The Capitol Weekly is reporting this week that California may join a growing number of education leaders nationwide in a revolt against No Child Left Behind (NCLB).
“Relief is needed immediately before more schools suffer for another school year under inappropriate labels and ineffective interventions,” Mr. Torlakson wrote in a letter to Duncan.
This week Mr. Torlakson went even further, saying in an interview that “NCLB was a law that had outlived its usefulness and that the nation’s schools needed Congress to undertake a complete revision of the law.”
“I think there is a consensus to leave behind, No Child Left Behind,” Mr. Torlakson said. “And to leave behind the (Annual Yearly Progress) which is a failed system and put in a new one that would be based more on the growth model that we use here in California.”
California is not alone. Across the nation, the Mr. Duncan has been flooded with requests asking for relief from onerous federal proficiency targets that even the nation’s best-run public schools like those in Davis will find nearly impossible to keep up with.
Last week’s letter warns that many schools with rising student achievement will be mislabeled as failing under the “one-size-fits-all” approach required under NCLB. In addition, the letter notes that NCLB restrictions on how districts can use funding will further burden schools already hit hard by budget cuts.
Mr. Torlakson writes, “One of the widely recognized problems with NCLB is the “one-size-fits-all” approach to labeling schools that fail Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP), regardless of the reasons for the failure or whether the school fell short by a little or by a lot.”
Mr. Torlakson further notes, “NCLB’s mandatory identification also places restrictions on how districts can use funding to meet the unique needs of its schools. Such funding restrictions impose huge burdens on the schools of California, which have already experienced $18 billion in cuts in state and local funding over the last four years and face looming triggered cuts for the upcoming year.”
“The economic crisis has hit California harder than nearly any other state. We do not have the luxury of dedicating scarce resources to meeting the rigid requirements of an outdated and ineffective federal law,” Mr. Torlakson wrote.
“Additionally, NCLB’s flawed accountability system places undue stress on the districts’ and the state’s capacity to meet the needs of increasing numbers of identified schools,” he added.
Mr. Torlakson proposed that California be allowed to freeze the imposition of sanctions and mandatory identifications for the coming school year at last year’s levels.
“Because of these shortcomings of the NCLB accountability system, I believe flexibility is appropriate, warranted, and urgently needed. California schools require immediate relief from the escalating sanctions imposed on schools that fail to make AYP,” he wrote.
Mr. Torlakson added, “For the 2011-12 school year, I propose that California be permitted to freeze sanctions and mandatory identification required under NCLB Section 1116 at the 2010-11 level. Schools that have not made AYP would not be subject to initial identification nor to escalating sanctions, but rather, would remain in their current status of school improvement, corrective action, or restructuring, giving the district and state additional time to provide positive supports. This approach will give California schools additional time to implement current interventions without forcing them into a new, short-term model while the state moves forward in developing our next generation accountability system.”
California has not applied for a waiver. Rather, the Superintendent of Public Instruction said on Friday, that he was merely asking the Education Secretary to “freeze the state’s annual proficiency targets and thus avoid having a new cohort of schools to fall into the failing category.”
“We are not applying for a waiver at this time,” he said. “My understanding is the conditions – if any – that would be attached to a waiver are still being worked on and there has been not a final determination by Arne Duncan and his department as to what conditions or caveats will be part of the waiver.”
“We’re weighing in to say, ‘Don’t saddle us with conditions that we can’t meet or we don’t feel are appropriate for California,’ ” Mr. Torlakson explained.
“And if he (Duncan) can’t resist a waiver that isn’t tied up with a lot of caveats and costs, the next best thing is freezing the accountability act as it is, not holding anyone accountable for it anymore,” Mr. Torlakson added.
“We are looking at all options and hoping to get a positive response from this letter,” he said. “We’ll cross the bridge when we get there but all options are on the table.”
According to the Capitol Weekly, Mr. Torlakson described a recent visit to an elementary school in Southern California to see “the turmoil caused by NCLB once again visibly clear.”
“The school, he said, like many others in the state, is making progress as they are struggling against huge budget cuts, bigger class-sizes and more demanding performance targets” Capitol Weekly reported.
“They’ve just had a significant boost in test scores,” he noted. “But because it wasn’t reflected before a particular deadline – even though all this process was being made – they are going to have to put out letters saying they are a failing school.
“The teachers, of course, are discouraged by that and the parents, confused by that,” he said. “I think it just shows that the system is unrealistic and out of touch.”
