In many larger older cities the Catholic schools are islands of calm and peace in the chaos. If that were my choice–bad public v catholic I’m going catholic every time.They have a system that has worked for many many years and children of all kinds.
Voucher programs and charter school have many of the same burdens on them, and that to me is have they been proven to work? And if they work, are they working for a broad slice of kids, or is it working only for the kids they cherry pick, who happen to be lucky to have involved parents and family that allows them to take advantage of it. De Voss and others are promoting vouchers and charter schools as a miracle solution, and the reality is we don’t know if they are. Some of the best Charter schools for example when examined show that the kids who benefit from them are mostly kids with involved parents, that the kids from troubled backgrounds if they get in (Charters are by lottery usually) end up mysteriously being ‘disappeared’ back to the publc schools, and we need to be careful of that.
Vouchers sound great, but take a kid in a failing rural or inner city school, how many choices will parents have? A typical voucher is like 5k, which in an inner city area would likely limit the parent to something like a Catholic parochial school, prep style private schools are going to be multiples of that in cost (a parent could conceivable get a scholarship for the rest, but how many kids would prep schools take, give scholarships to?). Also, could the local parochial school handle an influx of kids, would they have the classroom space and teachers? In NYC the archdiocese has been shutting churches and schools all over the city, would they for example have the resources to handle an influx of 10’s of thousands of kids? This idea that for kids in failing schools there is competition to the public schools is not going to be true all the time if even any significant percentage of the time, parental choice at best might rest with a parochial school or the like, and that may only work for a small percent of kids in those schools.
My biggest objection, which is deliberate, is that the proposals I have heard of refuse to have any kind of standards attached to them, it is basically give the parent a voucher and say “see ya”, and the idea seems to be if the school doesn’t work, well, that is the parent’s obligation. If public money is going to private schools via vouchers I refuse to have that done without standards, without any kind of criteria. What makes this worse is the for profit school thing, which in the college level has proven itself to be rife with fraud, what makes people think a for profit voucher taking school is on the level, or simply getting public money, getting rich off it, then disappearing like a rainbow after a storm?
This was done deliberately because I believe vouchers were not proposed to help kids in failing schools, inner city or rural, but rather a subsidy for parents who want to send their kids to religious schools because they think the public school “challenges their faith” , or parents who want to send their kids to private school and want a subsidy, this has been bandied about as ‘parental choice’ but what it seems to be to me is parents wanting the governemnt to subsidize ‘their’ schools, rather than paying for it themselves and that is not the same thing as helping failing schools. And if a kid is in a bad school, and goes to a “Christian School” or whatnot, then I want to make sure they are getting an education rather than it being a school for religious propoganda, I don’t think tax dollars should be supporting schools that teach science is nothing more than belief, that the earth is 6000 years old and Chemical bonding is because of “God’s Love” (that was in an actual textbook, folks), I want to make sure kids are getting a real education. If it is a for profit school, which I think should be excluded, I want to make sure that they aren’t skimping on lab science or other higher level classes and/or hiring anyone to be a teacher so they can make a profit. Put it this way, the whole “school choice thing” became a buzzword around the same time that the religious conservatives became a big part of politics, and that is not a coincidence.
With charter schools I likewise want to make sure that they are truly doing what they claim. Are they truly educating all comers, or are they cherry picking by letting the ‘trouble’ kids drift away back to public school? Are the lotteries attracting a wide swath of kids, or only the kids whose parents are already motivated to help them? One of the things I am most tired of is hearing people blame the parents. While there is no doubt some of the problem of inner cities schools (and these days rural ones as well) is the breakdown of families, parents unable to do much, etc, but what that is saying to a kid is “well, kid, sorry your parents are lame, but that is life”, we need to make sure that an effort is made to get kids into charter schools, not by parents pushing only, but by being pushed by advocates and pulled by the schools themselves. A good public school would be one to me that educates kids from all ends of the spectrum, Charter schools may benefit by the lottery system they have, since the kids who get into the lottery likely have parent(s) who are involved, how do we make sure that kids benefit from choice, that someone is looking out for them?
The biggest evil of see of vouchers, and to a certain extent charter schools and magnet schools, is that it is furthering the segregation of our society, between haves and have nots, between those who are religious and those who are secular and that is not good. One of the things I firmly believe is that the public education system the US has had for a long time was one of the biggest differences between us and other countries, it was only post world war II that in europe you saw any kind of true public school system like we have known of it. I realize that this is somewhat idealized, that things like de facto segregation (whites in the surrounding burb, blacks and hispanics for example in inner city schools), but even with that there at least was some levelling. I would rather figure out what is wrong with the public schools and fix them (and charters could play a large role in that), what I don’t want is the government financing further flight from the public schools across the board by giving vouchers to anyone who wants them for whatever reasons, let’s target the problem of bad schools and the kids forced to go to them, not create a program that subsidizes seperation and stratification.
