PeterDavid.net

but, as a liberal, aren't you supposed to love unions no matter what?

Actually, though, I see your point. I think that point of a school is to provide the best education possible no matter what. Sometimes though, schools go overboard in some areas. For instance, at my high school of 800 kids, we had four vice-principals, more then most schools three times our size. and yet, they were constantly whining about a) not having enough money, and b) not controling the students.

Much as I hate to suggest it....we should privatize education. give a company a set of stringent standards, give 'em cash, and let em go.

hell, can't be any worse.

Is a school system a business? Does a school system operate in the same way that a corporation does? Is it designed to achieve the same ends that a business does? The answer to all these questions is 'no'. This is an analogy that cropped up during the 80s when every aspect of our culture was looked at throught the lens of the bottom-line business model; a model that is fine for businesses, but schools don't operate that way. So to treat a school system as such is flawed from the beginning. And while you're paying lip-service to the overworked teachers, all your proposal offers is to work them over some more.

The problem has more to do with the school systems being continually forced to do more with less, or rather, more with none.

In Respectful Disagreement,
Mark W.

What a load of crap.

The underpaid teachers should take a paycut to help YOUR kids to do extracurricular stuff so YOU don't have to pay any more money?

Sounds like the crap that the overpaid politicians would shovel--but you'll never hear them mention a paycut for themselves.

Someone needs to start asking why most politicians in office are making more than double the average worker's salary.

If we could cut the politicians' salaries we could divert that money where it's needed, like the schools.

Anybody got a button maker? Peter needs a button:

Insitement to riot? Ask me how!

Yet another reason why no vote or referendum should not be passed without a majority of registered voters participating.

I have to say I don't think the "little people" who you admit are underpaid should have to chip in to help with a situation that sounds like it's the result of bad law. Surely this is when the state should step in and help out the school district, rather than saying, "Screw you... cut everything that makes school a more human environment and you have to pay out of your pocket to get it back." And by "you" here I mean the parents too. It seems like there should be some serious lobbying/protesting going on, rather than forcing parents and teachers and school staff to scramble to cover expenses for which I assume the state has the money to pay for.

And as someone already pointed out, education is not a business. Schools are not corporations, nor should they EVER be thought of as such. For one, their goal has to ultimately be enlightenment, rather than profit. If you let it be made into a profit-driven system, you might as well just shut public schools down because I'm sure by corporate standards schools are dreadful wastes of money.

Folks should remember that there are more unions than just the teachers...

-K

Peter really does have a point. Well maybe not with the teachers taking paycuts, but someone should be looking at the schools to make sure that all of the money is being well spent. It's not a business and doesn't operate like one. That could be a problem. Perhaps the officials while generally well-meaning might not be using their resources efficiently. They might be, but it really doesn't hurt to examine the system.

James--I think a number of schools have tried that. I keep hearing, when I'm at university in Philly, about the Edison schools, which are privatized. Apparently it's an unmitigated disaster.

For myself, I side with Aaron Sorkin (in the voice of Sam Seaborn): "[E]ducation is the silver bullet. Education is everything. We don't need little changes. We need gigantic monumental changes. Schools should be palaces. The competition for the best teachers should be fierce. They should be making six-figure salaries.
School should be incredibly expensive for government and absolutely free of charge to its citizens, just like national defense. That’s my position. I just haven't figured out how to do it yet."

But, of course, that's not quite the issue. What bothers me (and, I think, Peter) is the idea that there are any suggestions that can't be discussed, because no one will listen to each other. Maybe there were perfectly good reasons that the unions cutting back wouldn't work, but the parents wouldn't listen because they were all furious, and the officials wouldn't entertain the debate.

I read a story some months ago about some kids who hacked into their schools network because the admin was a moron and they guessed the passwords.. it was a fairly typical "string'em up" article.

What was interesting about it though was the FAQ on the schools website. It stated that if a parent wanted to buy one of the laptops that the kids received from the school so they could keep it through out the summer then it would cost the parents $3400. This may not seem like a huge amount for a laptop to some people. But these were $1k 12" iBooks.. I sat for hours trying to figure out WTF kind of software a high school kid would need that would $2400. I added up the cost for retail versions of Photoshop, MSOffice, 3Dcad and anything else I could think of. And it came nowhere near $2400. I know for a fact that students pay about 1/3 of retail for MSOffice and the other titles are given at substantial discounts to students.

So my question to PAD or anyone else.. why do teachers and the like need to take hits to make up for piss poor management? I mean this isn't an Mac vs Windows thing.. the machines they got can be had a damn nice student discount and so can the software. Who the *uc* is padding their pockets at our expense? I'd say we SHOULD do what businesses do.. when things seem out of whack .. have an audit. They can then make the findings public at the PTA meetings or whatever. It's time that taxpayers and parts got the most bang for the buck. We need to stop letting the private sector screw the public sector.. because what they are doing is screwing us.

I like to have someone who is screwing me to at LEAST buy me dinner first. ;)

Again, all PAD was asking was whether anyone had even looked into the idea of trimming any of the other budgets around the school. And, as so many have shown here, even raising the concept sets off so many people, on so many barely-related tangents, that it's never even discussed.

Perhaps there are good reasons why no other monies are avilable. Perhaps the administration actually is running efficiently, and perhaps the teachers have been cut to the bone and beyond (that last is true in many districts, including San Diego Unified). The salient point here is that we will never know, because the very idea is off-limits. And I don't think that, in a situation like this, any ideas should be off-limits...

> [Teachers] should be making six-figure salaries.

I've never quite understood the "teachers are grossly underpaid!" meme.

I would suggest that some proportion of teachers are the epitome of teacherdom and are grossly underpaid. Some (perhaps much larger) proportion of teachers are being paid exactly what their qualifications and abilities deserve; some are being grossly overpaid for their abilities.

The overwhelming power of the teachers' unions means that any attempt to differentiate between these groups fails. If teachers as a collective group have chosen a position that reduces an individual teacher's ability to earn what they deserve, I'm not sure I'd look beyond that group for blame.

The truth is that being a teacher is not a particuarly skilled job. Being a *good* teacher is, but that's never been a requirement to gain or keep the job.

Brian: Maybe, maybe not; but you can't deny that if teachers made six-figure salaries, more people would be competing for the jobs, allowing us to find teachers who were deserving of the salaries.

"What a load of crap. The underpaid teachers should take a paycut to help YOUR kids to do extracurricular stuff so YOU don't have to pay any more money?"

Well, first of all, I didn't say that. In an environment where we were being repeatedly told, "Everyone has to work together," I asked if the unions--and there are more than just the teachers--had been approached about pitching in since they're, y'know, part of "everyone."

And second, of the people who did vote against the budget, certainly the fact that the student grades and educational quality have been spiralling in our district over the past decade MUST have factored into their decision to vote no. Maybe they're saying with their "no" vote that they feel they shouldn't be paying higher taxes for education quality that is declining.

So it seems a bit disingenuous to say that everyone BUT the teachers bear responsibility for that decline, and not exactly out of line to suggest that maybe--just maybe--while the kids are being made to pay by losing their senior proms and athletics, and while the parents are being made to pay by trying to come up with the money to reinstate them, that the various unions at least be ASKED if they want to pitch in as well.

PAD

The truth is that being a teacher is not a particuarly skilled job. Being a *good* teacher is, but that's never been a requirement to gain or keep the job.

Well, sure, but that's true for most things. Outside of tightrope walking and lion training, most jobs are easy if you don't care how good a job you do at it.

But I'll say this: while I will never ever disagree with anyone who wants to see my salary raised (bless 'em) I went into this with Eyes Wide Open. Yeah, teachers are underpaid. So are cops, firemen and sanitation workers. Nobody holds a gun to your head and makes you pick a career.

That said, I agree with the poster who said that its a mistake to look at a school as a business. I also have to point out that the teachers did nothing wrong here so why should they be penalized? Not that it was wrong for PAD to throw out the suggestion (and you'd think that the administration would have had a better response). If the votes are anything like what I see in my old hometown of Saugerties NY I'll bet that if every parent who has kids at the school had showed up at the polls the budget would have passed easily.

And may I make a suggestion? Why don't the parents, teachers, PTA, whatever, take a page from the way politicians do it. We'll use the Republicans as an example, since we want to win (ba dump!); start organizing a grassroots organization that will man phone lines on voting day and get out that vote. Should be easy. Start with the names of all the parents at the school and ask them for the numbers of people who, though they don't have kids there, are sympathetic to the cause. Have teachers and parents at the phones, have vans that can transport voters who need a ride, do whatever it takes, short of registering dead people or slashing tires of your opponents.

And for God's sake, make sure that someone remembers to thank the voters at every sports game, recital, art show, whatever. Many parents feel like they have no connection to their kids school. If you are in fact so dependent on them to function you had better make sure you let them know how much their support is appreciated.

I just returned from 2 months in upstate NY for my summer family visit. My sister teaches special ed and walked into school her first day with a salary close to double my own, even though I've been doing this for 8 years. Kind of depressing and it makes me think about moving...then again, when I talk to the teachers and parents and read the incredibly cranky letters to the editor in the local paper, I realize that I've got it pretty sweet in North Carolina. Parents seem to like me, I don't think of my students and their parents as likely adversaries, I've never encountered the open hostility that you can find in New York against teachers. So...

If anyone knows of a place with North Carolina's teacher friendly atmosphere and New York's wallet friendly pay scale please let me know!

I am not a teacher, but I am married to one, my sister is one, my sister-in-law is one, my grandma was one (years ago), my cousin is one, and my aunt is one. So you could say teachers kind of run in the family.

I don't claim to have all of the answers, but the amount spent on education versus the results (and versus what is paid to those on the front lines, the teachers), is appaling. All but one of my relatives teach in the public school system. I know unions play a necessary role in giving them bragaining power, but the reality is that far too much money goes to union dues and to support political candidates than to actual educational issues.

I don't blame the teachers, nor do I think they should take a paycut. But knowing the absurd levels of middle management that existed in Dallas and the absurd salaries paid to many of them, I am not surprised that our education system is in trouble. And the unions are not helping.

No easy answers, I know, but something has to change.

Iowa Jim

And may I make a suggestion? Why don't the parents, teachers, PTA, whatever, take a page from the way politicians do it. We'll use the Republicans as an example, since we want to win (ba dump!); start organizing a grassroots organization that will man phone lines on voting day and get out that vote. Should be easy.

Good suggestion, but you left out one step. A good Republican would start a petition to get it on the ballot! Which is what I thought PAD would suggest. Nobody likes their taxes raised, but not educating kids will only come back to haunt us later and be far more costly.

Iowa Jim

The truth is that being a teacher is not a particuarly skilled job.

Having taught in other arenas, and having many teachers as relatives, I can say with utmost confidence that teaching is a highly skilled job. It takes a unique mixture of people skills to control and discipline a classroom, organizational skills to set up lesson plans week after week, and communication skills to impart information to kids who would much rather be doing something else. It might not seem hard to subsitute when it is only one day and the lesson plan is done for you, but try taking 30 diverse children who learn at different speeds and who are dealing with a host of their own home and personal issues and try to get them from point A to point B, and you will have a whole new appreciation for skills.

I think PAD is right that teachers should be held accountable, but they are only a piece of the puzzle. Most do a remarkable job with little support.

That's my two cents worth. I will shut up and go to bed now.

Iowa Jim

It's late. I'm tired. I just can't let this one go.

Peter's not wrong for suggesting the idea. It's unfortunate that his posts don't include the arguments being made against his idea. I'd be interested in seeing what the district had to say. The first argument that pops into my head is that the relatively minor downward adjustment for everyone simply isn't that dramatic. If you cut everything a little, the voters don't notice. Kids still go to art class, to football practice, etc. If you cut all the flashy stuff, people notice and realize (right or wrong) that the school needs money and they should have voted yes.

If grades etc. are going down in the district, Peter's absolutely right: everyone bears some responsibility. However, I have to wonder what it says about the average parental involvement (which can have a huge effect on a student's performance) in a district with such low voter turnout (and negative turn out, at that!).

Finally, for "teaching isn't that skilled of a job"-guy over there: Buy a clue. As other posters have noted, any job's easy if you don't do it even remotely well. Sitting in a classroom and breathing isn't that hard, true, but have you ever even tried to make it through the day as a sub? I'm not even talking about education, here, I'm talking about simply babysitting. Some days, you get a sweet group and life is good. Many other days, the kids run you ragged until you develop some (gasp!) skill at classroom management. Coming into the profession with that skill, teaching purposefully and not accidentally: that's tough. It requires skill.

As far as teachers' unions and pay scales and all that crap: merit pay is a chimera. How does one measure a “good” teacher? Grades? Say hello to inflation. Test scores? I can focus on a test and get students to rock the world on it. Wanna guess how much they really learn? Answer: how much do you or your buddies remember from all those tests you crammed for in high school? Student satisfaction? Oh, yeah. Let's let the inmates run the asylum. Parents wouldn't be much better. Teacher pay scales are based on seniority because that's the only reasonable way to do it in a society that values grades over learning, tests over teaching.

People say “teachers are underpaid” for the same reason people say “cops are underpaid”: they're essential. It makes no sense to the average person why someone as useless as Pamela Anderson makes millions while the person shaping your child's future or protecting your child from harm makes a pittance. (Please note I'm saying many people see it as not making sense--that doesn't mean there isn't a reason.) That doesn't mean that the people who say it are right in an economic sense. The statement really boils down to an indictment of our culture's value system. If teachers and cops and firemen and EMT's were valued the way we should value them, we'd make sure we had the best rewards there that we could, and people would compete more for those jobs. At the same time, where there's money to be won, there's deception to be found. I'm not sure we could handle teachers with big salaries. Who knows who'd be instructing our children then?

Eric

Since Johnson's "Great Society," we have spent over a TRILLION dollars on our schools. Thats a lotta dough. As a former inmate of the public school system, I would like to know where my money went. If teachers are underpaid (and I have know teachers worth paying millions.) and schools are falling apart, and we never get new textbooks, and teachers are decorating their rooms out of their own pockets, then where the hell did my trillion bucks go??!?!?! Band uniforms?

That is a serious question, where is all the money going? and why are schools having so much trouble with students?

Well, I talked to a lot of my teachers about this, and they always said that a large part of it was the parents fault. Not the good parents, like Mr. David, who go to the PTA meetings, and are involved, but the parents who never show, and who never get involved.

At my school, we, at one point had to have five police officers in the school due to constant problems. I always felt that if parents bothered to take care of their own kids, and worked with teachers, there would be a lot fewer problems. As far as I could tell, a large portion of our money went towards having four vice-principals, and whatever it cost to have five cops in the school on a daily basis. When you get to the crux of it, a lot of schools problems get down to discipline, which, at heart, is the responsibility of the parents. Unfortunately, many parents would rather blame schools then take responsibility.

Maybe I am wrong. Maybe Bill or Iowa Jim can give me a different, teacher's-eye perspective of the problem. But I think that if discipline was a little tighter, you wouldn't have to worry so much about having all the things to teach with, because the teachers could teach, and not control.

Iowa Jim, thank you for that comment. Yes, teaching is a skilled job. Too many people without exposure or experience have an imagine in their heads that teachers are class monitors and no more.

Eric, if you believe subbing is harder than teaching then I question your experience. Subbing might involve more disciplining because you, as the sub, haven't been there long enough to set up your own authority with the students but it is not harder than a regular teacher.

Teaching today involves more and more techniques and knowledge of technology. Class cirruculum is also being pushed. Where Algebra was a high school class when I attended school, it is now something taught at the middle school level. Most systems now require math and science courses to be taken each year of high school where two credits over four years used to suffice.

The funding issues for schools is ridiculous and outdated. The main problem being the formula doesn't provide for things like art teachers, music teachers, PE teachers and teachers of honors electives.

Parents are busier and have less time to invest in their child's education - a key factor in their child's success, kids are too easily distracted by TV and games at night and aren't getting the sleep or the homework time they need and then there are the abuses...

There are so many problems with the education system in America I can't see us fixing it within my lifetime.

I am a teacher. 24 years. PAD, I can understand their reluctance not to give up ground. I work an average of 10 hours each and every day but am paid for 8. There are nights when I leave home before light and return after dark. I teach one of those fine arts: choral music and also work with the theatre program. Often I am the very last person to leave the building at night when rehearsal ends. My pay for this? 33,000 a year. And that's with a higher degree and 24 years experience.

Folks, we ain't in it for an easy job.

Forgive the mistakes in the above. Long day and late night.

In the CPS, it takes 4 years to get tenure. During the first 3 years, you can be gotten rid of for any reason, including questioning the Principal's decision, the Principal caving to parents who kids got D's when the parents believe their kids should get A's and promotions to honors classes, because the Principal wants your job for the Principal's niece, or just because you are a lousy teacher. After tenure, you get a hearing and due process before you can be removed from a position. The point is, you have those first 4 years to screen a teacher to see if that teacher is a good one. And good teachers don't become lousy ones as soon as that tenure is granted. Principals need to do a better screening job prior to granting tenure to weed out the lousy ones.

I've never quite understood the "teachers are grossly underpaid!" meme.

Then you've never been one. 'nuff said.

Now, to echo Bill, I came into this with my eyes open, and I'll be the first to admit that by staying in the independent-school community I've got it a lot cushier than some ... but it's still not a lot of money. (Though Bill, if you want teacher-friendliness with a reasonable pay scale, California isn't completely out of the question -- and just for you, there's even a piss-poor Republican governor. :-)

As for Peter's question ... it's a good one, though I don't knwo that I'd agree with it, in part because the decline of unions' strength is so precipitous that I don't think there's much hope of a friendly labor/management "let's all pitch in" chat these days. (It seems closer to the "let's work together, meaning you do whatever I want" model that's currently in vogue in other arenas.) Getting the voters involved is a good idea, as is perhaps asking where a lot of the money disappears to in the bureaucracy. (I've never met an overpaid teacher, but I've certainly known a few administrators who seem such.)

And as others have said, I don't really think that looking at the schools through a business-model lens is necessarily a good idea. They're not in this for profit, and we've got an awful lot riding on their staying in good shape. Adam Smith be damned in this case -- we need good schools to be kept afloat by whatever means necessary.

Of course, I'm an evil liberal, so none of this really matters...

TWL

And by "knwo" above, of course, I really mean "know." At least I'm not teaching English. :-)

TWL

It's posts like this one that reinforces my belief that camera crews should follow PAD around, recording stuff like this for entertainment.

There are some systems that you just look at and have to ask "who was responsible for putting THAT mess together?" Public schools have to be one of them. Sure, there are excellent examples of well-run, productive, successful public schools. They don't often make the news, but they exist. Or they did, back 20 years when I entered high school. Today, you hear all the bad stories, and think something must be done. And mostly, you'd be correct.

Edison/charter private schools have had some success. But just as in any venture, you're going to have some failures. Are schools a business? Sure they are. But like a hospital, or even like a lot a businesses, determining whether your business is a success depends on what you value. Schools don't produce a marketable good that offers a monetary return, so in order to view it correctly as a business model, you need to identify the outputs you're trying to achieve. They're pretty intangible: graduation rates, GPA, college admission distribution, average salary of graduates, etc. And you have to have community buy-in that their investment isn't going to return financial interest, but these intangibles.

Much as I've harped on No Child Left Behind, it's a good theory, because it looks at the non-monetary intangibles and attempts to use those as a benchmark for determining success of the school venture. Every Federal government agency is undergoing, or already has, a re-evaluation of their key missions, and identifying benchmarks of success. Federal Employee salary increases are now tied to these benchmarks, mirroring the private sector business model (right down to the executive salary increases seemingly insulated from performance ratings). It's probably a good idea to do something similar for schools, and also to get all education related unions to buy in to tieing salary increases to meeting those performance benchmarks, rather than to a union promotion schedule.

And here's a novel idea: make that uniform right up through the executive/administration ranks. Make everyone accountable (oh, and for the Federal programs, FUND them).

PAD's question was certainly legitimate, and probably needed to be asked. If the tax-paying public perceives a decrease in performance, it's understandable that they are going to resist a tax increase. If Marvel switched it's paper to tissue for it's comics, and then raised it's prices, their sales would plummet...you can't usually charge more for a crappier product because your costs are increasing and expect unit sales to remain constant. Much as I appreciate the need for a union, I've long held the opinion that most teacher's unions hold too much power, and contribute too much to the problems at schools. New teachers are horribly underpaid. Old teachers that have lost the fire and are just coasting can be terribly overpaid. Very few are paid on actual merit and accomplishment...the incentive is to put your time in and just get your reward, whether you've earned it or not. And the temptation is to only work hard until you've earned tenure and substantially more job security, at which point you lose most of the incentive to work hard. And since the longer you stay, the more $ you make, there's an entropic tendancy to sit and coast while you cost the system ever more, and contribute less and less as you age and lose the ability to truly inspire your students.

So I don't think it's outrageous to consider asking the unions if they want to sit at the table and be part of the discussion. There's a huge problem to fix, and unless someone's going to put one person in charge, and give them the authority to make sweeping changes, then it will take all parties (parents, administration, teachers, support, and even the students at higher grade levels) meeting and willing to sacrifice a little now in order to develop a better model.

"Folks should remember that there are more unions than just the teachers..."

We could always adopt the Japanese method of having the kids doing the cleaning in high school. Saves money, and you have less vandalism when the little blighters realize they are the ones who have to clean up whatever mess they make.

"School should be incredibly expensive for government and absolutely free of charge to its citizens, just like national defense. That’s my position. I just haven't figured out how to do it yet."

Maybe ask the government in Norway where, if I recall correctly, undergraduate university is free. What do they know that we don't?

" if teachers made six-figure salaries, more people would be competing for the jobs, allowing us to find teachers who were deserving of the salaries."

Isn't that the rationale for paying politicians more? Doesn't seem to work all that well, does it? Conversely, let's look at Mother Theresa, what she accomplished and what she was getting paid for it.

Maybe John W. Campbell was right. We should have leadership by lowest bidder. Of course, we'd need to have strict anti-bribery surveillance.

"But I'll say this: while I will never ever disagree with anyone who wants to see my salary raised (bless 'em)"

I did. Some human rights tribunal in Canada decided that certain positions, such as lower-end clerical occupied mainly by women, were underpaid. It ordered a big back pay settlement. I thought it wasone of the silliest things I'd ever heard and wrote in to complain about it on the grounds that I had held one of those positions, had not made one cent more than the female staffers I worked with, yet still thought I was getting overpaid given the nature of the work. Unfortunately, the politically correct twits ignored me, rammed the back pay through, I got a cheque and my taxes soared thanks to that extra income. Thanks a heap.

"How does one measure a “good” teacher? Grades? Say hello to inflation."

Again, turn to the system used in Japan where one has to pass qualifying tests to get into (not out of) a grade/school. It is in the interest of the teachers receiving the new batch of kids to make the test tough to ensure they only get dedicated, hard-working students. No grade inflation there.

" ... but the amount spent on education versus the results (and versus what is paid to those on the front lines, the teachers), is appaling."

And herein lies the rub: "those on the front lines."

Teachers ARE the 'front lines'. But does anyone in the educational system listen to them? Of course not. Instead, bureaucrats and politicians bring in 'great experts' (ie anyone with a pop psych degree and half-baked theory) to tell teachers how to do their jobs. This results in such insanity as Britain looking at eliminating the use of the word "fail", replacing it instead with "deferred success" because it doesn't harm little Johnny's self-esteem as much.

Or bow to the rich, grant tax cuts, and then wind up with geography textbooks so out of date (in Ontario anyway) that the Soviet Union is still a superpower.

And we wonder why our educational system is such a mess?

Feh.

I teach part time at a community college, which I know isn't nearly the same thing as teaching at the zoos that our public schools have become, but I can tell you that it does require some very specialized people-skills that you can only learn on the job and that's on top of having knowledge of the subject matter.

Someone mentioned Edison and Philadelphia. Interesting story behind that company. Edison was created by a group for reasons that were as much political as they were to make a profit. The founders set out to prove that the private sector could run schools better and make a profit doing. So far, they've failed to achieve either goal.

Edison has been running the schools in Chester, one of the poorest cities in PA for years, and test scores have continued to drop. A few years ago, the state hired them as a consultant on how to fix the Philadelphia school district. After spending a year studying the matter, Edison came back with the recommendation that the state should (surprise!) hire Edison to run the Philly schools.

The only bigger educational fraud in Pennsylvania is our charter school system. Oh, and the new slots law, which while we're going to have slot machines in PA now, apparently, none of the money raised from them is actually going to go to the schools as originally promised.

It's true that we as taxpayers have been asked to pay more while getting less results from the public school system. However, after 20 years of trying to apply businesss models to public education, I think it's clear that the "privatized is always better meme" isn't giving us any better results.