Mr. Torlakson noted in the letter that he is working with the state legislature to put in place the next generation of accountability systems to evaluate schools more appropriately and effectively, and urged the Administration to support state-determined accountability systems.
In addition, Mr. Torlakson’s letter states that the current federal waiver proposal “presents problems for California” by asking states to commit to new policies that are beyond the scope of NCLB.
“The appropriate forum for consideration of any new federal mandates is through the Congressional reauthorization process, which by its nature requires greater transparency and broader democratic debate,” Mr. Torlakson said in the letter.
—David M. Greenwald reporting
This is a lot of political posturing – the move for waivers has already been afoot.
From msnbc:
[quote]The Obama administration will provide qualifying states a waiver from No Child Left Behind after Congress failed to act on reforming the program, the Department of Education said on Monday.[/quote]
My question is what represents a “qualifying state”? One that will support Obama in the upcoming election? Call me cynical…
This is an area where there may be common ground – our society is over regulated. The downside is cost and the inability to get things done. The GOP complains all of the time that over regulation is hurting business and impacting job growth – they are right.
It is not just business and education being affected. I would like to see every community go through their lists of ordinances with a goal of eliminating half of them. Keep the saftey related rules but eliminate the stupid ones – like tree ordinances.
“It is not just business and education being affected. I would like to see every community go through their lists of ordinances with a goal of eliminating half of them.”
Alphonso, for once I actually agree with you.
[i]”It is not just business and education being affected. I would like to see every community go through their lists of ordinances with a goal of eliminating half of them.”[/i]
I absolutely agree with this, but I’m fine with performance standards and regulation applied to organizations funded by public money. When you look at the actions of government over the last few decades, the trends have been just the oposite… ramp up regulation on private business, and let public agencies run amuck.
It is laughable that the education establishment – otherwise knows as the largest public adult jobs program in the country – would argue against no child left behind. They have proven tremendous skill at leaving copious numbers of children behind. I guess they want that to remain their right despite getting 100% of their funding through government redistributions.
It’s not laughable at all. The problem that it suffers is first it’s inflexible and therefore punishes districts for things out of their control. Second, it hasn’t taken into account the massive amounts of funding cuts. Third, it seems to be all stick and doesn’t provide funding to fix the problems. I also think it increased the standards too rapidly, when you start getting good schools out of compliance, then you know the program has a flaw.
“They have proven tremendous skill at leaving copious numbers of children behind. “
Jeff, I respect your intellect too much to really think you believe this. You and I know both know there are lots of reasons for kids to be left behind beyond the school, and if you don’t believe me come over to my place for an afternoon and I’ll show you.
David: I do believe this. I know there are many factors in the personal lives of these kids. However, that is the reality of the customer base. There is not a business model on earth that can survive refusing to adopt the challenge to satify the needs of their customer base… no matter how difficult. All I hear from the public school supporters is parental blame… as if there is some solution there. What is the solution… testing for parental preparation before approval for conception, free birth control, sterilization, forced marriages and the elimination of divorce as an option? Frankly, I think deportation of all illegal immigrants and their families would help here, but I’m not cold hearted enough to recommend that.
Public education in this state and in this country is dismal. The drop out rates are through the roof. And all we get is oposition to NCLB and a demand for more funding. We have copious evidence that there is no correlation with the amount of funding and outcomes. The problem is that the education system is broken/flawed/incapable and needs to change. The oposition to NCLB is just more evidence that the system cannot repair and improve itself enough to meet our needs of a society.
If you have a kid from a broken family that has behavior issues, you need a customized program to deal with it. In fact, you need a customized program for every single kid… because they are all unique and they all have unique needs.
Read up on “education personalization” and “school of one”. Even if we quadrupled spending, the public school system is too monolithic and bureaurcratic to be able to adopt the pace and scope of change required.
We need a new model that uses the private sector to reduce the scope of services a public school must provide. Yes, maybe this will result in the public schools educating more disadvantaged kids, but they at least they could taylor their education approach to better serve these kids.
I stand by my point that the public school system is skillful at leaving too many kids behind. We should have zero tollernance for leaving any kids behind. There is possibly nothing more important today than education quality and outcomes. It should be our top domestic policy agenda item. I care about teachers like I care about anyone else that needs a job. However, it is WAY down the list from my carring about kids and country. If you really put kids first and the country first, you would be behind drastic education reform.
