<p>I championed public schools for many years, helped found the first charter school in our state, was head of the PTA in our kid’s school, raised money and donated money to them, helped hire our principal, helped create standards and evaluate student work. Our kids were in public school until the schools no longer were able to meet the needs of either of our kids. It was very upsetting but we did allow them to apply for and enroll in a pricey private school that worked harder to personalize education and to work with students and families.</p>
<p>I got very frustrated by the bureaucracy of our public school system and the entrenched civil service mentality. Most of the friends & family we have who are teachers would leave in a heartbeat if they could find another job that would pay the bills. They love (or loved teaching) but HATE NCLB and all the continuous testing and pressure it created. They find that all the testing gets in the way of teaching and unrealistic expectations creates huge amounts of stress for teachers and school systems. Many of these teachers have decades of experience and are wonderful with kids and excellent teachers but are worn down by all the stress and constant testing and measuring.
One of the realities of our state is that there are MANY languages spoken. One elementary school has over 50 primary languages spoken in it. They are being held to the same standards as schools who only have one or perhaps three primary languages. Special ed students are often held to high standards as well, whether or not it’s realistic (as by definition progress is limited for some of these pupils).</p>
<p>I think it’s important to keep in mind the various factors that lead parents to describe teachers as “good” or “bad.” Yes, there are some whom most of us would agree are incompetent. But sometimes striving parents blame teachers unfairly for their kids’ failure to distinguish themselves in the classroom. Case in point–at my kids’ middle school the advanced-class math teacher was Vietnamese. He spoke with an extremely hard-to-understand accent. However, his students routinely won statewide and even national mathematics competitions and many of them went on to excel in high school (a few were so advanced that they had to eventually take classes at the local university). It did not go unnoticed that a disproportionate number of these kids were Asian. So not surprisingly, some of the pushy non-Asian parents complained that this teacher was incompetent because their kids were not at the top of the class. They actually argued that the Asian kids had an advantage because the teacher was Asian. (Umm…the teacher was teaching in ENGLISH and most of the Asian kids were from Korea or China anyway.) The complaints about him have persisted for years, and yet he keeps amassing trophies and preparing kids for MIT and other top STEM programs. Of course he is not “incompetent,” despite what people say.</p>
<p>Just dropping by for a visit. Bay, no do-overs? You are giving schools way too much power. You can decide to learn geometry anytime you want! </p>
<p>This makes me think of when I took a Mandarin class through continuing ed, and one of the students arrived late to class, wearing a helmet. For the first few minutes I kept wondering why he wasn’t taking the helmet off. Then it dawned on me. Oh. If he can go learn Mandarin, there are do-overs for geometry!</p>
<p>These situations just aren’t parallel. You get to choose the swimming teacher and the piano teacher because you’re paying for them privately, with your own money. If you hire Jane Eyre or Aristotle to teach your children at home, you also get to decide who teaches your children. </p>
<p>Of course, most of us aren’t Mr. Rochester or Philip of Macedon, and most of us don’t hire an individual to tutor our children at home. But you get somewhat more say in who teaches your children in private school precisely because you’re paying for it privately.</p>
<p>And this is not, IMO, “paying for it twice.” This is opting to pay for a privately arranged service instead of using the one that’s publicly provided. A better parallel, I think, is this. I pay taxes that maintain the city streets. I may use them, and so may any other motorist. Often they’re congested. If I want to get across the county quickly, I may use the recently constructed toll road. It’s my choice whether to pay the toll on the Intercounty Connector or to use the city streets that my taxes pay for. But if I choose the toll road, I don’t get to pay the toll out of my local taxes. If the choice I make has a cost, *I *pay the cost of *my *choice out of *my *personal funds. </p>
<p>It seems to me like a very conservative approach, this notion that you pay for your own choices with your own funds. Honestly, I’m somewhat surprised that conservatives don’t favor it (when it comes to public and private schools), and liberals like me do.</p>
<p>You are correct in principle, but there are lots of students who do badly in a math class and conclude that they just aren’t good at math. Some really do have low math aptitude, but others may have been frustrated by a poor teacher and/or textbook. Children with parents who can teach them math or hire tutors have more second chances than children who do not.