More money isn't the answer as it generally ends up being spent on bureaucracy (4 vice principals in a school of 800 students? Yikes!), but for years the mantra has that teachers are lazy and we need more competition to kick them in the ass. I don't buy that argument either. Most teacher's I've known are dedicated professionals who try their best to do their job *despite* the pressures from both parents and the bureaucrats.

The real solution involves letting teachers restore discipline and high standards to the classroom, but that involves more that just throwing money at the problem. It involves school districts having the courage to tell parents that their kids aren't perfect and parents remembering that their job is be parents and teach their kids how to behave, not to be their kids' best friend.

I was going to be an English teacher when I was in college. That was my goal after I realized that computer science would take me nowhere I wanted to be. If I hadn't burned myself out in the first two years of school, I might be teaching somewhere. One of the reasons I didn't go back for it after I got myself back together is all the apathy I saw. Most of the teachers in Pennsbury taught with the MOST apathy I have seen. The ones I remember, like Mrs. Martinez and Mr. Roche, you could SEE their passion. They got everyone in the class involved. A lot of the other teachers spoke at the front of the class and didn't care whether or not anyone got it. In fact, I remember a few cases where when some in the class didn't understand, we all were lectured about how easy this stuff is, with no clarification of the initial point given. School systems have to look not only at the performance of the students but the performance of the teachers. At least make some of them take effective speaking classes.

On the flip side, some teachers are paid nowhere near enough. Hence, I believe, in a lot of cases, the apathy. However, the school board? The administrators? Most of whom when I was in school never seemed interested in anything but what the football team was doing? The focus needs to shift back from athletics to academics. Schools will have fund raisers to build a new stadium, but that does very little for the average GPA. Worry more about whether or not the kids are learning. Schools may not be businesses, and that point has been beaten to death, but they SHOULD be run like one in that if the people working there aren't effective, get them out so that people who would be can get in.

The only problem with raising taxes to pay for education is the games the politicians will play.

When the state lottery here in New York was approved, it was because the money would go to education. HOWEVER, as lottery money was put into education, tax dollars were removed, leaving schools with no more money than they had before.

An education tax would likely have the same results.

I work for a teacher's union. The last thing we ever want to do is offer givebacks. It's bad precident, and a huge sign of weakness. That might seem insignificant, but I've sat in for contract negotiations two times now, and you'd be surprised how "out for blood" it gets.

I agree that these programs are horribly underfunded, but staff givebacks are the last thing that I would consider looking at.

From what I see people posting here, I think you can start to see that the problem isn't just one, or even a few, things. There's rampant problems all throughout the system. If education were a door, it'd be like saying "the door squeeks...I'm going to replace one of the hinges." Which might stop the door from squeeking, but totally ignores that there's a big hole in the door about 2/3 of the way down, there's only a handle on one side, one hinge is totally missing, and the doorbell rings next door, not at your house.

Education is in such a state that the entire system needs to be addressed, not just points here and there. Throwing money around won't fix much, if that money is just being pumped through the existing system. Our youth are failing, and falling behind relative to other countries. While at the same time, they're mostly being raised to expect that they're entitled to an awful lot of stuff. When today's kids finally graduate, and get out of college and discover that they need to actually DO something and EARN what they can, they may find themselves woefully underprepared.

Since we're talking about education again:

http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?itemid=19455

More about Bush's war on science.

Catori,

Check my post again. I was pointing out that just being a sub and doing the babysitting for a day requires skill. The idea was for the reader to then think, "Wow, and that's not even all the work of being a 'real' teacher!"

As for my experience, I think a year of subbing and seven years of teaching have shown me that both require skill.

Eric

"Schools will have fund raisers to build a new stadium, but that does very little for the average GPA."

I forget whether it was North or South Korea, but in one (or maybe both for all I know) of them, they treat the high-achieving students like they treat football stars over here: They are the popular, recognized ones. I recall, at the wonderful tribute to "Lord of the Flies" that was my high school; they had individual rewards for each and every sport, and often individual positions. The Honor roll kids (3.5 GPA) all got the same cheap plastic plaque, and a form award that I could have made using Word and Clipart. Until academic achievement is recognized as being worthy of some note, you are gonna get the same morons pouring out of the schools that you have know. I'm sorry, do I sound bitter? I am. Four of the most intellectually void years of my life were spent in high school, and that needs to change. Much as I like the spirit of No Child Left Behind, in reality it will only lead to administrators putting more pressure on teachers and minorities, and the teachers, instead of at least teaching the tests in their classes, will end up teaching the NCLB tests. A friend of mine is from India, and (according to him) the Public schools over there are the good schools, with a long waiting list to get in. Students don't dare misbehave, because they know they will be kicked out, and their place taken by one of the other thousand people who are begging to get in. Schools should be palaces, but more importantly, they should be a place that students want to go because they love it. It is the human nature to learn, and if you can make it fun and worthwhile, you will have people begging to go to school. At least, that is MHO

James Carter wrote:
"That is a serious question, where is all the money going? and why are schools having so much trouble with students?"

When Gov. Schwarzenegger of California came under fire for cutting the public school budget (from $42 to $44 million dollars), Tom McClintock published what he called "A Modest Proposal for Saving Our Schools." He ended up coming to the following conclusion: "The school I have just described is the school we’re paying for. Maybe it’s time to ask why it’s not the school we’re getting."

Mark Walsh, in the second comment on this thread (and others have agreed with him), asserts that schools aren't businesses, don't operate in the same way, and aren't designed to achieve the same ends. Unfortunately he's right, and that's the entire problem.

Our public school systems, like virtually every other government program, have no incentives to do well. There's no incentive for the school to provide a good product (a child's education) for the customer (the child's parents), because their income isn't dependent on pleasing the parents. (Of course, often, parents don't seem to give a hoot about their child's education, but that's a different problem altogether.)

Just as bad as not holding schools accountable for the quality of the education is that we don't hold them accountable for their budgets. If they go over budget, or if teachers are underpaid, it's because we're underfunding the system, not because of poor management of the funds or overpaid administrators. (I'm not saying we're not underfunding the system, just that there's so much other stuff going wrong that it's hard to tell. "It's for the kids" has been such a reliable way of getting people to shell out money that the school systems, at least around here, are never scrutinized that well.)

We need to re-introduce some accountability into the school system, and the best suggestion that I've heard to do that is to semi-privatize the system, using school vouchers. Schools funded in this way would be forced to compete for students, and even better, for teachers, which should substantially help with the underpaid educators problem.

Our public school systems, like virtually every other government program, have no incentives to do well. There's no incentive for the school to provide a good product (a child's education) for the customer (the child's parents), because their income isn't dependent on pleasing the parents. (Of course, often, parents don't seem to give a hoot about their child's education, but that's a different problem altogether.)

I don't think it's a different problem at all; I think it's a different facet of the same problem. If the "customer" doesn't appear to give a crap about the quality of the product, THEN there's no incentive to do well. It's not a question of "does their income depend on it?" -- it's a question of whether there's any significant feedback at all.

My income's never been dependent on "pleasing the customers" in a hard-and-fast way, but it's certainly true where I've taught that if a lot of parents start making phone calls in critique of your teaching, you'll hear about it.

The problem with saying "make schools accountable" is that there's really no way to quantify the results that (a) doesn't take years, or (b) isn't a joke (cf. NCLB). I know how well I'm doing because I see what my students do with that knowledge months and years later, and because I hear from them and from their parents ... at least on good days.

the best suggestion that I've heard to do that is to semi-privatize the system, using school vouchers. Schools funded in this way would be forced to compete for students, and even better, for teachers, which should substantially help with the underpaid educators problem.

And schools not funded in this way ... what? Die off?

The basic problem with vouchers, unless you restrict it to public schools ONLY, is that it winds up sucking even more money out of the public schools as parents head for private ones. The typical voucher amounts are enough to give a moderately well-off family a bit of a break for that private school they were eyeing, but not enough to do a damn thing for an inner-city family whose schools really need the help.

Vouchers might work, but it would take a lot of work and a lot of hard thinking to make sure you're doing it in a way that doesn't just cause more and larger problems a few decades down the road.

(I also don't believe it would help the "underpaid educators problem", as you put it, but that's another issue.)

TWL

As someone who has worked as a union employee, non-union employee and a manager, I think it is crucial in any organization that there is a non-adversarial relationship between employees and managers/administrators. And if the organization is hurting in lean times, the give-and-take MUST come from both sides for the organization to weather its crisis.

For unions to say, "no concessions -- it sets a bad precedent" can doom a company and put EVERYONE out of work. I've seen it happen. Conversely, poor decisions by selfish, short-sighted or incompetent management can do the same.

As a shareholder (taxpayer) of the school system, Peter has every right to question any angle if there is a fiscal crisis. And anyone who attacks such an open-minded stance is probably someone who is being influenced by self-interest rather than the ultimate well-being of the organization.

Frankly, at least at the university level, I am appalled by the runaway tuition costs over the past few years -- tuition costs that have far-exceeded inflation. Where's all that extra money going? Unlike with a business, no one can say it's going into the pockets of stockholders or the owners of a business. The lion's share, I'll wager, is going into the pockets of the professors, researchers and other folks who work there.

No offence to the teachers out there (I'm not trying to cancel your jobs), but here's a suggestiong: Cancel school for a year, and make each parent personally responsible for their child's education. Say around 8th grade. History, math, writing, science, and an art.

Give each parent a year of doing what people like Tim and Den do year after year, and then see how fast those parents step up to work a chance in the system. The poor voting turnout PAD describes just shows the apathy many have in America toward education. We see it as an entitlement, and we just expect it to be there. Too many parents don't see it as something they should invest in at all...just send your kid to school, and assume learning hijinks ensues. Progressing from one grade to the next, rather than being the rite of passage it should be, is just another entitlement, and woe befall any teacher that gets in the way of little Jimmy's progression.

Countries that make education a priority, by requiring actual, meaningful tests to advance, and that don't glorify the athlete at the expense of the scholar, are passing us by leaps and bounds these days. Countries that had rice as their biggest product 30 years ago are now close to creating nuclear devices, while the US...well, let's just say that I just got out of a 2 hour class my agency is requiring me to attend so that I can learn to write in something called Plain English. And the instructor is very good as telling us that it's not "dumbing down" our writing...but that's exactly what it is. It's an admission that the common American citizen lacks the reading comprehension to easily comprehend words like utilize, initiate, and promulgate. And rather than strive to improve education so that Americans are able to communicate in a sophisticated and intillectual debate, we're being told to lower our standards and write down to a lower level. This is the culture America is developing: Something proving too hard or ambitious? Simple solution, lower the standards so that the mediocre level you can accomplish with minimum work becomes acceptable.

I've long held the opinion that most teacher's unions hold too much power

I've always found this argument hard to swallow, because, from all accounts, it sounds as if teachers don't hold enough power.

It seems as though in alot of cases these days, the teachers have no power in the classroom or in the school, that parents have taken the power away, while, but expecting teachers to the jobs the parents should be doing at the same time.

Of my favorite two teachers in high school, one once told me that if he could go back and do it all over again, he probably wouldn't have become a teacher (pay, lack of power in the classrom).

The other lamented the fact that, after being teacher for 20-25 years, I could get hired as a computer programmer after 2 years of college and make more money than him on the spot. I mean, sure, he was happy to see that we had such opportunities, but it shows that society seems to care little for those that we need the most, such as teachers, firefighters, etc.

A friend of mine is from India, and (according to him) the Public schools over there are the good schools, with a long waiting list to get in.

Which makes it sound like not every kid gets an education.

Of course, things don't work like that here - kid may not get a good education, but he's forced to go.

So, I wouldn't consider what India is doing a good system.

"I've always found this argument hard to swallow, because, from all accounts, it sounds as if teachers don't hold enough power."

That depends on what you think of when it comes to "power." I totally agree that teachers have lost far to much of the ability to excercise control and enforce discipline in the classroom. Nothing gets an unruly kid's attention in class so much as a rap on the knuckles with a ruler (assault and bettery suit). Or giving a kid a failing grade (can't do that, will damage the frail esteem of the developing child).

Maybe the news just isn't reporting it, but where is the union call for getting power back in the hands of the teacher? Maybe the tenure pay system doesn't exist any more, but that was a creation of the union...stick around for 30 years, and finally you might make decent money. Just like many other unions that have similar pay-scales, 30 years ago, when those agreements were signed to by the companies, they seemed like a great idea. Or at the very least, they'd deal with the potentially high cost of retaining a bunch of top-salaried older employees in the future. Are we seeing a case where that once future time is now? What are the age-statistics on teachers? Do the schools most in budget trouble have a greater number of older tenured teachers pulling a significantly larger check for doing half the work?

"Which makes it sound like not every kid gets an education. Of course, things don't work like that here - kid may not get a good education, but he's forced to go."

This is another basic idea that maybe it's time to dismiss as outdated? Who says every kid needs the same education? How far do we want to take our standard education requirements? As a lawyer, I clearly need skills in writing, logic, reason, other communication, deduction, etc. I don't really need calculus, a ton of science, really broad history knowledge. Yet, I'm required to get a lot of that stuff. We're teaching our kids a lot of stuff they don't need, want, or can even use.

Why force someone to go to school? Why have someone in the classroom that does not want to be there? All they will do is serve as a disruption, distraction, and eventually slow those that DO want to be there down. If parents can't instill a sense of wanting to learn in their kids, what chance will total strangers have in doing so? Maybe this sounds harsh, but I think we need to put real requirements on school admissions and progressions. If a kid fails to attain the required score, they don't advance. If they don't demonstrate basic skills, they can't be admitted (we would have to set up some alternative access to education...like a skill based vocational program). Having a system where everyone, regardless of achievement, intent, or skill, is crammed through the same system. It produces the rare gem, but more often, it just gets bogged down in mediocrity. Is that the direction we want America to go in? So we can raise our big Foam Finger and chant "we're number 5!"

"Which makes it sound like not every kid gets an education."

Not from what I understand. Indian parents are so focused on education that they send their kids to private school, but the public schools are so good that people beg to come in. So, the private schools aren't BAD, but the public schools are really, really good. I should have made that clearer.

I figured it was only a matter of time until somebody mentioned the "V" word. Vouchers are one of those panecea ideas that may look good on paper and promise to magically transform the public school system into models of learning. In practice though, I have yet to see a vouchers scheme that would actually acheive this goal by itself. That's for a number of reasons. One is that there are generally a limited number of slots in the "good" public and private schools into which students from the "bad" schools can transfer, meaning only a select few will actually get elevated out. And if you think the kid who can't read but has a great jump shot won't get in ahead of the science whizkid, then perhaps you'd be interested in buying some beachfront property in Kansas.

Second, as study after study has shown, the problems facing many distressed school districts have less to do with how much money the school spends per pupil then with other more intangible problems like how the money spent (buy new textbooks vs. sending the superintendent to a conference in Bermuda), the general decline in accountability/discipline in this country, and the lack of parental support of teachers. Taking the money from school A and giving it in the form of a voucher to school B won't motivate A to change these problems.

Finally, vouchers lead to a further fragmentation of the community. One of the things I've noticed over the years is that people today feel less invested in their neighborhoods and towns. Policy makers should be encouraging residents to invest more of their time and support towards improving their communities, including the schools. Vouchers send the message that, "Your community is falling apart and there's nothing that can be done about it, but here's a lifeline to pull a select few out. The rest of you can get bent."

Not from what I understand. Indian parents are so focused on education that they send their kids to private school, but the public schools are so good that people beg to come in.

Gee, imagine that. Parents that actually expect their kids to get an education instead of having their self-esteem built it.

What a dangerously radical suggestion.

Tim wrote:
"I don't think it's a different problem at all; I think it's a different facet of the same problem. If the 'customer' doesn't appear to give a crap about the quality of the product, THEN there's no incentive to do well. It's not a question of 'does their income depend on it?' -- it's a question of whether there's any significant feedback at all."

After considering it, I think you're right that it's a facet of the same problem, but I wonder why there isn't feedback? Is it just a matter of parents who don't care, or is it that they don't feel their input matters?

Tim:
"The problem with saying 'make schools accountable' is that there's really no way to quantify the results that (a) doesn't take years, or (b) isn't a joke (cf. NCLB). I know how well I'm doing because I see what my students do with that knowledge months and years later, and because I hear from them and from their parents ... at least on good days."

Of course, you're right -- it's nearly impossible to look at a school and quantify whether it's doing well. Standardized testing is almost useless for doing that.

The voucher system, in my opinion, provides a very good way of holding schools accountable. If my (hypothetical) son's been in a school for a year and I don't see that he's making progress (individual interaction with him day after day does qualify me to make that decision in a way that a government agency looking at a test score cannot), then I'm going to take my son out of that school in favor of another one. It might be that particular school just doesn't suit my kid very well, but it suits plenty of other kids just fine. In that case, the school will prosper, and my son, having been placed in a different school that's more fitting for his personality and/or abilities, will prosper as well.

Of course, the system isn't flawless. Among other things, it brings up issues on how we monitor homeschooling (or unschooling), since the educators are also the parents who would be otherwise charged with evaluating the "system." Still, I'm convinced it remains a better system than what we've got now.

Tim again:
"And schools not funded in this way ... what? Die off?"

Unless they fix their school to meet the needs of the students and their parents, yes. Just like any business that doesn't meet its customers needs.

Tim once more:
"(I also don't believe it would help the 'underpaid educators problem', as you put it, but that's another issue.)"

Why not? I'm not suggesting that it would suddenly put all teachers in a higher tax bracket or anything. I'm saying that I believe it would put the good teachers in a place where they could make a lot more money. Average teachers should make at least some more, and lousy teachers, well, they'll take what they can get, or find another line of work.

If a school's ability to make money is dependent on being able to teach students well, then good teachers will be in demand, and as demand goes up, the cost of those teachers will go up, too. On the surface, it looks like basic economics to me. Is there something else I should be considering?

Craig J. Ries, about the Indian public school system:
"Which makes it sound like not every kid gets an education.

Of course, things don't work like that here - kid may not get a good education, but he's forced to go."

Are you saying you prefer the system that forces a kid to go to school for 13+ years even if he's not getting anything out of it? Despite what society tells us, there are important jobs that don't require thirteen years of schooling, much less college.

Everyone does need a basic education (reading, basic math skills, some fundamental scientific knowledge, an understanding of their duties and rights as citizens, etc.), but I strongly believe that we could give that to them by the age of fifteen (possibly younger). I wouldn't want to keep anyone who wanted an education from getting one, but keeping a kid who doesn't want to learn (particularly if he shows an aptitude for a productive skill that isn't part of the formal school system -- fixing cars, for example) in school where he can keep others from learning as well just seems counterproductive.

Granted, that brings up issues with helping the kid know what he truly wants, but I'm convinced that there are large numbers of students who would be better off in some sort of apprentice-ship type program than in the kind of formal schooling that we currently provide.

Vouchers strike me the same way that private accounts instead of social security do: an election buzz word that sounds good, but once you look at what it really does, you see that it doesn't really fix the problem at all. It really just does the same thing the system you're looking to replace does, just moves the money around in a different way.

I had a buddy harp on both these topics, yet he could never explain why they were any better than what we have today. So, we give some money back to the parents so they can offset the cost os sending their kid to a "better" school? That'll do nothing if the kid doesn't have a desire to learn in the first place. And if we stuff that better school with a whole bunch of new kids, the quality of service that school is going to be able to provide will drop...while the school the kid used to be in now has a lot fewer students, and may see an improvement in performance. So, vouchers are likely to have the opposite effect they are touted as having.

Now, giving parents that support their kids' education at home a tax break for the things they do, that might be a decent use of a tax incentive to energize education.

Den wrote:
"One is that there are generally a limited number of slots in the 'good' public and private schools into which students from the 'bad' schools can transfer, meaning only a select few will actually get elevated out."

I'll believe this at the same time I believe that there's a limited amount of wealth in the world and that Bill Gates' hoarding it is the reason I'm poor.

Say that you're in a district with two schools, Alpha Academy and Beta Boarding School. Alpha is a lousy school, and Beta's great. Beta fills up quickly, leaving 150 students who would love to have the opportunity to leave Alpha stuck there... in your scenario.

Here's what I think would happen, based on observations about how capitalism works: Seeing the fact that there's money to be made, someone will open a third school, Charlie's College Prep, which will serve those who would prefer not to be in Alpha but didn't make it into Beta. (Or Beta would expand as its administrators see the opportunity for more money.)

Den wrote:
"And if you think the kid who can't read but has a great jump shot won't get in ahead of the science whizkid, then perhaps you'd be interested in buying some beachfront property in Kansas."

Maybe I'm being idealistic and I just think too highly of my fellow human beings, but I think that what would actually happen is that we'd see two (or more) schools appear. One school that caters specifically to the scientific whizkids and one that doesn't.

The voucher system (in theory) should provide for better specialization, which tends to lead to the creation of more wealth. Is it perfect? No. As you point out, it could lead to the fragmentation of communities (as Charlie's College Prep and Beta Boarding School and the re-structured Alpha Athletics quickly build up a rivalry), but I think that it's a good deal better than our current system.

Even assuming all of your assessments are right, I don't see how "We'll help some of you out, and the rest of you are screwed" is worse than "Screw you all!"

I had to laugh at one of Bobb's posts above. Reminded me of a Microsoft Word class the insurance company I worked for before I woke up and went into TV made me take. See, all of we marketing directors were supposed to be getting PCs, so the powers that be thought it'd be a good idea if we, y'know, knew how to use them. So, I told Angela, our company vice president, A) I shouldn't be in the class because I could probably TEACH it, and B)Don't waste the money on the teacher because, well, see A. But the people over her were gung ho for us to take the class. So, we all sat in the boardroom laptops before us, blank Word docs open. Teacher's going through the basic functions, all the while I'm typing a note to my-then fiancee with a lovely rose watermark behind it. Teacher's walking around the class, sees my screen, and says to me, "Wow, I didn't know you could do that." Not to say that there are school teachers that don't know what they're teaching, but I personally know three teachers of different levels that can't do basic math. (IE, when cooking a 20 pound turkey for twenty minutes a pound, writing the number 20 20 times on paper and crossing it off every twenty minutes.) Granted, none are math teachers, but still....!

Bobb,

I totally agree that teachers have lost far to much of the ability to excercise control and enforce discipline in the classroom. Nothing gets an unruly kid's attention in class so much as a rap on the knuckles with a ruler (assault and bettery suit). Or giving a kid a failing grade (can't do that, will damage the frail esteem of the developing child).

While I can't ever picture myself doing the rap-on-the-knuckles thing, I can testify that poor grades (meaning D's and F's) DO still happen, at least in my neck of the woods. I've given a few -- and the administrators are generally fine with it so long as I can back it up (which I can).

Again, it's at least partially a question of making sure the parents are on board. I'm starting to think the old maxim about voting, "if you don't vote you don't get to bitch about the outcome," should be applied here. Any parent who's not involved with and supportive of his/her kids' education (and by "supportive of", I mean communicating with the teachers and willing to find a way to work with them if needed) does not get to complain if little Jeffy doesn't do well.

This is another basic idea that maybe it's time to dismiss as outdated? Who says every kid needs the same education? How far do we want to take our standard education requirements?

I think that's a very valid point, and one worth pursuing. Not every kid needs a "college-prep" education -- and even those who do don't need one of the one-size-fits-all variety.

I think a certain amount of the four core subjects (English, history, math, science) should be required for all in terms of creating literate citizens, but there's certainly no need to have everyone taking a really involved curriculum.

I also think vocational schools are more worthwhile than they're often rated to be (though I'll admit I'm working w/o much evidence here), and would like to see them recognized.

Maybe this sounds harsh, but I think we need to put real requirements on school admissions and progressions. If a kid fails to attain the required score, they don't advance. If they don't demonstrate basic skills, they can't be admitted (we would have to set up some alternative access to education...like a skill based vocational program).

Works by me, at least in theory. The devil, of course, will be in the details.

TWL

Amazingly, I've actually done some research on this issue (my organization was looking at what's involved in charter schools). The thing that struck me in my research is that the current basic model of education was created right after WWII, when the big push was to crank out engineers, scientists, and mathematicians in the ramp-up to the Cold War. The basic philosophy was that about one-third of all public school students would go into engineering and other hard sciences and be wildly successful as they helped the "Stick it to the Commies" effort, another third would go into the soft sciences and do all kinds of interesting things that weren't nearly as important, and the remaining third would pretty much be failures and not amount to much at all.

