And now we step into a debate about charter schools and public schools:
Pulling public funds together to run public systems, such as public schools, is what communities do. By taking out the “per pupil” funds for the children going elsewhere, the community suffers.
The public school IS the community’s for better or worse. Therefore, the community MUST take pains to make it the best it can be in order to provide for community success. I think working to improve the public school is what some in Cynthia’s community are trying to do. However, it appears that the wants of this faction of the community are falling on deaf ears. This is where the community must take the fight to the next level.
Here we are getting into very subjective territory of “wants.” If the school is not in violation of its “requirements,” then it appears that Cynthia and friends want something that the state does not require. The high turnover rate of teachers concerns me a great deal—and I think the community members have a real case to bring to a higher level of the education system with evidence of the school’s trouble with staffing.
However, there has been no real discussion of just what was wanted beyond a vague list. I am interested in knowing what courses are wanted at this school that the school does not already provide? Where is the evidence that sports have a higher priority over academics? So far, all that’s been offered is philosophical conjecture based on a list of perceptions.
This is not to say that the members of the community that have been trying to improve the school have not outlined their wants in detail to the local school board. I feel that the details of their requests and the evidence to support such are germane to the discussion we are having here. So far, very little concrete information has been offered here with the exception of “sports are king and courses are lacking.”
Cynthia claims that her public school is serving her needs but not her wants, and she wants something better. The endeavor of seeking something better is commendable and I encourage her to pursue it, but it’s important to examine the purposes and support systems that exist for citizens in society. In order to do this, I will take this argument one step further in terms of “citizen wants.”
The cost of living in my community and state is through the roof, but there are advantages to living here. I take the fact that I’ll never be able to afford my own free-standing home and will be living in a tiny condo for quite some time as the price for living here and enjoying some of the other advantages of this community. Believe me, I want to live in a McMansion like so many people do here, yet I want to pay next to nothing in taxes like so many people WANT here, as well. However, I cannot get what I want because of the cost of real estate where I live.
Now, if my community is not serving my needs and wants, I need to go to a community where my funds will serve my needs and wants…OR…I need to contribute to this community to make it better. I have chosen the latter. I have no children as of yet, but I have chosen to stay here and invest in my community and its infrastructure. And yes, this means, I have chosen to invest in the public schools because public schools are part of the commons that both support and are supported by all citizens.
I have attempted to establish that the community is supported by the citizens and its systems support the citizens in return. Now let’s move to the concept of “per pupil” funding.
“Per pupil” funding (in the charter school argument) is often treated like a tax break for parents to educate their children.
This is wrong.
Public education serves the community, therefore “per pupil” funds belong to the community, not the individual parents.
If you do not believe that the “per pupil” funding belongs to the community, let me play devil’s advocate for a moment:
Since I have no children, should my tax money go wherever I want it to go to meet MY needs? No. Why not? Why should MY tax money go to pay for Cynthia’s children to be educated? I didn’t ask her to have all those kids, and I certainly did not ask to have to pay for them to go to school. However, I do pay into their education because their education supports the community.
“Per pupil” funding belongs to all of us, not just to the people who have kids. If you are giving parents a choice of what to do with the “per pupil” funding, shouldn’t I have a say as a taxpayer, too? WHAT’S IN IT FOR ME, the childless taxpayer who is paying so that YOUR children could go to school?
See? The “me” argument is not conducive to a strong society. I am glad that I contribute to my society—an educated society benefits everyone in the community. If you don’t think so, I hope you lock your doors at night because the people who grow up on the street because they had no access to strong public education will do whatever it takes to get by, even if that means stealing from you.
I support the infrastructure in my community which means I pay for the children in my community to get educated because I am a citizen in my community and public education serves my community. Therefore, it serves me, kids or no kids.
If your subjective needs are not reflected in your community, I would say, move elsewhere and put your public funds to good use in that community. But if you stay in your current community, do not take your public funds out of the system that supports your community. We cannot always have what we want in life—there is no perfect system that caters to individual wants.
By running to a charter with “per pupil” funds in hand, these community members abandon the children left behind in the public schools. Abandoning the public school is abandoning the community children whose parents do not have the wherewithal to send their children elsewhere.
In Cynthia’s case, she feels that the public schools are “adequate” but apparently not good enough for her children. If her children are worthy of so much more, why doesn’t she continue the fight to get more for all of the community’s children since they are all in this together?
The original idea behind charter schools was to complement and improve the public schools they serve by offering alternative learning situations within the public construct—experiments or “think tanks” of a sort—to help serve the public better.
Today’s charter schools rob the public schools of the students whose parents care while leaving behind the students who desperately need someone to advocate for them. If you think the community is NOT responsible for all children, think again.
This isn’t about “what’s in it for me”—it’s about “what’s in it for the community as a whole.” The “me” attitude is what’s inherently damaging to the public and what drives much of the rhetoric in the charter school debate. You’ll find this “me” attitude permeating many other public issues. I believe that this is the philosophical crux of our political problems as a country.
Charter schools are being misused as institutions that compete AGAINST the public schools—why else would Cynthia be considering one? The public in each state needs to be very wary of charter school laws and how the charters are funded, run, and implemented.
Each state has its own version of the charter schools law, but here is an example of how charter schools in one state divide the community.
I found a blip about Wisconsin public charter schools on the web (see below) that states that these schools are open to the public…BUT they have waiting lists due to space limitations.
Why? If Wisconsin’s charters are open the public, why are there space limitations? How can you call public charter schools “public” when they limit space and then enrollment is limited as a result?
Is that serving “the public?” Not at all. This limitation is unacceptable and will seek to divide a community into those with the luck of getting in to a charter and those without the luck that have to stay behind in what’s left of the community’s public school. Granted this is just an example of charter schools in one state, but it gives you food for thought.
http://www.wicharterschools.org/faqs.html
If magnet schools are part and parcel of the public school system, they are operating with public funds and they are overseen by the public entities in charge of them.
Charters do not have the same regulations as the public schools yet they are siphoning “per pupil” funding that belongs to the public away FROM the public under the guise of a “public” institution with limitations in serving the public. This is dangerous to the public, no matter how you slice it.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
T answer your “per pupil funding”, I’ve found in Michigan that that’s dependent on where the political power lays, not which party is in power.
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Interesting thoughts on what makes a school ‘public’. This is an important question since more and more evidence is surfacing that points to many charters, using public education funding, are indeed not ‘Public Schools’. A reminder of a glaring example: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/01/minnesota-school-of-scien_n_1729305.html.
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one of the best posts i’ve read on this topic.
here’s my question: why is it “patriotic” to champion the local small business, “mom & pop” shop instead of the Big Box store, but its not “patriotic” to champion our neighborhood public schools instead of the franchised charter and private schools springing up like mushrooms in a damp forest?
i really question the public’s “need” for more charter schools–i just don’t see it outside the Michelle Rhee documentaries and manufactured ed reform rhetoric. most people are really pleased with the public schools in their communities–they just have bought in to this vague notion that those “other public schools” in towns nearby are the bad ones. kind of the “NIMBY” approach to building public support against public schools and for charters.
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There are good public schools, and there are bad public schools.
There are good charter schools, and there are bad charter schools.
There are good private schools, and there are bad private schools.
