and traveling by themselves to school when 6th grade starts.

So, in my opinion, I believe there is some value to choice. But I also believe that most of the choice systems that have been implemented have serious problems that victimize the people you and I should be most interested in protecting: the most vulnerable among us.
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Post 23 Nov 2017, 7:53 am

geojanes wrote:
bbauska wrote:I want to be clear that I think the parents are the best choice in making the choice of what school to send their children to. Let me make sure I understand you. Are you saying that you don't want the parent to have the money to choose what school to send their child/children to?


I want every school to be a great school so that we did not have to have this discussion.


This. A million times, this.
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Post 23 Nov 2017, 9:10 am

danivon wrote:
geojanes wrote:
bbauska wrote:I want to be clear that I think the parents are the best choice in making the choice of what school to send their children to. Let me make sure I understand you. Are you saying that you don't want the parent to have the money to choose what school to send their child/children to?


I want every school to be a great school so that we did not have to have this discussion.


This. A million times, this.


Me too with this caveat: you'll not have "great schools" without great families. Not every family has to be great, but our society has devolved to this: two working parents, everyone too busy on social media and texting to spend any time together as a family. Children are raised to believe they are more important than their teachers, therefore need show no respect.

You can't have "great schools" in an environment in which the teachers are second-class citizens in their own classrooms.
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Post 27 Nov 2017, 10:23 am

geojanes wrote:
bbauska wrote:
I
want to be clear that I think the parents are the best choice in making the choice of what school to send their children to. Let me make sure I understand you. Are you saying that you don't want the parent to have the money to choose what school to send their child/children to?



I want every school to be a great school so that we did not have to have this discussion.


Personal responsibility, cannot by and of itself,achieve the delivery of an educational system that has the goal of delivering a positive experience for all children. Personal responsibility (of parents) will always fail a large segment of children.
Do you simply abandon the children with poor parents, or lousy families, or can an educational system mitigate for these children.
Can you guarantee that all parents have the ability to make good decisions for their children? I don't think so. If an educational system can help parents arrive at good decisions then that's good.

The notion of "best practices" is used throughout the business community, and industry to seek out and learn from exemplary performers in the field .
Finland is considered the leading educational system in the world. When you consider all of the elements of the system, one doesn't find an emphasis on "personal responsibility". Rather the opposite. Society has chosen to be responsible for providing a comprehensive, maybe even holistic, educational experience provided by the brightest and best educators.
I suspect its a little easier being a good parent in Finland because of this support.
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Post 27 Nov 2017, 3:19 pm

bbauska wrote:I want to be clear that I think the parents are the best choice in making the choice of what school to send their children to. Let me make sure I understand you. Are you saying that you don't want the parent to have the money to choose what school to send their child/children to?


I should have included the caveat that I was only talking about public schools in my long post. Handing public money to private schools is I think a much bigger step. There are very limited situations where this might be appropriate, where the local schools are so bad that the child has no chance of succeeding, but those cases would have to be limited.
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Post 27 Nov 2017, 4:40 pm

I think handing money to a school that is the BEST choice for a student is exactly what needs to happen. If there are schools that are not succeeding (yes, any school - public, private or home) then they should not be funded,

Are you saying that unsuccessful schools should be funded? I would want the parents of students in that school to be able to take the money to another school and help the student succeed.

Is every student successful. Certainly not. Is every school successful? No, they are not.

Allowing a parent the choice, and the funds to better a student's specific need is better for the student.

Are you afraid that the public schools will not be able to perform as well as other options, and the students would be going to a better school? Why do you want the students to remain in an under-performing school if that is the situation?
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Post 28 Nov 2017, 4:30 am

To answer the original post: If you assume that the only beneficiaries of education are the parents of kids who are in education, it makes sense to claim it is about "paying for what you use"

But that would be a false assumption. Firstly, the primary beneficiaries of education are the recipients, but of course kids can't pay for their education at the time. Here's an idea: they pay taxes as an adult in order to cover the costs of their childhood schooling!

Secondly, the benefits of education are far wider. Employers are only able to fill positions if they can find people with at least basic skills. Important jobs in society rely on there being highly educated and skilled people available. That takes years to achieve, per person, and markets are very poor at driving such long term investment (it is quicker to import skilled workers or export work than it is to wait for a skills gap to be filled).

Thirdly, the problem with not just hypothecation of tax, but restricting it just to "those who benefit" is that makes the system much less viable, and each section more variable from year to year. You would see sudden tax hikes affecting parents some years, or sudden drops, not because of the overall cost of their kids' education, but because of other factors.

And to respond to the "funding bad schools" thing, actually it can work well, and if you can turn around a poorly performing school it has massive benefits. Here in the UK the initial Academy programme did this - poorly performing schools were funded directly by the Education Dept, with not for profit corporate sponsorship and often involvement, investment in resources and buildings (outdated schools being rebuilt or replaced), and many of them improved greatly.