Note the following from the California Teachers Association on the topic of school reform:
[quote]The past several of months has seen a great deal of discussion about “education reform” in the national media. Oprah. NBC. Bill Gates. Even Mark Zuckerberg. Everyone seems to have an idea about how we should improve our public education system. Waiting for Superman has shaken the public awake, offering a glimpse into some of the problems with our system, but it does so at the expense of public school teachers, our union and our students [b][comment… note which entity comes last in this list][/b]. It ignores the vast majority of the realities in order to focus on charter schools. Traditional public schools – along with their students and their teachers – are strangely absent. See the National Education Policy Center’s take on “Waiting for Superman” and “The Lottery.” The same policy center has just come out with a report finding the LA Times teacher rankings “deeply flawed”.
Day in and day out educators are doing their best for their students with far fewer resources and overcrowded classrooms. Instead of pointing the finger and casting stones, especially when research proves these “reforms” ineffective, we should be working together to not only reform our public schools, but to improve our public schools.[/quote]
This is the same template for the teachers unions… all defense and no offense. Here is their template strategy:
1) [b]Teachers are the Victims![/b] – They use emotive arguments painting teachers as over-worked, underappreciated, and attacked by people that “just don’t know enough to be allowed to have an opinion”.
2) [b]Education Performance is Good and Improving![/b] – Don’t read those studies, ready these other studies that show great outsomes and improvements. Also, if terrible thing like NCLB we would be able to a better job (even though we were slipping in performance before NCLB was enacted).
3) [b]The Real Problem is Underfunding![/b] – If we were just given more money we would make many improvements. Just ignore the lack of data correlating higher spending with greater outcomes, this is irrelevant… we will do a much better job with the extra money this time.
The irony here is that the crappy public education provided to so many people over the years contributes to them being ignorant enough to actually believe this hogwash from the CTA.
Learning Styles Debunked: There is No Evidence Supporting Auditory and Visual Learning, Psychologists Say
[url]http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/news/releases/learning-styles-debunked-there-is-no-evidence-supporting-auditory-and-visual-learning-psychologists-say.html[/url]
NCLB was designed to make schools fail so that a new model of the type favored by Milton Friedman could emerge. In the next few years almost all schools will fail NCLB benchmarks causing dislocations and demoralization of teachers without improving student outcomes.
I spoke with an old friend who has been teaching Physics for 20 years last week. Without prompt he started telling me how ” NCLB was f**king everything up.” This from a teacher who has sent students to the finest universities in the country; Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Berkeley, Brown, Davis and many others. This from a teacher that puts in many many extra hours working with kids after school and evenings. This from a teacher who sits on a scholarship committee raising and distributing money to deserving students in great need of assistance.
Of course my friend didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know.
Torlakson deserves our support for taking this on.
NCLB has serious structural problems, is underfunded, and has outlived its usefulness.
JB: [i]Read up on “education personalization” and “school of one”. Even if we quadrupled spending, the public school system is too monolithic and bureaurcratic to be able to adopt the pace and scope of change required.[/i]
What you refer to in these phrasing, which you posted links for in comments to another article, is commonly known as differentiated instruction. It isn’t unique to technology charter schools, but is also used in a number of public schools.
The Forest Lake Elementary program is impressive (at the edutopia link), but is remeniscent of many of the components of Da Vinci HS and a number of similar programs.
I found at a different site that they have a student teacher ratio of 12 to 1. I think it would be terrific if all elementary schools could work at that ratio. On average, the ratio is 20 to 1 across California K-12 schools, and that was when times were a little better in 2002. Couldn’t locate more specific data from my usual website (down for maintenance?), but I believe most elementary schools operate at a higher ratio than 12 to 1.
JB: [i]All I hear from the public school supporters is parental blame… as if there is some solution there.[/i]
I think we probably disagree at some level on this. You seem to seek an educational program that would overcome any deficit of parent support. As a parent, I’ve always been reading to my kids, meeting with the teachers to find out what they’re covering, limit screen time (TV, computer games, mainly) when it distracts from homework and other supporting activities (reading). This just makes sense to me, and I think I’ve seen it make a difference. I know that not all parents do this, and I have seen apparent negative consequences in their kids. The Harlem Kids’ Zone (a highly touted charter school program) actually has classes for parents to teach them how to be supportive in their kids educational development at home. If there’s an alternative way of looking at this, I’d be interested to know.