Despite my own opinions about the increasingly heterogenous make-up of the country, we have to acknowledge that a grand, one-size-fits-all federal policy is most likely not going to fix the education system. The needs of my small hometown's public school system with one high school of ~450 students are vastly different then the needs of my current home near St. Louis, with about 12 high schools of 1,000 or so kids each (and that's just St. Louis City; there's dozens more high schools in the surrounding suburbs). I think establishing federal standards and funding in terms of what should be taught at what grade level so there's some uniform expectation about what students are learning is vital, but decisions on how to implement the educational process need to occur closer to the schools where kids are learning, so local factors and economies of scale can be taken into account.

But alas, there's so much tied into defining where uniform educational standards end and implementation how-to begins, isn't there? For example, why in the world are textbooks and everything else that schools use to teach (except for software, because Microsoft and others are fighting to get their product into as many classrooms as possible) so freaking expensive? What if the federal government decided that a particular textbook met every educational standard for that class and grade level and ordered it in bulk? Wouldn't we save a lot of money? But, wait, isn't picking out a particular textbook making a decision on how to implement that course? And of course, I'm not even going to get into what happens when one state picks the pro-science biology textbook and another state picks the cleverly-disquised-&-hoping-no-one's-paying-attention-Intelligent-Design biology textbook?

And then you've got too many who think it's peachy that the government provides free daycare service nine months out of the year (and thank goodness the YMCA offers all those summer camps to keep them out of my hair during the summer), as long as nobody tries to tell them how to raise their child, who they spend maybe two hours with each day. Yes, there are still many parents out there who take an interest in their child's education, but we've got to do something to reach out to these "buddy-buddy" parents who are not doing their children any favors by not challenging them.

But maybe the key is that the education is just one key system in a larger one with many problems. When fixing a school, you have to look at the surrounding community and see what ails it as well. The pefect solution for a troubled school district won't amount to much if the community doesn't have the heart and financial health to support it.

Wow, how's all that for a whole lot of talk offering no solutions but plenty of questions and self-contradicting ideas?

And yes, of course I'm a product of the public school system :-)

Robin,

After considering it, I think you're right that it's a facet of the same problem, but I wonder why there isn't feedback? Is it just a matter of parents who don't care, or is it that they don't feel their input matters?

That I don't know -- but I also don't think "having input" equates to "give them vouchers." As I've said, if you want to take a voucher idea and apply it solely within the public-school system, then I'm at least cautiously willing to give it a whirl ... but somehow that doesn't seem to fit anyone's pre-established agenda.

The voucher system, in my opinion, provides a very good way of holding schools accountable. If my (hypothetical) son's been in a school for a year and I don't see that he's making progress (individual interaction with him day after day does qualify me to make that decision in a way that a government agency looking at a test score cannot), then I'm going to take my son out of that school in favor of another one. It might be that particular school just doesn't suit my kid very well, but it suits plenty of other kids just fine. In that case, the school will prosper, and my son, having been placed in a different school that's more fitting for his personality and/or abilities, will prosper as well.

You don't need vouchers to do what you've described -- just the willingness of the system to accommodate that flexibility. I'm all in favor of that, assuming that the parent (you, in this hypothetical case) can provide some data backing up their claim and don't just leave because they feel like it.

Tim again:
"And schools not funded in this way ... what? Die off?"

Unless they fix their school to meet the needs of the students and their parents, yes. Just like any business that doesn't meet its customers needs.

Schools. Are. Not. Businesses. Nor. Should. They. Be.

You can talk about a "business model" all you want, but the bottom line is that businesses run on profit, and schools don't. You can't dismiss the problem so easily with "well, that's how it works in business..."

If a school's ability to make money

[wheet]

Schools are not for-profit institutions. That's why the "teachers will make more argument" dries up, or at least part of the reason.

I'm convinced that there are large numbers of students who would be better off in some sort of apprentice-ship type program than in the kind of formal schooling that we currently provide.

Now there we can agree. (My brother's one of those people, in fact.)

TWL

Robin,

Den wrote:
"One is that there are generally a limited number of slots in the 'good' public and private schools into which students from the 'bad' schools can transfer, meaning only a select few will actually get elevated out."

I'll believe this at the same time I believe that there's a limited amount of wealth in the world and that Bill Gates' hoarding it is the reason I'm poor.

Finite amount of wealth, no. Finite amount of spots in schools can be fixed as you describe.

Finite amount of good, dedicated teachers -- not fixable under your system, unless you're proposing a massive teacher-training system first and can provide enough incentives that lots of people who might not be otherwise inclined are going to accept it.

TWL

>Posted by Will "Scifantasy" Frank at August 9, >2005 11:19 PM

>For myself, I side with Aaron Sorkin (in the >voice of Sam Seaborn): "[E]ducation is the >silver bullet. Education is everything. We don't >need little changes. We need gigantic monumental >changes. Schools should be palaces. The >competition for the best teachers should be >fierce. They should be making six-figure >salaries.
>School should be incredibly expensive for >government and absolutely free of charge to its >citizens, just like national defense. That’s my >position. I just haven't figured out how to do >it yet."

Yeah I remember that episode.
Also from same episdoe

SAM's response to simply asking Congress for more
money
Public education has been a public policy disaster for 40 years. Having spent
around four trillion dollars on public schools since 1965, the result has been a steady
and inexorable decline in every measurable standard of student performance, to say
nothing of health and safety. But don't worry about it, because the U.S. House of
Representatives is on the case. I feel better already.

SAM
It occurs to me Mallory, that you attended a private primary school, a private high
school and a private college.

MALLORY
What's your point?

SAM
Well, just that liberals have no problem with rich kids going to expensive private
schools, that doesn't undermine public education. And liberals have no problem with
middle-class kids going to parochial schools, that doesn't undermine public education.

MALLORY
Hang on!

SAM
The idea that letting poor public school students choose private alternatives would
destroy public education is simply contrary to our experience. Boston Latin, the oldest
public school in America, is still the best secondary school in New England.

Hey, that's nifty about Boston Latin. Um, why haven't we replicated that across the entire country? Won't something like that work in Carmi, IL, with a town population of 5,800, a fall festival called "Corn Day" (I kid you not), and a Super Wal-Mart?

If the original post was meant in sarcasm, then just consider this one a sarcastic pre-buttal to those who might defend it.

Tim, I totally agree that a big part of the problem is lack of engagement on the behalf of parents. As Jason put it, public schooling is becoming like tax-funded daycare.

I also Jason's research interesting. If the current model we use for education had a built-in failure rate of 30%, where does that leave NCLB? Or more importantly, you can see why NCLB fails as a program, because 30% of the population in the system is expected to fail. Yet here comes NCLB, forcing schools to pass a good portion of that 30% failure group, which means more resources directed at that 30% failure, than the 60% group that should be going on to do good things for society.

Howard, don't pull that crap on me. You got this from the same place I pulled it (I mean that literally--http://communicationsoffice.tripod.com), and if you've been paying attention you know the very next line is "They aren't all Boston Latin and Bronx Science," and that the argument was mostly false because Sam doesn't believe that. Opposition prep, remember?

Jason, I don't think the original was sarcasm, scarily enough.

Tim wrote:
"Schools. Are. Not. Businesses. Nor. Should. They. Be."

Why not?

You say that the reason that vouchers (as I envision them, which may not match up to any existing proposal) won't work is because schools aren't for profit, and again, I say, "Why not?"

If you have reason to believe that treating schools as a for-profit business (which would encourage them to streamline management and provide a good "product") won't improve the education system in this nation, I'd be happy to discuss that, but I'm at a loss to explain how "for-profit" is somehow a bad thing.

>Posted by Will "Scifantasy" Frank at August 10, 2005 03:05 PM

>Howard, don't pull that crap on me. You got this >from the same place I pulled it (I mean that >literally--http://communicationsoffice.tripod.com), >and if you've been paying attention you know the >very next line is "They aren't all Boston Latin >and Bronx Science," and that the argument was >mostly false because Sam doesn't believe that. >Opposition prep, remember?

You are absolutely wrong.
I got it from http://www.twiztv.com/scripts/westwing

Opposition prep arguements were still
good arguements and they weren't really countered.

BTW, have you seen
Season 5 Episode 15 "Full Disclosure"?
Democratic Mayor of DC argues in favor of vouchers.
Note: That episode wasn't written by Sorkin.

Will..the point is there are two sides to each argument...and Sam's pie-in-the-sky "I wish the world was perfect" isn't the answer anymore than Sam's mean ol conservative one is.

As for PAD at PTA...I half expected Eric Larson to run in when PAD raised his hand...that seems to happen in these "PAD raises his hand to open his mouth" columns.

Ok, sometimes I shouldn't just pull stuff from memory. Bobb, the idea about the roots of our current educational model I mentioned partially come from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation website at:

http://www.gatesfoundation.org/Education/default

I must point out that the foundation's educational push is for more charter schools, so there's definitely an agenda to promote smaller, more specialized schools. I just checked the site to see if I could find specific works about the theory, and I feel it necessary to point out that the model actually came from the 1920's, and the third/third/third divisions were more professions/trades/failure. The model that seemed to evolve out of that around 50 years ago was actually more of a factory structure, with what one article said was a predicted 50% fail rate, though that seems kinda high to me. Either way, the foundations of education in this country are not based on "individual enlightenment" and/or "intellectual citizenry" ideals by any means.

As someone who works in social services, business models only go so far in any governmental/public organization. Strict financial and programmatic controls, accountability, performance measures, and merit-based employment are strong concepts to apply to the educational system, but please don't talk about profit margins. Improved financial self-sufficiency, sure, but we can't ask the education system to turn a profit anymore than we can ask the EPA or the highway department to do the same.

Tim wrote:
"Finite amount of good, dedicated teachers -- not fixable under your system, unless you're proposing a massive teacher-training system first and can provide enough incentives that lots of people who might not be otherwise inclined are going to accept it."

Treat schools as a business, and in order to get better teachers (and thus provide a better product, get more students/customers and as a result, make more money), they'll come up with incentives.

I don't really deny that there's a finite number of good teachers out there (since there's a finite number of people on Earth, I have no choice but to conclude there is a finite number of good teachers), but I don't think we'd face a teaching crisis, either.

I think that the most effective schools would develop a good, flexible system that would allow them to use the teachers that we have now more effectively. There would also be schools that managed to reach out to some professionals in other fields who happen to have the talent for reaching out to younger people or for explaining things in a way that others find easier to understand.

These things are, of course, possible under the current school system, but I think they'd be easier if we encouraged direct competition between schools (and vouchers are, in my opinion, the best way to do that).

A quote from Strangers With Candy seems apropos:

"Numbers don't lie. This school just isn't turning a profit."
"But it's a public school."
"So's a privately-held corporation, and _they_ make money."

Jason wrote:
"As someone who works in social services, business models only go so far in any governmental/public organization. Strict financial and programmatic controls, accountability, performance measures, and merit-based employment are strong concepts to apply to the educational system, but please don't talk about profit margins. Improved financial self-sufficiency, sure, but we can't ask the education system to turn a profit anymore than we can ask the EPA or the highway department to do the same. "

Well, I'm not exactly proposing that we demand that the education system turn a profit, but that we take the money we're currently spending and allow parents to manage it for their children's benefit by choosing the school that gets their child's share. If both school A and school B can better serve the students that public school C currently serves, and they turn a profit in doing so (without costing the parents any more than public school C would've been), then I don't see how school B's headmaster's motive (to make a buck) hurts anything.

You say that the reason that vouchers (as I envision them, which may not match up to any existing proposal) won't work is because schools aren't for profit, and again, I say, "Why not?"

You know, this is a flip a coin thing, for me.

On one hand, I say we don't want schools to end like corporations, where people lie, cheat, and steal their way to the top.

On the other hand, that IS the real world, and for all the talk about high school preparing you for it, they're full of shit, because high school doesn't prepare you for anything.

I mean, I took a college-prep course in high school, and then the teachers bitched about students using cliff-notes for books we were supposed to read. So much for the "college" part of prep. :)

But, yeah, cheat in high school? Bad.

Cook the accounting books for the big executives? Well, if you get away with it, you'll probably get a nice bonus.

And on a very disturbing and sad note:

"After months of debate over science and religion, the Kansas Board of Education has tentatively approved new state science standards that weaken the role evolution plays in teaching about the origin of life."

Article here.

"If you have reason to believe that treating schools as a for-profit business (which would encourage them to streamline management and provide a good "product") won't improve the education system in this nation, I'd be happy to discuss that, but I'm at a loss to explain how "for-profit" is somehow a bad thing."

Robin S., I'd say it's not the model that causes the probelms, it's the measuring standards. In a for-profit business, you've got one really good indicator of success or failure: the bottom line. A for-profit business makes something: a good, a service, something. Butter. Guns. Schmoos. Whatever. It provides something that people pay money to consume, and generates financial profits for investors on top of operating expenses. The more profit it makes, the better it does, the more people want to invest. But simply put, a for-profit business has an objective indicator of success: profit.

What's your standard of success measurement for a school? Graduation rate? Salary after graduation? Attendance? Performance on a standardized test? Each of these is fraught with subjective inputs.

Those that fail to graduate high school can still get a GED at some point. And just getting your diploma doesn't guarantee success anywhere else...just as there are people that never graduate high school that go on to be successful in many different fields.

Salary after graduation? Do you count all those that go on to college, and have zero, or a negative, income? Do you include those that don't get a job until after college, and do you discount at all for the value of the college education?

Performance on standardized tests? This is maybe close to an objective standard, but what about those brilliant people that test poorly? Or those that face cultural/language challenges based on the format of the test?

And even if you could achieve an objective standard, how do you value it? A for profit company that pays a 200% return on investment is performing better than one that pays 2%. But if the 200% equals only $100, while the 2% return equals $2 million, the second may be seen as the "better" investment. So, how do you value the output results of a for-profit model school?

It's well and good to talk about running a school off the for-profit model, but talking and doing are worlds apart.

I'll believe this at the same time I believe that there's a limited amount of wealth in the world and that Bill Gates' hoarding it is the reason I'm poor.

Well, then believe it, Robnn, because that's exactly the conclusions drawn when vouchers were explored here in Pennsylvania.

Maybe I'm being idealistic and I just think too highly of my fellow human beings, but I think that what would actually happen is that we'd see two (or more) schools appear. One school that caters specifically to the scientific whizkids and one that doesn't.

That was what we were told when the created charter schools in PA. Instead, they created a bunch of schools that didn't do anything better than the regular public schools except waste money. They've been really good at doing that.

Having been a teacher's aid for a brief time, I have a high level of respect for teachers. I think they are the most important people we have on the face of this earth. Where would we be without our education? Whether you have just a high school level education (or less) or a college level education, look at that and exaime yourself. IF we didn't have teachers, none of us would be writing here. We'd all be out in the streets as savages.

So we owe our teachers alot. So they should, imo, be paid at least as much as doctors (certaily more then lawyers. lol).

As for school funding, forget sports imo. I think sports have been teachering kids the wrong lessons anyway. They are all about winning and less about fun (like they should be). So just forget them. Kids can play them on their own if they want to.

But arts, thearter, and music are very important. These are important parts of our culture and kids NEED to know about them. They need to be apart of that, imo. I think that most of the great human accompisments come from arts, thearter, and music (real music. which we hear far too little of these days).

So, just as its important that teachers get paid more, its also important that we save these programs.

And I agree with Peter. Teachers should help out with that. I'm not saying they should take a paycut, but they should help with the fundraising if they can and talk to the kids about how important those programs are.

When we start cuting back in the education of kids, then we start cuting back at our future.

DF2506
" Thats how I feel about the space program too. We need to focus on that much more too. I think NASA should be given all the funding them need so that they can finally get to Mars, other planets and really start the exploration of the universe. If we don't grow and learn, then what's the point of being alive? "

If you have reason to believe that treating schools as a for-profit business (which would encourage them to streamline management and provide a good "product") won't improve the education system in this nation, I'd be happy to discuss that, but I'm at a loss to explain how "for-profit" is somehow a bad thing.

Simply put: Edison, one of the biggest for-profit school companies has had control of the Chester-Upland School District for over ten years and they have failed to improve test scores.
The problem with the "for-profit is best" meme is that it's based on ideology and faith rather than the real world.

Isn't that what conservatives usually say about liberals? Funny, ain't it?

Robin,

You say that the reason that vouchers (as I envision them, which may not match up to any existing proposal) won't work is because schools aren't for profit, and again, I say, "Why not?"

If you have reason to believe that treating schools as a for-profit business (which would encourage them to streamline management and provide a good "product") won't improve the education system in this nation, I'd be happy to discuss that, but I'm at a loss to explain how "for-profit" is somehow a bad thing.

Others have already given responses similar to mine, but here goes:

1) As Bobb said, there's no good "bottom line" you can use to quantify what's going on.

2) I think the evidence is very strong that an unrestrained, unregulated appeal to the profit motive tends to create a lot more Enrons than anyone in the corporate world cares to admit. You think there's waste NOW, wait until Wal-Mart buys out the schools and takes away teachers' health insurance. That would certainly up the schools' profits, but it in no way creates a superior "product."

The public education system is a societal problem -- it's not one that's going to be fixed by simply worshiping the almighty invisible hand of the marketplace, no matter how much so many conservatives seem to think that solves every problem under the sun.

I'll ask you again, since you seem to ignore it every time I bring it up -- would you be fine with using the "vouchers" idea but applying it solely within the public school system? That seems to have a reasonable chance of creating the streamlining and competition you're so confident is the answer, yet you don't seem to be leaping at that particular opportunity. Why not?

TWL

Ok, I have to say something about the remark about sports teaching the wrong things. Competitive sports, like any other educational opportunity, when done correctly teach many, many valuable life lessons: competitive drive, fair play, being a good winner, being a better loser, team work in team sports, self-reliance and worth in individual sports, etc. The idea that it's somehow bad for kids to compete against each other and that learning to compete is not a necessary part of learning to live in our society is plain wrong. I didn't even really like sports when I was in school (had an assistant football coach that contributed to my heat stroke and leaving the team my junior year), but even the small amount I did participate gave me a heads-up about certain things in the real world. And sports are the only things that kids compete in while in school, yet they get picked on the most for it. Spelling Bees, Knowledge Bowls, Debate Team, Chess Club, Art Competitions, that Kiwanis/Rotary Club/Daughters of the American Revolution Essay every freaking year, and more are all examples of kids showcasing their innate strengths and working hard to compete. It amazes me that people will bemoan our educational system for falling behind and being uncompetitive compared to other countries and then complain that kids shouldn't compete for anything because of self-esteem, all in the same breath. True self-esteem comes from a sense of earned self-worth, at least in the real world. Hiding kids from the idea that they need to work hard, that just feeling good about themselves is not enough, is part of the problem we're talking about when our students can't be bothered to learn even the basics because their parents will bitch and moan until they get the grade they want.

Oops; the above should have read that sports are NOT the only thing that kids compete in in school...

Tim, why do you suppose that so many parents, if given vouchers, would head to the private schools? I know you are correct, I just wonder why.

My own guess is that the private schools have an advantage--they can kick out any disruptive students without penalty or much risk and easily replace them. Meanwhile, I have kids walking the hallways yelling obscenities and nobody can do a thing because they are special ed (and their "exceptionality", I might add, is not Tourettes. They are just playing the system.)

Then again, say we do kick out the malcontents. What happens then? They walk the streets, looking for trouble.

And further, if public schools could easily toss out students you just KNOW that some of them would be suspending low achievers just to raise their overall standardized test grades.

For those advocating merit pay I need to know how it would be done. Here's my situation: we have 4 levels of biology, as an example. Basic bio is the easiest, it has kids who have failed the class before, those with a limited grasp of English, kids who hate science or have struggled in the past, special ed kids, and a few who should have taken one of the higher levels but for some reason did not. CP Bio is college prep; harder textbook, more homework, more independent work, Honors Bio is very high level, almost a college level course, mush tougher book and projects. AP Bio is a college level class and earns you college credit. Hard as hell.

Now all of them take a final exam that is made up by the state (The AP class has its own test). If my basic kids average a 70 on the test and the CP kids average an 80 and the Honors kids average a 90 on the test, which teacher deserves merit pay? The one who taught the highest level kids and got high level scores? The one who taught the lowest achievers? Who did the best job? The only way to make it fair is to have all the classes randomly picked and everyone take the exact same course. I think I can state with no bit of fear that I'll be proven wrong that such an approach would result in virtually ALL of the basic and many of the CP level kids being left behind or, alternatively, most of the honors and some of the CP kids being bored out of their skulls and getting very much less of an education that they should.

Countries that make education a priority, by requiring actual, meaningful tests to advance, and that don't glorify the athlete at the expense of the scholar, are passing us by leaps and bounds these days. Countries that had rice as their biggest product 30 years ago are now close to creating nuclear devices, while the US...

Let's keep in mind though that many countries only educate the very top level kids...basically, their "public" school is a lot more like our private schools. When you are determined to give EVERY child an education you will inevitably run into certain challenges.

Who says every kid needs the same education? How far do we want to take our standard education requirements? As a lawyer, I clearly need skills in writing, logic, reason, other communication, deduction, etc. I don't really need calculus, a ton of science, really broad history knowledge. Yet, I'm required to get a lot of that stuff. We're teaching our kids a lot of stuff they don't need, want, or can even use.

Bobb, this is an idea I struggle with. There's a lot of merit to it. At the very least we should look toward more vocational opportunities in the high school. It's true that not EVRYONE needs to go to college...and yet I've known so many who blossomed in college after just taking up space in high school...I hate to think of kids making life decisions at such an early age that will hold them back for life...but again, there's a lot of good points in what you say.

Not from what I understand. Indian parents are so focused on education that they send their kids to private school, but the public schools are so good that people beg to come in. So, the private schools aren't BAD, but the public schools are really, really good. I should have made that clearer.

I recently saw a news program showing how girls in India were not getting an education while their brothers were...I don't know if this is something that is commonplace or limited to one region (India is a big place). I suspect that the realities for those in the cities are very very different than that experienced by the rural population.

While I can't ever picture myself doing the rap-on-the-knuckles thing, I can testify that poor grades (meaning D's and F's) DO still happen, at least in my neck of the woods. I've given a few -- and the administrators are generally fine with it so long as I can back it up (which I can).

I can state that at least 15-20% of my students, on average, fail. I'll admit that the majority of thise are not always academic failures--too many absences, suspended for fighting, that sort of thing, but I have no fear of giving an F. I'm a freaking pussycat, you get an F with me and you have richly earned it.

The thing that struck me in my research is that the current basic model of education was created right after WWII, when the big push was to crank out engineers, scientists, and mathematicians in the ramp-up to the Cold War.

Hmmm, interesting. I agree that there is way too much emphasis on advanced math (But I don't enjoy math so take that with a grain of salt). I see no reason for most kids to take chem and physics (both are great subjects but require a certain ability in higher level thinking).

Obviously, every kid should be able to read and write (though we should recognize creative writing as the talent that it is. Not everyone can do it well.). Obviously they need to have a good knowledge of essential biology and environmental science (again, my bias reveals itself).

science standards that weaken the role evolution plays in teaching about the origin of life.

Evolution has little or nothing to do with the origin of life. Two different subjects.

o we owe our teachers alot. So they should, imo, be paid at least as much as doctors

No. Thanks, you are a wonderful person, but no. I was married to a doctor. There's no comparison.

As for school funding, forget sports imo.

I'm going to have to disagree here as well. I know it is popular for us to bash the athletic department but the truth is that a lot of my kids would not be there if it were not for sports. That's a dumb reason to go to school but kids are, to various degrees, dumb. I've used sports to get better effort and behavior from my kids as well--telling Coach Pegram that Tyrone Firefly is acting up in class will often solve the problem--something involving repeated laps around the football field. They can't play if they fail classes so there are some who give an extra effort right there. And there is a level of discipline that sports gives them that can be used in all aspects of life.

Also, it is the one thing that gets parents involved. Is that right? No but welcome to Reality 101. Prerequisite: life.

Now there are schools where sports is the only thing and obviously the tail is wagging the dog there.

Best. Thread. Ever.

I still haven't seen a real explanation for where my four trillion went! :)

Serously though, as "investors" in the school system, or just as responsible people, parents have a right to question where the money is going.

Second, as a recent inmate of a public school, I can tell you Bill, when it came to sports, not only did the tail wag the dog, it was the whole damn dog! There is also a trend to see this same emphasis on sports elsewhere. And with this emphasis, comes a tendancy to look down on real acheivers, people who do well in class, or who work hard at something besides sports. I tell ya, it ain't fun being the one reading Peter David and Harlan Ellison in a world where most people are struggling to read the captions in "Playboy."

My question has always been, why is there no longer an emphasis on actual classroom acheivement? I mean, sure the Cold war mindset did result in leaving some students behind, but isn't there some middle ground, where we still focus on education, and manage to convey the message that this whole "larnin'" thing isn't bad?