@Atlanta68 - did I say the “problem” lay with the schools and not the parents? I certainly never meant to imply anything like that.
A child’s success and education come about as a complicated function of family life, family resources, personality, ability, LUCK, and of course, also school experience. Policy-makers and government officials and to a much smaller extent school personnel, can influence some of these variables, sometimes, in some ways. Our moral duty as a society is to make it a positive influence and to provide as equitable opportunity as possible, which includes extra help for those who need it (e.g. IDEA).
@musicprnt - yes to all, particularly the worrisome connection between religious education and voucher advocates. Also, remember that it’s not just parents pulling “their money” out of the system - we all benefit from a strong public school system. Yes, yes, morally. But also financially: it’s a heck of a lot cheaper to pay for school now than for jail later.
@barrons -
“In many larger older cities the Catholic schools are islands of calm and peace in the chaos. If that were my choice–bad public v catholic I’m going catholic every time.They have a system that has worked for many many years and children of all kinds.”
With all due respect, those of us who are not Christian/Catholic, do not necessarily feel that such a system works for “children of all kinds”.
And as @musicprnt notes, vouchers are tiny bandaids relative to private school tuition.
“With all due respect, those of us who are not Christian/Catholoic, do not necessarily feel that such a system works for “children of all kinds”.”
Especially the kind of troubled or neglected children that Catholic schools are allowed to kick out, and that public schools must educate come hell or high water.
Actually, some parts of Europe DID have the public education system the US had before WWII.
After all, the modern public education system as we know it was adopted from parts of the Prussian/Imperial German model from the mid-late 19th century onwards:
You folks are way out of touch. http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/education/more-non-catholic-students-are-enrolling-in-st-louis-area/article_80f43f79-2f54-582c-8335-1af9bf1b07ef.html
You can find articles like this for nearly every city in the US
Educate or babysit until the hit 16 or just disappear?? http://www.attendanceworks.org/research/elementary-school-absenteeism/
I prefer to look at the glass being 90% full.
@cobrat:
The foundations of the US public education system were based on the ideas of Horace Mann, who basically was a Prussian bureaucrat and the education system was designed to produce cogs in the machine so to speak…and quite honestly I wish we would get away from that model, but that is another story…
The problem in Germany (and my knowledge of German history is not particularly strong, so with caveats) as far as I recall is that it didn’t always work the way you might think. In the Prussian state or the cities it might have worked on the US model, with universal public school, but it wasn’t widespread, the more rural areas of Germany for example often lacked public schools as we know it, and many of them required parents to pay, as is common to this day in many parts of the world, so called public schools means the kids families have to have money to pay. Englands schools for the public (not calling them public schools, in england those are private schools, go figure) were often nonexistent or were almost worthless.
The idea of the public schools was to act as equalizer, to allow kids not lucky enough to be born into wealth to have a chance, and in many times and places in this country it did just that. Ironically, the 1930’s in NYC saw it create one of the best public school systems in US history, in large part because they had people teaching who otherwise would be teaching at the college level (my mom went to high school in what today is the South Bronx, same high school Colin Powell graduated from in the late 50’s, and the math department had teachers who almost all had Phd’s, and that wasn’t uncommon), a lot of poor kids whose parents didn’t have anything got a decent education during that time, many went on to great things. No, I am not comparing it today, the problems today are a lot more complex than back then as ironic as that might sound given how rought the 1930’s were, but rather saying that is what the public schools should be and have been in more than a few cases.
Personally I think that one of the biggest mistakes that the constitutional framers had was making education a local thing, I think that the idea that local education works better is belied by the reality of public schools in this country over the centuries, that some have been historically dismal for a long time while others are fantastic, and given the importance of education to this country…not to mention that almost all the countries schools we hold out because of high numbers on international tests and such as being great compared to ours, all have education as a nationally controlled program, we are one of the few industrialized countries where schools are almost totally local.
“Way out of touch”?? Because I don’t want my kids educated in a religion I don’t share? If your point is that non Catholics sometimes attend Catholic school (now “more” in St. Louis), great. Not a universal solution in a country with religious diversity.
I said “parts” of the Prussian system because the Prussian/Imperial German state did have compulsory schooling for all until the end of middle school.
Incidentally, the ROC(Taiwan)'s educational system which was initially modeled substantially on the Prussian/Imperial German system still only required compulsory education up until the end of middle school as of 2014.
The paying part in Prussia/Imperial German school systems started when one opted to attend a college-prep high school like the Gymnasium/Real Gymnasium(College prep HS geared for humanities social sciences/College prep HS centered on STEM) which was considered a path only for those interested in becoming academics or working in positions where a university education is required.