To wdf1: I don’t disagree that parental involvement is very important. Frankly, it is how I got all three of my kids through grades K-12, bc the schools did such a lousy job. I did extensive tutoring at home. However, with more and more families with two working parents, it may be unrealistic to expect parents to “pick up the slack” when the schools fail our kids. I can remember having a disagreement with a teacher bc my youngest daughter was bored out of her gourd at school. I simply asked the teacher if she could give my daughter some other more challenging work to do. Her answer – I don’t have to, your daughter can do what everyone else is doing. I took the matter to the principal, who much to my surprise agreed w me. The teacher was infuriated and shocked, but somehow managed to offer my daughter some more challenging work. That principal was none other than Norm Enfield – one of the best principal’s this town has ever had.
I just think we expect our schools to fix problems that it cannot solve. With the large number of kids growing up in broken homes, with substance abuse, trauma, medical conditions, birth defects and abnormalities, learning disabilities, etc., given shrinking resources, I see little hope that a large and growing segment will get their needs met and that will tend to impact the level of education the rest of the kids get as well.
[quote]I just think we expect our schools to fix problems that it cannot solve. With the large number of kids growing up in broken homes, with substance abuse, trauma, medical conditions, birth defects and abnormalities, learning disabilities, etc., given shrinking resources, I see little hope that a large and growing segment will get their needs met and that will tend to impact the level of education the rest of the kids get as well.[/quote]
I don’t disagree that schools cannot necessarily fix problem of students with serious problems at home, but they don’t have to make things worse either. I know my son was “dumped” into a program called Transition Academy, that was nothing more than an attempt to segregate students with problems away from the rest of the “normal” students. Learning disabled students were lumped in with discipline problems. And as a result, my dyslexic son was bullied the entire time he was at DHS by a group of thuggish kids that terrorized the entire school. Nor did my son get the help he needed at DHS. He didn’t get that assistance until he went to Sac City, and again at UCD. Both Sac City and UCD were instrumental in his success at achieving a BS in Math.
I cant speak for your son’s experience but my nephew from the teacher, to the resource specialist, to the counselor and the principal has been helped immensely despite huge obstacles and problems. But as we learned, Davis is one of the few districts to offer these kinds of interventions and support.
ERM: I think we’re probably talking about two different populations with respect to this issue. Both you and JB have used examples of your kids in expressing disappointment with the Davis schools, and by extension, perhaps, condemning the current education system to some level. But as best as I can infer, they graduated from high school and went on to college. I, too, have seen my kids have at least a couple of teachers that weren’t a good fit, but like you, we intervened to figure out how to work around it. I’m not expecting an absolutely perfect system (though I like seeing efforts at improvement), but one that I can make work for my kids.
The population that I’m thinking of are generally lower income and less educated parents, whose kids generally make up a large fraction of underperforming students. I am troubled that the system is currently rigged to blame teachers and the school system for that underperformance, even when improvements are taking place.
What I like about NCLB is that it has put in place a feedback system to determine where improvements can be made. What I dislike is the currently prescribed levels of improvement for all kids being used as a benchmark for defining whether a system is failing or not.
To wdf1/Elaine/Davis,
This is a great discussion. As I wrote, I think this may be the single most important topic of our time.
There problems with public education as I see them are all rooted in a culture of “can’t do” or “won’t do”. For example: “I can’t do it because I don’t have the funding. I can’t do it because the family unit is in disarray or missing and the parents are incompetent. I can’t do it because I am already overworked and underappreciated. I can’t do it because of the concern of fairness and equality for all. I can’t do it because of some religious person would use public funds.” Then there is the general … “I won’t do it because my union has ensured that I do not have to.”
It is wonderful for the kids will well-educated parents owning the time and resources to supplement what is missing, but this only cements the practice and supports a continued view from the education system that this is the “new normal” for them. If this is the new normal, then it is understandable how more kids lacking these parental resources are being left behind. It is ironic that many of the same parents that have devoted copious time and resource to their own kids educational outcomes, are the most apt to oppose reforms… thereby causing more kids to trapped in a system that is more likely to leave them behind. I would consider this cruel if I thought these parents understood the cause-effect. However, like the teachers, they have accepted everything as the new normal and resist change as a natural response. They don’t grasp a vision for how it could be better.
