<p>Sally, do they still have them in your district?</p>
<p>i agree with riporin on this question. We sent our kids to private school for high school because our public schools were terrible. We did not tell the world how wonderful public schools are. We said we wish public schools could be run by people who actually cared about giving all kids a good education but in fact they care about their franchise and sinecure – not the kids.</p>
<p>We can be politically correct and mouth all sorts of platitudes about how wonderful public schools are and then send our kids to private or we can actually be honest about the situation.</p>
<p>Who cares about the kids? Those with the money who purchase private for their kids then brag about paying their taxes and about how much they care about public school – or those who tell the truth about the sitaution?</p>
<p>Emperor’s New Clothes.</p>
<p>emily, yes. And even better, our grade school was actually two schools–K-2 and 3-5. There are two others like that in the district. I loved having the focus on a small range of kids at any of the schools. The only downside was that my kids had never been in school together till my son was a senior and my daughter a freshman!</p>
<p>mammal, my parents put me in private school for exactly the reason you state–the public schools in our area were known to be “bad.” Well, some parents obviously cared more than mine about supporting their local schools and now the high school I would have gone to is one of the best in the state. Meanwhile, I got four years of brainwashing by a bunch of religious zealots who denied evolution, censored books, and said we would burn in hell if we went to a secular college. It was my own experience with a private school (in an affluent area of a major American city) that led me to my current position in support of public education.</p>
<p>Nice to hear that your school still has the program. I am sure it will be back again in my district as soon as demographics dictate. ;)</p>
<p>Sally
You are a good writer. Who do you credit for that?</p>
<p>Thanks, Bay. I assume I have some natural abilities, just as others have talents in math or music or anything else. I have always been a voracious reader. I also credit my father, who was (and is) a stickler for proper grammar and usage. I did have a wonderful English teacher in high school–and he didn’t participate in the indoctrination process. :)</p>
<p>Matt would be a crappy father if he prioritized consistent rhetoric over what he thought was best for his individual children. So good on him for doing what he wants.</p>
<p>And his opinion doesn’t matter just because he’s famous.</p>
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<p>Note the comment about “aptitude” in what I wrote:</p>
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<p>Lots of people won’t learn geometry or understand Shakespeare no matter how good the teaching, but a good educational system enables those with the necessary aptitude to do so.</p>
<p>Damon is just being Damon aka a typical wealthy Hollywood product who believes in many “values” as long as it does not impact the rarified air he breathes. Why would anyone pay more attention to what he says or thinks than to Charlie Sheen or the Kardashian’s remains a puzzle.</p>
<p>As far as the underlying issues of private versus public, it will be needed for foaming mouths to succeed in decapitating the last remnants of catholic education in this country to realize how clueless and misguided their actions were. In the meantime, many will keep applauding the greatness and luster of our tertiary education with pride and glee all the while clinging to the monopoly that has been nothing but an abject failure for the world’s first power. </p>
<p>Many should read Bryk’s book for a deeper understanding of the service and savings provided by the ones that are pilloried with abandon.</p>
<p>The private HSs do have the PSAT (and SAT and ACT, plus SATII and APs), but I don’t believe they have to take whatever the NCLB tests are and the teachers don’t appear to be in great fear about their performance being measured by how well or poorly their students do in testing. </p>
<p>Of course, there is a selection process and kids CAN be booted out of private school, so behavioral problems are WAY down.</p>
<p>I am not familiar with exactly what tests are being conducted in public schools, but I know that the state does require SOME NCLB testing or other and all of the schools are put on a huge spreadsheet that is published in the newspaper, with whether the school improved or worsened compared to prior years and other schools.</p>
<p>My S did have an excellent public school teacher who taught the 30+ kids in the 6th grade self-contained class, from 8am until about 2:15 every day (except Wednesdays when they were released at 1:30). The kids were all levels, from kids WAY above grade level, significantly below, and everything in between. He was able to keep them all engaged and motivated, while helping them progress as they were able.</p>
<p>He did divide up his students into ability levels for math and English, and swapped with the other 6th grade teacher, so they could work with kids who were more similarly able. It was a big stretch for him though and after that year, he switched and is now the tech teacher for the whole school, where he has been for about a dozen years. He was one of S’s favorite teachers and help cultivate the love of math and science in nearly all the students he meets.</p>
<p>HIMom, thought you might be interested in this article.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2013/08/10/us/ap-us-hawaii-fleeing-teachers.html?hp[/url]”>http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2013/08/10/us/ap-us-hawaii-fleeing-teachers.html?hp</a></p>
<p>^A lot of people think living in Hawaii will be paradise. But for young, ambitious people, the reality is that it is very limiting. It is not surprising at all that Hawaii has had difficulty retaining long term, young teachers who come from and have ties to the mainland. The young teacher profiled had been there 7 years; that seems reasonable to me. </p>
<p>According to this article, nearly half of all teachers leave their jobs within 5 years. [Public</a> Education Faces a Crisis in Teacher Retention | Edutopia](<a href=“http://www.edutopia.org/schools-out]Public”>Public Education Faces a Crisis in Teacher Retention | Edutopia)</p>
