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<p>:rolleyes: </p>
<p>Yeah, because teenagers don’t have hormonal issues with or without pregnancy. </p>
<p>And maybe “common sense” doesn’t apply here because these kids don’t know about sexual health. If the schools aren’t teaching it and the parents don’t approve of it… well… there’s that.</p>
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<p>Yep, that would really be a crime. Well, at least in the United States! In other parts of the world, a constitution that ensures free system of education and freedom of religion seems to work rather well. </p>
<p>Inasmuch as you cannot believe tax payer money can pay for a religious education, would it surprise to learn that “we” are quite happy to accept the savings of public dollars that flow directly from the academic contributions of a religious-based system of education?</p>
<p>Any idea what the “removal” of faith based schools would cost the US taxpayers? Any idea how much more a school system freed of the pesky Catholic church would cost?</p>
<p>PS Check the graphs in the first pages of this report. Illuminating!
<a href=“http://www.bc.edu/content/dam/files/schools/lsoe/pdf/Roche_Center/Sustaining_Urban_Catholic_Elementary_%20Schools.pdf[/url]”>http://www.bc.edu/content/dam/files/schools/lsoe/pdf/Roche_Center/Sustaining_Urban_Catholic_Elementary_%20Schools.pdf</a></p>
<p>Who was advocating removing private religious education? Must have missed that post.</p>
<p>High school without hormones and mood swings wouldn’t be high school at all :)</p>
<p>By the way, the answer to my rhetorical question is:</p>
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<p>Aren’t the parents of the students at those catholic schools who are paying tuition the ones providing the nation with that savings?</p>
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<p>Try looking into the technical achievements of Bell Labs some day.</p>
<p>I have been peripherally involved with a handful of charter schools and have tutored at one. The following thoughts:</p>
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<li>Some charter schools have interesting ideas. Most don’t. A window into this is the admissions vetting for one school that looks for 8th graders. One problem: some kids are too far behind grade level to catch up. Another problem: there is often no or next to no responsible adult in the kid’s life. Either one means the kid will likely fail or at least is too big a risk for the school to spend resources on. </li>
<li><p>This means charters cherry pick. They want the kids that require fewer resources, meaning the healthy kids with responsible adults in their lives who have been functioning reasonably well and aren’t way behind grade level. This is natural, whether the school is for profit or not. The public schools, by contrast, have to take everyone - and sometimes make it difficult to remove the disruptors because there is no other place for them. In that regard, my town has a separate facility called Opportunities for Change where the “bad” kids go. I mean kids with police records, drug problems, etc. The kids call it “Only f’d Children”, but our town is well off enough to try. Most places can’t. It’s a myth that private enterprise - or a non-profit - can run an actual public school for less. To do better financially, they need to restrict what they spend and that means excluding as many kids who need services, who need extra help, etc. as possible. That is how business works. Business isn’t public service.</p></li>
<li><p>I was against the “Community Schools” movement of the 1970’s because I saw what it really meant: a takeover of the patronage and power structure by local power brokers who cared more about their needs than students. I was right. I wish I had been wrong. Much of the movement toward charter schools today, particularly in places like LA, is driven by religious belief (and sometimes racism but more the former). Don’t want your kids to be exposed to evolution? Don’t want your kids to be taught about Islam? Start a charter. These are in many ways an outgrowth of the way the private school systems exploded in the South when the public schools were forcibly integrated in the late 60’s. These schools were mainly religious, which makes sense because they stepped in to fill the white family needs. We now see them trying to get money from the state. Also natural: you’re educating kids so attach yourself to the taxpayer too. Just as destructive as the liberal-pushed Community Schools movement with the added advantage that the curriculums are simply not up to snuff.</p></li>
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<p>Is such distinction important?</p>
<p>^ yes. If the church were providing a free education then the church would be saving the taxpayers. But this is not the case.</p>
<p>This charter school topic is very interesting and I suppose I will give my two cents, and I will likely later regret it. 
