Why aren't kids being raised better by their parents?
Why aren't kids being raised better by their parents?
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
He's saying they should have access to good schools within walking distanceOriginally Posted by GGT
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
As I am sure you are no doubt aware, children - especially elementary age children - are the responsibility of their parents, and it is the parents who should be held liable for their well-being and education.
Again, square peg meet round hole.We agree, that we have fundamental/foundational/systemic problems in education. I 'blame' lack of coordination between private-public, but I also understand some of the Why's. Our private, for-profit business sector focuses more on quarterly or yearly profits, and sometimes willingly sacrifices the longevity or quality of their company just to get short-term gains. Our government is tasked with long-term goals and vision that benefit everyone in our Union...a choice private entities can choose to embrace or ignore. Governments don't have that same "luxury". Well, unless they follow the examples of failed nations.
Last edited by Enoch the Red; 02-16-2012 at 01:44 PM.
No, totally no. The fact if people pay for something by themselves or if the taxpayer is paying for something is fundamental.
Thank you Aimless, I appreciate people who can read and understand.
@GGT, the transportation problem is an argument against the freedom to choose the school for you children. Even if everyone can afford any school, not everyone can afford to transport their children to school every day.
"Wer Visionen hat, sollte zum Arzt gehen." - Helmut Schmidt
EJ--'All kids having access to good schools within walking distance' isn't possible in the US. It would be a logistical nightmare for all students to have 'school choice' plus an easy walk or guaranteed transportation. Our landmass is huge, and not everyone lives in populated/urban areas. That's why we have those big yellow school buses, funded mostly by district taxes that are tied to property values. By law they're required to shuttle kids to parochial schools, too (since their parents pay property taxes).
The transportation problem is real, complicated, and affects poor/working poor families the most. Urban kids have city bus routes, trains or subways that rural or ex-urban kids don't. Even if they live only five or ten miles from a school, they'd be lucky to have bike lanes...or even contiguous sidewalks with cross-walks. One of the crazier things in the US are pedestrian 'bridges' that span six lane highways, just so kids can walk a few blocks to school without getting hit by a car.
That's what I (and Being) were alluding to....
Let's not get this out of context. I meant the school down the street as the school nearest the student, that could be miles away. The school of choice might be many more miles away. The transportation to and from the school of choice is where the inequality lies. If I can't afford to transport my child to the school of choice, should my child be relegated to an educational experience that is less than that of the school of choice?EJ--'All kids having access to good schools within walking distance' isn't possible in the US. It would be a logistical nightmare for all students to have 'school choice' plus an easy walk or guaranteed transportation. Our landmass is huge, and not everyone lives in populated/urban areas. That's why we have those big yellow school buses, funded mostly by district taxes that are tied to property values. By law they're required to shuttle kids to parochial schools, too (since their parents pay property taxes).
The transportation problem is real, complicated, and affects poor/working poor families the most. Urban kids have city bus routes, trains or subways that rural or ex-urban kids don't. Even if they live only five or ten miles from a school, they'd be lucky to have bike lanes...or even contiguous sidewalks with cross-walks. One of the crazier things in the US are pedestrian 'bridges' that span six lane highways, just so kids can walk a few blocks to school without getting hit by a car.
That's what I (and Being) were alluding to....
Faith is Hope (see Loki's sig for details)
If hindsight is 20-20, why is it so often ignored?
Agreed! Of course, transportation wouldn't matter so much if every school had high quality teachers and curriculum. That's where the true inequality lies, and why so many parents/students are trying to get into schools outside their assigned districts.
Nice convo so far.
When it comes to transportation, I honestly think that's the least concern. Subsidized student transit isn't that controversial, is it?
Or at least it's a concern that will never be perfectly addressed. This is why people go through all sorts of chicanery (or just plain moving) to enroll their kids in particular schools.
Whether one is part of a voucher-based education system or a government-monopoly system, there will never be a situation where every school is perfect at the same time. There will always be a gradients in these issues, and that gradient is what should be motivating schools to change.