What matters is that parents whose child is in a bad school should have the choice to remove that child from the bad school, and place him or her in a good school.
I don’t care if the school is public, charter, or private – no student should be trapped in a bad school.
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The residents of a community do not have the opportunity to vote on charter school budgets or their board of directors. Residents do get to vote on traditional public school budgets and school boards. In NJ, people have no say or input about whether a charter school will be dumped into their school district. They have no say even if they do not want said school in their midst. The NJ commissioner of education, Chris Cerf, has absolute powers in this regard, he is a true czar of charter school proliferation. Charter schools are more like separate school districts unto themselves. They take public money but are totally independent of the local school board and superintendent. They do drain resources from the local schools because the schools have fixed costs that do not disappear even if they lose a pupil to a charter school and they also lose state aid.
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Yep. Charter schools are NOT public schools but private schools designed to rip off taxpayer money. They were force fed on the rest of us when vouchers didn’t get anywhere with the public.
Charter “schools” really need to be abolished. Period. You want a “school” without regulations and strings attached, create your own private school. Nobody is stopping you. But don’t ask the taxpayers to foot the bill. When taxpayers foot the bill, there needs to be a system of accountability. There are none with private schools, not even those “sponsored” by local school districts.
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I meant charter schools have no real system of accountability to the taxpayers.
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I don’t understand the rationale for charters not having an elected board of trustees. It seems obvious and appropriate.
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I think charter schools certainly could have an elected board. That is an argument to change the conditions of the charter.
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The number of pupils served by a local school is a handy “rule of thumb” measure for assessing the monetary need. It is also reasonable to support the public resource that meets that need according to fair measures of ability to pay and benefit received.
That is the rationale of public support for public education to which reasonable people have consented through all the glory days of U.S. history. It is is a holistic way of looking at educational systems as complex, dynamic, interrelated wholes, involving the entire community of parents, students, teachers, and policy-proposers. The atomistic way of looking at a living system, where individuals vie to tear off their individual bits of flesh and drain their individual portion of “stone soup” down to the last drop — that is a species of society that will rapidly dry up and die. As I pray we don’t have to prove in practice, since so many societies have done that already in the past.
There are people who say that policy decisions about the character and conduct of our schools should be decided by a system where parents and pupils are given the franchise to “vote with their feet”. That is absurd. At no point does the remainder of the citizenry delegate their duties and powers in the matter of education to parents of school-age children according to the number of children they have in school for the quickly passing time they are there. It is a patent violation of democratic principles of representation to dictate that parents alone should have the power to sell off property that belongs to all and to liquidate resources that the long generations before us have entrusted to the future of us all.
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“It is a patent violation of democratic principles of representation to dictate that parents alone should have the power to sell off property that belongs to all and to liquidate resources that the long generations before us have entrusted to the future of us all.”
Brilliant, Jon. May I quote you in the future?
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sure …
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I view the world in a bit of an atomistic way, but where individuals seek to find the best way to cooperate with each other. In some things that might involve joining together in a government, in others it might involve leaving decisions up to individuals.
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TE,
So how does that relate to what Jon has said? Give some concrete examples please.
Thanks,
Duane
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It seemed to me that Jon suggested a connection between a traditional liberal view of society and destructive competition when he said “The atomistic way of looking at a living system, where individuals vie to tear off their individual bits of flesh…”.
I wrote my post to suggest that the “atomistic way of looking at a living system” is consistent with a search for cooperation. My political philosophy finds roots in the contractarianism of Hobbes, Locke and more contemporary work of Gauthier.
You might be interested in reading the book The Evolution of Cooperation by Robert Axelrod, perhaps while listening to one of my son’s favorite songs: Christmas in The Trenches by John McCutcheon.
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I often find it difficult to separate the concepts of public school and community from what we call “home.” They are all so intertwined and necessary for life, and yet we tend to take them for granted. For a large part of each day, a public school is my home and all the children of the community are invited and accepted unconditionally because it’s their home, too. It reminds me of something Robert Frost wrote long ago:
“Home is the place where, when you have to go there,
They have to take you in.”
“I should have called it
Something you somehow haven’t to deserve.”
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Why should it be inconceivable that various communities might conclude that it is in their best interest that parents be enabled to choose the schools they deem most appropriate for their children? In fact, isn’t that exactly what various education tax credit arrangements purport to do? In essence, such programs reflect the decision of various communities to permit a portion of an individual’s funds to remain in the individual’s own hands, rather than become communal funds, with the proviso that the funds in question be expended to access an education deemed most appropriate by the individual rather than the community.
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Public schools are a public responsibility. Anyone who wants to go to a private school is free to do so. At their expense.
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If we’re going to pay more than lip service to the notion of community, we ought not conclude a priori that no community may determine that the education of the public is better served when all parents, not just those with sufficient means, are enabled to place their children in whatever schools they deem most appropriate, whether they happen to be “traditional” public schools, charter schools, private schools, or home schools. You might opine that such a view makes for bad policy, but there’s certainly no logical contradiction involved in a community deciding that its dollars should follow a child to a school of choice.
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RR,
“If we’re going to pay more than lip service to the notion of community, we ought not conclude a priori that no community may determine that the education of the public is better served when all parents, not just those with sufficient means, are enabled to place their children in whatever schools they deem most appropriate, whether they happen to be “traditional” public schools, charter schools, private schools, or home schools.”
No because the public schools belong to the public and not just the parents who happen to have children in them.
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RR says: “If we’re going to pay more than lip service to the notion of community, we ought not conclude a priori that no community may determine that the education of the public is better served when all parents, not just those with sufficient means, are enabled to place their children in whatever schools they deem most appropriate, whether they happen to be “traditional” public schools, charter schools, private schools, or home schools. You might opine that such a view makes for bad policy, but there’s certainly no logical contradiction involved in a community deciding that its dollars should follow a child to a school of choice.”
RR, let me ask you something. I don’t have children in the system. So do you think I can have MY “per pupil” funding to use for MY choice of business? And how many hypothetical children do I have to have in order to have as much “per pupil” funding as I want? After all, I certainly could use that money to improve MY personal life. Using your stance, there’s no logical contradiction involved in a community deciding that its dollars should follow the taxpayer to the public or private systems that a taxpayer chooses to use. This is, of course, unacceptable, but when replacing child with taxpayer, suddenly there’s a different picture. Now before you tell me that my expenses as a taxpayer are not compulsory as education is, save it. I have to pay into this community in order to be a member. I have compulsory requirements, too. Where’s MY “per pupil” cut of the community pie?
The problem is that “per pupil” doesn’t belong to me any more or less than it belongs to the families with children. Jon Awbrey said it best above: “The number of pupils served by a local school is a handy ‘rule of thumb’ measure for assessing the monetary need. It is also reasonable to support the public resource that meets that need according to fair measures of ability to pay and benefit received.”
Duane is also on target, although much more succinctly than I ever could be.
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Asking whether you can have YOUR “per pupil” funding to use for YOUR choice of businesses introduces somewhat of an inapt analogy, as I believe we both agree that the funds in question are to be directed to provide for the education of the public. Your question flies in the face of the assumption that because an educated public is in our common interest we both agree that a certain portion of our resources should be used to accomplish that end, regardless of whether we have children.
