Mississippi and school funding lawsuit

Parent Cafe
21

“As to the argument that students who are given a choice do no better - by whose measure?”

This has been done with all the 'school choice programs", the experimental vouchers in Milawaukee (privately funded) to allow inner city kids to go to private parochial schools, it was tried in charleston, it has been studied in Detroit with the voucher program there, and what they all found was compared to the students ‘left behind’, they didn’t see any significant increase in educational performance. I am sure there were some advantages, for example you would hope the alternate schools might be safer, but as a cure for the ills of bad schools, it hasn’t shown it can do what proponents claim.

“On this forum, all the time, parents advocate for the students the idea of “fit.” The parents strive for unlimited choice for their children and strategize about how to get into what they perceive to be the best schools. To them I suggest limiting their children to the local college.”

That argument is comparing apples and oranges, what you are talking about is very different than public schools and education. No one is arguing about parental choice, no one is arguing parents shouldn’t send their kids to private schools for whatever reasons, what people are arguing against is using public funding to allow parents to take that money and use it to subsidize their choices. whether it is because they believe a NE prep school better gets their kid into Harvard or because they believe the earth is 6000 years old made in 6 days and don’t want their kids exposed to science or rational thought curicula. There is a much better argument for choice with kids in failing schools, where there is demonstrable need for change, it is why I support the notion of charter schools, for example, as long as they can show results, I am the last person who would say that public schools are necessarily well run the way they traditionally are or that they necessarily put kids first, for a number of reasons. I would even think of voucher programs for kids in bad schools, 1 is that many of them have absolutely no requirements that they measure the result of the schools the kids go to, in Detroit with the for profit schools, for example, the law specifically as far as I know banned any rules that kids going to alternative private schools with vouchers needing to take state tests used to monitor progress and 2 is that many of the voucher programs, like in Indiana, started out being about kids in schools that were performing poorly, and suddenly turned into a program where basically any parent could take their voucher and run with it (and yep, most of those taking advantage of it were religious conservatives, mostly christian, wanting to send their kids to ‘their’ schools and have the state pay for it, which raises many questions).

My real problem with the whole thing is it operates from the premise that somehow public schools are not a good thing, that somehow they themselves are a problem instead of what they were and have proven to be historically, one of the things that led to the success of the US, it was a place where the kids of the poor could hope to get an education and did, and good public schools are also a way to keep the US from stratifying, where the well off if there were no good public schools could pretty much guarantee no competition for their kids, take a look at the antebellum south or look at the elite universities prior to WWII, what you saw was education being the privilege of the well off. Not to mention that the real impetus behind vouchers is somewhat selfish, people who for example send their kids to private school but resent paying school taxes ‘they don’t use’ (and before someone on here accuses me of being jealous, I am not, my son did not go to public school and while paying my not insubstantial property taxes to pay for other kids to be able to go, I paid for expensive private school for many years and sacrificed to do it, no fancy cars, no vacations, and I never once complained about paying for the schools, the same way I didn’t when I was single, before I had kids or now that my kid is grown). I fully support parental choice with schools, I just don’t think parents who want to send their kids to private school for whatever reason should be supported by the public dime unless there is an overriding reason to do so, whether the kid is special needs and the school can’t provide what he/she needs, or the school is failing everyone, I can see it. Public subsidy of parental choices? Nope.

22

Like I said, those who send their kids to private schools are amongst the strongest opponents of vouchers that would allow some poor kids in. And I doubt that many New England prep schools would be overrun with voucher kids fleeing the hinterlands.

The problem with the politics of this thing is that those who view government as a cudgel to right wrongs (rather than as a lever to promote independence and liberty) will go on for volumes of minute detail and miss the point. Why should any child in the public system be forced into a specific school? Even if you limit vouchers to public schools, the opponents don’t back off.

Again, outcome by whose measure? My point is that the child and his parent’s are the appropriate judges of his individual outcome. If I am satisfied with a product I could care less how someone else measures my experience. Especially if they try to use that measurement as a means of force to prevent me from obtaining the product in the first place.

And what is a “failing school?” Failing requires some sort of value judgement or measurement which opponents of choice usually oppose, i.e. standardized testing, broken homes, etc. Once a school is judged to be failing by whatever measure, the opponent of choice always propose spending more or someone else’s money on the failure - something they would never do in their own financial lives. All for the sake of others’ children and in line with their sense of omniscience about what others should be allowed to do.

23

Most college students in the US attend local colleges, usually due to financial constraints. I.e. even in the theoretically much less restricted realm of college (versus K-12 school) choice, a wide range of choices is mostly available only to students who have wealthy parents or who have top end credentials (i.e. admission to elite colleges with good FA or earning big merit scholarships). Granted, the latter situations are over represented on these forums, but they should not be seen as typical.