That's a different problem, if the distance to the nearest school is too far, I agree that buses are necessary. But that's not what I said. In my example there is one school in walking distance, but if a family decides to put its kid on another school it would need transportation for that.
Yes, and that's why "free choice of schools" wont help those who can't pay for transportation.The transportation problem is real, complicated, and affects poor/working poor families the most.
So know you actually found out what I actually said. If every school has high quality there is no need for transportation except for those who don't have any school at all nearby.Agreed! Of course, transportation wouldn't matter so much if every school had high quality teachers and curriculum. That's where the true inequality lies, and why so many parents/students are trying to get into schools outside their assigned districts.
Subsidized transport to get a kid to the nearest school is certainly not that controversial. Subsidizing transport to get any kid to their favorite school many Kilometers away certainly could be controversial (this is just my impression).
As long as private schools are allowed as well it isn't really a monopoly, right?Whether one is part of a voucher-based education system or a government-monopoly system, there will never be a situation where every school is perfect at the same time. There will always be a gradients in these issues, and that gradient is what should be motivating schools to change.
"Wer Visionen hat, sollte zum Arzt gehen." - Helmut Schmidt
The voucher can also be used to pay for transportation.
Brevior saltare cum deformibus viris est vita
That's the problem with "school choice" I was trying to explain, even if vouchers can be used for transportation. Obviously not all schools will be excellent, some will always be better than others, but "choice" and vouchers would have to be offered to every family. Including gifted and special needs kids, wanting the one school that offers great music or language programs. I'd wager some parents would want their star athlete to attend schools with top notch football programs, too.
It'd become controversial when kids want to go to from a mediocre school to a better one (or their favorite), even if it's many miles away and not on existing bus routes. Who draws the lines on "choices", needs and motivations, and how's that criteria made? And how's it make the crappiest schools any better if they're left as last choice, and not enough 'diversity' in student body to raise the bar?
A logistical nightmare to revamp subsidized transportation, allotting student spaces by lottery or early enrollment, trying to figure out class size and staff positions, local taxes co-mingled with state funds... As Dread said, those who can afford to will move or buy a house in the better district. We call it School Shopping instead of House Hunting. (Steve Job's parents decided to move to a smaller house in a more expensive area, just for the high school with a better technology and pre-engineering program.)
Not quite, because even people who send their kids to private schools have to pay for their local public schools. Essentially, they must double-pay for education. As government continues to drive-up the cost of education, this is increasingly putting private education into a realm that only truly upper-income people can afford.
Or Catholics. Because they can theoretically draw on funds outside their diocese. And the Vatican has more money than God.
You mean the tax payer. Well yeah, if you can accept that this will go hand in hand with a tax increase.
You will, through taxes, pay also for the other kids, but you won't double pay for your kid, because your kid won't produce costs in the public school system.
Of course you are right, but it still isn't a monopoly. You have a choice, if you have money. But it's often like that.
"Wer Visionen hat, sollte zum Arzt gehen." - Helmut Schmidt
We already pay for others' children in our tax codes, as it should be. All children will, hypothetically, produce more costs to the public school system, if school choice and vouchers are implemented across the board, in the form of even more subsidized transportation.
This whole discussion grates on my nerves.
I personally prefer subsidized schools over subsidized transportation as well.
"Wer Visionen hat, sollte zum Arzt gehen." - Helmut Schmidt
I believe you will essentially double-pay, because you're paying enough taxes to send your kids to public school, while also paying enough to send your kid to private school. Unless of course you have eight kids at once, that messes-up the math.
However, I think it is monopolistic for the government to create an educational system, force you to pay for it and then force you to pay once-over if you want to try a different system.
Not to mention that your control over this government system can become basically non-existent. Which is what we're seeing in NYC, where our local public school system had three sexual abuse scandals crop-up in two weeks. It turns out that union contracts prohibited school leaders (we call them principals) from seeing the full employee records of teachers.