We are both “paying into the community in order to be a member.” The dollars we pay for the education of the public already find their way to an array of private entities (e.g., textbook publishers, test developers, consultants, etc.). Isn’t it the end result of such expenditures that counts? Is it inconceivable to you that the education of the public might best be achieved through the provision of a broad array of public and private alternatives?
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If we can expand the discussion a little, why should people be allowed to send students to private schools? Many posters here have pointed out that students of uncaring parents benefit from the efforts of parents who do care. I think those posters are undoubtedly correct. We would have more caring parents involved in public schools if society did not allow private schools.
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“If we can expand the discussion a little, why should people be allowed to send students to private schools?”
People are “allowed” to spend their private money in any way they see fit–they do not have to ask permission to send their children to private schools. Should they be “allowed” to spend the public’s money on private schools? No.
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LG
People are certainly NOT “allowed” to spend their money as they seek fit. We prohibit people from spending “their” money on many things. All sorts of narcotics, transplant organs, automatic weapons, rocket propelled grenades are illegal to purchase. Why not add private schools to the list if we can make the case that they are destructive to the community?
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Nice try, my friend, but you are again twisting my words.
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LG
I did not mean to twist your words.
My comment was meant to point out that society routinely prevents citizens from purchasing goods that it decides are destructive to society. Society routinely discourages purchasing of other goods by increasing the cost of purchase through taxation. Private education could be added to the list if it is sufficiently harmful.
I hope you will also comment on the earlier disagreement. If your arguments against charter schools is only about the per pupil fees, there is no need to talk about the character of the people leaving and staying. I think you are arguing a deeper and more important point than just one of finance.
Here is another passage from our discussion. In your post to Cynthia, you said:
As stated earlier, you are the kind of person your community needs—your community is only as strong as the people in it. If the people left behind who are still in the public school fall apart because so many good people like you abandoned that school, there goes your community.
I agree with your statement “your community is only as strong as the people in it” and think it is a very important point. I think you correctly worry that the people left behind will suffer because “so many good people like you abandoned that school..”. You are not arguing that the public school is worse off because of a per pupil transfer. You are arguing that the school is worse off because Cynthia is not there.
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I am glad to see another response to one of my comments given top billing in the blog.
On accountability: It is my understanding that charters are regulated by the government. In New York, for example, enrollment in the charter must be by lottery. I see no reason why the regulations could not require some or all of the board of trustees be elected or a more extensive system of accountability.
On voting with your feet: The public school system is a system where people vote with their feet, very literally. If you don’t like the school your children have been told to attend, you move. It happens all the time and the person who posted this statement endorses people voting with their feet. The people who move school districts (or perhaps persuade the politicians to change the district or school lines so they do not have to move) “rob the public schools of students whose parents care while leaving behind students who desperately need someone to advocate for them” just as much as those who would go to charter or private schools.
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Actually, the person who posted this statement endorses two things:
Support your public schools or move and support your new public schools, but do not ever take “per pupil” funding out of the public in support of a non-public institution.
You support (or pay into) the infrastructure, and the infrastructure pays you back–result: an educated community. That money isn’t yours personally with which do what you wish. It belongs to the community just as the school does.
This is a gross misrepresentation of my words: “The people who move school districts (or perhaps persuade the politicians to change the district or school lines so they do not have to move) “rob the public schools of students whose parents care while leaving behind students who desperately need someone to advocate for them” just as much as those who would go to charter or private schools.” That quote was made in the context of the people who use their “per pupil” funding for a charter school.
You are a formidable debate partner, but please don’t misrepresent my stance by taking it out of context.
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I don’t believe you are talking about per pupil funding here. You say “students whose parents care” leave behind “students who desperately need someone to advocate for them”. People care about schools, people are advocates. I think your point is about the nature of the people who will move and the people that stay behind, not about funding.
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Some forms of regularity are more lax than others …
In the run-up to the American Revolution, the Colonists had some beef about “taxation without representation”. The Powers That Were replied somewhat to the effect — “What do you mean? Lord So-&-So was appointed to represent your interests in Parliament.” To make a long revolution short, it is of course a matter of degree, or pedigree, a judg(e)ment call if you will, but the People will insist on their right to judge when a form of representation has become too distorted, obstructed, remote, or suborned.
And the People reserve the right to fix it.
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Of course some regulations are more lax than others. If you think the regulations are too lax, you can advocate to change them.
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Sic semper the Tory palliative, and people of good will actually do buy it for as long as they can take it — until they just can’t stomach it anymore — and then have to probe a little deeper into the obstructions to the People’s Will.
That is what we are doing here.
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Question. What do you do when you have a child with special needs, say, deafness…and you can’t move anywhere within the surrounding public system that meets his/her needs? What happens if your child needs a different methodology? The flippant “move to a different district” may not apply.
What happens when the only option is private schooling? Why should that taxpayer have to pay for the collective when the individual’s need is ignored? Where’s the justice in that scenario?
Public schools DO exist for the community but who are they educating? Subgroups or individuals? I’m no fan of charters but when the public schools are no longer run by the community, but rather, the federal government via mandates, it’s no wonder the taxpayers look for alternatives. Is the answer charters? No. IMO, the answer is to put the local school district policies back in the hands of the local communities.
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The schools are required to provide schooling for a child with special needs. If the school is not providing this, the public must demand it. Yours is an argument based on needs. Others argue for charters based on wants–I think there is a huge difference.
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How can you tell a need from a want?
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You can’t separate a need from a want. In the case of deafness, the public school will tell you what it has to offer. It doesn’t matter what the child’s orientation to communication is, the public system will give the parents what it gives the parents. Period. Sign language will allow communication, so the basic need is met. While an interpreter attached to the hip is not a reasonable expectation for the child for the rest of his/her life, this is in effect what the public school offered us 20 years ago.
Even as cochlear implants became more prevalent and oral language is easier to acquire, the public systems are slow to react. It’s expensive to teach deaf kids so the public schools will do the cheapest methodology possible. It doesn’t matter the long term consequences for the student.
I argue there is little difference in this case between need vs want. Do I WANT my child to become self-sufficient and independent? Yes. Does the public school provide the basic NEED of communication? Yes. Will it be enough in the big picture? No.
And change the public school system? You’re kidding, right? Real life vs theory: a federal lawsuit wouldn’t change a system that protects the system vs providing services for the individual. When you have a federal judge agreeing with the public school that if a 6 year old deaf kid learns his “ABCs” in one year is an “appropriate education”, you better believe parents will pull their kids out and find truly appropriate education for their children. Talk about low expectations.
Private schools should be abolished for the collective community? Parents shouldn’t be the final decision makers on their childrens’ education, but rather, the state should have that role? Parents better hope their individual children fit within that collective framework or else they (the parents and the children) are in serious trouble.
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To stlgretchen:
“You can’t separate a need from a want.”
Actually, you can, but doing so is not a simple process. That is why policies take so long to change and implement. What’s good for a portion of the population must not be a detriment to the entire population.
Here’s an example comparison: Does a community need clean drinking water? Yes. Does a community need a public park? No. However a public might support the idea of a place where its community members can go for recreational purposes. Sounds good. Will the public put in a park just anywhere? No. It is beholden to the members of the community to examine the issues surrounding the park such as: Where could the park be located so as to serve the community best without infringing on the privacy of the park’s immediate neighbors, what sorts of facilities will be in the park, etc., etc.