Bill, Tim, you guys are teachers. tell me, where did your school's share of that four trillion go? And do you think that schools overemphasize non-academic stuff too much? I mean, I only know about one school, you guys know about at least two.

As for school vouchers, I tend to be a little ambivalent about their use. Sure, you can save some kids, but how do you decide who? Academic merit? but since kids who come from better financial backgrounds tend to do better, you would run a chance of giving them to the people who need it least. Financial status? then what about all the kids who are doing better? dont they deserve a fair squeeze? The idea of saving as many as possible is laudable, and to his credit, Bush is doing the best he can, but there is no way that you can save them all. So do you save some? How do you choose who to save?

If you can give me a real, fair way of judging who gets school vouchers, but just handing them out is a bad idea.

1Well, as someone that had neither children or other vested interest in public schools, I still have an unsupported opinion or two... 8-)

First, on measuring results. I think that the measurement should be whether the parent is happy with the results (whether it is education, behavior, college prep, test scores, SATs or football ranking...) If I, as a parent, can have a real, actual choice as to where my child can go, 'I' can pick the criteria of choice. If this means that this is where my voucher goes, then great! (as a side note: I don't have kids, but pay $1000 every year in taxes for schools. Wouldn't it be interesting if I could choose WHICH school got my funding...)

But, the problem is, this would KILL the administrators, advisors, consultants, admins, etc. who have NOTHING to do with teaching, and everything in DIVIDING UP THE LOOT! The real problem with the school budgets are not the teacher's salaries, or even the upkeep on the schools, it is the cost of all the administrators and beaurocrats that get their cut in between the budget and the schools. Unfortunately, all these other parasites are ALSO in the teacher's union, usually in the positions of power, and it is their phony bologna jobs that the classroom cuts are there to protect.

My fantasy? Eliminate state and federal education boards. Let the state ADVISE, but keep ALL THE MONEY at the local level. Allow EVERY TAXPAYER the right to choose which school his taxes funds. Let every parent choose ANY school he wishes for his children.

Also, reduce the present certification requirements for teaching to either a certificate that takes no more than 6 months to achieve, and/or let it be waived by at least 2 years of experience in the field of interest. If a person can't teach, a certification won't help him. If he can, and has real world experience, don't punish him by requiring him to spend a year of his life getting non-sense classes just so he can volunteer to make a lot less money for the common good.

If schools were businesses, I would be allowed-- required!-- to throw back any defective parts they send me.
Try something as simple as building a house, if every piece of lumber is supplied by a different family, with no standardization. Some of the boards are warped, some cut wrong, some are termite ridden, underfed, etc. Sometimes you get a great piece of wood that doesn't require much shaping by the carpenter; then the problem is keep that board from being compromised by the corruption around it. Oh, and the house doesn't have to have a firm foundation, because we're more interested in the football stadium anyway.
As a teacher, the students are the raw material that come into my workshop. I can't waste time complaining that today's students aren't the best material. I have to teach whoever-- whatever!-- walks in that door.
Wake me when advocates of the business model start to understand this. The market can't solve everything, capitalism is not appropriate for every human endeavor. More money would be nice, but I'd trade it for kids who are encouraged to read at home and a society that gives academic teachers more juice than athletic directors .
Cultures put their resources, including their best and brightest, into whatever they think is most important. For a while, churches and cathedrals dominate the landscape; then the palaces of government, courthouses and legislatures. Nowadays the largest and grandest buildings are those belonging to the great financial powers-- and the sports arenas they name after themselves. Now take a look at the schools.

For all our talk about education, colleges report that donations to the universities are highly linked to the success of the football and basketball teams.

In my town three years ago, almost no one (besides parents) showed up at a school board meeting to honor the Academic Decathlon students who went to the state finals. However, the next week it was standing room only when the board was considering changing the mascot name from "Coons" to "Raccoons".

Until we decide to honor academic achievement at a higher level than academic prowess, until we reinforce to our kids daily that the smartest kid in the class is someone to be respected, not poked fun at, our schools will continue to decline.

There is no point in our moaning about the fact that football is more popular than quiz bowl. It just is. Nothing will change that. I could give you several theories about why--for one thing, we are hard wired to enjoy violence and will choose our entertainment accordingly. Give the kids on the Quiz Bowl team barbed wire bats and watch the rating skyrocket.

Also, it's basic envy.You can't get too upset over the fact that someone is better at basketball than you are because it is a simple matter of genetics- not everyone can be 7 feet tall. But people like to believe that the only reason someone is smarter than they are is because they waste time reading or have no social life.

And let's take the long term view here. Sure, it sucks to be the smart kid who gets no attention in high school but at least he will go to college and is more likely to get a good job making real money--all factors that are much more likely to lead to sex than what happened back in 10th grade.

Part of my job as a teacher is to point out to the smart kids just how temporary and unreal high school is and how much better adult life will be for those who are mature at 16 while the rest of their peers are acting the fool. When I've run into them later in life 9 times out of 10 we share a laugh at how right I was.

Go Coons!

Bobb:
"What's your standard of success measurement for a school? Graduation rate? Salary after graduation? Attendance? Performance on a standardized test? Each of these is fraught with subjective inputs."

I've already said what my standard of success for a school is: "Is my child showing progress?" It's subjective, but I think it's a subjective measurement that parents who take an active role in their children's lives are qualified to make. As for a measurement for the macro success for the school: "Are lots of parents dissatisfied and pulling their kids out?" seems like a solid way of marking that success.

Den:
"That was what we were told when the created charter schools in PA. Instead, they created a bunch of schools that didn't do anything better than the regular public schools except waste money. They've been really good at doing that."

Can you provide me with a link where I might find more information on the implementation of these schools?

Tim:
"I'll ask you again, since you seem to ignore it every time I bring it up -- would you be fine with using the 'vouchers' idea but applying it solely within the public school system? That seems to have a reasonable chance of creating the streamlining and competition you're so confident is the answer, yet you don't seem to be leaping at that particular opportunity. Why not?"

How is that differnt from what happens now? If I want to drive my kid to the next school district and let him go to school there, doesn't "his" money go there instead?

1.) I tend to think of government-run schools as a bad idea, because I'm of the opinion that government, though a necessary evil, is inherently, well, evil. Allowing the government to manage my child's education seems like a surefire method of making sure he grows up to believe that the government is the answer to every problem.

2.) I'm not sure exactly how a voucher that I can only "spend" in the public school system helps anything. Is the government going to build extra schools in my area to compete against themselves? If not, how does that help me when the second nearest high school to my home is forty miles away, in the opposite direction from my workplace?

3.) Even if the government does build two separate schools in the same district (though, expecting that to provide competition is like saying that XP Home and XP Professional constitute competing products), what would the difference be? Would we have separate governing bodies for each? It seems to me that if we have two schools that are being managed by the same set of inept fools (i.e., the local board of education), then it's like a choice between eating horse crap or dog crap -- technically, you've given me a choice, but it's a lousy one.

Still, I'm willing to admit that my experiences with the public school system were extremely negative, and that probably colors my opinion of it. The public-system voucher program would be better than what we have now, but I remain convinced that a private-system (or even semi-private) is better.

Here's my question: if I opt to send my kid to a private school, or if I opt to home school him, what happens to the money that would've gone to his public school? What happens in the system now (I imagine that the money simply goes back into the larger pool of government money), and what would happen in your system of "public-only school vouchers"?

When I say I want a voucher system, this is all I'm asking for: If I send my kid to a private school, I want the government to direct that $X that would've gone to my public schoool into the private school I've chosen. Why is that such a problem?

Tim, Bobb, Den (and anyone else I've missed):
I'll be around a while tomorrow and may comment then, but I'm going to be away this weekend, so I'll probably not be responding much more

I just wanted to mention that I've really enjoyed this discussion, even though none of us seem to have convinced anyone else. I love debating this kind of stuff, but it's not altogether common that I get to do so without the disagreements turning to an argument.

Thanks.

> I can say with utmost confidence that teaching is a highly skilled job.

The good teachers, the one that left an impact, the ones that make a difference--I have no problem saying that they are highly skilled and deserve to be paid more.

The NEA tells us that the U.S. has somewhere in the neighborhood of three to four million teachers. Around 200,000 people graduate each year with a bachelor's or master's degree in education. At this size, our educational system isn't set up to require skilled teachers, nor set up to reward them either.

> Merit pay is a chimera. How does one measure a “good” teacher? [...] Teacher pay scales are based on seniority because that's the only reasonable way to do it in a society that values grades over learning, tests over teaching.

Got me, but somehow we manage to do without a seniority system for lawyers, doctors, computer programmers, comic book writers and almost every other sector we actually care about.

Sure, how long you've been working in the field is an aspect in all of those systems, but by and large, professions we care about pay employees (or at least claim to pay employees) based on some measure of competency, despite the fact that there rarely exist absolute objective measures of their skills.

I have a question for you teachers out there on this thread:

What do you think of the social merits of high schools?

I've heard stories where people want to bring back the "girls/boys only" type schools, claiming that the other sex is merely a distraction from learning, other stupid excuses, etc.

I guess I would say that high school as much of a social benefit as education, if not greater (I was your 'never study, ace tests type', save for science classes).

I work for a teacher's union. The last thing we ever want to do is offer givebacks. It's bad precident, and a huge sign of weakness. That might seem insignificant, but I've sat in for contract negotiations two times now, and you'd be surprised how "out for blood" it gets.

I agree that these programs are horribly underfunded, but staff givebacks are the last thing that I would consider looking at.

This was the most despicable outrageous comment on this whole thread!

So in this union worker's eyes, helping the schools and the children are not the most important thing for teachers, making sure that the unions get every cent they can from the union dues that are the biggest reason that teachers don't make very much money is the most important thing.

Caring for the actual schools and students is a sign of weakness??? Unions really are evil!!!

I have to ask, why, if we're concerned about the ever-declining quality of our education, would we want to REDUCE the requirements and qualifications necessary teach? This reaks of the same idea that if most of the kids find something too hard, we should just dumb it down to the lowest common denominator. Why is expecting people to go to school and get the proper professional recognition before, oh, molding the minds of our youth, too much of a burden and inconvenience? TEACHING IS NOT EASY; if teaching was actually easy and didn't require any particular skill, all of the teachers we have now would be enough. Years of experience in one field does not translate into being able to teach a class how to do it. Mentoring an individual as a protege? That's based more on a personal relationship and leading by example. Teaching a class with probably no experience in your field or any other about it? That requires specialized skills and a particular mindset that allows you to find common ground with a broad range of youth who may or may not be interested in what you're telling them. Can someone switch careers and become a teacher late in life? Sure, but why would they be able to just waltz into the classroom a perfect teacher as opposed to walking into another field where they will need additional training?

Brian,

How do I know a doctor has done a good job? Because I'm better. I'm healed. The body provides a reasonably clear measure of "good" and "bad" medical procedures.

How do I judge that a lawyer has done a good job? Notice the use of the word "judge" instead of "know". Because we won. The bigger we won, the better she did, many would judge. At the same time, lawyers are one of the most maligned groups of people in history, and not without some good reason. There is a disconnect in that profession between what is right and true, and what is decided by the court. Still, when it comes to paying a lawyer, people want to win, so there is an objective way to judge lawyers. It may be one of those things that ends up destroying us (this disconnect between justice and law), but people judge it that way.

How do I know a programmer did a good job? The program works efficiently and does what it needs to do. People want a program that works, and they complain when they don't get it. If the program doesn't work, or if the computer is broken, they chuck the part that doesn't work.

How do I judge a comic writer did a good job? The story sells well. The quality of writing is opinion, and so businesses turn to sales numbers as criteria over things like critical praise. Look at the fate of FALLEN ANGEL. Great book, huge critical praise, poor sales. The disconnect between quality and sales means some sucky books continue and some great books don't, but there's no moral issue here, so people accept it. It's business, and comic books are not living things. When they outlive their usefulness, they are discarded.

How do I judge that a teacher has done a good job? I must first decide on a criterion to consider. After all, schools are a business, right? So I'll look at the other “businesses” that you've mentioned and make sure the analogies hold.

If I want an objective answer, I say "check what kids have learned through test scores." It's like doctors, right? Wrong, of course. The health of the body is a measurable factor connected to the quality of a person's life. The test scores of a student aren't necessarily connected to what the student knows in a meaningful way. There's that disconnect again. So, schools aren't like hospitals.

If I want a "winner", I judge with test scores. I can judge who "wins" and who "loses". Measuring student performance tells me how teachers are doing, so the teacher with the most "wins" is good and the teacher with the most "losses" is bad, so I go with the winner the same way I do with a lawyer, right? Wrong, of course. If teachers were the only factor in the student's test scores, or if they even factored in as heavily as a lawyer might in a case, then picking the teacher might mean picking the winner. But the sheer number of factors--not the least of which are the student's parents, with whom the student spends much more time over his life than he does with his teacher--involved here means that picking a teacher doesn't guarantee or even strongly predict a "win." So, schools aren't like courthouses.

If I want a teacher that "clicks" with my student, I judge by the efficiency and effectiveness of the program, right? Judging how well the teacher conveys the information, the quality of the information, etc. tells me if that person is a good teacher the same way that checking a program tells me I have a good programmer, right? Wrong, of course. If teachers are the programs, the students are the computers. Try fitting a single program to an infinite diversity of CPU's and various hardware. Let me know how that goes. Remember, too, that the family has installed a unique OS in the student that has its own strengths and weaknesses. No Windows program can ever be more stable than the OS, because it is built on the foundation of the OS. No teacher, no curriculum, can ever be expected to change the baggage a kid brings with him from his family. So, schools aren't like software firms.

(A note for the programmer analogy--remember, too, that if each teacher is a program, then every school is going to have multiple programs for a student. Shall I move schools every year to pick the best one? Never mind the hassle for me and the academic disconnect such frequent moving would cause for my child--would you have liked to have made new friends every year?)

If I want a teacher that “works” for the largest number of people, I judge by the popularity of the teacher, right? If many kids are happy with the way the teacher treats them, if many parents are happy with the grades their students get and the level of knowledge their students gain, then the teacher must be good, right? Wrong... to an extent. If kids are really interested in a teacher who treats them fairly and challenges them appropriately, then that part works. If the parents are really interested in seeing their kids learn the most they can and performing to their potential, then that part works. Of course, if the parents really only care about the grades their kids get so that the kid can go to a good college or get a scholarship, then anything less than an “A” is unacceptable. If the parents have that attitude, you can bet that the kid only cares about an easy class, not an appropriate challenge. If you have those latter standards instead of the former, then popularity isn't always the best judge. So, schools can't be treated like comic book companies--especially for purposes of merit pay--in many situations.

There are things that every profession has in common. Education shares traits with the businesses you mention, with one huge exception: ***Education Is Not A Business.*** When a teacher deals with a student who is “terminally ill” or “permanently paralyzed” in some way, we can't just say, “that's all we can do. Your child is discharged.” When a school has bad test scores, we can't just not admit the students whose scores are low. Academics are very, very important, but they are not ALL-important, no matter what W wants you to believe with his pie-in-the-sky, 100% will succeed NCLB crap. When a teacher's educational program is inferior to another's, that teacher is not automatically inferior. I am not the best teacher in my school. At the same time, I know that there are students who are ALIVE today because I listened and took time. You think my being 10% better at teaching English matters compared to that? When one teacher--or one school--is more popular than another, the “competition” the quality disparity creates is not necessarily constructive. I know whole districts that are more concerned with test scores than they are with education--mainly because they're desperate to compete for their “clients”' money. Those kids are not coming out as prepared as they could be if the school didn't have to waste time pandering to some test written by people with their own political agendas.

Education does not happen in a vacuum, either. Students bring in the problems from the world--the school doesn't create those problems and then send them out. Violence in schools has less to do with teachers or a lack of “intelligent design” teachings than it does with our country's messed-up value system that tells us that it's better to examine rape procedures in detail than it is to see an exposed nipple.

You think the problems of the public schools would be solved by sending kids to private schools? Private schools sort on the basis of money. Most of the middle class and up folks (no matter their color or religion) would be very happy with their schools then. Why? Because all of the problems of poverty would be swept under the rug “where they belong.” While I have no problem with someone sending their child to a school because they believe that it is their religious duty to do so, I do have a problem with someone marginalizing others because they want their kid to see only the 5% of the world that meets their standards. People adoring private schools because they “sort out” the undesirables are like tourists declaring CountryX to be the best country in the world because they never had to see the crushing poverty afflicting 95% of the population.

Vouchers do not solve the sorting and accessibility problems, either. Look at voucher legislation sometime. Here in Michigan, when they've put up vouchers for a vote (and they've lost so far, thank goodness), the proposed vouchers have never been worth the full $6700 per student each public school gets, but many private school tuitions are $10,000 OR MORE. Even if they did offer the full amount, that still leaves $3,300 or more per year for the family to come up with. You think someone near the poverty line sees that kind of sum as an opportunity? If someone walked up to me right now and said, “I'll give you ten billion dollars if you give me ten thousand dollars in cash right now,” I'd have to refuse him! I don't have that kind of cash on me. That someone didn't offer me any real benefit because I couldn't afford his offer!

Still, “the public schools aren't working now”, so we'd better try something, right? That's like the doctor saying, “Well, I can't cure the disease, but I can always decapitate the guy and see what happens.” When we can see clearly that PlanX disadvantages that outweigh the problems of the status quo, we must NOT accept PlanX.* I don't deny that the public schools need to find a better way, but treating them like businesses isn't the way.

You find me a business that succeeds when 1) it MUST work with whatever faulty materials it's given, 2) it RARELY has enough capital to invest properly, 3) it CANNOT measure its true success because of the lack of a true, reliable bottom line, 4) it DOES NOT PAY its employees salaries comparable to others with similar levels of education, and 5) its competitors CHERRY-PICK the best raw materials, then I will seriously think about treating the public schools like that business.

Until then, please support the teachers and students who must work within our flawed public schools and try to find ways to make those students' lives better, because it may be one of them who can visualize that business model I mentioned.

Eric

* a shout-out to all you db8ers out there! w00t!

"There is no point in our moaning about the fact that football is more popular than quiz bowl. It just is. Nothing will change that."

And that's the complacent type thinking that is leaving America left in the educational dust. Maybe I'm cynical from going to school in Indiana, but ungodly amounts of money are poured into sports programs at the expense of other programs. Teamwork, discipline, grace in victory and defeat, yeah, I learned all of those in marching band, yet we had to win state championships 3 or 4 times before the school board remembered the music program come budget time, never mind that we were the ONLY ones bringing home trophies.

So, to paraphrase, sports are a good way to make the physically fit, but dumb kids feel better about themselves. Hurray, let's continue to celebrate intellectual mediocrity. Heck, there are even some kids focusing on sports who could actually BE something if they would actually apply themselves, but it's easier to get the instant gratification of basing their self-worth on suiting up and trying to maim other kids, earning accolades from the crowd.

The sad thing is that a lot of Americans are actually going to be surprised when the cure for cancer or AIDS comes out of China or India. It will, unless we get off of our collective, Big Mac infused duff and start encouraging intellectual excellence NOW.

And guess what? It starts with the parents.

-Rex Hondo-

"After months of debate over science and religion, the Kansas Board of Education has tentatively approved new state science standards that weaken the role evolution plays in teaching about the origin of life."

Sorry ... first reaction? "I wonder what Kal-El would think of this?"

"I recently saw a news program showing how girls in India were not getting an education while their brothers were...I don't know if this is something that is commonplace or limited to one region (India is a big place)."

Don't try telling that to the two middle-aged women I work/worked with who do/did (one moved on to another company) much of our computer programming over the years and are both from India, born, bred and educated there. Then again they were from big cities, perhaps things are different in the countryside.

"There is no point in our moaning about the fact that football is more popular than quiz bowl. It just is. Nothing will change that."

And it isn't as though this is something new. The late Dr. Asimov bemoaned this in his mid-1960s essay THE CULT OF IGNORANCE.

"I'm at a loss to explain how "for-profit" is somehow a bad thing."

Define 'bad'. If you're trying to keep costs down and then add a profit atop those very same basic costs, you'll wind up defeating the stated purpose of the exercise. Either that, or you often wind up with so much corner-cutting that the product winds up worse than it started out. Yes, there is sometimes fat to be trimmed, but when you start hacking at the bones ...

" ... so that I can learn to write in something called Plain English. And the instructor is very good as telling us that it's not "dumbing down" our writing...but that's exactly what it is."

Disagree.

In all too many instances, professionals, be they bureaucrats, lawyers, or electrical engineers, have become so used to their respective high-falutin' jargon that they have lost the ability to communicate with the 'common man'. They need to be taught how to write in ten relatively simple words what they are used to taking fifty polysyllabic ones such that their non-professional audience will get an approximate idea of what they are talking about which may not be precise down to the umpteenth decimal place their jargon would afford them, but good enough for the layman to get what they are driving at.

Or, as I once told a programmer as I was going over changes to the user manual [intended for the average office worker in my workplace] he'd written "this is why they are getting me to rewrite it instead of you. I've just stated in one line what it took you this large paragraph full of terms the average non-programmer couldn't be expected to know."

That he still didn't get it made my point for me.

"They need to be taught how to write in ten relatively simple words what they are used to taking fifty polysyllabic ones such that their non-professional audience will get an approximate idea of what they are talking about which may not be precise down to the umpteenth decimal place their jargon would afford them, but good enough for the layman to get what they are driving at."

Your response contains a key concept that the "Plain English" proponents are missing: audience. I learned it pretty much in English 101 (or whatever they called in high school). If I'm writing a letter to Joe Q. Public in response to a question he's asked, I'm not going to use a whole bunch of technical terms. Or if I do, I'm going to explain them.

On the other hand, if I'm writing a fairly technical environmental assessment of a proposed Federal project (which I actually do on a daily basis), I'm going to use technical terms, and jargon, and terms of art, and everything else my professional discipline embraces, because I know my primary audience is going to understand all that stuff. There's not enough emphasis made during the Plain English classes on audience, and the impression I get is that the Administration would prefer that all government writing be made in Plain English. And while that's consistent with other policies embraced by the Administration, it's ridiculous. Case in point....Plain English would have me use the word "silly" in place of "ridiculous," since they mean essentially the same thing, and the second is what they call an "arrogant" word. However, while they mean essentially the same thing, there are subtle differences. Or imagine only being able to use the word rain, when you're trying to describe a monsoon.

While I absolutely agree that in certain situations, professional writing is inappropriate. I've been an advocate of legistative drafting reform (or put another way, "write them laws better") for years. I even taught Plain English for lawyers at law school. But I've always felt that it would be better to approach it as teaching "Better English," or as I'd prefer, "Gooder English," because there's no way around that "Plain" = dumbed down.