I cannot inject this into the understanding of most people if they do not have experience with it. I suggest all read up on organizational best practices for excellence in service delivery. Read about how successful organizations overcome the most difficult competitive challenges to satisfy the most difficult customer. Also look at best practices for providing top-level customer service. Once you become educated in these practices and understand how they fit within the organizational work culture, and how they manifests in the behavior of management and employees… you would find yourself appalled at how drastically far from this is the business of public education. Within the behaviors and norms of the business of public education, the signs are glaring and almost embarrassing if you know what you are looking for.
It is not easy for any organization to fix a dysfunctional customer-service work culture. Management and employee habits are tough to break… especially for more experienced employees that have hardened their resolve to resist change. Sweeping organizational change is very, very difficult even with the freedom to make human resource changes. It takes vision, strategy, planning, and execution skills. It takes leadership and the leaders must have authority and accountability to make it happen. Even with this power, there is a “principle of stakeholder thirds”… that for big organizational change you will have: one-third that gets it and supports the change; one-third that will be ambivalent but can be swayed (either way); and one-third that will be impediments and fight the change.
Any executive with experience having to maintain positive momentum for a project of change while having to fire a third of his/her workforce to make it happen would then be motivated to learn how to implement the type of organizational constant improvement required to ensure he/she never have to do it again. That is what excellent companies do to survive these days. In a unionized and politicized environment like we have for public education, it would be impossible to make the kind of change required. That is why I am advocating vouchers as a reform… because it will force change to occur and it will spawn a “can do” attitude from new business models competing to provide the best education value to the customer. This will infect the public sector because the public schools would have to start competing on value.
Our vision for K-12 education should greatly expand. Our goal should absolutely be that no child is left behind. The failure of NCLB is not so much a testament that the policy was flawed as it is that our model for providing education is flawed. As I have said, I would tax myself more if public education could deliver a commensurately better product. However, what we get is only a bunch of excuses for how difficult the job is, and how they need more funding just to maintain the status quo. That is completely unacceptable and indicative of why we need drastic reform.
I just noticed: “To wdf1/Elaine/Davis”… I meant to write “To wdf1/Elaine/David”
[i]”The population that I’m thinking of are generally lower income and less educated parents, whose kids generally make up a large fraction of underperforming students. I am troubled that the system is currently rigged to blame teachers and the school system for that underperformance, even when improvements are taking place.”[/i]
I would add to this the kids from parental resource-constrained, middle-class families that are non-template learners. These kids are also at risk of being left behind. I get heartaches just thinking about the joy of learning melting away every day these, often extremely smart, kids are injected with a feeling of being stupid and incapable because they don’t have the genetic wiring for rote memorization or otherwise “fit in” to the growing narrow box of what behaviors and personalities teachers believe they have to teach to.
Improvements are taking place at a snail’s pace and with the education system kicking and screaming all the way.
It is amazing to me how many people defend and protect mediocrity in public school and teacher performance, but then hold our military to a performance benchmark of perfection. Poor performance of both leads to the devastation of lives. I see more people get upset about an undercooked piece of chicken at a restaurant than for our underperforming schools.
JB: Here’s an interesting link to info about Forest Lake Elementary, held up as an example of personalized learning:
[url]http://www.education.com/schoolfinder/us/south-carolina/columbia/forest-lake-elementary-school/#overview[/url]
This school did not meet AYP (adequately yearly performance). By a certain definition, this school could be considered a failure. We may have trouble coming up with an acceptable and attainable definition of a successful school.
So, how would you measure that a publicly funded city police force is succeeding? If the crime rate is zero? If so, then all of our police forces are probably failing. Should we privatize the police? Hire Blackwater (or their successor organization)? I think you’re dealing with a similar situation in education.
[b]I cannot inject this into the understanding of most people if they do not have experience with it. I suggest all read up on organizational best practices for excellence in service delivery. Read about how successful organizations overcome the most difficult competitive challenges to satisfy the most difficult customer. Also look at best practices for providing top-level customer service. Once you become educated in these practices ….[/b]
This is all a bunch of rhetoric. I have been in business a long time and I have noticed success comes from those who do something rather than just talk about it. To me our education system is locally run by people elected in the community. The Davis community is certainly open to education ideas and the community has the resources to generate ideas and effect change. Davis could and should be the model for change – it has everything going for it. All it takes is people to step up and participate in the process. It is not good enough to sit on the sideline and blog about problems. A better approach would be to actively work to improve the process. You are not doing anything by simply ranting! Frankly I am not doing anything either so it is unfair for me to complain about your inaction. I am just pointing out that opportunities are being missed because too many people are “too busy” to get involved.
