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<p>You are right, I did say feel at one point. But you basically said you feel sorry for people who I said were happy with their jobs. That part was not a thought or a feeling.</p>
<p>Those are your words, Geo, not mine. As I said, I think teachers are in many ways between a rock and a hard place. I think they often get most of the blame for inherent system or nature of the beast problems that are much larger than them. I can see how the job can very much take a toll.</p>
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<p>Where’s this perfect district? I’ll send a resume!
I’m a public high school teacher and my son graduated from my school with no damage done. But I’ll take hypocritical support over none at all…</p>
<p>If Matt Damon is paying property taxes, but sending his kids to private schools, he’s supporting public education more than somebody who sends his kids to public school.</p>
<p>The only people who think this is hypocrisy are those with an anti-public school political agenda.</p>
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But will the increased tax base bring more money to the city than is being expended on vouchers? Again - how about improving the public schools, and maybe allow parents to choose from among a list of public schools? Some cities are doing that quite successfully, and those schools serve a broad cross-section of students, not just those who can scrape up the balance of the tuition, and provide transportation. I know of several families who moved to local cities because property values are lower - what they save on property taxes they spend on tuition to send their kids to parochial school. I don’t think vouchers will entice middle class families back to the inner cities. </p>
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It doesn’t, directly. If the parents or some outside entity wants to pay for him to go elsewhere, that’s fine. But if his attendance at another school means less money or other resources for the public school, then that does hurt Betsy.</p>
<p>As for indirectly benefiting Betsy, if Brian’s parents are the type that get involved, his attendance at Betsy’s public school might benefit her greatly. One of the biggest differences between the best and worst schools is the amount of parental involvement.</p>
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<p>This is an absolutely stupid generalization. I happen to live in an area that has a lot of “celebrities” and they care about their kids’ education as much as any of us do. They are also very bright people who did quite well in college. There are certainly exceptions, but I think most parents try to do what is right for their kids and their families and if that happens to be private school, so be it.</p>
<p>DeborahT, getting past differentiating between my one feeling statement and my other non-feeling/non-thought statement, all jobs can take their toll on a person. But I can understand that a teacher having to put up with BS can lose their effectiveness. In that case, the system needs to be changed and vouchers are a way of changing it. Entrenched interests do not want any changes to the status quo.</p>
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Not necessarily. When twice the money is split two ways, it still equals one set of funding.</p>
<p>And the benefit one student gets from the parents of another should be appreciated, not counted on. Parents need to be involved for their own children, which is the problem in a nutshell.</p>
<p>scoutsmom, I said happy with their job, not a perfect district. I am happy with my job (I am not a teacher) but my company is far from perfect.</p>
<p>According to this article, Matt Damon bought a house in Pacific Palisades [Matt</a> Damon splashes out on a $15 million Los Angeles home on the same street as pal Ben Affleck | Mail Online](<a href=“Matt Damon splashes out on a $15 million Los Angeles home on the same street as pal Ben Affleck | Daily Mail Online”>Matt Damon splashes out on a $15 million Los Angeles home on the same street as pal Ben Affleck | Daily Mail Online)</p>
<p>I don’t know what elementary school is in his neighborhood, but this is the high school served by it:[Palisades</a> Charter High School - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palisades_Charter_High_School]Palisades”>Palisades Charter High School - Wikipedia)</p>
<p>Both the area and the school are known to me to be quite “progressive.”</p>
<p>Matt Damon is paying property taxes on a fifteen million dollar house and you people are complaining that he doesn’t adequately support public schools? Give me a break!</p>
<p>Hunt,
EVERYONE pays property taxes, even when they rent. That is a specious argument.</p>
<p>Matt Damon grew up in Cambridge, Mass. For elementary school, he went to an ALTERNATIVE public elementary school. For high school, he went to Cambridge Rindge and Latin, which is about as diverse as a school gets. (It has been in the news because it’s also the high school the Boston marathon bomber attended.) He then went on to Harvard University but dropped out without a degree to pursue acting. </p>
<p>His speeches in favor of public schools have criticized the current emphasis on prepping kids for standardized tests and the lack of autonomy teachers have now. </p>
<p>I see no hypocrisy whatsoever in his decision not to enroll his kids in a public school if he feels that the public schools available to him emphasize the prep for standardized tests he has criticized. Damon is probably telling the truth when he says that no public school available to his family is the sort of progressive elementary school he attended.</p>
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<p>I wonder what private schools he found that do not care about standardized test scores. Most good private schools use a standardized test for admission. The good private high schools are extremely competitive about producing good SAT scorers, at least.</p>
<p>Damon is not a hypocrite. It’s absurd to suggest otherwise given the evidence. </p>
<p>My son, over the course of his education, went to public, private and home school. Through out it all we have supported, and still support, public education.</p>
<p>Parents send their children to private schools or religious schools or home school do so for reasons of their own. And they have a perfect right to do so. It would be good if those choosing alteratives out of fear would try the public schools before running away from them.</p>
<p>Maybe he’s sending his kids to a Montessori school or something like that.</p>
<p>If you Google this “issue,” you will see that it is sweeping across a bunch of right-wing websites that are foaming at the mouth to find “liberal hypocrisy” in Damon’s decision. Fortunately, as you can see from this discussion, here at CC critical thinking is more in evidence, and most of us can see that there’s really no hypocrisy at all.</p>
<p>"His speeches in favor of public schools have criticized the current emphasis on prepping kids for standardized tests and the lack of autonomy teachers have now. "</p>
<p>You are exactly right. And from what I have read, LA schools are particularly enmeshed in the testing craze and lack of teacher autonomy. If that is the case, then it makes perfect sense for ANY parent who opposes that type of schooling to send his child elsewhere.</p>
<p>I live and work in a part of Seattle where some of the “worst” schools can be found. All of them are not universally “bad”, all have good things about them. They are not, though, the right fit for my younger D, while they WERE for her siblings. I have no problem pulling younger D and sending her to another district where her needs HAVE been met. I happily pay for the gas to drive her and the many trips I make as an involved PTO parent. I supported my older kids’ schools just as strongly-they just don’t all happen to be the same schools.</p>
<p>The problem with CC is that most parents peobably have access to relatively good schools. There is no sympathy for poor inner city kids trapped in low performing, dangerous public schools.</p>
<p>Do your kids go to a low performing dangerous public school?</p>