Let me use one last analogy: Say there are 2 cakes on a table. One's a multi-tiered, bridges and all, buttercream strawberry filled yellow/chocolate wedding cake. The other's a plain sheet cake with plain vanilla frosting. They're both cakes, right? So, your bride to be should be just as happy with the sheet cake as she would be with the huge wedding cake, right?

i wonder why it is suggested that there can be no way to assess a teacher's capabilities when trying to determine their level of merit (for merit-based assessments).

it is true that you can't simply look at test scores to determine if a teacher is effective. nor can you just look at parent responses, or student responses. judging how effective a teacher has been IS a subjective judgement, but that doesn't mean that it can't be made.

when i, as a software engineer, come up for my review at the end of the year, my supervisor isn't going to look at one item to determine if i merit a raise. for instance, he can't look at the number of bugs i fixed - what if i worked on complicated bugs that required higher level of skill, but took more time? but the number of bugs i fixed will likely factor into the equation. he can't simply look at the customer feedback - what if i had a particularly nasty customer? or the customer was being unreasonable? but customer feedback will likely factor into the equation. basically, when my supervisor is assessing whether or not i should get a raise, he will make a subjective judgement based upon a lot of factors.

why can't teachers be assessed the same way? give the principal (or a group of people? however you want to do it) a variety of information: test scores, student feedback, parent feedback, peer reviews, etc. after all, we all know there are good teachers and bad teachers, right? certainly that's been my experience. how did i know? observation - it's not hard to figure out. let the local officials determine the merit of the individual teachers. but this brings us back to the original point of running schools more like a business. why? under the current system, local principals would try to cheat, and give everyone in their school high marks. why? money. the more successful the school, the more money from the big money pool you get.

so how do business principals come into play? because the schools right now are run like a government agency, not like a business. example: in many government agencies, there is a budget. if you get to the end of the fiscal year, and you come in under budget, that means that next year your budget will be lowered for the next year - you are essentially penalized for good performance/cost savings. so, often, agencies will spend money (taxpayers money, mind you) that they don't need to spend in order to use up all their budget and ask for a budget increase the next year. with plenty of levels of beauracracy in there for good measure.

our schools are run much the same way - no real accountability for results, just looking at the budget numbers. if you ran schools like a business, you could have the teachers assessed by their immediate supervisor (i.e. the principal), the principal assessed by his supervisors (i.e. the superintendant, or school board), and the superintendant by their immediate supervisor (i.e. the state). it should be fairly easy to develop a budget based on number of students, adjusted for cost issues (i.e. inner city versus rural). the allotment of that money to all of the teachers is handled by the principal, who makes subjective judgements on who gets raises, etc. the success of the school overall is then up to the principal, who goes through the same subjective review (based upon multiple factors) by the superintendant, and so on.

the problem that the union brings is when it goes from being a body to protect against abuses by the administration, to a body that has enough power to fully blanket all of their members with protection. the result is that it becomes very difficult to get rid of bad teachers, because they fall under the same blanket protection. it also becomes very difficult to assess and praise great teachers - because that blanket protection squashes attempts to rate teachers on merit (because it would then expose the bad teachers). this ends up being good overall for the teachers (at least for the ones who just want to get by), but is not necessarily in the best interests of the school or the students.

look, i'd be all for providing more funding to the public schools, IF there were any indication that it would be better spent than the money i'm already paying. that's where auditing comes into play. if you say we need an extra .5 cent sales tax to fund a particular program, with particular goals, and how the money will be spent, and i think the program has merit, i'd be more than happy to vote for it. but simply saying that we need more money for education, when for all i know the money will go into raises for administrators or a new football statium, then i'm going to vote it down. and if i think the program you're implementing is a bad program, i'm going to vote it down. it doesn't mean i don't support education, or that i don't support teachers. if you think teachers deserve a raise, that's fine. show me why - for all i know i might be giving a raise to the worst teacher in the school.

oh, and one of the reasons that doctors/lawyers/plumbers/etc. make so much more than teachers? they aren't government employees. private school teachers (and professors at private schools) make quite a bit more than public school teachers - i think you'd be hard pressed to find someone at a lower level position (which, in the chain of command, teachers are) who make a lot of money in any governmental position...

-b

Bravo, Peter. Jeez, I probably disagree with 90 percent of what you say (aside from the comic/sci-fi reviews, that is---as I like to say, I come for the peerless comic/sci-fi commentary, and stay for the liberal hogwash), but it's nice to see that the idea of union accountability has taken hold with you in some small form.

Now, if you'd only get cracking on that Condi in '08 op-ed, we might make some serious headway here.

-Dave O'Connell

What do you think of the social merits of high schools?

Pretty important. I've noticed that although home-schooled kids are, on average, way ahead of the others in pure knowledge, they tend to be a bit socially retarded (this is not true for all of them).

This was the most despicable outrageous comment on this whole thread!

C'mon, this thread has been mostly free of personal attacks. Let's keep it that way.

And that's the complacent type thinking that is leaving America left in the educational dust.

It's not being complacent, it's working with reality. I don't see any suggestion from you on how we will fill up a stadium of people cheering for the Quiz team. If you ever figure it out let me know--you should also share the secret with the producers of Jeopardy so they can best the Super Bowl's ratings every week.

So, to paraphrase, sports are a good way to make the physically fit, but dumb kids feel better about themselves

Not all or even most of the kids in my school's sports program would fit that description. Reality ain't an Archie comic.

private school teachers (and professors at private schools) make quite a bit more than public school teachers - i think you'd be hard pressed to find someone at a lower level position (which, in the chain of command, teachers are) who make a lot of money in any governmental position...

I'm not sure that is true...most of the private school teachers I've talked too get even less than I do. The tradeoff is that they are also getting far better working conditions and far more motivated students.

If a private school opened up in my town with better pay they would have NO trouble cherry-picking the best public school teachers from the throng that would be beating down their doors.

Just in response to The StarWolf--Instead of having they in technical or legal positions lighten their use of technical words that the layman could understand what they're getting at, let's start holding the layman responsible for understanding what the hell's going on around him, her or it. (Hey, you never know anymore...) That, really, is the biggest part of this whole problem, playing down to the lowest factor rather than showing those how to get into the higher. Now, some people aren't as capable linguistically or mathematically as some others, but the current system does nothing but drive that point home to them, so they stop trying in other areas. It's like your archetype brainiac student not trying hard in gym class bedcause those around him tell him/her that they can't do it. Those treatments are ingested and become ingrained and people stop trying and their brains begin to atrophy all because they are "shown" their particular niche and are forced to fill it.

I'm a little surprised that there hasn't been more discussion of religious schooling, and its merits and drawbacks. Anyone have any personal experiences in this area?

And while I very much disagree with the notion that teaching does not require a terrible amount of skill, I find the notion of paying teachers exorbitant salaries, i.e. the Sorkin solution, equally preposterous. Aren't some professions supposed to be about more than just money? Isn't it better that one might gravitate towards a certain profession because it's a "calling" and not because they want to clean up big time? Just a thought.

-Dave O'Connell

Re: Sports in schools. Here's the thing. Physical activity of some kind IS important for kids, especially younger ones. It helps with their physical development, and also works to keep them healthy. Heck, you can say that for adults, too (I'm pushing for an office recess time, along with a 20 minute after lunch nap).

But when you start getting into organized, competitive sports, you're really starting to get beyond excercise for health's sake, and into something else entirely. Are there important lessons you can learn in competitive sports? Absolutely. But the thing is, they aren'y mandatory. We require everyone to get basic, math, reading, writing, science, and history lessons, and to a certain degree, we require (or at least we did in my high school) some basic phy ed. class. But then you look at football, track, baseball, basketball, etc. These are extracurricular, AFTER SCHOOL activities. It's not like your kid is taking a school offered art class.

The point being, there's a market for sports. Everyone can see that. So why use tax-payer money to fund what is essentially the entry-level position for the professional sports althlete, especially when private leagues are forming all over the place?

Yeah, test scores are not necessarily a good indicator of how well a teacher is teaching or a student is learning.

If one went by most of my grades in grammar and high school, one would think I had the world's worst teachers and/or that I was a total nincompoop.

Yet, if one went by my test scores, one would think the exact opposite, since, overall, I routinely scored in the upper five percentile nationwide.

The fact is, I was quite a handful back in the 1960s, and there is no doubt in my mind that if I was zipping through the school system today, I'd probably have a continuous Ritalin drip stuck in my arm, attached to an industrial-sized, backpack tank. More ominously, I would also have never have had the opportunity to naturally develop, through trial-and-error, into the person I eventually grew into -- and that's why I am troubled by the widespread use of drugs today to make it easier for teachers to control "problem" students in classrooms.

For anyone that's seen the movie Godzilla: Tokyo SOS, you'll know what I mean when I say the role of the typically plucky/annoying kid in some Godzilla movies was so pumped full of Ritalin he could barely move his cheeks enough to crack a smile. And while I said that jokingly, it's sad that it is such a joke now. Maybe it's not a rampant a problem as we migth be led to believe, but it does seem like Americans in general are for to casual in their use of prescription drugs, and tragically include their children. Which is just crazy to me, given the increasing number of studies that show that we have almost no clue how long-term drug use affects an adult, let alone a developing child. I know this gets off the education topic some, but based on attitudes I've seen in the soon-to-be-parents group, our society is about 50-50 between advancing into an enlightened future where parents take an active role in being a parent and fully engage in the massive responsibility that it is, or sliding into a state where we just accept whatever the drug of the day is and pump it into our kids without a care for what it might be doing to them.

"Pretty important. I've noticed that although home-schooled kids are, on average, way ahead of the others in pure knowledge, they tend to be a bit socially retarded (this is not true for all of them)."

Nor is it true generally. It's a stereotype without much basis in reality. All the research, including a longitudinal study carried out by the University of Michigan on the socialization of homeschooled students, indicates that the homeschooled students are generally at least as well adjusted socially as their public schooled peers. In my personal experience, they are almost exclusively better adjusted socially. Once in a while I'll come across a homeschooled student who seems challenged in this area, but by and large, they are socially light years ahead of their schooled peers. And I live in a neighboorhood that, surprisingly, has an almost 50-50 split of homeschooled and traditionally schooled kids. The differences are fairly blatant.

Unless, of course, your definition of "socially retarded" includes being polite, well-mannered, respectful, able to relate to people of all ages, able to carry forth intelligent conversations at length on a variety of topics, able to express a contrary opinion (even to that of an adult) and to defend that opinion respectfully, and the ability to engage an adult in conversation while meeting their eyes and talking to them. (That last was one thing that has always impressed me about homeschooled kids. Without exception, they look me in the eyes, listen to me, and talk to me during conversations. Schooled kids, almost without exception, never look me in the eyes during conversations, preferring to look away or stare at the ground.)

As with anything, too much of something is usually bad. I don't doubt that too many kids are being given drugs that they don't need--a few hours staked to a fire ant hill would probably accomplish the same thing at far less cost--but I've also seen kids who were LITERALLY bouncing off the walls, unable to focus or concentrate for more than 10 mintes, suddenly transform into B level students once the doctors worked out their dosage.

So I don't know. One thing I wonder about--if you read older novels or study the "good old days" you see that madness was a frequent event. It was one of those things that one feared. Now I've got a lot to worry about but it never occurs to me to be concerned about going stark raving bonkers. Maybe age related dementia but not the pure craziness that filled up the asylums of old. So my question is--have our advances in medicine and psychaitry truly reduced the incidence of insanity? And wouldn't that be a good thing? Might some of these kids we see medicated in school today have been condemned to village idiot staus a few generations ago?

I'm not saying that too many kids aren't being over prescribed but let's not throw outthe baby with the bath water.

Bill, I'm sure there are instances where medication is not only mandated, but clearly has a positive impact on the patient. But I wonder how many of those kids that bounce off walls and can't seem to sit still have been raised on a high-sugar diet?

I guess I'm showing my bias as to why I go to a DO and not an MD. I'd rather look at the whole set of circumstance, rather then hear a set of symptoms and prescribe treatment based on very little actual knowledge of the patient. Look at the number of drugs every year that we discover some unhealthy or even fatal side effect. There really is no free lunch, and with any treatment, you need to balance the risks against the benefits. If you can get a rowdy kid under control through diet instead of drugs, you should. You should also not let this view get in the way of using drugs when they are called for. But it seems to me that the growing American trend is to drug first and ask consequences later.

As to home-schooled kids occasion having ill-developed social skills, I'd say you could go to plenty of public and private schools and find socially maladjusted kids. And probably a greater proportion of them than among the home-schooled crowd.

Isn't it better that one might gravitate towards a certain profession because it's a "calling" and not because they want to clean up big time?

There might be a middle ground...I'm not sure the teachers want to be paid the same as baseball players. (Oh, I'm sure they'd like it, but they're not delusional.)

But in a capitalisitic society, if you have a choice between being a math teacher, making $25,000 a year, or go into Corporate IT and make $50,000 a year, the schools are going to struggle to compete for quality teachers.

Ok, someone called me on my comment that we needed less stringent standards for teachers, and instead called for MORE requirements to be a teacher.

I take it you are not a professional that has considered teaching? I am. I am an engineer, with a masters in electronic engineering, and a bachelors in Psychology. A few years ago, I considered going into teaching, maybe high school science or math. What I found convinced me that this wasn't going to happen.

In order to teach in California, you need a certification. This isn't just a take a test and you are certified certification. This is a one year 'graduate' level set of preparation classes, most of it in phony bolony courses in "multi-culturalism" and 'standards' - basically, how to meet all the different government requirements that are added each year. The legislators and state board of education have to justify their existance, and look like they are doing something, so one of their exercises is to 'tighten' standards, i.e. create more requirements that have nothing to do with teaching, but everything to making some interest group provide support and campaign money.

What we need is simply a couple of classes in basic classroom procedure, practicums in teaching methodology, and let the teachers teach. Instead, we get a lot of micro-management, make sure you have the correct political attitudes, and who cares if you actually know anything about your subject...

Charlie

"Anyone have any personal experiences in this area?"

Yeah, religious schools are the best. Why? First, the almighty fear of nuns. You ever see "The Blues Brothers?" Remember the Penguin? Not made up. Nuns can be terrifying teachers. Second, the clergy tend to be very, very, very well educated. I never met so many people who knew the classics like nuns and priests. Third,
it is very expensive, so the teachers are very well paid. as for the religious education, it wasn't as big a deal. I went to a Catholic school for a while, and all we had was Mass once a week, and occasionally one of the priests came in for a Q&A. Also, when parents pay a nice chunk of change for school, they are much more likely to be involved. (I am mentally contrasting Parent-teacher night at the Catholic school and at the Public school.)

"Unless, of course, your definition of "socially retarded" includes being polite, well-mannered, respectful, able to relate to people of all ages..."

Speaking as someone who was also homeschooled, I can say that, while we do tend to be more mature, we also tend to have trouble getting along with our peers for the same reasons.

"Isn't it better that one might gravitate towards a certain profession because it's a "calling" and not because they want to clean up big time?"

Yeah, but it would be great if they could clean up too. Also, then you would have less of an issue with a merit based system. If teachers were making lots of money, then there would be less worries about teachers being judged on merit, because they no longer have to worry about pay.

When you get right down too it, aren't all those pro sports people supposed to be doing it "for love of the game?" Lets cut their salaries, and see how long that lasts.

"I'm not saying that too many kids aren't being over prescribed but let's not throw outthe baby with the bath water."

I have met kids who were so far off all the walls (in high school, no less!) that they needed some Ritalin. I have also had friends who had some slight problem put on drugs that are now giving them far worse problems. I think that recess would cure a lot of problems. What the hell happened to recess anyway? you have it till about 6th grade, then, BAM!! No more recess. Man that sucked.

One thing I like to point out about the teaching pay scale, however much I respect them, is we have to take into account that in most school districts they do have about 3 months off every year. If you prorate the average teacher's salary out to a true annual salary, it looks (a little) better compared to other jobs. The teachers on this thread will correct me if I'm wrong, but don't many school districts pay teachers, even if only marginally, for other duties, like for teaching summer school, coaching, or sponsoring some of the more involved extracurricular clubs?

Should teachers make more? Probably, but I think it is also a calling, and truthfully, if teaching became a high paying job, you'd get many, many more people going into teaching who were looking for a paycheck and not a passion. It'd be like the explosion of MBA's in the late 1990's; tons and tons of people running around with these expensive degrees looking for a job in a glutted market, not because they loved the field and the work, but because that's where the money was supposed to be. I thought about going into teaching, but the combination of my lack of patience (I know, you would have never thought) and, frankly, my desire to retire sometime before I died without being a pensioner, didn't make it the right choice for me. And, truthfully, I'm certain if I had gone into teaching, I'd probably be looking for my umpteenth teaching gig after telling a parent that having their child in class meant that somewhere, I was depriving a village of its idiot.

"Speaking as someone who was also homeschooled, I can say that, while we do tend to be more mature, we also tend to have trouble getting along with our peers for the same reasons."

Which is hardly a negative. At least, not for homeschooling.

Charlie: Actually, I looked long and hard at teaching, as I started college as a mechanical engineering major and decided during my second year internship that I wanted something else. I went with a Bachelor's of Arts in History, and initially Teaching Certification. But in Illinois non-education majors are required to take education certification as a minor with 30+ credit hours of classes. Aside from the reasons mentioned above, becoming a teacher would have nullified all of the credits from my engineering major (I was able, with a couple of specific history classes, to turn my Japanese language credit into an East Asian Studies minor). But that doesn't mean I don't think the classes are necessary. My sister got her Bachelor's in English with Education certification, but after going through the program and the required student teaching time, she decided it wasn't for her and focused on the English part of her education. Would she have known that had she not had all those courses? What if she'd been able to rush through and gotten into a classroom, only to find that she was miserable? If even for a year, would you want your kid to learn from someone who hated their job?

I don't know you personally, so it could be that you're very qualified to teach classroom after classroom of students through your unique experiences and personality, etc. But not everyone is, even though they may think they are. And I'd rather err on the side of caution, with strict requirements that require a certain amount of dedication to act as a vetting process when we put someone in front of our youth, to make sure they really want to be there.

Tim, first of all, I think I made it clear that my impressions of home-schooled kids were based strictly on my own experiences. Obviously, those are different from your own. For example, after 8 years of teaching, I doubt that I have even had 20 kids who were home-schooled (and with the block schedule I have had a grand total of around 1000-1200 students who have endured me as their teacher). You, on the other hand, live in a place where HALF the kids are home-schooled! Clearly, we are talking about 2 different worlds.

The home-schoolers I have seen (or more accurately, that I know about--I'll only know a kids has been home-schooled if they tell me) generally had it done for religious/political reasons. If half the kids in your neighborhood are being home-schooled I suspect it would be because the public schools are not up to par. So we may be dealing with a radically different population. If some of the home-school kids I have seen have trouble relating to their peers it may be far more likely due to their being brought up in a very religiously restrictive environment.

I think it might be difficult to do good studies on home-schooling due to the radical differences in the REASONS why a particular child is home-schooled--do the parents want to have their kids educated in a safe environment where there are no distractions from learning or are they afraid that their kids will be learning about Evolution surrounded by minorities? Because, I imagine that you will get very different results from those two extremes.

And I have nothing, nothing against home-schooling. If I could afford it, I'd have home-schooled my own kids. If any of you can pull it off, give it a go. Teaching is rewarding and the education of one's own children should be one of a person's greatest concerns so it stands to reason that home-schooling your kids is a great idea, if feasible.

One of the great difficulties in discussing public (K-12) education in the US is that it's extremely hard to make accurate generalizations. Direct governance of public schools happens at the local (district/city/county) level, but funding of public schools comes from a wide range of sources increasingly dominated by state and federal monies (so that in more and more communities, the community doesn't really see the true cost of their school system reflected in their tax burden). While local districts run individual schools, a great many of the standards, programs, and tools they use are imposed at the state and federal levels as well. And the form that local school oversight takes differs widely, too -- some school districts have full-time paid boards, some have elected citizen boards whose members aren't paid at all, and the degree to which the roles of the board (setting policy) and the administration (day to day management) are separated can vary as well.

Which is why any "one size fits all" policy solution to the perceived problems with K-12 education in this country strikes me as untenable -- to the extent that "the system" is broken, it's broken in dozens of different ways in hundreds of different places. [I note that when I use "perceived problems" above, I don't mean to suggest that there are no problems in US public schools. I do mean to suggest that the problems in any given district may or may not be the same ones asserted to be plaguing schools generally, or the same ones present in schools in some other district elsewhere in the nation.)

There is an additional wrinkle that has mostly not been touched on, either in the above discussion or the general national debates -- the student population today is not only far larger than it was in the "good old days" (for the sake of argument, let's say pre-WW2), it's also far more culturally, economically, and academically diverse. An education infrastructure that did a decent job of serving a primarily European, reasonably homogenous population base is now being asked to serve a population in which Asian, non-European Hispanic, Islamic, and other non-Western students, many from desperately poor households, form an increasingly significant percentage.

Which is yet another reason why more money -- though it's often very much needed -- is not and cannot be the One True Answer to improving public K-12 schools in the US. I am a firm believer in the proposition that public schools must be improved -- as someone notes above, they're one of the few remaining institutions capable of creating and nurturing a sense of community in localized populations, and we badly need to reinforce that community consciousness. But I think that the clearest path toward improvement is for federal and state bureaucracy to get out of the way and allow local schools greater flexibility in addressing the specific challenges facing their communities.

This was the most despicable outrageous comment on this whole thread!

So in this union worker's eyes, helping the schools and the children are not the most important thing for teachers, making sure that the unions get every cent they can from the union dues that are the biggest reason that teachers don't make very much money is the most important thing.

Caring for the actual schools and students is a sign of weakness??? Unions really are evil!!!

Nice how you can twist words. I never once said a thing about salaries or anything that effects my own salary. When I talk about givebacks, I am talking about things like health benefits, pensions, tuition reimbursement funds, money for professiona development training, etc.

In New Jersey, we have an abysmal teacher retention rate. Now let's start cutting the benefits that they already get. Where does that leave these students? Without teachers.

And it must be nice to be so idealistic. Sure, in a perfect world, people would flock to teaching because they want to help people. But at the end of the day, it's just as important for them to be able to provide for their families, have decent health benefits, and opportunities for professional growth.

Yeah, religious schools are the best. ... Third, it is very expensive, so the teachers are very well paid.

I just looked at what our local Catholic community calls their "Red Book" -- detailing the details of all the local schools, including tuition. Secondary tuition ranges from $2500/year to $13,000/year depending upon location. The two schools at $2500 are in rural areas, but there are several around $5000 in urban/suburban areas. I'm not sure if you consider that very expensive, or not. I have no idea how much the teachers get paid.

Some reality checks from 17 years' teaching experience, 10 in a tough inner city district and 7 in a rural district:

1. Unions don't protect incompetent teachers. In practice, they protect competent teachers who've pissed somebody off by doing their jobs. Incompetent teachers seldom stick their necks out far enough to be noticed; they are sheltered by principals, parents and nepotism on the board.

2, Tenure does not mean you can't fire me; it means you have to follow due process and can't arbitrarily get rid of me. If the schools were really interested in getting rid of incompetent teachers, they could do so.

3. Judge teachers by their popularity with students and parents? The "most popular" teachers tend to be the ones with no backbone, who flatter and pimp and inflate those grades so the kid won't be benched for the big game. Evaluations by the principal are no better-- principals want teachers who haven't caused them any trouble.

4. Unions are powerful? Get a clue and stop repeating neo-conservative cliches.

5. Local school boards should not be allowed anywhere near a curriculum. See Kansas.

6. I would be all in favor of merit pay IF you could promise me I was being evaluated by an impartial third party with no relation to the principal, the superintendent, the school board or the parents. A state or federal inspector using generally agreed upon standards would be nice, like the fellows who regulate banks and make sure their books balanced.

7. NCLB is a joke in the trenches; not one child will be better educated because of it. NCLB only added to the paperwork requirements for each school. It did not increase the number of science teachers, lab supplies, library books or whiteboards. "Compliance" with No Child Left Behind means filling in the forms correctly with plausible looking statistics for the hungry bureaucracy. "Compliance" does NOT mean your students have finally memorized the times tables.

8. I can speak to where the trillions of dollars are going: lots of technology. Educators are enamored of machines that go "ping"! Library funds for purchasing books are often raided; when you start calling the school library a "media center", you can define its needs any way you want.

9. One thing the teaching profession could do: call for the abolishing of university "teacher education" programs. Education classes are proverbial in their uselessness, even among practicing teachers. 1: Require student teachers to get a real degree in some field of knowledge, test them for basic competence in the subject. 2: Appear before a licensing board with a presentation that proves you have the ability to present your subject, to build on prior knowledge and to prepare your students for the next level. 3: Introduce student teachers on bureaucracy, record-keeping, classroom management and the "paperwork" required today. What is that, three classes plus an internship somewhere? It's the education majors that embarass the rest of us. That being said, there IS still a plce for academic research on education, just as there is on every human discipline-- just stop wasting my money by asking me to take an "education" class instead of classes pertinent to the subject I teach.

10) Declare a cultural jihad on pop culture references to "nerds, geeks, eggheads, liberals, know-it-alls, we know what kids REALLY want", etc. etc. etc. It DOES make a difference. We're trying to turn schoolchildren around, and children are not the worldly wise bullshit detectors we see on TV. They are easily misled by superficial coolness, flattery, and machines that go "ping". Bring back the adults. You wouldn't let them make a decision about surgery or going to war, why would you let them decide how much and what kind of education they need?
presented without revision

Bill,

Thanks for your clarification. Again, I found your posts to be filled mainly with opinion based on your own experiences, some of which I agree with and some of which I don't. To be sure, my original post also had my opinions based on my experiences.

However, my original point is that your contention that homeschooled kids are by and large "socially retarded" is not only inflammatory but also completely unsupported. There is no research that I'm aware of that supports that claim and a lot of research that demonstrates just the opposite.

Man oh man -- I attend to other things for 18 hours and the thread goes nuts. :-)

Bill --

Tim, why do you suppose that so many parents, if given vouchers, would head to the private schools? I know you are correct, I just wonder why.

Some of it is what you mentioned -- the fact that they know "disruptive influences" (a phrase which I tend to find a little vague and potentiall prone to abuse) can be removed.

I think another aspect is that private schools tend to have fairly selective admissions (having served on two different schools' admissions committees, I know something about this directly), and so parents can be fairly certain that the climate of the school (academic, social, etc.) is one that they'd agree is a good fit.