JB: [i] I see more people get upset about an undercooked piece of chicken at a restaurant than for our underperforming schools.[/i]
The difference between K-12 education and restaurant food is that the restaurant controls the product until point of sale. In K-12 education, the school controls the “product” for only a fraction of the time.
One way to produce results you’d like, perhaps in a private enterprise setting, is to go the route of [u]Brave New World[/u], where development is completely controlled to produce the right number of Alpha-plus indviduals that society needs. Praise the Ford!
[url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_new_world[/url]
wdf1: How do we measure?
[img]http://www.cscdc.org/miscjeff/ProudParent.jpg[/img]
[url]http://www.greatschools.org/school/parentReviews.page?id=923&state=SC#from..HeaderLink[/url]
This data shows consistent improvement except for Social Studies. Maybe they need new teachers for that subject. This data does not match the the data in your link.
[url]http://www.greatschools.org/modperl/achievement/sc/923#from..HeaderLink[/url]
In terms of AYP being perfect, it is not. But before that there was limited-to-none accountability for schools to improve. For a school like Forest Lake Elementary, I think key measures would include many factors other than just AYP scores. I think that is the point you are trying to make. However, I would expect scores to increase. If not, then I would question aspects of their model and implement changes.
Here is a link to a company developing the type of technology we need to ramp up education services.
[url]http://www.wayangoutpost.com/[/url]
[i]” A better approach would be to actively work to improve the process. You are not doing anything by simply ranting!”[/i]
Agreed. That is why I actively support the public k-12 education reform movement including working to change public awareness for the benefits of privatization and vouchers. That gives me some license to rant, does it not?
JB: Here are some reviews from the same website (greatschools.org) of Patwin Elementary, a local neighborhood Davis school that you may have heard of:
[url]http://www.greatschools.org/school/parentReviews.page?id=7794&state=CA#from..HeaderLink[/url]
Also just about as many glowing reviews. If this is how we agree to define school success, then can I count on you to support such a school at parcel tax election time?
wdf1: Actually I am on record praising Patwin and other Davis elementary schools. I am also on record saying that our most pressing missed opportunities are with Davis’s middle schools and the main high school.
However, Patwin and Forest Lake are hardly compariable give the income levels of the average student. I think you make the consistent point that it is more difficult to educate lower income kids. In that case I think you would need to compare Forest Lake to other schools with a similar racial and economic demographic.
[b]That gives me some license to rant, does it not?[/b]
I will agree with that.
I am just not sure we need to privatize education. As I look around I see some groups of people doing very well while others lag behind, generally speaking. If you look at kids whose parents or recent ancestors come from India and Japan along with all of the countries in between, you will see a group of students who do very well, again in general terms. Why is that? they have the same teachers as everyone else yet they get more out of the process. Look at a community like Cupertino which is dominated by “Asian” kids (actually many mixed families with one Asian parent) – they manage to excel. Some of the qualities that I see are-
– more parental guidance (pressure)
– more school, most go the Saturday school
– more focus on math
– a little less focus on non-school activities – school is the priority
– a little less focus on “fun” and more focus on work
There is nothing magical about that model – it is mostly just focus and setting goals.
Alphonso: [i]If you look at kids whose parents or recent ancestors come from India and Japan along with all of the countries in between, you will see a group of students who do very well, again in general terms. Why is that?[/i]
Top of the Class: How Asian Parents Raise High Achievers–and How You Can Too
[url]http://www.amazon.com/Top-Class-Asian-Parents-Achievers–/dp/0425205614/[/url]
Alphonso, you raise some very good points. Here is my thinking on this.
1.[b]Creativity[/b] – The US is not Japan or India. We have been tremendously more creative. We have invented most of the things that these two countries have exploited to even justify their populations being educated in math, science and engineering. Both of those countries have excelled cranking out expert copycats. Most of Asia including China is doing the same. The bar is much higher for America requiring the development of well-educated creative people. Tiger moms create risk-averse, play by the rules kids that eventually enter the workplace and create far fewer patents per degree.
2.[b]American Exceptionalism[/b] – We support much a higher average standard of living than India. Our population is much more diverse than Japan. We are the third most populated and third most densely-populated country and we are a superpower. We are higher up the global economic food chain and have much more to lose if we crash. Our economic development bar is higher than all other countries in terms of inventions and business churn. In the new information economy, education is more of the key. Our K-12 education system should be the new model for the rest of the industrialized world. Instead we are the laughing stock… even as we spend more per child than most countries that have better outcomes.