<p>It astounds me why anyone even cares what Matt Damon thinks, period. Does he even still act? I cannot remember the last movie he was in, before this new one with the crappy reviews.</p>
<p>I also do not get why Catholic or private schools that have a religious focus get such a a bad rap - I know a few kids who came out of them and got an amazing education. Probably better than the same education in our excellent local public high school, truth be told.</p>
<p>“I also do not get why Catholic or private schools that have a religious focus get such a a bad rap - I know a few kids who came out of them and got an amazing education. Probably better than the same education in our excellent local public high school, truth be told.”</p>
<p>I don’t think anyone on this thread was giving them a bad rap. It’s more that most of us believe that our tax dollars should not be paying the tuition for those who choose to send their kids there. </p>
<p>Here is a very interesting article in today’s Times about an Evangelical Church group in Portland, Ore that is doing wonderful things in the poorer public schools without evangelizing. </p>
<p><a href=“Help From Evangelicals (Without Evangelizing) Meets the Needs of an Oregon Public School - The New York Times”>Help From Evangelicals (Without Evangelizing) Meets the Needs of an Oregon Public School - The New York Times;
<p>Samuri:</p>
<p>It astounds me that so much credence is given to ANYONE from Hollywood. After all, their most valued talent is to be able to get you to believe they are something they are not. </p>
<p>As for the Catholic/religious school thrashings that occur regularly…well some folks like to carry resentments for a long time, it serves a purpose. It takes a certain level of emotional maturity to be able to see how some systems have changed and to let your own clouded vision not preclude you from seeing the benefits present in today’s religious schools.</p>
<p>I say this as someone who had a terrible, emotionally abusive Catholic k-8, followed by a wonderful Catholic HS. Someone who sent their kids to a rather fundamentalist K-8 school where the dogmatic teachings were not in line with our familie’s views and beliefs. It was a great opportunity to teach the kids (starting in kindergarten!) how to discern and parse information (great prep for the information/internet age!); how to take and make the best use of the positives in a situation and to respectfully leave aside that which does not work. They went on to wonderful Catholic HS’s which provided a much better base in certain things (like writing, critical thinking, rhetoric) than would have been available at the local public HS. Ironically, the reason for this is that the Catholic HS allowed a level of discussion on political, social, moral and economic issues which would never never have been permitted in our local public. And, since the HS were same sex, it allowed for an interaction with students that again would have been prohibited at the public (can you imagine an economics teacher using 4 letter words in class and yelling, or a chem teacher making a ‘periodic’ joke). It worked so well for my kids…what it required on my part was letting go of my own anger, assumptions and resentments. It was, and still is, hard to do.</p>
<p>As for public funds for private schools…put me in the NO court. The idea that public educational policy would begin to drive how private schools can function is very disturbing.</p>
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<p>Yes, but Matt Damon went to Harvard! And we give a lot of credence to that on this site. :)</p>
<p>I agree that no one should really care what Damon thinks; but there is something very annoying about stars getting “free” and widespread media coverage when they talk about things they don’t necessarily know much about. That’s why we have to smack them down to their rightful place when they do that. ;)</p>
<p>It has long been a challenge in Hawaii and elsewhere to find enough qualified teachers, willing to teach in high need, high poverty areas of our state. The cost of living in HI is just so high and it’s hard for folks to get the support they need. My relative taught special ed in high need, high poverty areas for several years, getting her tenure. As soon as she could, she transferred back into town, to teach closer to where she lives and has taught there now for over two decades. As was pointed out, the problem of teachers leaving the profession (or the state) is not unique to Hawaii, though travel costs for visiting with relatives can mount quickly. </p>
<p>Our housing is among the highest costs nationally. If free or subsidized housing were provided for teachers, that would help a lot (but I don’t see that happening, even though one private school did that for a while).</p>
<p>It is hard to change a system when there is a lot of inertia keeping it the way it exists. We have had a few superintendents who have tried to innovate but they have not lasted very long and as the article said, its tough when one “new” idea is tried only to be scrapped and replaced by another rather than tweaking and refining and keeping the good parts of the ideas.</p>
<p>There is some amount of “brain drain,” where wages and opportunities are limited by the size of our state, but quite a few people DO come back, to raise their kids and/or spend time with their families and when their aging relatives need them. It’s a trade off–quality of live vs. wages, to some degree. Several relatives had to make these choices and have chosen to come home, even though the wages were lower they chose to be closer to family and loved ones.</p>
<p>I applaud Matt Damon for using his celebrity to advance what to him is an important issue. He certainly isn’t the first. Lots of people think of Harry Belafonte as some washed up calypso singer. But not everyone knows that he was front and center of the civil rights movement. He got involved not just because he believed in it but because he knew that his celebrity would grant him access to people the general populace didn’t have. And that those who might turn away from a “regular” protester might listen to what he had to say.</p>
<p>Other celebrities work to end poverty, or on breast cancer research or autism, etc. It’s not that they are “more important”, it that they have the ears of a lot more people than the average Joe or Jane.</p>
<p>But lookingforward calls it: if Matt Damon is the focus here, the point he was making, whenever he made it, has been missed.</p>