Lastly ... well, using Robin here as an example, there are those people who think that anything private is automatically superior to anything public.

And further, if public schools could easily toss out students you just KNOW that some of them would be suspending low achievers just to raise their overall standardized test grades.

Possibly true, but I wouldn't think it would be difficult to put in some safeguards in that regard.

[on merit pay -- different levels of classes]

Now all of them take a final exam that is made up by the state

Methinks that's the problem right there. IMO, the exam should be appropriate to its particular class, not a one-size-fits-all variety.

I can state that at least 15-20% of my students, on average, fail. I'll admit that the majority of thise are not always academic failures--too many absences, suspended for fighting, that sort of thing, but I have no fear of giving an F. I'm a freaking pussycat, you get an F with me and you have richly earned it.

Oh, the few F's I've given over the years are ones which were absolutely warranted and nobody said boo about them -- it's just a hard thing to do when you really really want them to do better and feel like they can but don't.

I agree that there is way too much emphasis on advanced math (But I don't enjoy math so take that with a grain of salt). I see no reason for most kids to take chem and physics (both are great subjects but require a certain ability in higher level thinking).

Allow this physics teacher to disagree. :-)

There's no real need for most kids to take a highly mathematical physics course, no -- but I think a basic conceptual physics course is something that everyone would benefit from having had. Among other things, I think it's actually simpler to understand than your basic biology course, and related at least as strongly to things they see every day.

My first day of classes, I give a pop quiz with about half a dozen questions: why is the sky blue, why do we have seasons, why do we have high and low tides, that sort of thing. I never grade it, but it focuses their attention, particularly those who say they don't really know what physics is yet.

(Of course, one of my favorite responses ever to the seasons question came from someone who wrote about Persephone eating pomegranate seeds. "This is someone I can work with," I thought.)

Obviously, every kid should be able to read and write (though we should recognize creative writing as the talent that it is. Not everyone can do it well.).

Agreed -- and half this administration seems to have missed the essential lesson of WHEN you engage in it. :-) (It was just sitting there begging to be said...)

I'm going to have to disagree here as well. I know it is popular for us to bash the athletic department but the truth is that a lot of my kids would not be there if it were not for sports.

I'm of two minds about this and always have been. On the one hand, I completely agree with you that sports can be a great motivator for kids, and teaches a lot of wonderful lessons. On the other hand, I also see kids (more focused in some sports than others, interestingly) who think that because they play a varsity sport that they're entitled to the world and more -- and in some of those cases, the coach is feeding into it rather than helping moderate it.

I think sports are definitely worth keeping, but I'd also try as much as possible to drive home the lesson that it's a secondary activity, not the primary purpose of school.

TWL

James,

Bill, Tim, you guys are teachers. tell me, where did your school's share of that four trillion go?

We never got one -- my previous school, at least, was an independent school and so far as I know didn't get any public money whatsoever.

And do you think that schools overemphasize non-academic stuff too much?

See my response to Bill, sort of.

Charlie --

First, on measuring results. I think that the measurement should be whether the parent is happy with the results (whether it is education, behavior, college prep, test scores, SATs or football ranking...) If I, as a parent, can have a real, actual choice as to where my child can go, 'I' can pick the criteria of choice.

I'd certainly agree with this much!

(as a side note: I don't have kids, but pay $1000 every year in taxes for schools. Wouldn't it be interesting if I could choose WHICH school got my funding...)

Interesting, yes. Problematic also, I suspect. First, it's an easy step from there to saying "shouldn't I get to choose whether my taxes go to the schools at all?", which will result in half of childless taxpayers saying "not my problem" and bailing, thus putting a nail in public education's coffin. Second, at that point you'd have schools devoting a lot of money to PR and advertising to get your attention, which in itself takes away from useful ways to spend the money.

Bill --

You can't get too upset over the fact that someone is better at basketball than you are because it is a simple matter of genetics- not everyone can be 7 feet tall. But people like to believe that the only reason someone is smarter than they are is because they waste time reading or have no social life.

I think that gets to the heart of a lot of it (and I'm sure our host here has run into more than a zillion people who think that being a writer isn't "real work"). Wish I knew what could be done, though.

Craig --

What do you think of the social merits of high schools?

I think they're highly variable, but in general tend to do more good than harm. Having taught both at coed and single-sex schools (girls, to be specific), in both cases I see a lot of growth over the course of the years I get to see the kids -- usually, anyway. While academics are (or should be) the primary focus of HS, the social side is so all-encompassing for adolescents that anyone who ignores it or pretends it won't matter is deluding themselves.

(And I say this as someone who was ... well, let's say "not socially adept" in high school. College was much better.)

TWL

Aaaaaand back to Robin --

I've already said what my standard of success for a school is: "Is my child showing progress?" It's subjective, but I think it's a subjective measurement that parents who take an active role in their children's lives are qualified to make.

And the parents who don't take such a role? What's to stop them from picking a school based on how close it is to the baseball stadium, or the nearest strip club?

(And lest you think that's solely hyperbole, I passed a day-care facility a few weeks ago that was right next to "Titillations", a strip club. I'm left to wonder if the clientele overlap ... or the employees. I digress, however.)

Tim:
"I'll ask you again, since you seem to ignore it every time I bring it up -- would you be fine with using the 'vouchers' idea but applying it solely within the public school system? That seems to have a reasonable chance of creating the streamlining and competition you're so confident is the answer, yet you don't seem to be leaping at that particular opportunity. Why not?"

How is that differnt from what happens now? If I want to drive my kid to the next school district and let him go to school there, doesn't "his" money go there instead?

1) You often can't do that -- a lot of schools are residency-based. I can't send my daughter to a school in the next town unless I live in said down.

2) No, "his" money doesn't go there under those circumstances so far as I know -- it might the following year, but not immediately.

1.) I tend to think of government-run schools as a bad idea, because I'm of the opinion that government, though a necessary evil, is inherently, well, evil. Allowing the government to manage my child's education seems like a surefire method of making sure he grows up to believe that the government is the answer to every problem.

That leaves us at a bit of a deadlock, then -- there's no way I can address a core mindset that "X is evil" without turning into more of a confrontation than either of us would like.

I will say, however, that if you've stated your beliefs accurately above (and there's no reason to believe otherwise), then your interest really isn't in reforming or improving public education, but in removing it entirely. As such, you'll have to forgive me if I have to consider your suggestions on that basis.

2.) I'm not sure exactly how a voucher that I can only "spend" in the public school system helps anything.

Different schools, different teachers, different administrative priorities. If schools are given a fair amount of latitude in how they run things, doesn't this let you choose the approach that's the best fit for your child?

3.) Even if the government does build two separate schools in the same district (though, expecting that to provide competition is like saying that XP Home and XP Professional constitute competing products), what would the difference be? Would we have separate governing bodies for each?

Why not? Granted, we probably don't at the moment, but is that such a hard thing to envision?

It seems to me that if we have two schools that are being managed by the same set of inept fools (i.e., the local board of education), then it's like a choice between eating horse crap or dog crap -- technically, you've given me a choice, but it's a lousy one.

Nice to know you're coming at this from a rational point of view.

(On the other hand, "Tim Lynch -- Feeder'O'Crap" does have a nice ring on a business card.)

Still, I'm willing to admit that my experiences with the public school system were extremely negative, and that probably colors my opinion of it.

Appreciated.

When I say I want a voucher system, this is all I'm asking for: If I send my kid to a private school, I want the government to direct that $X that would've gone to my public schoool into the private school I've chosen. Why is that such a problem?

The problem is that the public school in question isn't "yours". It's the community's.

As I said in response to someone else earlier, as soon as you get to do that, the obvious next step is for someone who's childless (or whose children have graduated) to say "I don't want my money going to fund education at all." Now, since you think public education (and any government-run program, if memory serves) is intrinsically evil, that may not cause a problem from where you sit -- but from where I sit, it would be the beginning of sucking the public schools dry of virtually all funds and of most students whose parents have even a chance of pursuing another option.

If you think taxpayers should have the option of choosing where the money goes (including out of the government entirely), that's fine, but if you think it would stay limited to education I think you're kidding yourself -- and I don't know that an a-la-carte approach to tax money is something we want to just blindly leap into.

TWL

Bob --

i wonder why it is suggested that there can be no way to assess a teacher's capabilities when trying to determine their level of merit (for merit-based assessments).

It hasn't been so suggested.

What has is that there's no hard-and-fast, one-size-fits-all variety of doing so that would work for every teacher (probably even within a discipline, but certainly across it).

The method you're suggesting (with a variety of information and individual judgements) is a good one, as long as the person or people doing the judging has no axe to grind -- but that also involves a lot of time, thought, and effort. I think it's a perfectly reasonable suggestion, but the people in charge of making these decisions (and yes, I mean the current administration) prefer a single number they can point to and say "a-ha! easy fix!"

look, i'd be all for providing more funding to the public schools, IF there were any indication that it would be better spent than the money i'm already paying. that's where auditing comes into play. if you say we need an extra .5 cent sales tax to fund a particular program, with particular goals, and how the money will be spent, and i think the program has merit, i'd be more than happy to vote for it. but simply saying that we need more money for education, when for all i know the money will go into raises for administrators or a new football statium, then i'm going to vote it down.

That's understandable -- but given all the other venues in which money gets spent in ways I don't like, school funding is the one I always consider a justifiable risk. (Well, one of them -- libraries are the other.)

oh, and one of the reasons that doctors/lawyers/plumbers/etc. make so much more than teachers? they aren't government employees. private school teachers (and professors at private schools) make quite a bit more than public school teachers

Untrue. When I was just starting out in California, my initial salary was a good 5-10K less than what I'd have made in the public school.

Now, that may vary state-by-state -- but it's certainly not a blanket truth.

TWL

Last post for a while, I promise.

Dave --

And while I very much disagree with the notion that teaching does not require a terrible amount of skill, I find the notion of paying teachers exorbitant salaries, i.e. the Sorkin solution, equally preposterous. Aren't some professions supposed to be about more than just money?

Sure, and I'd like to think teaching is one of them -- but just because it's about "more than money" doesn't mean leaving incomes at the poverty level is a good idea.

I don't expect to get a $20-million, four-year deal from a school (or a trade to another school) -- but I'd like to think that teachers should be given enough money that they aren't worrying too much about being able to buy a house or afford child care. At least in urban California, most teachers haven't a prayer of buying a house unless they want a 90-mile commute each way or have an independently wealthy spouse. (It's a bit better where I am now.)

Basically, I agree with you that you don't want to make the salaries so huge that people come just for the paycheck -- but I think you want to make them respectable enough that people aren't scared AWAY by the paycheck, and to a large extent that's happening now.

Jason --

One thing I like to point out about the teaching pay scale, however much I respect them, is we have to take into account that in most school districts they do have about 3 months off every year.

That's a bit of a canard, actually. Most teachers spend a reasonably large chunk of the summer doing course prep for the following year, and meetings and such run well past the "last day of school" for kids and start well before the alleged "first day of school." When relatives ask me when my year starts, I always say "under which definition?"

I'd say that on average, the amount of actual downtime I've gotten each summer is a month, maybe six weeks.

The other thing a lot of people who make that claim overlook (and I'm not necessarily referring to you, Jason) is that a typical work-week is by no means the standard 9-to-5 job when it comes to teaching. Most of my workweeks during the school year are in the 60-80 hour range, and there are days during crunch periods when I've been known to set my alarm for 3 a.m. so that I can go into school and get some work done. (This was both pre- and post-baby, BTW.) That's something that should also be considered when talking about presenting a "true" annual salary.

The teachers on this thread will correct me if I'm wrong, but don't many school districts pay teachers, even if only marginally, for other duties, like for teaching summer school, coaching, or sponsoring some of the more involved extracurricular clubs?

Depends on the school or the district -- but some certainly do, yes.

And perhaps appropriately, now I've got to go pay some bills. :-)

TWL

A couple of quick thoughts on specific sub-topics:

Most merit-pay proposals seem to me to rest on a dilemma. As various folk have noted, the easy/simple methods for assessing "merit" are demonstrably limited with respect to accuracy. On the flip side, any evaluation system that produces a worthwhile level of accuracy is going to require significant time and money to administer -- and that money definitionally falls under "administration" costs, which critics of public schools consistently decry as wasteful.

Which demonstrates, of course, the logic-flaw in asserting that all "administrative" costs are wasteful and inappropriate. As in any large organization, one needs supervisors, managers, and/or administrators to run the organization -- and secretarial support to deal with the inevitable paperwork associated with running said large organization. [I've long thought that teachers should have more direct secretarial support than they do, for instance.] And sufficiently large school districts necessarily require greater central oversight than smaller ones. [Then again, I tend to think that school districts can get too big to be usefully managed -- LA Unified, in which my sister-in-law teaches, may be an example of that problem.]

Judge teachers by their popularity with students and parents? The "most popular" teachers tend to be the ones with no backbone, who flatter and pimp and inflate those grades so the kid won't be benched for the big game. Evaluations by the principal are no better-- principals want teachers who haven't caused them any trouble.

One teacher I knew said that every year the most popular and least popular teacher shouls be taken out and summarily executed; it would greatly improve the overall situation. Harsh but intriguing.

At any rate there is quite a bit of truth in what you say.

Unions are powerful? Get a clue and stop repeating neo-conservative cliches.

Unions ARE powerful. In North Carolina, as a state worker, I have no union. My sister, teaching in New York, has a very powerful one. She gets a hell of a lot more money than I do. I'd be willing to bet that, on average, teachers in states with unions get paid more than those in states without unions. Of course, pay isn't everything and I have some problems with how her union operates but there's no denying that they have power.

One thing the teaching profession could do: call for the abolishing of university "teacher education" programs. Education classes are proverbial in their uselessness, even among practicing teachers.

Amen, brother! Listen to the man! HUGE waste of time, though a few of the teachers I had were among the finest people I have ever known--but their classes were oasis' in the desert.

your contention that homeschooled kids are by and large "socially retarded" is not only inflammatory but also completely unsupported.

In my defense, what I said was "I've noticed that although home-schooled kids are, on average, way ahead of the others in pure knowledge, they tend to be a bit socially retarded (this is not true for all of them)." which certainly has enough qualifiers in it. I regret using the word retarded though, which is too loaded. I'm not implying that the ones I have seen are immature or slow or complete social outcasts--just that they often have a certain degree of difficulty relating to their peers. (Someone said "And this is a bad thing?" It is if you're a 15 year old.)

I mean, I LIKE my social outcasts. They hang out in my room. I show them cool websites. They lend me truly odd CDs (A band that does bluegrass versions of Metallica? WTF?). But I think they'd really rather be able to do all this with some kids their own age.

Re: summers

It's valid to point out that teachers get summers off--I only get almost 2 months but that ain't bad. So you could make the claim that we should factor that in when comparing teachers saleries to others.

Tim is right though--it isn't a 40 hour week, at least not for a good teacher. The funny thing is, in some ways we are masochists. I'm happy that we finally have new textbooks this year even though that means I have to toss out all my painstakingly created worksheets and chapter reviews (I HATE the ones that come with the books. I have to make my own) and start over again. If I A-had a copy of the book and B- had been told exactly what subjects I'll be teaching I'd probably be making them up right now.

> let's start holding the layman responsible for understanding what the hell's going on around him, her or it.

Uh, how many years does it take to become a lawyer? A doctor? A chemist? A programmer? How many years should someone be expected to spend in school until they are able to understand what the hell's going on around them? Let's be practical, shall we?

Although ... I admit I'd much rather see a few more elected officials with more than high school science under their academic belts. Might make for some saner legislations.

> Isn't it better that one might gravitate towards a certain profession because it's a "calling" and not because they want to clean up big time?

It'd be nice, but I can't help remembering the ONE SCENE from the long-defunct L.A. LAW show where the firm's founder is a guest speaker to a freshman class of would-be lawyers and, when he asks if there are any questions, the ones he does get are all about how much a lawyer makes and which sort of practice is the most profitable. And then I wonder how far from the truth that is?

> Nuns can be terrifying teachers.

Having been in classes taught by nuns (latter part of Grade 6, as well as grade 7) I can attest to that.

> in most school districts they do have about 3 months off every year

And all the teachers I've known have invariably spent at least a month of that either keeping up, or improving their skills through summer courses at university. At their expense, of course. So much for three months off.

> I can speak to where the trillions of dollars are going: lots of technology. Educators are enamored of machines that go "ping"!

Unfortunately. But some are waking up to the idea that machines just might not be such a good idea after all, and going back to having little Johnny use the computer between his ears beats relying on calculators and spell checkers.

We can but hope.

"In my defense, what I said was 'I've noticed that although home-schooled kids are, on average, way ahead of the others in pure knowledge, they tend to be a bit socially retarded (this is not true for all of them).' which certainly has enough qualifiers in it. I regret using the word retarded though, which is too loaded. I'm not implying that the ones I have seen are immature or slow or complete social outcasts--just that they often have a certain degree of difficulty relating to their peers. (Someone said "And this is a bad thing?" It is if you're a 15 year old.)"

Bill, I just wanted to chime in once, but you keep saying things that I feel that I have to respond to!!

The desirability of lack of conformity and not being able to fit in with ones age mates (I don't say peers because ultimately, age is a horrible method of choosing ones peers) is not an absolute. Its desirability stands or falls on the reason for the lack of conformity. For a hyperbolic example, plunk a normal healthy kid down in a population of psychopathic, anti-social misfits, and his inability to relate to everyone around him is very desirable. (So would be his immediate exit from that population!)

That being the case, the hypothetical difficulty of a homeschooled child to relate to some other children his own age because of his greater maturity or intellectual gifts is not a problem of the homeschooled child. Quite the opposite in fact. It is the children with whom the homeschooled child is trying to interact who have the problem.

By the way, I am not disagreeing with you at all that this happens. In social settings with various ages, I have observed many homeschooled teens prefering to hang with the adults rather than kids their own age. The reason, frankly, is that the behavior of their age mates is so immature and downright obnoxious that the company of adults is preferable. The homeschooling parents that I know (including myself) take pride in this unintended consequence of our educational choice. There is no shame or regret in raising a child who is generally more mature than the other kids his age. It's a source of pride.

"I mean, I LIKE my social outcasts. They hang out in my room. I show them cool websites. They lend me truly odd CDs (A band that does bluegrass versions of Metallica? WTF?). But I think they'd really rather be able to do all this with some kids their own age."

And these are the homeschooled kids that you believe are socially inept? I'd be surprised if they are. They sound more like the "geeks" and "misfits" that are always cast out in the school setting. Not because they are more mature but because they're not part of the "in crowd." Because they like strange music, act different, or dress in a unique way. (Imagine being so socially inept, and they're not even homeschooled!!!!) Such kids would probably benefit greatly from homeschooling, where they would be free to explore their individual interests without the cruel attitudes that are so common among kids in our school system.

is property tax not supposed to go toward education? at least that was my understanding. if that is correct, last i checked, new york has quite the taxes, so therefore, where is the $$$$ going?

Joe V.

(This was written periodically throughout the day today, as I had a few minutes to check the site here and there and copied quotes I wanted to reply to. Apologies if any of the points I make have already been addressed.)

Jason wrote:
"I have to ask, why, if we're concerned about the ever-declining quality of our education, would we want to REDUCE the requirements and qualifications necessary teach?"

I've got no interest in lowering the standards for people to teach, but changing the current requirements and qualifications? I'm all for that.

I honestly believe that the standards we use now are completely faulty. I have no doubts that there are some very good teachers who come through our current system (that is, they go to college and get degrees in education), but based on my observations of good teachers and the things that my education-student friends in college were being taught, I believe that they are good teachers despite the system, definitely not because of it.

No one walks into the classroom as the perfect teacher, and many of the skills necessary to be a decent teacher can be taught. Just like Peter didn't learn to tell stories as well as he does in a classroom, great teachers have skills that they certainly didn't pick up in a modern college course in education. (Probably not in older education courses, either, but I've no experience with those.)

In a reply to Charlie later, Jason continued along the same vein:
"And I'd rather err on the side of caution, with strict requirements that require a certain amount of dedication to act as a vetting process when we put someone in front of our youth, to make sure they really want to be there."

I've no qualms at all with making sure that a teacher wants to be there, or that they've got some skill (whether natural or obtained through training) at, well, teaching. But as Charlie pointed out, a lot of the "education" classes now are a lot more focused on making sure one has the proper political beliefs and "respect for diversity", not on actual teaching ability.

Eric wrote:
When we can see clearly that PlanX disadvantages that outweigh the problems of the status quo, we must NOT accept PlanX.* I don't deny that the public schools need to find a better way, but treating them like businesses isn't the way."

I'd agree, except that I don't think that the disadvantages of the voucher system outweigh the problems of the current system. In fact, the problems are largely the same, but they're lessened.

Eric:
"You find me a business that succeeds when 1) it MUST work with whatever faulty materials it's given, 2) it RARELY has enough capital to invest properly, 3) it CANNOT measure its true success because of the lack of a true, reliable bottom line, 4) it DOES NOT PAY its employees salaries comparable to others with similar levels of education, and 5) its competitors CHERRY-PICK the best raw materials, then I will seriously think about treating the public schools like that business.

Schools don't work as businesses because... they aren't be allowed to do the things to do the things that businesses do? You're making my point for me, aren't you? For the school system to succeed, it must do the things that businesses would do.

1.) The fact that we don't allow our schools to separate the wheat from the chaff is part of the problem in the current system. We try to put everyone in the same school system, even though we know that doing so provides a disservice to everyone.

It hurts those students who have strengths that lie outside of the traditional educational model -- they're not only forced to sit through it now, but they're constantly preached at with the idea that everyone should go to college, which simply isn't true.

It hurts students who have strengths that serve them well in the traditional classroom, because their education is disrupted by other students.

So why not allow schools to, at the very least, locate those students who're better suited for other things and help them find what they're truly good at? Get the "faulty" raw materials out. (I'd say they're not faulty so much as not right for that particular use, but...)

You may think that I'm trying to write the slower students off, but that's not what I'm doing at all. I want to stop the system that makes them think they're stupid (and worse, encourages others to think less of them because they're allegedly stupid). That their strengths lie in other areas doesn't make them somehow inferior.

My dad has been a miner, a truck driver, a logger, and a grocery store owner during my lifetime. He's got a high school education, nothing more. I assure you, though, that he's a good deal more intelligent than almost any college student I ever met. However, I also recognize that he's better suited for learning outside the classroom than inside it.

We're all equal in rights and deserving of the same basic respect, but we're not equal in abilities, no matter how much the current system is true.

2.) I'm sorry, but I'd have to see some raw numbers on that. I've yet to see a school system that isn't throwing a ton of money down the toilet. I think it's less a problem of not having enough capital and more a problem of not properly managing the capital available.

Of course, if I saw the numbers, and the system wasn't wasting money, I'd be more than willing to support additional funding.

3.) Why can't it measure success? The doctor measures success patient by patient -- why can't a school do so student by student? Because there are too many students and too few teachers. What we need is someone who spends time with the children on a day to day basis and would therefore be better suited to determining whether the student was really learning anything. Thing is, we have those people, and you're arguing that they don't have the right to choose a school that better suits their student (or that they should be punished for doing so, since they lose the $6,700 that the government would've put toward their student's education otherwise).

Stop trying to make decisions about schools on the macro level. Allow parents to make the decisions for their individual students, and the micro level decisions will determine the fate of the schools on a macro level.

You admit that testing doesn't work, and you see how I believe my solution will. You obviously disagree -- why, and what is your solution?

4.) I suspect that's related to 2, and has more to do with mismanagement of funds (and a higher than necessary administrator-to-teacher ratio).

5.) I don't like the use of the word "best" there at all, as it only applies if you're measuring the two "products" by the same measuring stick. A school that specializes in benefitting the smarter kids will likely have better test scores, just like a fence-post factory will produce bigger chunks of wood than a toothpick factory.

I'm talking about multiple types of schools -- one type that produces future nuclear physicists and doctors, another type that produces police officers and fire fighters, a third type that produces artists and musicians, and on and on. Will the first school produce better science scores than the third? Of course. Does that mean it's better? No.

You keep saying that schools can't be like businesses because they can't filter out the "faulty" materials. I, on the other hand, am saying that schools fail because we insist on sending iron, wood, marble, and silicon through the exact same processes and then expect them to come out the other side as useful materials.

Eric wrote:
"Even if they did offer the full amount, that still leaves $3,300 or more per year for the family to come up with. You think someone near the poverty line sees that kind of sum as an opportunity? If someone walked up to me right now and said, 'I'll give you ten billion dollars if you give me ten thousand dollars in cash right now,' I'd have to refuse him! I don't have that kind of cash on me. That someone didn't offer me any real benefit because I couldn't afford his offer!"