And as I wrote in a previous message, some Chinese kids are getting math lessons at Chinese school. When they see algebra in 8th grade it may be review, while for other students it is their first exposure.</p>
I actually agree with you and said it far back on the thread.</p>
<p>Conservative, to me, means that you don’t get to ask “the government” to fund your personal choices. Now I certainly think that taxes are waaaaaay too high, but picking and choosing doesn’t appear to be an option.</p>
<p>Maybe government funding for education should be replaced with a government mandate to educate one’s children. People with high incomes would pay for schooling on their own, and those with lower incomes would get subsidies on a sliding scale. Taxes could be cut because the government would not fund the education of rich kids and only partially fund the education of middle class ones. If parents were paying for education directly, there would be no complaints about vouchers being used at religious schools.</p>
<p>Oh, sorry, zoosermom. No disrespect intended.</p>
<p>It is a very long thread, and I don’t think I’m the only one who can’t keep track of everything that’s been said. I know there have been other posters who’ve basically restated some points that I made earlier, too.</p>
<p>No, you cannot. If you take Geometry in 10th grade at our public school and get a C- (which means you do not understand it well), you cannot repeat the class during the school year or during the summer (unless you pay for it somewhere else), you cannot move on to Trig/Precalc, and you cannot move on to Calc, and you are basically screwed if you ever had the notion of pursuing a path that requires a higher level of math education.</p>
<p>Hm, Bay, that’s interesting. How many years of math does the local public school require to graduate? I have trouble believing they can prevent students from taking enough years of math to graduate, and I could certainly see the student having taken geometry in 9th or 10th grade.</p>
<p>Well, that would be another approach. But I wouldn’t favor it personally.</p>
<p>I think there should be some kind of agreed upon standards for what constitutes education, and I don’t think there would be such agreement without public education.</p>
<p>I also think that everybody–including childless people–has some stake in educating the next generation, because these are the people who are going to care for us in the old folks’ home, the EMTs who are going to drive us to the emergency room when we fall and break our hips, the cab drivers who are going to take us places when we can’t drive any more, etc., etc. They’ll be all the workers who sustain the nation’s economy when we’re too old to work any more. So, IMO, everybody ought to pay some of the cost of educating succeeding generations.</p>
<p>HImom,
Can you please provide more detail on the constant testing and measuring that goes on in Hawaii’s public schools?</p>
<p>As discussed earlier in this thread, the reality here in CA is that this does not actually happen. Our kids do STAR testing in 3 - 11 grades, but one can opt out by staying home on those days without consequences, so there is no stress involved.</p>
<p>When my kids attended private schools, not only did they all used standardized admissions tests, all of those 4 different schools used standardized testing (Stanford test ? - can’t remember). Public school testing here doesn’t seem any different than private school testing.</p>
<p>“Does your state not mandate special treatment (programs, etc) /allocation of funds for gifted and talented students as well as special needs students?”</p>
<p>Yes Georgia has a mandate and pays extra for gifted students. I didn’t realize it when my sons were first tested and labeled gifted. I just figured that it was a way to put the kids who learned the same together. Although honestly some of those gifted kids are so much smarter than everyone else it’s kind of scary.But later I found out that the state of Georgia pays more per student for gifted that regular students. In simple terms they pay $1 for a regular kid and pay $1.67 for a gifted kid. Of course you would think the school districts would try and load up on gifted kids but its really not that simple they have to take a number of tests ect… to get in and then if they can’t do the work they get moved back. The state also pays more for special ed kids but I think it depends on what their disabilities are on how much they pay. I’m pretty sure it’s more than what they spend on a gifted kid though.</p>
<p>“People with high incomes would pay for schooling on their own, and those with lower incomes would get subsidies on a sliding scale. Taxes could be cut because the government would not fund the education of rich kids and only partially fund the education of middle class ones.”</p>
<p>I would love to see this. The cries when 99% of the people would realize - even with a subsidy - what it would cost to educate their children in private schools - would be so deafening it would be beyond anything we as a nation have ever experienced. And that they would have to pay for it for 12 years x how ever many children they have. </p>
<p>DeborahT
Our high school requires only two years of math to graduate: Algebra I and Geometry. But a student cannot be admitted to CSUs or UCs without three years of math (Alg 2); with 4 years recommended. Students can move on to regular Statistics with a C- in Geometry.</p>