In matters of both needs and wants, there is a great deal of policy to attend to in order to make viable decisions that will be helpful to the public and not harmful to anyone in the public. This is not to say that making decisions regarding public drinking water are few and can be made quickly, but there is a need for a public water supply because humans can die from disease and dehydration if they were to be without it. Now if you want to split hairs and tell me that some people can use well or spring water so that negates the “need” argument, you can. However, my examples are just to show that there are needs and there are wants. Most local governments support recreational budgets, but when budgets get tight and then push comes to shove, the budget allotment for park maintenance will surely lose out to that of the water supply. Want vs. Need—in a nutshell.
“In the case of deafness, the public school will tell you what it has to offer. It doesn’t matter what the child’s orientation to communication is, the public system will give the parents what it gives the parents. Period. Sign language will allow communication, so the basic need is met. While an interpreter attached to the hip is not a reasonable expectation for the child for the rest of his/her life, this is in effect what the public school offered us 20 years ago.”
I’m sorry to hear that the system was not meeting what you felt were your child’s needs. I can understand how frustrated you must have felt at the time. The conversation about charter schools is very real in today’s educational climate, so it’s important to note whether or not there have been any significant changes to public education policy that would better equip the schools to more adequately serve a child with these needs now compared to 20 years ago. Has anything changed since then? I’m betting it has, but then again it really depends on what the community has demanded from the public system. I’m sure your child was not the only child needing services of this nature in the last two decades.
As you probably know, the legislation that governs the deaf can be found in Part B of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) and section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (section 504). A FAPE (Free and Appropriate Public Education) is a part of the community school’s responsibilities to the children of all citizens.
Here is what the federal government says:
http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/docs/hq9806.html
Free Appropriate Public Education
The provision of a free appropriate public education based on the unique needs of the child is at the heart of the IDEA. Similarly, the section 504 regulation at 34 CFR 104.33-104.36 contains free appropriate public education requirements, which are also applicable to local educational agencies serving children who are deaf. A child is receiving an appropriate education when all of the requirements in the statute and the regulations are met. The Secretary believes that full consideration of the unique needs of a child who is deaf will help to ensure the provision of an appropriate education. For children who are eligible under Part B of the IDEA, this is accomplished through the IEP process. For children determined to be handicapped under section 504, implementation of an individualized education program developed in accordance with Part B of the IDEA is one means of meeting the free appropriate public education requirements of the section 504 regulations.
The important language in that excerpt is: “based on the unique needs of the child.” I would hope that there was a support staff available to you to discuss and serve your child’s needs. If there was not, these people are available in today’s schools by law. Special needs services have indeed changed greatly in the last two decades.
If you are suggesting something beyond what the law allows, i.e. what the law deems “appropriate,” it is always prudent to advocate for a policy change (which I’m sure you did). I only stress that one should never give up in this fight—it is how public systems work. Demand a change. The community needs to be pro-active about making these changes by getting involved. It has been done before, and it can be done again. It is often necessary for individual families to solicit community help to do this especially if the family has far more obligations in regard to tending to a child’s special needs. Helping each other is what members of communities do.
I am curious to know what you did do about your situation. I’m sure you have done more than this, but for some people, simply stating that the public school isn’t doing enough—even just complaining to the public school—isn’t all that should be done to make these changes. A mere complaint is often the driving force beyond the “choice” argument, but I caution people from running to private interests with public money without trying to bring changes to the public system first—taking public money out of the public system for personal wants does nothing for those who are in the public system. If you want to help your child, help your community. By keeping your child in the public school, you are promoting a social education for your child and his or her peers. This is the benefit of a community effort toward more social understanding.
“Even as cochlear implants became more prevalent and oral language is easier to acquire, the public systems are slow to react.”
Policy change takes time, an issue that can be construed as an unfortunate aspect of how public systems work, but it is for good reason. Personal influences on public policy must be carefully evaluated so that they do not inadvertently create harmful situations for the public as a whole. It is often unfathomable how what seems to be “helpful” to one person can put someone else at a disadvantage, but an understanding of the big picture often brings these aspects to light. Policies need to be reviewed for all points-of-view—sometimes this is not apparent to one person because of a personal situation that prevents that person from seeing how a policy change will affect everyone. Those who oversee public systems cannot just make “cut-and-dry” changes to policies without a careful review process. This is merely a possible explanation to the lack of timeliness in public system reaction.
“It’s expensive to teach deaf kids so the public schools will do the cheapest methodology possible. It doesn’t matter the long term consequences for the student.”
I’m curious to see the your proof that backs up this claim. Do you happen to have the budget reports with allocations and all the possible costs from various other public and private agencies that provide services to the deaf? This is really important, because if you are speaking from a position of personal judgment without facts, your words will fall on (forgive me) deaf ears. I can see how easy it is to dismiss legitimate complaints when backing research is missing. I always caution people to back up their claims with facts before making a stink about how nobody is listening to them. I am not accusing you of this; I am merely stating that many complaints about the system have come from personal rhetoric tied to emotional responses to something without real evidence. It’s very easy for these things to go on within the construct of a public system. Fact-finding is a form of support for the community system because it can only serve to improve the system. The more you support your community, the better the services for all children can and should be.
“I argue there is little difference in this case between need vs want. Do I WANT my child to become self-sufficient and independent? Yes. Does the public school provide the basic NEED of communication? Yes. Will it be enough in the big picture? No.”
Fostering your child’s independence is not only the responsibility of the school—there is a personal responsibility of the family and the child in question. By asking for the school to provide the guidance your child needs (and you want) for self-sufficiency and independence, you are, after a fashion, making requests of a public education system to help to raise your child on issues of social intelligence along with you.
In reference to services that support your child’s social intelligence: What about children with mental illness conditions that are not as obvious as a hearing disability? We always hear about that kid who “shot up” the high school—“he was such a quiet boy…” What should the school be doing for him? Are you going to ask the school to provide mental health services for children with these special needs? What if a child’s emotional disposition prevents him from learning? Should he get a special mental health services or should he be ignored because his issues are not as apparent as a child with a hearing disability? Would it be better for him to go to a “special school” for children with disabilities like his or should he remain in the population with other children who do not have these issues but may have other issues? What is best for these children? Most laws speak to the “least restrictive environment” for children with disabilities of any sort, whether mental (emotional or learning) or physical.
Many schools provide a school counselor and most provide occupational/physical therapists for students whose disabilities impede their learning. There is a fine line between providing services that aid learning and raising a child on social intelligence. Is it possible that what you are asking for is a “want” beyond the “need?” Now if you want something beyond what the school provides, that is your prerogative (and a noble one, at that), but the request must be carefully examined before placing any kind of expectation.
As you probably know, schools make accommodations for children with special needs in accordance with the legal document collaboratively written by their child study teams, parents, and teachers called the IEP. If your child was not getting what was needed, it was your responsibility to voice this in the IEP meeting, which I’m sure you did. If your requests went unanswered, it’s time to bring in experts and fight the system. It is your prerogative as a citizen, and it does work for those who have a case. If you are asking the school to somehow be fully responsible for teaching your child self-sufficiency and independence, you are bordering on asking for the school to parent your child. Every child needs this social guidance, but the school can only provide part of it—the parent needs to do his or her job in this regard, too.