3.[b]American Diversity and Equality [/b] – Our diversity-plus-equality way is a great thing, but it comes at a cost of a more difficult challenge to educate all those diverse kids. If you are India, you just don’t count the education outcomes of the lower class “untouchable” people. If you are Japan… well you mostly educate native Japanese people. Even the northern European countries that American liberals seem to love are much less tolerant of diversity… and have much less diversity to deal with.
4.[b]American Politics [/b] – Just spending more per student does not improve outcomes. Michelle Rhea tried to reform the highest-cost schools in the nation (DC schools) and was beat back politically by the DC teachers union. The larger issue here is that we are blocked from even starting/testing new teaching models within the public school system because of the political stranglehold the teachers unions have over our political process.
Here is my response to your list:
[b]more parental guidance (pressure)[/b]
Not sure what you envision as a real solution to this. Do you really advocate putting more pressure on parents to fill the education gap from the public school system? Just what parents need… more pressure…
[b]more school, most go the Saturday school [/b]
I’m fine with this. How do you make it happen? Turn it over to a private school with this option and let parents make the choice. Otherwise it will never happen. How are you going to get all those union employees to start working Saturdays?
[b]more focus on math [/b]
I think this makes sense from the perspective that we need more science and engineering professionals in this country to compete in the modern economy. However, I think we need to completely update how match is taught in order to do this.
[b]a little less focus on non-school activities – school is the priority [/b]
I’m not sure what you mean here. I think kids learn plenty from well-run, well-organized non-academic activities. If you are a tiger mom your little darlings can only play the piano or violin. If the family goes on a vacation, why not make the kids research and investigation of the location. There are many creative ways to educate.
[b]a little less focus on “fun” and more focus on work[/b]
I get your point here, but I think it is an area where you and others are missing the boat on motivation theory and the value of engagement. The kids do not work for the teacher and the school; the teacher and school works for the kids. If you are a teacher, it is your job to engage each and every kid to inspire them to learn. Humans have a natural motivation to learn. Schools and teachers can destroy that natural motivation with an attitude that “all it takes is hard work by the student”. If the student is not engaged then the teacher is failing the student. If the student is engaged and still not doing the work, then the student is failing himself. The latter rarely happens in my experience.
“We are the third most populated and third most densely-populated country and we are a superpower.”
Are we more dense than China, India, Pakistan or Indonesia?
No. Apparently it is I that am dense. I don’t know why I wrote that. It was oposite of the point I would make that our vast open spaces make for more expensive and more difficult delivery of education and healthcare.
Thanks for reading my post and keeping me honest and accurate! 😉
JB
I agree with you about the need for ongoing educational reform. I am not sure however that you are aware of the ongoing change that is occurring. And I am not sure that you appreciate that “public” does not equal lack of change and “private”does not equal individualized effective instruction.
The DaVinci Academy where my son went to high school has been operating in Davis for 10 years, offering through the public school system,
an alternative to DHS that provides the educational standards that you frequently post as desirable. Last year, they expanded to the junior high
level. These kinds of programs will not exist in the “public”realm if the funding for public schools is gutted as you advocate.
As for the private sector, my daughter attended St. Francis High School ( one of the two most highly ranked private schools in the area) and received essentially the same education as available through the AP program available at DHS, at much higher cost. There were a number of entrenched teachers there who it would appear to me had not revised a lesson plan in 30 years. They were protected not by a union but by their religious affiliation. Private does not always equal innovative, personalized instruction and public does not always equal entrenched, poor quality and uncaring.
JB
A couple of questions regarding your advocacy for vouchers that I have posed before, but have not seen you address directly.
1) In Davis, or a similar small community with full geographic access, I agree that a voucher system might be at least logistically feasible.
How do you see this working out in an inner city area where the kind of private school you seem to envision would be unlikely to locate?
2) What do you see as the alternative for those children whose applications are not accepted by the voucher schools? Or would you mandate
acceptance of all applicants as is the charge of the public schools by residential district?
3) You frequently cite a business model as one that schools should emulate based on customer service. While I think this is a wonderful goal, I would point out some incongruities unless you, and the remainder of the taxpayers are willing to pay much more for vouchers than we do now.