Similarly, the vast majority of US students in the 19th and the early part of the 20th century didn’t go on to high school, especially academic prep high schools though that changed rapidly from the 1920’s onward:
https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/2664307/Goldin_AmericaGraduation.pdf?sequence=4
@cobrat, thanks…always interesting to learn new things:)
It shouldn’t be too hard to come up with one pay pool for honors classes and another pay pool for regular classes.
Of course, there is also that pesky Establishment Clause.
Hard to grind through all the tedium here. The obvious solution to K-12 education for poor children is to give them and their parents no choice but to go to the school in their lousy neighborhoods and twiddle thumbs about “funding and resources.” Restricting option, limiting freedom, dictating to parents, know-it-all authoritarianism is always the wise route when solving the problems of poverty. If one administration in the history of our country wants to expand school choice, then we should vilify it as an enemy of children and an oppressor of the poor - and of course downright stupid.
One issue is how do you measure school quality. It seems like even at the elite prep schools, it’s still an unresolved question whether the unhooked students would have fared any worse in college admissions if they went to the local public school. There’s no fundamental reason why vouchers have to be limited to 5k. NYC spends about 20k/pupil on public schools. If you combine a 20k voucher with the financial aid the poor kids might eligible for, they might be able to cover tuition at many of the privates.
The 20k figure you’re citing is the average and not necessarily the amount spent on every K-12 public school student. It’s skewed higher because public K-12 must also provide higher cost services to students with disabilities sufficient to fulfill their needs so they can have an equal opportunity to a good education as a non-disabled child in order to comply with the ADA*.
Private schools don’t have to comply with such mandates and most use their status as private schools to reject outright or to strongly encourage parents of students with disabilities…especially learning/mental disabilities to leave and return to their local public schools.
- Though there's a possibility of that being gutted by recently introduced legislation.....
@musicprnt , you are correct, our extremely positive experience was with independent prep type schools, and at least for those schools, all of our observations were accurate. The kids who attended were by and large the children of professionals, business people and academics, there were a few scholarship kids too (who were never identified to the school population) . There was no ‘achievement gap’ - the black and Hispanic kids went on to Michigan, WUSTL, Williams and the Ivy’s about as often as the Asian and white kids. In terms of overall quality 100% of the graduates went to college and 80% of those went to a top 50 college. We didn’t see a single incidence of theft, rape, or serious crime. The lockers didn’t even have locks! A few kids dropped out for mental illness and other issues. One or two were asked to leave.
I can’t speak for religious schools, but our friends kids who attended public schools did have some advantages. Dual enrollment was encouraged at the community college or local university. They made accommodations for elite athletes (e.g. skaters -who attended half time) and had much better sports, theater and music programs. More on-line content was available. But overall, it was hard to make up for an average class size of 15 in the independent high school vs. 30 in the public one.
We were pretty involved with school operations, and as I pointed out before, the independent schools delivered much better results at about the same cost as the public high school. One of the ways that costs were controlled was having every teacher do double duty as a coach - sports, music, club teams, academic teams, etc. - and fewer facilities. (No pool, no football, no baseball etc)… Some teachers ran other programs like research liaison to our local university. Another telling feature was the college counselor/ student ratio. The independent school had one per 35 kids, the local public HS had one per 80 kids. The independent school concentrated its resources in what it considered high value areas. The administration was tiny - a head of school, 2 admins, a business/financial manager, 2 admissions people. Some teachers doubled as class principals. Much smaller than the public HS and the army of administrators at the district level.
About half of the independent teachers were not certified, but the vast majority had graduate degrees and had taught at the university level. The public school had 100% certification, but far fewer graduate degrees and few had taught at a university level.
By any objective measure important to CC members - average ACT, percentage of NMSF, college admissions to elite schools, etc. the independent school did a better job. All of the pedagogical training you spoke of still could not produce the same results. It’s very unfortunate that the public schools rarely come close to what we experienced, especially when they are well funded. They just do not spend the money effectively.
@TooOld4School if you re-read what you yourself wrote, you will hopefully see the outrageousness of your conclusion that the public schools didn’t use funding effectively.
By your own admission, your private school admitted only kids with involved families and fair to strong ability. And the school demanded uncompensated work from its teachers too (“double duty”). Then they paid for smaller class sizes instead of physical plant which no doubt they used elsewhere on someone else’s dime. Great, I’m not surprised there was success!
@WISdad23 no one remotely said your straw man argument. If only we had a system where poor people had any kind of voice in this country. You are fooling yourself if you mistake that for the efforts to drain funding and send it to billionaires, as represented by DeVos and her allies.
How large would that advantage be if you controlled for parental educational levels and income? I really don’t know.