“And change the public school system? You’re kidding, right? Real life vs theory: a federal lawsuit wouldn’t change a system that protects the system vs providing services for the individual.”
Since you asked if I’m kidding, I’m going to ask you to be real. If the public school system is incapable of change, how do you think IDEA, the Rehabilitation Act, 504s, IEPs, etc. all came about? Did the powers-that-be just guess that these types of services could possibly be useful for “someone” but for just whom, they did not know?
You CAN effect change in the public school system—it happens all the time. I know your personal situation is the strongest truth to you—believe me, I understand that we are nothing without personal convictions. However, one must think more globally when dealing with a large system. I have seen instances where the large system changes policies to aid and protect individuals when it is not harmful to all—the anti-bullying laws are testament to this—but how many times have you heard someone complain about a new rule or law put into affect because “someone did something” that negatively affects everyone but the solution to this makes life more difficult for everyone else? It happens every day in the schools.
No system is perfect—that’s a great lesson to teach children but adults seem to need this lesson, too.
“When you have a federal judge agreeing with the public school that if a 6 year old deaf kid learns his ‘ABCs’ in one year is an ‘appropriate education’, you better believe parents will pull their kids out and find truly appropriate education for their children. Talk about low expectations.”
If you brought your case to the federal court system, that was a brave and conscientious move on your part, and I admire you. If so, did you bring in expert advocates to testify regarding what is “truly appropriate?” Despite what you might feel, you DO honestly have the power to change the system, but you cannot do it alone. I certainly know what it’s like to stand up to the system of bureaucracy having been put down twice myself for advocating for a program that was being cut—but in any public system, there are protocols to protect harmful influence to policy and legislation. Because of these protocols, changing a system takes time—unfortunately, children grow at a much faster rate than laws do.
“Private schools should be abolished for the collective community?”
teachingeconomist appears to claim that I think this way from a philosophical perspective, since private schools take a part of the constituency out of the public school population like charter schools do. The issue is far too complicated to justify making such a general statement as that, but teachingeconomist did.
There is context missing from the statement above. I will attempt to explain the context: To an extent, losing part of the public constituency to a private school can certainly affect the public school population positively or negatively, but to abolish private schools? That is a ridiculous statement—and one that I do not share. Mine was an argument against removing public support from the public schools to the charter schools—I never made an argument about removing public allowance for private schools to exist, per se, although charter schools that do not serve the needs of the public can indeed be glorified private schools. My position is that charters are worse than private schools because they funnel public funds from the system without serving within the public system. Private schools should not and, for the most part, do not funnel public funding at all. (There are exceptions for religious school populations where transportation services are often shared with the public schools. This is somehow justified since the service of moving people is not so wide-spread and is more cut-and-dry than other school services. In many cases, school transportation is the responsibility of the municipality and not the actual school district. How’s THAT for a confusing situation?)
It appears that teachingeconomist is attempting to “catch” me in a contradiction such as this: Investing in one’s community is both a fiscal and a personal responsibility, therefore taking the “person” out of the community schools does affect the public school population through changes to the balance of social influence. This is a very delicate issue that should never be oversimplified by making such a dangerous and general statement that private schools should be abolished for the collective community, but absurdity does get your attention, doesn’t it?
“Parents shouldn’t be the final decision makers on their childrens’ education, but rather, the state should have that role? Parents better hope their individual children fit within that collective framework or else they (the parents and the children) are in serious trouble.”
No one is saying that parents should not be the final decision makers in regard to their children’s education. If you can point out where anyone has said that, I’d like to see it. Otherwise, it is a biased interpretation.
The PUBLIC, not just the parents, has a responsibility to work with its institutions to provide for the community. Are you trying to say that since I have no children, I should provide my tax money to the public school system with no say, but only parents should have a say? I object whole-heartedly—it’s my community, too.
A lesson in basic civics will tell you that I do have a voice—my tax money is part of the support that provides for your children, other families, and the entire community at-large. We are a community—a system of people—not a bunch of individuals some of whom are privileged to make decisions about how the funding provided by others will be spent. We have a representative legislature to make those decisions, but these representatives are beholden to the PEOPLE, not just those who happen to be parents.
I am sorry that you have such a horrible taste in your mouth regarding how the public system treated your child. It is important to note that public systems are not perfect, but they belong to you. You have both a responsibility to and a benefit from the community pulling its resources. It’s equally important to remember that your responsibilities go beyond your family and home. This is the case for all citizens, whether they want to admit that or not.
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I really don’t want to seem like I am nit picking here, but it really is an important question, especially when applied to education: How clean should the water be?
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LG-
With your restatement I see I was wrong about my interpretation of your post saying to Cynthia “your community is only as strong as the people in it”. Is what you meant to say “your community is only as strong as the funding base for public schools”?
I hope we can continue this discussion. I know it is getting very scattered both in issues and across posts.
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The strength of the “funding base” has nothing to do with whether a school is good or bad. Some of the schools with the highest levels of per-student funding are the worst performing. Giving more and more and more money to bad schools has not made them any better. I wrote this blog entry about that, and I cited many sources to back up my claims:
People who say U.S. public schools are “underfunded” have no idea what they are talking about.
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To LG:
We filed a federal lawsuit to obtain an appropriate education for our child. We went to IEPs and generally were outnumbered 20 to 2. We were told to advocate for our child but quickly discovered that meant to advocate in the way the system wanted you to advocate.
I am well aware of IDEA and if you talk to parents of children with various disabilities, many of them will tell you they are not worth the paper they are written on. When you have 6 mothers of deaf kids with different level of impairments and cognitive abilities, and when these 6 moms compare their childrens’ IEPs and discover the goals are the same for each child, you know the system is there for the system and not the individual child.
When you are in the “best” system for these children, it makes for smug administrators and teachers. What many theorists of education don’t understand is that parents don’t have the luxury of waiting years for policy changes. Their children are falling behind and we can’t wait for the “best program” in the state to finally come around and appropriately educate their children.
Deaf children ARE expensive to educate. They need speech therapists, interpreters, resource teachers. They are a low occurrence disability and every level (mild, moderate, severe, profound) has its own approach…or should. It is also more labor intensive to teach a child to talk rather than sign, so most public systems do not want to use this approach. And, if you are in a small district, your child may be the only deaf child in the system. Many professionals are needed for just one child.
I am a state advocate for children with special needs and I have seen public systems try to do the least possible and still comply with the legal requirements. In the case with the 6 students, it was if the district was “fill in the blank” mode.
I appreciate that districts have dwindling resources. It cost the district $18,000 to educate these kids. We finally went private and it cost $13,000 AND my child received the education he NEEDED.
And least restrictive? What a joke. I ask you. You have a deaf child with language delays. What is least restrictive to that child, to be in a class with other kids on his/her same level or with hearing 6 year children with normal language development? It’s not fair to the deaf child OR the hearing children…OR the teacher to have to hold the class back for the deaf child to catch up.
The political correctness of this means the child doesn’t get what he/she needs. It also means the mandates of the public school DON’T meet the needs of ALL children. So what happens to these kids who are certainly educable (my child is finishing his last year of college) but don’t fit that “one size fits all” mold offered by public school?
