<p>“But in the cases in which they do, then are you willing to go back to providing children an inferior education at a higher cost to prevent someone from making a profit. Because that is what you are saying.”</p>
<p>Non starter for me - I am philosophically opposed to giving my school tax money to a for profit entity. </p>
<p>But if you want to send your kids to a school run by a private for profit business and pay for it - go right ahead.</p>
<p>Yep, I’ve decided that Damon is just a shill for his mother. He never took standardized tests, his kids never took them, so what does he even know about them other than what he has been told?</p>
<p>Agentninetynine, perhaps some of those children would benefit from state-run boarding schools. That can be a wonderful option.</p>
<p>Zooser – I don’t think I’d trust the state to raise those kids. But I also don’t have any answers. The few who have grandparents or other relatives have done remarkably well. But sadly many of them end up wards of the state. </p>
<p>I have a friend who sits on a board that reviews child custody issues, mostly involving cases where the parents are incarcerated. Only one case in 6 or 7 years has not involved meth.</p>
<p>It’s really sad.</p>
<p>Bay, how do you go back and for the between not a hypocrite (said at least twice) and now a shill for his mother?</p>
<p>ZMom, like the Indian Schools?</p>
<p>How do you know Damon never took tests?</p>
<p>99, this is from Damon’s recent speech.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Lookingforward, no. Like high quality boarding schools.</p>
<p>If people don’t have the stomach to understand that if they want to reach every child then some tough choices have to be made. Otherwise, there is a subset of kids who will never succeed and no amount of money could ever fix that.</p>
<p>A shill and a hypocrite are not the same. </p>
<p>Damon is wrong about not being able to get out of taking the tests; you can do that now. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.</p>
<p>Thanks, Geo. Lucky Damon.</p>
<p>Z, if it were up to me, I’d be pretty radical. But the counter is taking kids away from family instilling or superimposing other values, whether those are so great, etc. The argument is endless. </p>
<p>Bay, you have opinions, fine. You presume he is a shill. You say he and his kids have no experience with standardized tests.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Because public service work is often an inherently unprofitable money loser. Even I, as an evil Republican, can see that. The government provides certain services at a loss because they cannot be strictly monetized without loss of quality and/or access. Public schools can never “compete” with private schools until they can pick and choose the students and families they serve, which will never happen.</p>
<p>Public schools have formed the backbone of a literate, democratically capable electorate in this country. Individual schools may have their failings but let’s not destroy the village to save it.</p>
<p>Looking forward, that is exactly the point I am making. Absent some very unpalatable choices, every kid can not be helped and money, alone, won’t fix that. I would never support removing kids for that reason, but making high quality boarding schools available by choice could be one more piece of the puzzle. I don’t believe there is one fix for every situation.</p>
<p>“Damon is wrong about not being able to get out of taking the tests; you can do that.
now.”</p>
<p>You cannot get out of taking every test. You cannot even graduate from a public high school without taking profiency tests in all subjects. </p>
<p>I also don’t think it’s necessary to have taken any standardized test or have children who have taken them to understand what they are and how they influence what is taught and how it is taught in the public schools.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I don’t agree with that characterization. It isn’t that they are money losers, they are cost centers. So we should do anything we can to reduce cost and/or improve quality.</p>
<p>I am another evil republican like Sue, and when I am not kicking old people down the stairs I favor public education as the best and most conservative choice for society as a whole. But I would never ban private schools or private vouchers. However, I also don’t think there should be only one model of public school.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>What real incentive or mechanism does a voucher system provide for a school to improve quality? How many kids have to leave before the school just closes or merges with another school that will probably be pretty similar, failures and all?</p>
<p>Until public schools can cherrypick their students, vouchers just punish them for factors beyond their control. Public resources should not be diverted so that middle-class kids can go to St. Leo’s on the government dime instead of PS 101.</p>
<p>“It may be a bit un-PC to put it this way, but it’s pretty obvious to me that students with major problems (academic and/or behavioral) need to be separated from students who don’t have those problems. And those populations of students have very different needs. To separate them and meet their needs in the public school, there has to be enough staffing (and good staffing) to do it. It requires a lot of money–and that’s hard, since some of these failing schools are already sucking up a lot of money. I just think that achieving this kind of separation by getting the less problematic kids out of the public schools is likely to weaken efforts to help those kids with big problems. That is, if they didn’t “choose” to leave, their problems are their own problems. But their problems are going to be our problems, whether we like it or not.”</p>
<p>Hunt, I agree with you, in large part…but that’s not the reality we currently live in. In our state, discipline problems, even severe ones are constantly reintroduced into the same classroom over and over. It has become virtually impossible to truly suspend, expell or permanently segregate a student into an alternative class unless there is a criminal offense, resulting in the child being placed in a correctional institution.</p>
<p>Therefore, the teachers must deal with them…and still try to maintain order and teach.</p>
<p>"I’ve pondered my own question, and decided (again lol) that no, Damon is not a hypocrite. His interest appears to be in paying public teachers more and protecting his mother’s teacher friends from being evaluated. So choosing a private school for his kids may actually be consistent with his opposition to the way public schools are currently being run. "</p>
<p>Bay, Where did you get that he was opposed to teacher evaluation? I looked for specifics and found none.</p>
<p>I’m also very pro vocational and life skills training. The decisions some kids need to be able to make, in life, go beyond the usual coursework. In many cases, the need for other skills exceeds. Most of that isn’t reflected in standardized testing, as it exists now. For the very kids targeted by NCLB.</p>
<p>It’s a tough one and kudos for being involved. I’m not generally conservative, btw.</p>
<p>In CA, they used to send some kids to the Civilian Conservation Corps. Is that still around?</p>