I personally support charters for a number of reasons. One is because we are constantly dropping internationally and the only way to ensure prosperity is by making sure we have an educated workforce. Engineering appears to be the way of the future, technology, etc. So math and science are infinitely important and unfortunately this is where we seem to drop most. I understand the idea of the purity of public education but frankly it isn’t pure because of teachers unions that corrupt politics and so on and so forth. Bottom line is that it isn’t working as well as it should. I feel that it has been failing students. Now the concept of competition is one that constantly brings out the best an industry can offer, which is why monopolies are illegal and don’t work for people. The basic idea of charter schools is simply an alternative to a public school. They are inovators. The best model that produces the best results will be expanded and the failures will go away eventually. Students can either go there, or stay at publics. That’s why I support them and contrary to the horror stories being told here, there are charters that work. I attend one of them. We are a small charter with a graduating class of about 65 students. All classes are done online and there are teachers in the room that are always available if you have any questions or need help. We consistently outperform the state in terms of ACT/SAT/ Standards based assessments. I love the school and I support what they provide. There are a lot of charters that don’t work, and it is a shame, but don’t generalize, because there are ones that truly provide a better option than the public norm.</p>
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<p>Games of semantics.</p>
<p>Taxpayers, in this context, is synonymous to public spending. The government spends taxpayers’ money. </p>
<p>It is pretty clear that an education system with 100 percent public funding would increase our current PUBLIC expenses to account for the greater number of supported students.</p>
<p>I have no problem with religious education existing in the US.</p>
<p>But I have a huge problem with religious charter schools being funded by the government. Separation of church and state, if you please.</p>
<p>Imagine the brouhaha if an Islam-based charter school sprung up giving the equivalent education that the “Eternity Christian Academy” is giving. “Nah, you don’t need to know about evolution. Let’s just talk about the Koran all day. And watch TV!”</p>
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I am a conservative, Christian woman and I support the right of religious schools to exist (I’m even sending my non-Catholic kid to a Catholic prep school), but I am uncomfortable with public funds being used for the education part of religious education.</p>
<p>In my area, kids in private schools of all stripes can get free MetroCards to use public transportation, they can sometimes have a school nurse, sometimes have services provided for kids who are authorized to have them, and sometimes have meal assistance (all based on income/enrollment), but that’s as far as even I am willing to go.</p>
<p>It’s not semantics at all. You stated that catholic schools were saving the nation 23 billion dollars. That is not correct. The families removing their students from the public school system, thus reducing the overall cost, is what’s creating the savings. These kids could be going to secular private schools, or being home schooled for that matter. In the case of catholic schools you created a valuation and came up with the number of 23 billion. Fine, I’m okay with that…but that’s a savings due to the students not being in the system, not a free education the catholic schools are providing. It has nothing to do with the actual school they are at. If all of those students were home schooled the savings to the public school system would be the same.</p>
<p>^exactly.</p>
<p>Parents who choose to send their kids to private school generally pay the same property taxes or whatever else funds public schools in their area, AND they pay private school tuition.</p>
<p>Those families save taxpayers money by essentially paying for school twice. The schools themselves don’t have anything to do with this savings, they get paid for what they do. Or as blue said, the parent who gives up a full time job in order to homeschool “pays”. As far as taxpayers go it’s the same thing whether a kid is home schooled, goes to Catholic school, Hebrew school, Islamic school or a college prep boarding school. In all those cases parents pare paying “twice” and so subsidizing the public school system.</p>
<p>However, if a private organization were supplying an education that was free of charge to the families that attend, THOSE organizations could be said to be saving taxpayers money.</p>
<p>As a parent who chose to have his S attend private school from 4th grade on, this choice did not allow me to “opt-out” of paying property taxes that are the source of the state funding of my state’s public school system. Property owners without children or children of school age and business property owners ALL pay property taxes annually. To me the “paying twice” argument does not fly. I had a choice. The choice came at a price.</p>
<p>And, the state public schools also receive some federal funding.</p>
<p>Charitable contributions to a church can be taken as a federal tax deduction to the payor. Church property is not subject to state property taxation</p>