I hope some of you can understand the desperation of parents in dealing with their public schools. The child doesn’t have the luxury of time for policy changes to take effect. In my personal experience and in working with other parents, special education services are often times attuned to protect the system, not the child.
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stlgretchen, upon reading your comments I have a few questions and comments to share with you.
It appears that your comments include very serious claims against a public system based on your personal experiences. Such claims gain validity when presented with the backing of expert field experience and fact-finding. Without these, it is easy to see how a federal court could offer you no support or public solutions to your dilemma.
I am not making any claims that you are wrong or right here—there simply isn’t enough information to do so based on what you have offered so far. However, in order for such serious claims to have credibility, there are many points to consider and questions to answer. It is imperative that one argues with some reasonable backing when attempting to pass judgment on a system to the level in which you have.
I do not wish for you to take anything posted here personally, as there is no intent to personally criticize your actions or feelings. This is merely a philosophical argument based on the examples you have presented. What you have gone through is an enormously heart-wrenching experience, and I cannot pretend to understand the level of despair you felt during the whole process. I do admire that you “took the bull by the horns,” as it were. Your son is a true testament to your care.
If your intent is not to continue the discussion to any other end but for you to vent your frustrations, there is no need to respond. If you want to continue, here are some questions and points to ponder. If you elaborate on these topics, I believe it will help the discussion.
1. What is an “appropriate education” for a child such as your son, and who decides this?
2. Parents will invariably be outnumbered at IEP meetings—this does not negate their collective voice. If you felt threatened by the professionals “on the other side,” could it have been because you had a perception of opposition from them? Sometimes it is difficult to deal with an opposing view when one is so close to the situation, as in the case of a parent advocating for a child. Your children can be seen as an extension of yourself.
3. There is an individual responsibility to work within the system for success, however, if one does not trust the system, there will be no satisfaction for that person. The system obviously lost your respect along the way, but if you step back from it, was there anything redeemable about the experience that might have put the situation on a different path?
4. Laws are unfortunately not all things to all people, but they permit rules for the implementation of public services. Just as schools are not responsible for raising children, laws are not supposed to “take care” of people without some effort on the part of the people themselves. An educational experience is ever-changing as it moves through the actions and influences of every day and every year. For as many negative experiences you perceived, could there have been moments where the school was doing right by your son?
5. There is a great deal of congruity in education goals. Public education needs some form of common goal or standard to govern its curricula—otherwise the system will not serve the commons. Unless a child is severely impaired, an IEP is by law going to appear to cover far more than most special needs children actually need in the way of accommodations. This could be why so many seemed similar. IEPs are structured to include all possibilities from the least to the most extreme levels of functioning. It is quite possible that the indicators in each IEP did not require adjustment beyond the regular educational goals of each student in the entire population. I really cannot speak to what you saw to explain this, but if you want to give more information about it, perhaps an explanation could be made. I think it is only fair for you to elaborate on the topic instead of offering a simple statement that all IEPs are the same, therefore they are invalid. As well, it is disconcerting that parents were sharing their children’s legal documents (IEPs). There are laws that govern these practices—I caution people who make a practice of sharing this information with others as it violates personal protections.
6. Personal perceptions often cloud judgment of reality. I am not accusing you of having a clouded judgment—I am only pointing out that it is quite possible that your perceptions could have been influenced by personal feelings. No one would blame you for this, however. You are, after all, the personal caretaker of your child, and he is your responsibility. I am simply offering the possibility that you “could” have perceived things on less than a practical and philosophically sound level if you were attaching personal perceptions of despair and frustration to the situation. Again, no one would blame you or tell you that you should never have an emotional investment in this. It is your child.
7. Policy changes take time—pro-active movements can help speed the process along, but changes need their “day in court.” And like the ever-changing experiences of a child, one should never give up on the issues as they present themselves in new ways throughout time.
8. Again, you reference an “appropriate education,” but taking it one step further, who decides how to measure “on level” or “falling behind?”
9. The beauty of public school systems is in how resources are shared among the public. The right to these resources is bestowed on the community by the community and for the community. The ugliness is in the bureaucracy of a large system, which makes it of utmost importance for individuals to work within the confines of the system to seek the changes they feel they need or want. It is the balance of the public interests and the private interests where these services are often criticized. I have met many parents of children with special needs that run the gamut. Some found a way to work with the system, and some, like yourself, did not. It is your prerogative to make the decisions of whether to leave the system or stay, but it is irresponsible to color a perception of the system based on an individual experience. A lack of support for the system paves the way for the system to break down and prevent helping so many others who benefit from it. However, if a minority (such as yourself and the six other parents you reference) feel as if they are not being represented, it is absolutely in their best interest to pull their resources together in the fight. You do have a voice even in a sub-group.
10. If you want more personalized instruction, you can seek it out yourself or you can work to help the system give it to you. Most people do not have the resources to personalize their instruction on their every whim—this is why it is important to keep working within the system by holding it and its constituency accountable for working toward more and more benefits for the populace at-large.
11. What a child needs can be very subjective. There is a reason why a system of individuals works with children in the public systems and not just one person or one parent. There are parents who home-school, but they are not the sole decision-makers that govern their children’s learning. There are regulations and guidelines set forth by the state that home-schools must abide by in order to satisfy the compulsory education requirements of every citizen. The public systems offer far more than one individual can, and by their nature, public systems have far more credentialed professional opinions than individuals do. Parents do have a say, but it is important to understand that opinions are based on experience and perceptions. I would not home-doctor my child unless I had extensive medical training, and even then, I would not be able to guarantee an understanding of every aspect of the human body and its systems in order to tend medically to their every need. Even doctors send their families to specialists. A parent who is making decisions on what is educationally appropriate for her child, while noble, cannot always be expected to know enough to make certain educational judgments. This is not meant as a criticism—it is merely mentioned with the intention to illustrate that perception does not always equal reality. I know that is not so very reassuring in regard to who can be trusted, but the bottom line is, parents AND education professionals cannot know everything that is necessary for a child, but if you’re going to make a bet on who might know more about these decisions, who would you choose? And your answer is purely yours—no one is saying it is wrong or right.
12. Public systems are intricate and complicated, but they can be implemented uniquely by personnel who are as varied as the system’s constituency. People are what make systems work, and the outcomes cannot always be predicted by short-term perception.
13. There is no “one size fits all” mold. There are efficient descriptors that can accommodate many people with similar needs, but schools are set up to work toward bringing a common education to the masses within the framework of the individual learner. It is also the personal responsibility of each member of the constituency to seek the individualization of the common education.
14. Experience informs judgment, but generalizations based on individual perception of public systems can be detrimental to the public when made from only a local point-of-view.
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LG:
I take nothing personally. As far as what makes an education appropriate, that’s the $64,000 question. We had experts test our child and they were educators and researchers (from outside our district and state) exclusively working with deaf children for several decades. Their testimony was put up against…preschool teachers from the district.
Appropriate education as I stated previously, from the judge, was that if my child learned his ABCs in one year at age 6, she considered that appropriate because the teachers said that was appropriate. Mind you, this is a child with a hearing impairment, with no cognitive issues impeding learning.