24

@ucbalumnus I understand your point. But even by “local” they are not restricted to an array of 1, even with significant financial constraints. In my little neck of the woods there are multiple community colleges and at least two universities within one hour from each other. It does not even occur to those students with financial constraints to limit themselves to one choice and many of those students end up attending multiple schools.

25

However, the far greater number of curricular directions that a college student can theoretically do (i.e. possible majors) means that two or three local universities may still be a significant restriction on the student’s curricular choices if s/he is interested in majors not offered at those two or three local universities. In contrast, even the significant variation in US high school curricula is relatively small compared to the variation in colleges’ curricular offerings.

26

So as long as the high school text books are the same at different schools they are equivalent and the student should be forced into a single choice based on geography? The high school curriculum might be similar at all high schools, but the differences that do exist are sufficient that many parents go to great length and expense chose specific school districts. Or as some here have noted, opt out of public schools altogether.

It does amaze me the energy and mental cartwheels expended trying to restrict poor students (or any student for that matter) from having choices. Next, someone here will cite a study/survey that shows the majority of poor parents don’t want choices for their children; gangs, drugs, truancy, violence, and crime in schools are all misunderstood due to cultural biases; and that the mere application of additional “resources” is all that is needed.

27

“Like I said, those who send their kids to private schools are amongst the strongest opponents of vouchers that would allow some poor kids in”

That is nothing more than insulting, you are assuming somehow that parents who send their kids to private schools are elitist snobs who don’t want ‘those’ people around them, and that is far from the truth. First of all, I never said that vouchers shouldn’t be used to help a poor kid escape bad schools, I said that if we go that route that I want accountability for tax dollars used that way, that as taxpayers we have the right to know that the kids who use this program aren’t being used, like in Detroit, to fatten the coffers of for profit schools, for example, that don’t give them a good education. The point of the voucher program is not to accomodate parental choice, it is there to supposedly adddress situations where kids are stuck in bad schools. We aren’t there to support fundamentalist Christians or ultra orthodox Jews send their kids to private schools that support their faith, they are welcome to do that on their own dime, that is not what we are talking about. And if we are going to claim we need vouchers to allow kids in bad public schools to succeed, then there is a burden that we do have a way to measure that, that they aren’t going to schools that are not any better.

“Again, outcome by whose measure? My point is that the child and his parent’s are the appropriate judges of his individual outcome. If I am satisfied with a product I could care less how someone else measures my experience. Especially if they try to use that measurement as a means of force to prevent me from obtaining the product in the first place.”

That would be true if you were paying for it, but we are talking public dollars, not your own private decisions. When it comes down to the interests of society, parental freedom only goes so far. For example, all states have rules requiring children go to school until they are 16, if parents want to homeschool there are often regulations around that. States set standards for education, and it doesn’t matter what the parents think, you don’t take x years of english, Y years of US history, etc, you don’t graduate, pure and simple.

Not to mention that part of the problem we have in this country is that local choice has led to the mess we are in, where some kids have world class public education and others are left to bad schools, the states at the bottom of the rankings in education reflect those choices, in how they view education and what they offer.

And why is it important to society? Look at what is going on economically, the whole have and have not issues, and it often comes down to education, the rust belt and rural areas that are so hurting, that depended on jobs that didn’t require much of an education, are dying, and a lot of that is they don’t have the education systems to provide workers for the jobs there are, and this is leading to serious social issues, the drug epidemic, breakdown in families, you name it, can be tied back to the lack of opportunities…I don’t think the parents want this for their kids, but in many ways their choices and that of their governments let this happen.

. “And I doubt that many New England prep schools would be overrun with voucher kids fleeing the hinterlands.”

Again, that is assuming that the fight against vouchers is based on some sort of snobbery, that people don’t want poor kids, either inner city or rural, in their sanctums. First of all, vouchers likely wouldn’t help with that kind of school, you are talking orders of differential with a prep school , a poor rural kid would be more likely to be able to get a full scholarship there, if they are that poor. The ides that I or anyone is fighting vouchers as proof of snobbery is idiotic, I respect parental choices, what I don’t respect is parents wanting the public to pay for that for reasons they shouldn’t be, it shouldn’t be a program to allow parents to help pay for their voluntary choices, pure and simple.