<p>So, if the church uses donations to buy land, construct a school and to fund the maintenance and operation of that school, don’t you have to consider the amount of taxes not collected in this process (state and federal) in determining any “savings” from taking the students out of the pool of public school students?</p>
<p>BTW-- it was announced today that less than 1/2 of Texas publics and Charters meet the federal standards for Title 1 federal funds.</p>
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I agree completely. My position is that I am beyond grateful that I can make the choice that I think is right for each child. One of my kids got an education that one can only dream of in a public school. Because that was the right place for her.</p>
<p>My only concern is that even when the public schools are great, sometimes the greatness is only accessible to the kids who could have gone elsewhere. Not sure if that makes sense to anyone else, but it does to me. There are a lot of perks in some inner-city public schools by way of grants, donations, partnerships, but a lot of that goes to the kids who are already successful and come from families that could have made the choice to opt out of public school.</p>
<p>One of the prevailing assumptions in education discussions among us Americans is that privately run schools are better than their public counterparts. An assumption that can be quite incorrect depending on particular school, geographic region, or student. </p>
<p>One example of this being the contrary was a couple of rural Mississippi based cousins’ experience with what turned out to be former “Segregation academies”. Turns out the only difference between them and their public counterparts was their location within the town/local region, the racial demographic of the students, and nice looking facilities. Curricula was the same and so substandard that one cousin who visited and saw the regular NYC public high school curriculum said the latter would have been a marked improvement over that private school. When their parents found most of even the top 20% of those private schools’ graduates struggled to complete the first year or two at the directional public universities, they pulled both sons out and sent them to boarding schools with much higher academic standards. </p>
<p>Friends from Virginia and other Southern states reported similar situations and even mentioned a few cases where despite deliberate underfunding for political reasons, the local public school was actually better than the local private schools with the former not only sending kids off to much more respectable/elite colleges…but also sending off graduates who actually thrived and graduated in respectable standing in stark contrast to the latter. </p>
<p>Moreover, even a respectable private day/boarding school could have spotty areas in their curriculum. During my undergrad career, I tutored many day/boarding school graduates who struggled with various academic subjects and sometimes were on the brink of being academic suspended/expelled. Quite an ironic position for someone who graduated from a public high school…and one located in <em>shudder</em> NYC no less.</p>
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In some places those kids are in separate facilities, but in others those benefits come with attendance at the same school as everyone else. In both cases, there will always be a distinction between the kids whose parents don’t make sacrifices, and those who do. Many who could choose to opt out of public schools are in that position preceisely because of sacrifices they have made.</p>
<p>My youngest attends a magnet school in the local city. Admission is by lottery, with preference given to certain students either because it would otherwise be their neighborhood school, or because they already have a sibling attending. All had to apply, and are there because their parents chose to apply. My child benefits from some advantages over our suburban schools, but other advantages are aimed at the city children. Even so, she benefits indirectly, because they motivate those children. By the same token, those children benefit from the presence of the suburban children. </p>
<p>I don’t disapprove of the concept behind Charter Schools, but they should be subject to similar standards, and follow a similar curriculum. If they want to add to that curriculum, that’s great; the same should apply to any public school. If my tax dollars are paying for a school, it should be accountable. There are bad public schools, but there are also good ones, just as there are bad and good charter schools. I agree parents should have some choice, if their school is not adequate, but that doesn’t mean the parent is entitled to take “their” tax money elsewhere. Your child is entitled to a public education, as defined by the taxpayers. If you disapprove of the content of that education, you may opt out, but the taxpayers shouldn’t be forced to pay for your choice of replacement, without some form of accountability.</p>
<p>I went mostly to private schools and lived in a neighborhood very close to a huge Catholic school complex. Lots of families chose to send their kids to some form of private school, though our public schools were (and are) among the best in the nation. As others have noted, that is a personal choice and it would be wrong to expect the public to pay for that by reducing property or other school taxes. Some of these choices were religious, others for social reasons, others for athletics, and still others for academics.</p>