These were teachers of the deaf who in two decades had never been back for certification in deaf education for two decades. Much had changed in hearing aids/cochlear implants in two decades, but they had not attended any classes in continuing education in deafness. The audiologist had incomplete audiograms on my child. The teachers insisted that “total communication” used in the district allowed severe to profoundly deaf children the ability to talk, but as the deaf community is small and we knew deaf students through the high school, this was not apparent in communicating with these students.
You write: “There is no “one size fits all” mold. There are efficient descriptors that can accommodate many people with similar needs, but schools are set up to work toward bringing a common education to the masses within the framework of the individual learner. It is also the personal responsibility of each member of the constituency to seek the individualization of the common education. ”
There should be no “one size fits all” mold but there is. Look at common core standards now present in the majority of states. My personal experience with my child has raised my awareness of what happens when the “common” doesn’t “fit” with the individual’s learning style, whatever that learning style is. This experience 20 years ago is an example, IMO, of what happens when “common” expectations are held by educators or special interests. The individual child that doesn’t fit in that expectation is left behind. How in the world do you expect parents to teach a deaf child to talk? That was the job the school told us it would do, but all we had to do is look at its track record and knew it was doing a dismal job.
I had a wise mom of an older deaf child tell me once: “Everybody is out to make money on your child. VR, schools, etc. Your job as a parent is to determine who will benefit your child the most and put your resources toward that organization”. She was right. Parents/taxpayers need to look long term at the educational direction of their public schools and decide if those schools are preparing children (hearing, deaf or whatever) to live independently in the world or teaching them to become good test takers.
You write: “Some found a way to work with the system, and some, like yourself, did not. It is your prerogative to make the decisions of whether to leave the system or stay, but it is irresponsible to color a perception of the system based on an individual experience.” This was not just my individual experience. We uncovered (a long, long story), evidence that the first grade teacher of the deaf who had been there for many many years had been abusing deaf children for 15 years. An investigation was held (I talked to the parents and others involved), and this teacher had slapped students, one of the parents was a teacher in the same district and stated “Mrs. X was so verbally abusive to my daughter she killed her love of learning”, one mother had to drag her 7 year old out from under the bed every morning for school and it finally came out years later that the girl was scared of this teacher, an interpreter asked to be reassigned to another school because her reports of teacher abuse to the administration fell on “deaf ears”.
These stories were basically the same from different children over a 15 year span. These are an example of a district mismanaged and arrogant to parents and students. BTW, this teacher was not fired. She was reassigned to another school with all hearing students. Guess she couldn’t get away with this behavior with children with normal language ability at 6 and 7 years of age.
What I am telling you, all this talk about “changing the system” and “working within it” sounds great. Most theories do. But when you are the parent and have limited time to introduce language into a child, theories don’t mean squat.
You write: “I am simply offering the possibility that you “could” have perceived things on less than a practical and philosophically sound level if you were attaching personal perceptions of despair and frustration to the situation.” I agree many parents may not be able to see their child without an emotional lens. We would not have pursued the path we did had we not had outside testing done by credentialed professionals who had worked with deaf children for decades. Based on the testing done on my child, the outlook for his success in this particular mode of communication and learning was believed to be appropriate. As it turned out, we did make the right decision by pulling him from the public system and following the recommendations of the private testing done on our child.
You write: “It is the balance of the public interests and the private interests where these services are often criticized.” Very true. But the public interest (or at least what Arne Duncan spouts) is that children should be educated for the workforce. If I have professionals stating my child can be oral and this increases his employment chances, wouldn’t the public interest be to provide him with an education that would train him in that skill?
You write: “Parents will invariably be outnumbered at IEP meetings—this does not negate their collective voice.” Theory, probably you are correct. In practice, you are not correct. I could give stories after stories of districts who have made their childrens’ lives quite difficult at school because of parental disagreements. And what parent wants their child to have difficulties at school when they are already dealing with learning issues? Parents are at a disadvantage when it comes to learning how to deal with the legalistic system of IEPs. In MO, there has been a change in that IEP due processes will go before administrative judges instead of the district…the contact who sent me this information hopes this will cause districts to be more amenable to discussions rather than stonewalling parents.
Does this give you a better view of how one school district operated? BTW, I understand the deaf/hard of hearing program has pretty much collapsed over the years since we left. It was too long in coming, IMO.
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If the public schools were doing their job properly, then parents wouldn’t be pulling their children out of the public schools and sending them to the charter schools.
If 10% of parents switch their children from a public school to a charter school, then it makes perfect sense that 10% of the money would also be transferred from the public schools to the charter schools. But yet for some reason, you are very bothered by this. Why is that? Why shouldn’t the money follow the child to whichever school the child attends?
And why should children be trapped in a public school that their parents consider to be a bad school?
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If you want a market system then you can have a market system. That means you pay for your own children’s education the same way you pay for the groceries to feed them. And no one pays for you and yours but you. Then you will have all the choices you can afford.
I suppose the government might try to advise parents about a balanced diet of knowledge or an educational food pyramid or something, but all the good advice in the world wouldn’t stand a chance against the pyramid schemes of mega-money advertisers who target you and your children like nobody’s business but theirs.
Vouchers might enter the market as the educational equivalent of food stamps, but only only on the fringes, only in cases of proven but temporary and desperate need — and of course all good anti-socialists and true rite-wingers would be dead set against them. Ironic, huh? But you can bet your bottom dollar it would happen as soon as they manage to destroy public education once and for all.
That is where we are headed if we keep going down this road.
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There are, of course, many examples of public subsidies in a market when society believes it is important. The bus riders in my town do not pay the full cost of their trip on the bus, the poor do not pay the full cost of the food they eat, the elderly do not pay the full cost of their medical care. These subsidies are very reasonable and take place in a market system, so it need not be the way Jon described in his opening paragraph.
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International testing shows that the U.S. has the worst public schools of any major country. But we do have the best colleges in the world (which is why so many people from all over the world come here to attend college), and we have 100% school choice at the college level, and the government funds much of that through grants and loans. So choice has given us the best colleges in the world, and lack of choice has given is the worst public schools in the world.
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@danfromsquirrelhill
Before anyone else says it, I think this last claim is overly broad. At the very minimum, you might want to look at the schools in the best performing countries and see if they use geographic admissions to their schools. I would guess that some or even all do use the same basic admission standards for their schools. I am sure other posters will point out other things.
Are the bagels at Bagel Land on Murray Ave still great?
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The Bagel Land on Murray Ave closed many, many years ago. But I love that you knew about it.
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@danfromsquirrelhill
That is too bad. I used to walk over there most Saturday mornings and buy a dozen for the house. When they asked what I wanted, my response was always “what just came out of the oven?”.
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“If the public schools were doing their job properly, then parents wouldn’t be pulling their children out of the public schools and sending them to the charter schools.”
danfromsquirrelhill, this is where your argument falls short and right out of the gate, too. Until you can “prove” that public schools aren’t “doing their job properly,” all bets are off.
Would you like me to tell you how parents aren’t doing their collective jobs properly? Would that be fair? Where’s the standardized test for parents? Why do you need a license to own a dog, but any idiot can spawn?
I can be snarky and obnoxious in order to spread rhetoric, too, but I don’t wish to mischaracterize an entire portion of the public because I know better than to make baseless general accusations of blame. There is good and bad in every system–making generalizations is a dangerous game when these generalizations affect millions of people.