So... I might be able to come up with $3,300 for my kid to go to a better school, but because my neighbor can't, I shouldn't be afforded the opportunity?

Tim has been suggesting a voucher system for "public" schools. I'm okay with that if we allow for different types of public schools. Send the kids who show an aptitude for math and science to one school, the kids who show a rapport with animals to another, the kids who have a knack for spinning tales to a third and the kids who have a talent for woodwork (or metal shop or...) to yet another, and stop trying to measure them against one another. That way, everyone can afford to send their kids to school (since they're public), but the schools are better tailored to meet the needs of the kids.

Star Wolf quoted Bobb as saying:
"... so that I can learn to write in something called Plain English. And the instructor is very good as telling us that it's not "dumbing down" our writing...but that's exactly what it is."

...and then disagreed, saying that dropping the technical jargon isn't "dumbing down" the language, which is correct. Unfortunately, The Star Wolf missed the rest of Bobb's quote, which pointed out that the problem wasn't technical jargon, but pretty common every day words:

"And the instructor is very good as telling us that it's not "dumbing down" our writing...but that's exactly what it is. It's an admission that the common American citizen lacks the reading comprehension to easily comprehend words like utilize, initiate, and promulgate."

Tim wrote:
"And the parents who don't take such a role? What's to stop them from picking a school based on how close it is to the baseball stadium, or the nearest strip club?"

Unfortunately, nothing. Parents who put other things above their child's education is a societal issue that's a problem in the current system as well as in my version of the voucher system.

I hope and pray that those students will manage to transcend the example their parents give them, but that's no reason to hold my (hypothetical) kid back by not letting me pick a school that suits him.

Tim wrote (about my question on how his "public vouchers" program would differ from the current system):
"1) You often can't do that -- a lot of schools are residency-based. I can't send my daughter to a school in the next town unless I live in said down.

2) No, 'his' money doesn't go there under those circumstances so far as I know -- it might the following year, but not immediately."

I'm basing the following on second-hand knowledge and my (possibly faulty) memory, so please take it with a grain of salt.

One of the history teachers in my local high school is famous for the amount of work he requires students to do. By the time I was in high school, it had become fairly common for students to transfer to another high school (in a different county, requiring them or their parents to drive anywhere from 10 to 40 additional miles) to avoid taking his class.

I seem to remember that this caused a bit of a stink because the county was required to send some amount of money to the other school systems in exchange for their accepting the kids. Now, whether this is just a local (or state) policy or I imagined it, I can't say, but it seems pretty similar to what you're talking about with "public school vouchers".

Tim:
"Different schools, different teachers, different administrative priorities. If schools are given a fair amount of latitude in how they run things, doesn't this let you choose the approach that's the best fit for your child?"

Assuming that we allow for different administrative priorities, it does. I just don't see it happening when the entire school system in which I'm permitted to use the money earmarked for my child's education is under the thumb of the federal government.

Tim:
"Nice to know you're coming at this from a rational point of view."

Sorry. I was out of line in applying the "crap" analogy to all school systems, and should've applied it a little less liberally. I apologize. I wasn't thinking, and I assure you that I meant no offense to you nor any of the other teachers who may be hanging out here.

In a system like our local one, where the county government is run by a handful of families who like to play favorites, I'd prefer to have an alternative that's run by someone outside of the system, because offering another school run by that same group isn't offering much of a choice at all.

I know that there are some good teachers in the local school system, and I can't name more than two that I actually believe to be bad. They're hampered by the administration, and I don't see how a system that lets me pick only from schools run by that same administration would be of any use. If you're proposing a "public school voucher" system that would somehow allow me to avoid a bad administration, I'd be willing to entertain the idea.

Tim:
"As I said in response to someone else earlier, as soon as you get to do that, the obvious next step is for someone who's childless (or whose children have graduated) to say 'I don't want my money going to fund education at all.'"

I'm not talking about letting the taxpayers control what happens to "their" money when it goes into the government pool, I'm talking about letting the money earmarked for my child's education be used for my child's education, regardless of whether I choose to allow him to go to a government-run school.

Tim:
"Now, since you think public education (and any government-run program, if memory serves) is intrinsically evil, that may not cause a problem from where you sit -- but from where I sit, it would be the beginning of sucking the public schools dry of virtually all funds and of most students whose parents have even a chance of pursuing another option."

Well, the idea is that if public schools can't improve to compete in the marketplace, they would die because all students would now have the chance to go to a school that better serves their needs.

Tim,

I love your comments (and I'll bet you've done a great job as a home-schooling parent--though I was under the impression that your only child was too young for this--are you talking about future plans?).

Here's the thing--the kids I'm talking about (and you are correct that they are not all or even mostly homeschooled) are going through high school alone NEEDLESSLY. It isn't that there aren't any other kids with the same interests--we have, as I love to keep pointing out, 2600 kids. This is not a typo. Even if whatever you are is a measly 1% of the population that's a whole CLASSROOM of fellow whatevers.

But these kids are almost painfully shy and very fearful of rejection. Which gets me nervous since there are subgroups that will accept anybody and they are usually not the best ones. The Druggies. The Vandals. The Visigoths. Marching Band.

One reason why I am so well loved, or at least haven't had my car keyed, is because I open my room an hour early and let anyone who wants to come in and play around on the computers or play YuGiOh (don't get me started) or whatever, which has actually allowed some of them to slowwwwwly make friends with each other. Then they disappear and never write.

Of course, this is from someone who was afraid to speak up in groups of people right up until college and now strikes up conversations with people who, I'm pretty certain, were thinking about mugging me. I think at some point I must have had a stroke or a takeover by a pod.

Getting excited about the new school year yet?

"That being the case, the hypothetical difficulty of a homeschooled child to relate to some other children his own age because of his greater maturity or intellectual gifts is not a problem of the homeschooled child. Quite the opposite in fact. It is the children with whom the homeschooled child is trying to interact who have the problem."

that's one hypothetical case. however, they may also not get along because they lack a certain emotional maturity.

now, i can only speak from (very limited)personal experience. the one home-schooled person i've spent the most time with had serious emotional maturity problems which i believe stem from her home-schooling environment.

this points out a basic problem with home-schooling. kids with lousy parents will also have lousy teachers.

not that i'm writing-off the whole system, just saying it isn't full-proof (or fool-proof, for that matter).

School should be incredibly expensive for government and absolutely free of charge to its citizens, just like national defense.

Nah, we should give out national defense vouchers and allow each family to have defense choice. If I put my vouchers into missile defense, I don't get protected in a land war. If I put all my vouchers into armored cavalry, I get opted out of the missile shield, etc. That's what free-enterprise is all about!

i would also if there are many good parents who are not necessarily intellectually capable of teaching at a high school level.

not that you need to be brilliant to teach high school, but it is a particular ability that not everyone else has.

Bill,

Thanks for your response. It struck just the right cord.

I hope I'm doing well as a homeschool parent. Usually, I'm fairly confident. But I'm glad you didn't see the kids around the dinner table tonight. Yikes! They are good young'uns, but they have their moments. (For the record, I've got SIX children.)

What you describe is a lot darker than I remember it. I was one of the awkward, shy kids, but I had my circle of friends who were similarly looked on a third class citizens. I had someone I could relate to. I'm glad you're where you are. I may have some very sincere disagreements with how education is run in this country today (I'd favor a system that let's parents choose their school without being forced to fund schools that they don't use), and I'm sure we could get into some very spirited debates. But I'm glad that the kids have teachers like you. I wish you were legion.

Actually, I am looking forward to the Fall, but not the way that you think. We school year round, taking several periods of time off throughout the year rather than one long three month break. We find that the school year calendar doesn't make much sense in light of today's modern industrial society. (The extended vacation during the warm season was to allow the kids to help with the farming.) By doing it this way, we try to avoid having to remind our kids in the Fall of what they were taught the previous year and forgot during the summer break. (It might sound cruel to keep the kids studying indoors while their friends are all outside playing, but you have to keep something in mind - A typical homeschool day lasts two to four hours. After that, they're free to play.)

Anyway, I'm looking forward to the Fall because we take our big vacation (two weeks) after Labor Day. We can go on holiday anytime we want and always wait until school is in session. So, our kids typically get the month of September off because we're out of town for two weeks anyway.

It's an interesting perspective. I always hated the Fall because school was starting up again. My kids love it because they get a break!

Anyway, thanks for sharing your ideas with me. I enjoy the give and take of differing perspectives.

Tim

Americans in general are for to casual in their use of prescription drugs, and tragically include their children. Which is just crazy to me, given the increasing number of studies that show that we have almost no clue how long-term drug use affects an adult, let alone a developing child.

I am curious how an "increasing number of studies" could result in our having "almost no clue" about the subject studied. Perhaps you meant that there have been very FEW studies on the long-term affects of anti-ADHD drugs in children, which wouldn't be inaccurate.

However, these drugs are rarely used "casually", since they are mostly controlled substances and, more to the point, only "calm" kids who actually have an attention deficit. Most of the drugs are STIMULANTS, and if given to a normal child, would have him bouncing off the walls. They are not tranquilizers and do not flatten affect as you imply.

Robin,

We may be approaching the point where all we can do is say "I see what you mean, but I don't agree" here, since some of this is definitely boiling down to a conflict of worldviews (or at least, similar goals with *vastly* differing ideas about how to achieve them). Nevertheless, a few comments:

No one walks into the classroom as the perfect teacher, and many of the skills necessary to be a decent teacher can be taught. Just like Peter didn't learn to tell stories as well as he does in a classroom, great teachers have skills that they certainly didn't pick up in a modern college course in education. (Probably not in older education courses, either, but I've no experience with those.)

It may surprise you to hear this, but I almost completely agree with the above. One of the strengths (and weaknesses, I hasten to point out) of the independent-school system is that teachers don't have to be credentialed -- as a result, I've never gotten around to getting mine despite the fact that I'm about to start year (eek) 14.

I have plenty of friends who are credentialed, however, and one of them sums up my opinion of the process (witnessed from a distance) as something like this:

If you're a natural teacher, a credentialing program won't tell you anything that isn't common sense. If you're not a natural teacher but an okay one, it'll remind you of some things you OUGHT to know. [She tends to use as an example someone who both of us taught with in the past.]

My sense is that the credentialing program as it currently stands is seriously flawed, and that there at the very least ought to be an alternate way of going about it. Certainly I believe being an education *major* is not a great idea, at least if you're teaching at the high school or middle school level. (I can't comment on the earlier grades, since I've never taught them. That's where all the really brave people go.)

We're all equal in rights and deserving of the same basic respect, but we're not equal in abilities, no matter how much the current system is true.

I'm sorry, I'm having trouble parsing that last clause there. Your overall point (that schools should be more flexible in seeing where a student's talents lie, whether it's in or out of the classroom) is one I generally agree with.

I've yet to see a school system that isn't throwing a ton of money down the toilet. I think it's less a problem of not having enough capital and more a problem of not properly managing the capital available.

I have to ask: how many school budgets have you actually looked at? There may well be a fair amount of waste, but as others have pointed out if you want to be able to evaluate teachers fairly and thoroughly that's going to require more administrative structure than most people seem to think is necessary.

So... I might be able to come up with $3,300 for my kid to go to a better school, but because my neighbor can't, I shouldn't be afforded the opportunity?

That's not a fair summation of Eric's point, Robin, and you know it.

Tim has been suggesting a voucher system for "public" schools. I'm okay with that if we allow for different types of public schools.

Fine by me, though I'm not sure I'd segregate the "types" to the same degree as what you're suggesting. In part, you're suggesting tracking the kids at what might be a very early age, and I'm not generally in favor of that for a number of reasons.

[This is actually quoting Bobb}:

"And the instructor is very good as telling us that it's not "dumbing down" our writing...but that's exactly what it is. It's an admission that the common American citizen lacks the reading comprehension to easily comprehend words like utilize, initiate, and promulgate."

I have to agree with this. I tend to use Big Words [tm] and complicated sentence structure when I write (as people here may have noticed :-) ), and I know that in some cases it's turned people away from my writing. (Someone once told a friend of mine that he preferred someone else's reviews to mine because mine made him have to look things up and he didn't want to feel dumb. Sigh.) I certainly try to make things as comprehensible as possible for my students, but I'm not going to shy away from being as particular as necessary in my phrasing. (I have a bit of a reputation for being picky with kids' wording, actually.)

Tim wrote (about my question on how his "public vouchers" program would differ from the current system):
"1) You often can't do that -- a lot of schools are residency-based. I can't send my daughter to a school in the next town unless I live in said down.

I'm basing the following on second-hand knowledge and my (possibly faulty) memory, so please take it with a grain of salt.

[example deleted]

I'm not familiar with any such examples, but I'm also not really in a position to be privy to such. I'll take your word for it.

Tim:
"Different schools, different teachers, different administrative priorities. If schools are given a fair amount of latitude in how they run things, doesn't this let you choose the approach that's the best fit for your child?"

Assuming that we allow for different administrative priorities, it does. I just don't see it happening when the entire school system in which I'm permitted to use the money earmarked for my child's education is under the thumb of the federal government.

Deadlock, then. I don't see it as being nearly so monolithic.

In a system like our local one, where the county government is run by a handful of families who like to play favorites, I'd prefer to have an alternative that's run by someone outside of the system, because offering another school run by that same group isn't offering much of a choice at all.

I have to wonder where the heck you're living, where the next HS over is "10-40 miles away" and a handful of families run the county. I mean, I grew up in New Jersey and recently moved back there, which is supposed to be a mainstay of political corruption, and I'm not seeing the latter.

And now, the key issue for vouchers as I see it:

Me:
As I said in response to someone else earlier, as soon as you get to do that, the obvious next step is for someone who's childless (or whose children have graduated) to say 'I don't want my money going to fund education at all.'

Robin:
I'm not talking about letting the taxpayers control what happens to "their" money when it goes into the government pool, I'm talking about letting the money earmarked for my child's education be used for my child's education, regardless of whether I choose to allow him to go to a government-run school.

But that means you ARE talking about the former, Robin. No ifs, ands, or buts. If you say the money is earmarked for "your" child's education, then a childless person can claim *with equal validity* that their money shouldn't have to be earmarked for any child's education.

There is no way out of that progression other than justifying it with "but I wanna!", so far as I can tell. I understand the desire, but it is not "your" money to disburse as you see fit, any more than someone who doesn't drive gets out of paying for roads and other infrastructure.

Those property taxes go to support public education. That's the education of the public, not the education of your kid specifically. I, for one, think we should all be striving for a well-educated citizenry -- not that I'm saying you don't, but your posts have on occasion been willing to effectively say "well, too bad for those who can't afford X type of education", which is effectively throwing them over the side.

There's our collision of worldviews, I think: you're insistent that the money somehow should remain "yours", and you're not seeing or not acknowledging the inconsistencies in or logical consequences of that stance. The public system is flawed, no question, and I'm happy to discuss ways of changing or reforming it. I am not willing to entertain the idea of scrapping it, and I take particular exception to any attempt to cloak said idea in the guise of reform.

(I'm not saying you're doing that last -- at least not intentionally. Your statements can certainly be interpreted that way, however.)

TWL

Robin said:

So... I might be able to come up with $3,300 for my kid to go to a better school, but because my neighbor can't, I shouldn't be afforded the opportunity?

1) Voucher proponents often use the "vouchers give EVERYONE access to private schools!" argument in their ads. Here in Michigan I've seen this idea used over and over again. One TV ad showed a [rich] white kid in a limo driving past a [poor] black kid, with the [words] implied by the ad, then it asked, "is it fair that only one of these kids gets to choose his school because he can afford it?" While vouchers might increase access for some folks, they do not benefit everyone, nor do they provide anyone who is even remotely poor the opportunity to find a better school.

2) IMO, You should not be afforded the opportunity by the government, by the taxpayers, by me. It'd be like the government paying the moving fees for "white flight." (I don't mean to bring race into it, but the economic factors involved are very similar, regardless of race.)

Tim has been suggesting a voucher system for "public" schools. I'm okay with that if we allow for different types of public schools. Send the kids who show an aptitude for math and science to one school, the kids who show a rapport with animals to another, the kids who have a knack for spinning tales to a third and the kids who have a talent for woodwork (or metal shop or...) to yet another, and stop trying to measure them against one another. That way, everyone can afford to send their kids to school (since they're public), but the schools are better tailored to meet the needs of the kids.

1) I tend to agree that once a kid gets past a certain grade (9th? 10th?), we would do better to begin specializing education more. I'd like to see an improved apprenticeship program (which I recognize has been mentioned in this thread already). The "one-size-fits-all" approach is fundamentally flawed past a certain point.

2) Transportation needs to be improved. People deserve equal access to public services, and if you start moving kids out of "home districts" to attend other public districts (which I support, BTW), you'd better be prepared to transport them.

3) We actually have something like this in Michigan--"schools of choice." The biggest problem with it is that many schools are now so desperate to get students that they let parents get away with anything. "Oh, Johnny failed his class so you're leaving? Well, maybe he really only got a D. Let me check with the teacher..." No joke.

4) I agree with you that many kids who are "slow" under the current system would benefit from an environment that offered more options. Unfortunately, NCLB is taking that possibility away by forcing schools to concentrate on core subjects to a silly degree.

Allow parents to make the decisions for their individual students, and the micro level decisions will determine the fate of the schools on a macro level.

I watch this happen EVERY DAY, and the system is abused again and again by parents who lack integrity. Certainly there are many, many good parents, but far too many of the bad screw over the system and their students by allowing their kids to pick the easy, no-work teachers. (Who should be removed, no question. See Tim's response--I think it was Tim--on tenure not protecting bad teachers.)

Robin, you sound like someone who is (or would be--I don't know your situation) very invested in your child's education and future. You don't sound like someone who would make snap judgments about a teacher. Systems like the one you advocate would work well if every person lived up to the values you express. The amount of "gaming the system" that I see every day in public education as parents gain more and more control over their students' individual educations has convinced me that too many people are not like you, and I have no faith in their ability to maintain any sense of integrity in the face of the choices you're talking about.

That's not a defense of public schools; it's just a reason why I don't think some of your ideas are practially viable.

Eric

Tim said to Robin:

There's our collision of worldviews, I think: you're insistent that the money somehow should remain "yours", and you're not seeing or not acknowledging the inconsistencies in or logical consequences of that stance. The public system is flawed, no question, and I'm happy to discuss ways of changing or reforming it. I am not willing to entertain the idea of scrapping it, and I take particular exception to any attempt to cloak said idea in the guise of reform.

(I'm not saying you're doing that last -- at least not intentionally. Your statements can certainly be interpreted that way, however.)

Not only can the statements be interpreted that way, but many of the leaders of the voucher movement have those exact goals in mind:

1) Stop my money from going to public schools
2) If you don't have your own money to educate your kids, screw you
3) Cloak selfish, elitist programs in veils of public service

Robin, I'm not ascribing those motivations to you in any way, but many of the people pushing vouchers are motivated that way.

Thanks, Tim, for putting things so well.

Eric

Tim (Butler),

You know why I was under the impression you only had one young child? Because I am feeling bit under the weather and in my Alka Seltzer Cold medication stupor got you crossed up with Tim Lynch...which is not a bad person to get mixed up with, but anyway there you you go.

(and I think having 6 kids in the home-school situation automatically eliminates a lot of the problems that an only child would have).

Do you work with other home-schooling parents or do you do it all on your own? And here's another question, one with selfish motivation on mypart--what, if anything, could a humble teacher of science try to market to help out home school parents? Is there any kind of science material that you've seen a need for?

Always looking for a way to supplement the checking account, that's me!

BTW--really really off topic--anyone who is in the Hermitage PA area this sunday--they're shooting a zombie movie and need zombies. Yeah, what are the odds? I show up intown for a few days and bam! they need zombies. And some folks say there is no God. Anyway, send me an email if you want to be a part of it and are in the area.

Nice how you can twist words.

Didn't twist a thing. PAD's original comment was asking why not get some support from the unions, and you came back with that being a sign of weakness. I did no twisting there.

I never once said a thing about salaries or anything that effects my own salary. When I talk about givebacks, I am talking about things like health benefits, pensions, tuition reimbursement funds, money for professiona development training, etc.

In New Jersey, we have an abysmal teacher retention rate. Now let's start cutting the benefits that they already get. Where does that leave these students? Without teachers.

Now who is twisting words? No where did I state anything about cutting teacher's salaries or benefits. My problem is with the monies that the unions receive. Why not use some of the dues money to actually help the schools immediate concerns and not worry just about the lobby industry that unions support?

Bill,

We belong to a local homeschooling support group that keeps us informed of programs, field trips, support, advice, opportunities, etc. In addtion, our next door neighbors also homeschool their four children. (You can see why half the kids in the neighborhood are homeschooled!)We also enroll our kids in local sports and extracurricular activities. (My daughter is just finishing up a drama camp this week.) Once we also took part in a homeschooling co-op that offered noncore classes, like creative writing, drama, public speaking, etc.

There are opportunities for profit, if you dig a little. I attend at least one convention a yearm and I can tell you that the homeschool community is exploding in terms of numbers. As a science teacher, your services may be very marketable to this group. Especially in the later grades, parents don't always feel comfortable teaching advanced science subjects to their kids. Three things I would recommend off the top of my head -

1) Contact as many local support groups you can find and ask them. You might want to consider offering workshops for the kids. As a precursor, you could come in and do a presentation/ demonstration during one of their regularly scheduled meetings. No pay, but if they like what they see, some doors may open.

2) Pursue any homeschooling co-ops in your area. (Any support groups should be able to put you in touch with them.) They are always looking for qualified teachers to run their classes.

3) You may want to check out curriculum fairs and homeschooling conventions in your area. If you have a service or educational materials to sell, there may be opportunities there for you to exploit.

All the best!

A couple of "Amens" to these ideas proposed above:

-- Secretarial support for teachers as well as administrators. Should I prepare exciting lessons and edit student writing, or catch up on the paperwork? The poor bastards I feel sorry for are the Special Ed teachers: every year they're given more and more forms and documentation (persistent lobbying by parents of special needs students, and legislators who never saw a special ed law they didn't like). And while we're at it, do you think I could have a phone at my desk for calling parents, instead of 20 teachers waiting to use one of the phones in the office?

-- We have the same problem with HS seniors avoiding a "tough" class in order to keep their GPA up. Graduation was a travesty-- the two hardest working students had to share salutatorian honors, while three students who'd deliberately dropped the same classes were allowed to "share" valedictorian status. Gaming the system.

-- Amen to creating/designing your own worksheets. I do the same; the ones that come with the textbooks are horrid.

Bill Mulligan wrote:

> Yeah, teachers are underpaid. So are cops,
> firemen and sanitation workers. Nobody holds a
> gun to your head and makes you pick a career.

Unless you were drafted, of course.

Anyway, some months ago the St. Louis Post-Dispatch ran an "expose' of bad government" article about how firefighters in some suburban and exurban fire protection districts west of the City are receiving six-figure salaries, and how wasteful this is compared to the starting salary in the St. Louis Fire Department of $31,900 per year.

To me, what's wrong is not that some outstate firefighters are making a hundred or so grand a year (good for them!), but that St. Louis firefighters start at a miniscule thirty-one-nine.

A couple of years ago we lost two St. Louis firefighters in a refrigerator-factory fire. The first got separated from his brothers, his tank ran out of air, and he collapsed. The second died trying to make pickup on him, his desperate radio calls for help obscured by other radio traffic on the too few channels available to the Fire Department.

The thousands of mourners at the public service at Kiel/Savvis Auditorium and the posthumous promotions to Captain they received don't make up, will never make up, for the loss to their families and our community.

No matter how much these men and women get paid, it's never enough.

The Star Wolf missed the rest of Bobb's quote, which pointed out that the problem wasn't technical jargon, but pretty common every day words:
"And the instructor is very good as telling us that it's not "dumbing down" our writing...but that's exactly what it is. It's an admission that the common American citizen lacks the reading comprehension to easily comprehend words like utilize, initiate, and promulgate."

Both are correct. There are too many functionally illiterate people out there [thank the dieties the movement to have teachers use Ebonics in class died a richly deserved death in California], but at the same time, there are too many people who have lost - if they ever had it - the ability to communicate effectively with anyone but a small cadre of peers.

Still, it could be worse.

'Red' China [I can't speak for Taiwan] and Japan have lists of hundreds of 'official' characters which are considered a must to know if one is to be considered really literate. According to a Chinese friend, the former has been working to abolish some of the more complex characters from the list in order to make it easier for people to qualify as 'literate'. Sad, really.