My big objection to vouchers for poor kids is that it actually does what it is supposed to, if kids go to alternative schools with a voucher and they do well, great, but I want proof of that, school failure isn’t because the school doesn’t teach that the earth is 6000 years old and science is a lie, which is personal belief, school is a failure if the kid is not learning how to read and write, to be able to read something and understand it, to be able to comprehend and do math and so forth, and those can be measured, however imperfectly, and in the end it is going to come down to what that kid can do with his life, does he have the tools to be able to find work that pays well, that allows him to feel a part of society, and yes that is in the public interest. Far too many voucher advocates do see it as a way to get rid of the public schools and it isn’t because they are failing, it is because in their own way they have an agenda, whether it is to try and get rid of ‘secular humanistic’ teaching or whether it is because they hate to pay school taxes shrug.

28

"It does amaze me the energy and mental cartwheels expended trying to restrict poor students (or any student for that matter) from having choices. "

Poor kids should have choices, but they should be choices that are about allowing him/her to do better, and if it is public money the determining factor has to be based on facts, it shouldn’t be, as with Indiana’s program, that a large percentage of the money is going to kids, not because they are in bad schools, or are poor, but rather because their parents are using the money to subsidize a religious school or whatnot. The thing about rural areas is there aren’t that many choices in many places, and the alternatives may not be much better than the public schools, thing about a poor area like that is there isn’t the base to support strong private schools. If there is a parochial school that can meet standards, I wouldn’t have problems with vouchers, or if there is a neighboring district the kids could go to where the schools have the room for the kids, then I have no problem with that either, but I want accountability for it, and I want it to fix a problem, not to try and drive an agenda or support parental belief.

29

That is because many of the school choice proposals provide only a veneer of choice, often mostly to those who already effectively have more choice to begin with (i.e. parents with enough money to choose private schools or move to different public school attendance areas).

Commuting logistics and costs are often the effective limit on schools choice even when it is offered. When I was going to high school in a suburban area, there were only two (maybe three) public and one private high school nearby that I could get to without driving or being driven. The two nearby public high schools were both in the same district, and similar in curricular offerings and ratings (with about a third of graduates going to four year colleges, with some more going to community colleges). The private one was mainly attractive to Catholic parents who wanted their kids to go to school in a Catholic environment and was otherwise academically similar. The third public school (that I listed as “maybe” due to distance) was often seen as “better” at the time, but not extremely so.

I would not be surprised if school choice programs in many areas really did not provide as much effective choice as they claim. Now, in places like NYC, where the public transportation system allows students to get to school on their own much more easily, school choice can effectively provide greater choices for students. But many places are not like NYC, so making school choice programs effective would likely be much more expensive in terms of commuting and transportation assistance so that students have a practical choice of attending a more distant school that is academically noticeably different from their nearby school(s).

30

Few choices are better than no choices. Certainly, not every single student will have identical choices. Certainly a student/family who might wish to change schools will need the wherewithal to figure out how to get to the building each day. Those seem like poor reasons to prohibit choices for everyone in the country.

Maybe if a lot of students wanted to go to other schools some innovative group of parents would figure out something like car pooling.

31

We are the big town in our area and have just one high school (class size of 300) and an alternative school for kids at risk of dropping out. Students already are on the bus for up to 40 minutes to come in off the farms. Vouchers would definitely work only for parents who work in another city or have a SAHM to drive around. The nearest community college is 30 minutes away.

Fortunately our schools are ok but not high powered. That is ok with me because I want my kids to know the full spectrum of socioeconomics in our area. They had friends of several different religions. They went to birthday parties in trailer parks, farms, and McMansions. In my daughter’s elementary class for several years there were autistic twins and the kids were fantastic with them. Done well, school can be so much more than reading and writing.

Our country is becoming silos of people who don’t interact with each other. It may sound hopelessly idealistic but I believe the public schools are our best chance for the kids to learn the nuances through interactions rather than soundbites and memes from social media.

edited to add: the public schools should not become the place where kids with disabilities are shunted to and where kids whose families don’t know how to work the system are left. That sets up a cycle of people not wanting their kids to be there because of poor outcomes and looking for alternatives.

32

@WISdad23 For the most part (all?) the failing schools are in poor neighborhoods.

Do you know anyone who starts work at 6 or 7 a.m.? Do you know anyone who doesn’t drive? Has an unreliable car? Spilt custody of children? Works two or three jobs? Has a disabled child at home?

And you are wanting to make their lives more difficult?

33

This correlation is a lot weaker than you might think. You have high spending areas like New York, which doesn’t do any better than the national average on 8th grade NAEP math and reading scores, and DC, which despite its high spending, manages to perform worse than the national average. Then, out of the five lowest spending states, three, Idaho, Arizona, and Utah, do just as well, if not better than the national average.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/local/wp/2015/06/02/the-states-that-spend-the-most-and-the-least-on-education-in-one-map/?utm_term=.be4a3771fe11
https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/reading_math_2015/#mathematics/state/acl?grade=8
https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/reading_math_2015/#reading/state/comparisons/NP?grade=8