So teachers who were believed to be possibly being inappropriate with students were just sent to other schools, where the new principles were contractually not allowed to see their history of abuse.
But this is a bit of a [predictable] tangent for me. So, back to the original topic: if I give $50 to Ron Paul's campaign, will my name be disclosed?
They'll put it on the blimp
In the future, the Berlin wall will be a mile high, and made of steel. You too will be made to crawl, to lick children's blood from jackboots. There will be no creativity, only productivity. Instead of love there will be fear and distrust, instead of surrender there will be submission. Contact will be replaced with isolation, and joy with shame. Hope will cease to exist as a concept. The Earth will be covered with steel and concrete. There will be an electronic policeman in every head. Your children will be born in chains, live only to serve, and die in anguish and ignorance.
The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.
OK, I agree that you are forced to pay. And you have something like a monopoly on that side of the coin.
Well that is totally different here. The schools on local levels are controlled by a voted committee called "Schulpflege". This committee has the very purpose to represent the peoples opinion how the school should be run.Not to mention that your control over this government system can become basically non-existent. Which is what we're seeing in NYC, where our local public school system had three sexual abuse scandals crop-up in two weeks. It turns out that union contracts prohibited school leaders (we call them principals) from seeing the full employee records of teachers.
So teachers who were believed to be possibly being inappropriate with students were just sent to other schools, where the new principles were contractually not allowed to see their history of abuse.
"Wer Visionen hat, sollte zum Arzt gehen." - Helmut Schmidt
Not really. Not all property tax or tuition rates are equal.I believe you will essentially double-pay, because you're paying enough taxes to send your kids to public school, while also paying enough to send your kid to private school. Unless of course you have eight kids at once, that messes-up the math.
1) Apartment complex renters pay less than homeowners. Condo/townhouse/co-op owners pay less than individual property owners. Rural non-farm residential is taxed lower than suburban residential. Those in impoverished or blighted neighborhoods pay even less, because the tax rates are based on super low property values. It's all based on land-use, land values, and property 'improvements'. See slum lords and 'affordable' rent, in districts that have no tax revenue but still need public schools.
2) Religious schools charge different tuition rates based on ability to pay and family size. Catholic schools will give huge breaks to poor families with those 8 kids, if they're members of the parish. Most offer lower tuition for each additional child, to make it affordable for large families. Parochial and private schools give needs-based 'scholarships' to needy families.
3) Wealthier families do pay both property taxes and (usually) full private school tuition. But they can also pay a CPA to find tax loop holes, itemize and deduct their property taxes, mortgage interest, and religious tithing from their income, reducing their overall tax burdens.
Urban flight, rent control, ex-urban sprawl, the housing bubble, and screwy tax codes helped lead public school funding to disastrous results. Connecting education to property values and property taxes is one of the dumbest things we've ever done.
I'll agree with that.
What solution do you feel best addresses the problem? Local governments are quite limited in the way they are allowed to increase revenue. Maybe educational funding should be limited to federal revenue (spread equaly to each district) and local revenue should be limited to local needs (that vary locale to locale like fire, police, library, etc...). Education is a national need after all. Somehow I think this goes against the grain of your desire for small central governance.
Faith is Hope (see Loki's sig for details)
If hindsight is 20-20, why is it so often ignored?
Funding per student comes from the state. Raw number of students = funding. And of course parents can take their kids to any school and the funds travel with them. School choice, more equal educational benefits and a destroyed teachers union.
Of which a disproportianate amount is from federal funds. Sure, a lot of that money comes from states but not necessarily from your state. California contributes more than Texas.
Do travel expenses travel with them or do the parents pick up the tab? School of choice can be an hour in the opposite direction of work. That makes for a two our commute to work, and three hours child care for you to pick them up after work.
Okay, now we got to the nittygritty. Organizations should be destroyed...at all cost.
Faith is Hope (see Loki's sig for details)
If hindsight is 20-20, why is it so often ignored?