Now then…I still want my piece of the education money, too, since my unborn children haven’t used any of it as of yet. I’m saving up for an education for them. 🙂 Hypothetically, I want 2-3 children so I will split the difference to 2.5 times for my family portion of the “per pupil” funding. By now, I should have at least nine years of “per pupil” funding owed to me from my current community, 2 years from my former, 2 years from the one before that, and 11 from the one before that, although I’ll settle for 10 because I planned on having at least a year between my 2.5 children. Man, I’m RICH! Can’t wait to get my hands on the funding! Should I invest it in a charter school or a private school? Oh, I know! I’ll send my children to an elite private academy. Do you think boarding school would be nice? So what form do I need to fill out to get all this money?
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I will prove to you right now that the public schools aren’t doing their job. Just take a look at these three blog posts that I have made:
The new method of “teaching” math leaves students ignorant and uneducated
We libertarians and conservatives should praise Barack Obama for sending his own children to private schools
People who say U.S. public schools are “underfunded” have no idea what they are talking about.
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From your blog:
“Despite this high level of funding, in reading and math, the district’s students score the lowest among 11 major school districts – even when poor children are compared with other poor children.”
It’s clear from the article you are quoting that the funding is not going to the appropriate places–however, that does not mean that all schools follow this model.
“33% of poor fourth graders in the U.S. lack basic skills in math, but in Washington D.C., it’s 62%.”
Math and reading scores do not accurately portray a school learning profile–they are important diagnostic tools, but in reality, one should look at the community culture of preparedness of the children as they enter the school system. To simply blame the schools for the community’s failings isn’t fair. It appears the money in this article was spent on “technological innovations” for the students when they really need a guided culture of experience. The tests, especially language arts, are often biased toward children who live outside of this culture. While I cannot speak for the reasons that this district appropriated funding this way, you are making a blanket statement about all schools based on an article about very few school systems. You do make a great point about misappropriation, but I don’t believe it’s fair to color every district in the national system this way.
“The parents said their children were receiving a much better education from the private schools.”
Parents also believe politicians when they say that our public school system is failing. Perception does not always follow fact. This is not fact–this is perception, and therefore it is not a valid source of fact-finding.
“During the 2006–2007 school year, a private school in Chicago founded by Marva Collins to teach low income minority students charged $5,500 for tuition, and parents said that the school did a much better job than the Chicago public school system.”
Again, using parents as judges of a system without basing the claim invalidates it. This isn’t proof–it’s conjecture.
“Although this very high level of spending continued for more than a decade, there was no improvement in the school district’s academic performance.”
Just how do you judge academic performance? By test scores?
Haven’t we had enough of the arm-chair educator debate that test scores prove nothing more than a portion of a specific kind of learning and reflect the level of a specific kind of skill (i.e. test taking), but truly cannot stand alone as a true measure of learning in totality? Or are you going to keep using this rhetoric as “proof?”
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If a student can’t a get decent scores on standardized math and English tests, then yes, there is something seriously wrong. These tests are not “biased” – they are an accurate reflection of what the student does or does not know. Saying that tests are “biased” is just an attempt at making yet another excuse for academic failure.
I went to a Montessori school when I was a child, There are Montessori schools all over the world. The tuition at Montessori is far less than what public schools spend on each student. When we had to take state-mandated standardized tests for math and English, I thought they were silly, because they consisted of material that I had learned many years ago. The tests were ridiculously easy. I actually felt insulted by them. When all my scores came back as 99%, I was disappointed that I had not gotten 100%. My teacher had to explain to me that 99% was the highest possible score on this type of test.
Marva Collins was a teacher in the Chicago public school system in the 1970s. She taught low-income black students. The school told her that her students were “learning disabled” and “unteachable.” Collins did not believe that claim. She had some of her own ideas on how to teach those students, but the public school system would not allow her to carry out those ideas.
So she quit the public school, and, with almost no money, started her own private school. She took these very same students whom the public schools had labelled as being “learning disabled’ and “unteachable,” and she taught them math, literature, science, history, the classics, etc., Many of them ended up graduating from college.
Clearly, the public school had been 100% wrong when it had labelled these students as being “learning disabled” and “unteachable.” Instead, it was the Chicago public school system that was “teaching disabled.”
Anyone who thinks that lack of funding for schools, or students being in poverty, is an excuse for academic failure, is mistaken. Marva Collins proved that they can be excellent students, even when they are poor, and even when their schools have little funding.
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So a “Parent Trigger” law is not necessary-as in the public school system we can vote in our school board and therefore make changes in the school system. It seems the Parent Trigger law needs to be in place for Charter schools where we don’t have any say in how our tax dollars are being used.
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The public in public schools is many things. Unfortunately, the “public” in public schools is steadily being eradicated. When that process reaches a not-too-distant future point, not only will public schools be at risk, but the very republic upon which they depend. Citizens own public schools, and only citizens can preserve them. See more at Preserving the Public in Public Schools, Rowman & Littlefield Education Press, 2012.
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I think many people posting on how important keeping the “public” in public schools focus on the virtues of citizen involvement and ignore the problems.
Many public schools, especially in rural areas, reflect the view of the community by teaching religion as science. Many public schools seek to teach students the “values” of the community, which include a particular religious belief.
It is essential that individuals be protected from the community in many ways, including in education.
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I am 100% in favor of teaching science, biological evolution, the big bang theory, etc.
I attended a private Jewish school for 7th and 8th grade. We had a science class, and we had a Jewish history class, and the two were kept totally separate from each other. That’s how it should be.
Public schools should not have religious classes. They should teach about the existence of the different religions as part of their history classes, but they should not be pro-religion.
Although I was born Jewish, I consider myself to be agnostic, and my two personal favorite religions are Jediism and Greek mythology.
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Whoa–stop right there. Public schools as a whole do not “teach” religion in any other way than from the POV of critical analysis. If any so-called public school is teaching religious edicts, it is violating the separation of church and state provisions of our governance.
Be very careful of making statements based on untruths and then expounding on them. They weaken your credibility.
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My wife was often sent to the principal’s office for not standing and reciting the Lords Prayer as it was being read over the public high school intercom system. In 2011 that same community was trying to decide whether or not to dismiss a teacher whom many students said taught creationism in the class, taught that homosexuals were damned by God, and burned crosses into students arms using a Tesla coil. The NYT had a good long article about it.
My wife’s life was turned around by her receiving a one year scholarship to a private high school.
I assure you that outside of the major cities and away from the coasts, religion is often taught without critical analysis.
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Here is the link to the NYT article.
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After reading the article, I stand by my original comment: “Public schools as a whole do not “teach” religion in any other way than from the POV of critical analysis.” As a whole meaning NOT ALL.
Mr. Freshwater is an anomaly–obviously, and these charges would be brought against anyone who does not represent public education as a whole. Do people exist in the system whose ideology goes against the system? Sure. Just like in any system. But one example does not color the totality of the system. What you’re saying is akin to saying that doctors prescribe anesthesia medication to their patients as sedatives and not for their intended purpose because Dr. Conrad Murray did. Preposterous connection.
I am curious–was Freshwater ever found guilty of the charges?
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