Now who is twisting words? No where did I state anything about cutting teacher's salaries or benefits. My problem is with the monies that the unions receive. Why not use some of the dues money to actually help the schools immediate concerns and not worry just about the lobby industry that unions support?

You have no idea what you are talking about. It is illegal for unions to use due money for political contributions. At least in Jersey, I have no idea if that is a federal law. All our political work is done through a seperate fund where members voluntarily contribution, too. I can't speak for what other unions do, but our union does not use any dues money for any political action.

In fact, we also give a scholarship to our member's kids...and not a dime of that money comes from dues to, we work yearround to get contributions from local businesses.

At the union I work for, we've use dues money to set up professional development programs, including a educational resource center where teachers can access resources or put together bulletin boards for just the cost of the material.

PAD never said have the unions use more of their money to help the district, he said they should do rollbacks and cutbacks. Both those things directly effect school staff (our district, we represent teachers, aides, and clerks), and it's something that any intelligent union would be unlikely to just discuss off the cuff.

We have the same problem with HS seniors avoiding a "tough" class in order to keep their GPA up. Graduation was a travesty-- the two hardest working students had to share salutatorian honors, while three students who'd deliberately dropped the same classes were allowed to "share" valedictorian status. Gaming the system.

This isn't quite the same example, but that sort of motivation has been around for quite some time. I graduated HS in '86 (a public school, graduating class of about 450 kids), and some of the "battle" for valedictorian status got a little weird.

One classmate of mine had a father who was chair of the history department and who taught the AP US History course. Funny how virtually everyone who took that class who might have been perceived as a competitor for valedictorian got something other than an A. (The son was a great kid; the dad was a terrible, terrible teacher.)

Another classmate of mine threw out her back late sophomore year, with the result that she didn't take PE the last two years of HS. Since PE grades were figured into the GPA at the time (and may still be, I don't know), removing that (non-honors, non-AP) course from her load had the effect of raising her weighted GPA significantly, and she in fact wound up as valedictorian. Nobody ever accused her of injuring herself deliberately, but she was so ultra-competitive about it (starting from about week 2 of freshman year) that some people always wondered.

Interesting times, high school.

TWL

Tim Butler,

Thank you very much for the tips...I'm toying with an idea for a book this year on using technology to allow kids to explore their creativity and if I do it I'll want some input from homeschoolers as well as traditional teachers.

Tim Lynch,

I see that some schools are eliminating the entire valedictorian concept entirely because of abuses like that. A shame, really.

Disclosure: I am a Catholic school teacher, although not a Catholic (our counselor is Jewish, which is simply terrific) after being a public school teacher then college instructor for several years. I took this job, after cutbacks left me laid off of my small college position, while turning down public school jobs even though I make $5000 LESS per year (not more in this private school) because of the ungodly mess that is public education.

To respond to the original question: Not a teacher worth his or her salt, including me, hasn't spent their own money on the classroom. Science teachers like me especially have to purchase equipment (the usual science supply shop, the local Dollar Store, for bleach and peroxide and the like) for everyday use. And the more schools cut back, the more teachers have to buy. So I don't accept the argument that the teachers are not sacrificing. They simply can't sacrifice enough to make up the difference.

I will never make more than $40K per year teaching, most likely. And that makes it tough to support a family. Teachers in rich suburban areas like Westchester County NY make far more. More power to them. But since schools are NOT a business, I can never make what I am worth.

After many years in education, and time spent in research pursuing a doctorate, I have a number of ideas for education reform that will never get implemented, such as smaller schools, ungraded elementary schools where students move up at their own pace, and compulsory education ending at 8th grade....but with 9th-12th grade available free of charge to anyone at any age, when they are ready to do it.

Oh, and teacher starting salaries at $35-50K depending on region, and moving up from there. The way you recruit better job candidates is to offer more money and perks, any business knows that.

Best to you all. Wish we could solve all the problems in this thread, but it won't happen.

"Best to you all. Wish we could solve all the problems in this thread, but it won't happen."

Sadly true, but good ideas, like the ones you suggest, have to start somewhere. And the more people discuss this, the more chance we make a change where it will matter...congress. State and Federal governments need to be the place where we, the People, make a change by putting people in power that recognize that our youth are our literal future. And however important it is to work to fight terrorism, improve roads, go to the moon or mars, or build a $300 million bridge so 56 Alaskans don't have to commute via boat, none of those things matters if there's no one around in the future to use them. And by denying our children the best education we can provide them, we're dooming our future to the struggle of global mediocrity.

well, given that something like 90% of school funding comes from state and local government, that'd probably be the most logical place to start. the advantage to that is you actually can have more of a voice in local/state decisions than in federal decision. the drawback is you have to deal with whatever wackos and idiots you might have in your state/locality. still, i think in general it is easier to deal with local wackos than national wackos...;)

i will say one thing in defense of 'no child left behind' (wait, hold your spears and daggers until i'm done! :) ) - at least it was an attempt to do SOMETHING different. for decades our school systems have been running, generally, under a 'business as usual - just send us more money' approach, which was not working. i think by looking at all the various ideas that have been posted here, a lot of people have a lot of different ideas on how to fix things, but there doesn't seem to be any obvious answers - just a lot of guesses ("i think this might work" - everything from completely privatizing schools to completely socializing them, and everything in between). yes, i think that nclb is, at best, mostly ineffective, and at worst, an unmitigated failure. mostly, i think that the reason is that it put too much accountibility at the federal review level. but at least it was SOMETHING new. and maybe the next president will come in and try throwing something different at the wall and see if it sticks. it'll be interesting to see if either of the 2008 candidates come up with a new approach to education, other than simply "i plan to increase education funding x%".

of course, there's always the possibility that the failure of our schools has nothing to do with the schools themselves (or any attempts to "fix" them), but is merely a symptom of large-scale shifts in our society - but that type of thinking makes my head hurt on a friday afternoon...

-b

You know, I hate to be a pessimist but doesn't it seem odd that with all the different approaches, all the different schools, all the different ideas, that nobody has found that "right way" to do this? And the implication becomes that maybe it doesn’t exist, that what works with one group at one time in one place may be a disaster when applied somewhere else.

Same with prisons. How many times have we heard about some great program that reduces recidivism and then you never hear about it again?

Are humans just so complex that anything that attempts to train or educate them is doomed to fail in as many cases as it succeeds? Then again, the military has been able to do a good job with much the same people.

One thing to keep in mind--our knowledge of how people learn is woeful. Our knowledge of how the brain works is better now than it has ever been but we still have a long way to go. We are attempting to reach a goal (education) with a very very weak understanding of the processes behind it. You CAN make an airplane without understanding the physics of flight...but would you want to ride in it?

"You know, I hate to be a pessimist but doesn't it seem odd that with all the different approaches, all the different schools, all the different ideas, that nobody has found that "right way" to do this? And the implication becomes that maybe it doesn’t exist, that what works with one group at one time in one place may be a disaster when applied somewhere else."

Hence, the drive for freedom of choice in education without being penalized by the government by being forced to fund an educational system that simply does not work for everyone.

I agree completely with what you've said, Bill. The next step is to develop a system that allows people to freely choose the educational alternative that's best for them without penalty.

You're not being a pessimist. You're being a realist. One size fits all requires that those who have a different learning style but cannot adapt will fail.

Freedom is a beautiful thing. It doesn't guarantee success. Nothing does. But it does maximize the opportunity of achieving it. The "right way" is to let everyone choose their "right way."

To respond to the original question: Not a teacher worth his or her salt, including me, hasn't spent their own money on the classroom. Science teachers like me especially have to purchase equipment (the usual science supply shop, the local Dollar Store, for bleach and peroxide and the like) for everyday use. And the more schools cut back, the more teachers have to buy. So I don't accept the argument that the teachers are not sacrificing. They simply can't sacrifice enough to make up the difference.

BINGO! Full disclosure time myself: while I work for a teacher's union, my wife works as a teacher (I initially typed my teacher works as a wife...funny slip). We've spent a lot of money for her classroom, including simple things like books (her class has an incredible library now...I'm jealous when I walk in there), notebooks, pencils, science kits, etc. She teachers special ed, and most of the time, she can't get teacher's editions for all the grade levels she's teaching.

Well, after finally making it through all of the posts here, I'm sure I may forget some thought
which I had somewhere over the course of reading through all of this the past couple of days, but ....

I'm not a teacher, don't have kids, and went to a very good public high school, so I'm not as personally invested in this topic as many here, but there were a couple of comments I wanted to make:

I also disagree with the assessment of sports as being for the "dumb" students. In my particular graduating class, of the Top Ten (val[edictorian], sal[utarian], etc), at least five of them (plus the young man who was fourth in our class at the time of his death in a car crash) were on athletic teams, including the "val" and "sal". (BTW, at my school, the rankings were set at the start of the senior year, with senior year performance not factored in. I remember our #10 teasing #11 about that, since #10 coasted enough during senior year that #11 would have passed him in ranking if things had been recomputed at the end.)

As far as teachers (in traditional school districts, leaving out the year-round model some are stuck with) not really getting three months off after all, but "only" four or six or eight weeks: No offense, but as one of the rest of us, the majority of Americans who get two weeks, plus a handful of odd days, off a year - I don't really feel that sorry for you ;) (Now, if only we could figure out how to change our society to mirror Europen countries like France, where everyone averages two months a year off ....)

Tim Butler,

what sort of standards or oversight does a homeschooler submit to to prove that their child is actually receiving a worthwhile education?

my ex and i had talked about homeschooling the kids we planned to have, so i've put some thought into this. i went through so many things in public school that i would never want my child to go through. but, on the other hand, these hardships ultimately helped me to become a much stronger person.

now, i'm not saying that kids need to go through hell as a character building experience, but learning to get along with your age group, all of them, not just the ones as bright as you, is a very valuable skill.

What do I do on my **weeks of "summer vacation?"

I spend a couple recovering from the school year (if you've never done it, you don't know how physically taxing it is to teach...teaching college was much easier) and reacquainting myself with my wife and kids....and then work to make some of the money I miss out on by teaching rather than doing something lucrative. In between, I work on preparing lessons for any new classes I will have to teach that I haven't taught before, and trying to fix the things in the classes I am teaching again so that I might be able to do it better.

One year, when we had a lot of snow days, some of the public started griping that teachers were getting paid form NOT working a number of days. I had a simple response: that's fine, install a time clock at the school and I will clock in and out. But, I will no longer be taking work home, I will be doing it all at the school, and you WILL be paying me overtime.

That would end the timeclock thing very quickly.

Speaking as someone whose mother has been working in an administrative capacity for educational systems for 15 years or so, and whose mother-in-law has been a 4th grade teacher for 35 years, I gotta say, asking ANY schoolboard employee to take a paycut is a bad idea. With the exception of janitorial and maintenance staff (who get paid way less anyway), everyone working at a school is already spending their own money when they can where things are lacking. My mother-in-law spent a LOT of her OWN money every year to make sure all of her students had the supplies and materials they needed, because many of them couldn't afford it. So you're asking people who are already way underpaid, and who already spend a lot of their own income on their students, to take a pay-cut. That don't fly. And don't forget, most teachers have kids of their own to send through school.

I do like the idea of politicians taking a massive pay-cut, but that's borderline revolution talk.

"what sort of standards or oversight does a homeschooler submit to to prove that their child is actually receiving a worthwhile education?"

It varies from state to state. In my state, which is one of the easiest in the nation in which to homeschool a child, there are no requirements. None. The parents have the absolute right to homeschool their children without any accountability or reporting responsibilities to the state.

"my ex and i had talked about homeschooling the kids we planned to have, so i've put some thought into this. i went through so many things in public school that i would never want my child to go through. but, on the other hand, these hardships ultimately helped me to become a much stronger person.

"now, i'm not saying that kids need to go through hell as a character building experience, but learning to get along with your age group, all of them, not just the ones as bright as you, is a very valuable skill."

And homeschooling would preclude this...... because?

Believe me, my kids get a lot of experience dealing with difficult age mates. Mainly, from schooled children who are well versed in the herd mentality of their educational environment and don't know how to relate to other kids unless they can gather as a group, identify the most vulnerable member, and spend a great afternoon scapegoating, taunting, and tormenting that person for fun. Believe me, I know of what I speak. My 5 year old is developmentally delayed and has some special needs. Right now, we're going through a difficult time of it because he (in his own words spoken to me the other night) "loves everyone." Unfortunately, this sentiment is not shared by the majority of the schooled kids in the neighborhood who have a made a hobby out of yelling at him, teasing him, and hitting him with various objects and then coming to complain to my wife and I when our son finally loses control and lashes back. "Christopher's hitting us!" they complain. They don't add that Christopher finally lost control after trying to get along with 5 kids who didn't want to do anything but yell at him, tease him, and hit him.

That what you're looking for? I'm not. And I don't intend to thank those kids or their parents for making my son "strong." I think that stinks and it's exactly the type of "socialization" that I want to avoid. Right now, I'm soooo looking forward to when school starts so that I don't have to spend all my time waiting for opportunities to interfere with my son's "socialization."

If it's what you want, go for it. I don't think the "socialization" of the schools is worth anything, since I have yet to find a social setting in real life that even remotely resembles school. But I'll tell you what I told my sister-in-law when she made the same argument that you did - don't complain when your kid is being tormented or teased or put upon or ridiculed or even beat up by the other kids at school. It's not bullying. It's socialization. Write a thank you card to the school instead.

(Sorry for the rant. But I'm sick of the type of socialization that you're referring to. It's disgusting that any kid should have to deal with it.)

To bring this more to the point that you raise, the homeschooling community is very diverse, and it offers the children involved many opportunities to interact with just as many different kind of kids as those who are schooled. More over, homeschooled kids interact with the world outside the classroom on a daily basis, which also affords rich opportunities to meet and interact with all kinds of people.

Maybe the neighborhood kids treat your son that way BECAUSE he is home-schooled, which in their minds makes him weird, different, and not one of them? Not excusing their actions, just rationalizing.

I'm sure they rationalize their actions along those line. Does that make it all ok? Let me just skip all the preliminary discussions and jump right to the end: Nazi Germany had all kinds of rationalizations for commiting close to 10 million murders over the course of 6 years. And would still be today if some good-hearted folks weren't willing to risk everything to show them that just because you can make up an excuse to do something, doesn't change whether that act is the right thing to do or not.

Or maybe it's ok to abuse something or someone just because they're different from you. Someone help me out here, what's that called, when you treat someone different than you in a way that makes them feel like you hate them, or consider yourself to be better than they are?

Someone help me out here, what's that called, when you treat someone different than you in a way that makes them feel like you hate them, or consider yourself to be better than they are?

Republicans?

;)

Craig,
Nice post above. A nice intro. The smiley was a nice touch:)

Bill Mulligan,
Very nice points on this thread. But I just had to respond to these statements:

"There is no point in moaning about the fact that football is more popular than quiz bowl. It just is. Nothing will change that."

First, I can't buy into this kind of complacency. Nothing is a given. At the turn of the last century, football couldn't even touch baseball in popularity. Things change.

And is quiz bowl that important? This is what is wrong with the educational mindset in this country today. It is mainly about memorizing facts, figures and dates and names. The emphasis is not on the skills an average student is going to need. Or even a detailed history of this country, or even the 20th century. This is why many kids feel what they are learning is not relevant to their lives, and in many cases, they're right.

"I could give you several theories why - for one thing we are hard wired to enjoy violence and will choose our entertainment accordingly. Give the kids on the Quiz Bowl team barbed wire bats and watch the rating skyrocket."

See, I find this kind of thinking elitist, stereotypical, simplistic, grossly unfair and untrue.
First, football is not that violent. Second, events like it do help instill concepts of teamwork and discipline and competitiveness. While there are "dumb jocks", there are also many bright ones and many kids who have no motivation and will not become engaged in either the social or academic aspects of school.
If a school's football program is eliminated and the money "saved" goes to hiring a new Administrator or is used as an excuse to keep property taxes low or cut them, what do you do then?
More people also go to theater productions than debate competitions. Is art not important?
And we don't have to worry about giving kids barbed wire bats for entertainment because kids are already using them out on the streets.
Because nobody is teaching them how to read.
Because adults are too busy pointing fingers at each other instead of doing some heavy lifting and making schools more effective.

"Also, it's basic envy. You can't get too upset over the fact that someone is better at basketball than you because it is a simple matter of genetics - not everyone can be 7 feet tall."

Poppycock. It is not a simple matter of genetics. If it were, the coach would just take the five tallest players and play them. Each player - even superstars like Kobe Bryant - is expected to excel in a certain area. When I was in high school, our team's starting point guard was shorter than me. And I'm 5'7. And he beat out our star baseball player. And we made the playoffs.
It's called determination. To chalk it up to genetics is as offensive to me as if you said there was no chance on me doing better in Asians in academics because of genetics or that I have a "natural advantage" over blacks in academics because of genetics.

"But people like to believe that the only reason that someone is smarter than they are is because they waste time reading or have no social life."

And people also like to believe that the only reason jock types are popular and get laid is because of their biceps when in actuality their
confidence, strong personality and willingness to be social actually play a huge role.

"Sure, it sucks to be the smart kid who gets no attention in high school."

Sure, but a lot of the time these kids CHOOSE to be loners or look down on those they deem not to be as smart as them. And it also sucks to be the kid who is though of as weird because he's rather practice 3-pointers than go to the movies.

"Part of my job as a teacher is to point out to the smart kids just how temporary and unreal high school is"

I see your point, and if that motivational tool works for you, great. But isn't all life transitory? If you don't feel it's "real", then why should students take it seriously?

ROBIN SAID: "I've already said what my standard of success for a school is: 'Is my child showing progress?' It's subjective, but I think it's a subjective measurement that parents who take an active role in their children's lives are qualified to make."

TIM LYNCH RESPONDED: "and the parents who don't take such a role? What's to stop them from picking a school based on how close it is to a baseball stadium, or the nearest strip club."

So the parents who who do take such a role should suffer for those who never will? Sorry. They do deserve a choice. Even if it's from two or three public schools. As for those who would pick their child's school based on the reasons you suggest:
A.) How is it any worse than trapping kids who can't afford better/private schools into a bad public school?
B.) How is their decision and what they base it on really any of your business? Your cited example is silly.

Nice post above. A nice intro. The smiley was a nice touch:)

Well, it was set up so wonderfully, that I just couldn't pass it up. :)

First, football is not that violent.

I know a judge you should tell that to.

(Not a problem for me personally, just something I read today regarding an assault charge against a football player.)

"Maybe the neighborhood kids treat your son that way BECAUSE he is home-schooled, which in their minds makes him weird, different, and not one of them? Not excusing their actions, just rationalizing."

I wish I could understand what the purpose of your post is, because it clearly escapes me. The implication seems to be that enrolling my son in school would help him to be more accepted by the neighborhood kids. Pardon me, but that idea is so obviously false that I have to consider your comments somewhat....... lacking.... in thoughtfulness. (And that's putting it as diplomatically as I can.)

If that were the case, they (school kids) would treat each other with love and respect. Of course, that's generally not the case. In the immortal words of Jean Shepherd, "You were either a bully, a toadie, or one of the nameless rabble of victims." The way my son is being treated is not extraordinary or even unusual. Unfortunately, it's the standard. I remember one period of my life in second grade. We were all sitting around a big table. Probably about 10 of us. One of the girls at the table was the popular, smart, beautiful kid. Every day, she picked out the victim for that day. The one kid that everyone else at the table would torment and ridicule. Did I rise up and condemn this injustice? Or even tell the teacher? No, I just remember the incredible feeling of relief I felt when I escaped being the "victim of the day." Did I join in on the torment? I don't specifically recall joining in, but I would bet money that I did. I was part of the herd as much as anyone else.

"Someone help me out here, what's that called, when you treat someone different than you in a way that makes them feel like you hate them, or consider yourself to be better than they are?"

"Republicans?"

In this case, the parents of my son's tormenters had John Kerry signs throughout their yard last November. These days, they're sporting such bumper stickers as "Buck Fush" (great example for the kids) and "W is For War".

So, I actually consider this bad treatment to be Christopher's introduction to modern liberalism.

;) right back at you.

Jerome,

Now we can lay off the other posters and argue with each other :)

And is quiz bowl that important?

No, not really, I was just looking for a competitive event that relied on reading.

First, football is not that violent. Second, events like it do help instill concepts of teamwork and discipline and competitiveness. While there are "dumb jocks", there are also many bright ones and many kids who have no motivation and will not become engaged in either the social or academic aspects of school.

I think I made that point above somewhere. And by violent I don't mean that in the thuggish sense. There is nothing inherently wrong with violence, under certain circumstances. Maybe I'm making up my own definition of violence--how does "physical action" sound.

If a school's football program is eliminated and the money "saved" goes to hiring a new Administrator or is used as an excuse to keep property taxes low or cut them, what do you do then?

I would never advocate eliminating football. Motivates way too many kids.

Poppycock. It is not a simple matter of genetics.

No entirely but to a greater degree than you give it credit. Even a short good basketball player is born with certain traits that give them an advantage. That's why those dads who train and push their kids from birth to be the next great sports star are often disappointed. Similarly, exposing your kid to art will not make them the next Rembrandt, unless they have it in them.

I'll post more later, gotta run

Ok, a little bit on football, and what makes a school great...

I was lucky. I went to what I later found to have been one of the best high schools in the country, at that time. Our high school was not one-dimensional, but had talent, and developed talent in many different areas, not all of them academic.

First, there is football. Our team was second in the state, lost in a 6-0 battle in the championship to the team that was later rated as the best in the country. BTW, very few of the team went on to become college all stars. It wasn't because we had great players, we had a great TEAM that year. Our coaches taught that way...

Next, there was band. Our school had a jazz band that was hot. They went to competitions in Europe, as well as in the states. They were considered one of the top five jazz bands in America. Note I said jazz bands, not high school jazz bands! Many of them DID become professional musicians. Christian music fans may recognize Degarmo and Key, who started in that band.

Same in Quiz'em on the Air, ROTC, basketball, science competitions, the lot. We were not always the very best in a competition, but we were in the top layer in everything.

Was our school perfect? No! For one thing, we had a major drug problem, although our senior year it was better. Of course, one of the problems was that our students didn't sell, they PRODUCED the drugs. Also, Race was a big issue. We had two different race riots my senior year.

However, what stopped that second race riot from becoming bigger is a good example of what our school did right. My Advanced Math class was just after lunch, when the student body was reeling from a racially motivated assault on the senior class president. The teacher, who happend to be black, sat us down and discussed what had happened openly, and frankly. He calmed us down, and through us, calmed the school down. Who was in this class? Captains of both squads of the football team, the captain of the basketball team, three cheerleaders, the heads of the ROTC, Band, and even the head of the nerds... (me...)

Or course, this was in the dark ages (1974) when a trip to the principles office meant an acquaintance with a wooden paddle. But we did good work, and we worked hard.

Or course, the year after I graduated, they 'integrated' the school, shipped a whole lot of new students of various races and motivations in. The principle, vice principle, football coaching staff and band staff, and half the teachers all moved to a different school in the non-bussed county, and the whole thing fell apart. Of course, that county school was in the same high achievement situation two years later...

CharlieE

Jerome,

Here's the quote I knew I'd written somewhere:

(in reply to the statement:)
as for school funding, forget sports imo.

I'm going to have to disagree here as well. I know it is popular for us to bash the athletic department but the truth is that a lot of my kids would not be there if it were not for sports. That's a dumb reason to go to school but kids are, to various degrees, dumb. I've used sports to get better effort and behavior from my kids as well--telling Coach Pegram that Tyrone Firefly is acting up in class will often solve the problem--something involving repeated laps around the football field. They can't play if they fail classes so there are some who give an extra effort right there. And there is a level of discipline that sports gives them that can be used in all aspects of life.

Also, it is the one thing that gets parents involved. Is that right? No but welcome to Reality 101. Prerequisite: life.

Now there are schools where sports is the only thing and obviously the tail is wagging the dog there.

So I think it's obvious that I have no problem with sports in school.

"Part of my job as a teacher is to point out to the smart kids just how temporary and unreal high school is"

I see your point, and if that motivational tool works for you, great. But isn't all life transitory? If you don't feel it's "real", then why should students take it seriously?

There are two kinds of kids I feel really bad for--the ones for whom high school is the worst time of their life and the ones for whom it is the best time of their life.

High school shoulb be a great time, a time to fall in love for the first time, have your heart broken for the first time, learn how to deal with it for the first time, etc. If all that is overwhelmed by outside stuff (and some of these kids are dealing with things that would make you weep), well, that's unspeakably sad.

But man, if High School were the BEST time of my life, how awful would that be? High school isn't "real life" in the sense of it's not at all the way the rest of life works. We all know people who go on living their adult life as though they are still in high school. They are generally to be pitied.