Oh yeah, did I mention we get rid of federal funding of education all together? End the Department of Education and return full control back to the states.
As far as travel expenses... sure why not?
Destroyed teacher's union isn't the primary goal. The primary goal is to educate children effectively and efficiently. This isn't possible with many ridiculous teacher's unions across the country. It should be easy to fire an under performing teacher. Almost anyone with half a brain would agree with that. Reasonable people can disagree on how to measure performance. Reasonable people can disagree on HOW to educate a child. But no reasonable person can agree that a teacher who is incompetent should keep their job. Yet thousands of incompetent teachers keep their jobs due to the stranglehold unions have on education.
Your (home state) Texas students have already bottomed out in number of drop-outs, poor reading and math scores, children living in or beneath the poverty level, having no health care, and needing subsidized lunches. An oil-rich state like yours is using more federal than state funds for public education, with legislators and voters who are generally tax-averse. I wonder how willing your state really is to be totally self-funded, or what that would mean to a poor state like Mississippi....
We already discussed that angle and didn't come up with who decides the travel limits, and how. Let alone facility limitations, class size, and staff hiring...when 10,000 kids want to attend a school meant to hold half that capacity.As far as travel expenses... sure why not?
Again with the union bashing?Destroyed teacher's union isn't the primary goal. The primary goal is to educate children effectively and efficiently. This isn't possible with many ridiculous teacher's unions across the country. It should be easy to fire an under performing teacher. Almost anyone with half a brain would agree with that. Reasonable people can disagree on how to measure performance. Reasonable people can disagree on HOW to educate a child. But no reasonable person can agree that a teacher who is incompetent should keep their job. Yet thousands of incompetent teachers keep their jobs due to the stranglehold unions have on education.Here's an idea --- if colleges and universities were 'producing' great teachers, and their profession was rewarded with salaries that reflected their value and importance to society (like paying more than $30,000 to a kindergarten teacher)....they wouldn't need unions to bargain for benefits in lieu of wages, and they'd be more likely to boot out the bad among their professional group.
The US doesn't even value pre-school or kindergarten yet, let alone paying those professional teachers a professional wage.
What are you talking about, kids are responsible for their own education. If a kid isn't doing well then it's that kid's fault, not his teachers'There's no such thing as an incompetent teacher, only incompetent students. If those students spent even half as much energy on their studies as they did on bullying each other there would be no educational crisis. Millions of kids are educated by supposedly incompetent teachers and yet they turn out fine, ergo you can't blame the failures on teachers.
Jesus Lewk I did NOT expect these whiny liberal excuses from you
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
We have state funding of schools over here in Germany. And let me tell you: It's the subject of many curses and swear words of teachers, parents and politicians alike.
It's not the heaven you think it is.
When the stars threw down their spears
And watered heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the lamb make thee?
I do not think you appreciate what he actually intends to be done with state-level control of education. The "red" states are already on the receiving end of federal pooling, and he wants that to end. He wishes that the red states be permitted to teach children the Earth is 6 000 years old, that God created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve, and this to happen in a biology class mind you. The "feds" are only evil to these people because it gets in the way of maliciously indoctrinating children with GOP-endorsed clap-trap. I am woefully ignorant of the German political sphere, but I don't suppose there's a good analogue to be had there.
e: By "children" I of course refer only to white kids, as the GOP is firmly of the opinion that browns are not people.
In the future, the Berlin wall will be a mile high, and made of steel. You too will be made to crawl, to lick children's blood from jackboots. There will be no creativity, only productivity. Instead of love there will be fear and distrust, instead of surrender there will be submission. Contact will be replaced with isolation, and joy with shame. Hope will cease to exist as a concept. The Earth will be covered with steel and concrete. There will be an electronic policeman in every head. Your children will be born in chains, live only to serve, and die in anguish and ignorance.
The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.
Why teach biology at all? Just teach people math, English, and the Bible (along with vocational skills).
Hope is the denial of reality
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