My evidence from the business world? You tend to get what you are willing to pay for. If I go to Nordstrom’s and pay $ 100.00 for a pair of shoes, I will get excellent service in a very pleasant atmosphere from staff who are knowledgeable about the product. If I go to Target, I may pay $ 20.00 for a pair of shoes but will be lucky if I can find anyone who even knows where to check to see if there are more sizes available, let alone knows anything about the product. The private sector, as you have frequently pointed out, tends to view maximization of profit as their most important priority. I do not see how this will automatically translate into improved, affordable education.
I am not opposed to a voucher system that would include the following points:
1) Must accept all applicants
2) Must provide education in all geographic areas
3) Must not be religion based (based on direct personal experience as well as my admitted secular bias)
4) Must be cost neutral with regard to current school expenditures
5) Must meet the standards of the top performing public schools (if not, why are we changing to private while continuing mediocrity?)
6) Must allow for optional direct parental involvement in education program
When I see a voucher proposal that meets all these criteria, I will join you in working towards it’s implementation. Until then, I will continue volunteering and donating to the public schools.
Medwoman:
Private schools in inner cities already happen when allowed to happen. I am also fine with charter schools, but not the model we see today where the local school board controls them and the teachers unions influence politicians to do everything they can to ensure the charter schools are run just like the failed public school that preceded them.
Private schools do not cost more per child than do public schools as a general rule. It depends on what is offered.
You use Nordstrom and Target as an example but seem to miss the point that you have the choice to shop at either store… and many other stores. Most parents and their kids do not have any choice when it comes to their K-12 education. It is the old soviet model where the government gives you one choice.
Your list of requirements also misses the point of choice, and leads me to question if you really understand and/or value the power of choice. Note that you have choices – a lot of choice – in most every product and service. The reason companies improve their products and services – constantly strive to improve value – is that you have choice as a customer. The bad plumber goes out of business as the good plumber’s business grows. Consider that this is only plumbing… with the schools we are talking about human lives. Kids that drop out and those that get a crappy education are much more likely to die poor and young. We should all be advocating hyper-competition to come up with the best model of education value… if only to save lives.
As I have pointed out before, beyond what is protected by anti-discrimination laws, private schools accepting vouchers would have to meet certain statutory requirements for student/customer acceptance. Other than this, I disagree with everything else on your list because parents would have the choice. For example, if the private school accepting vouchers had a model that limited direct parent involvement (for example a boarding school), then you could choose not to send your kids to that school if you wanted to be more involved.
I get a laugh out of your “not religious-based” requirement because in the same sentence you admit you are secular-biased. So is the public school system. What if as a parent I have a problem with the public schools brainwashing my kids with a secular (read: anti-religion) mindset? Should I not too have the choice to send my child to a religious-based school? Seperation of church and state cust both ways. In fact, the original intent was to prevent the secular world from restricting or controlling the practice of religion… just what the public schools do today.
Again, if a religious school accepts vouchers they have to accept kids of all races and genders. They should also be allowed to test for acedemic acceptance just like our universities do. They should be able to teach the curriculum that they choose as long as they demonstrate adequate student performance. If you as a parent want your kiddies to learn in a complete religious-sterile school, then keep them in the public schools. If you cannot find a private school that will accept your kids or that you deem acceptable, then keep them in the public schools. You support the public schools, so why would it be a problem keeping your kiddies there?
You and others can’t seem to break free of this top-down-control-outcomes mindset.
I am not advocating doing away with public schools unless they cannot perform. If we open up the business education to the free market competition to provide the best customer value it will inject urgency into the public schools to improve. Those that play the game well enough will survive. Those that don’t will lose to private alternatives or be taken over as a private-run charter school.
I think the biggest fear from those that oppose vouchers is that the private sector would begin to blow the doors off the public school model. They fear the loss of funding to pay public-sector teachers more than they fear the missed opportunity to save more kids from being left behind. That is sad.
I don’t have all the answers for how a privatized K-12 education model would work. For example, what is the model for athletics? With respect to athletics, I do have concerns about the impact on team sports by diluting the public school population. Frankly, I would be fine with an arrangement for multiple schools to participate with some shared funding model. I would also be fine developing a small-schools league where less gifted kids still get a chance to participate in sports. I would all of this up to smart entrepreneurs once they are set free to pursue profit. A new model will develop and it will be better than the old model.
My guess is that a school district like Davis would remain mostly non-private, especially the K-7 grades, since the schools perform well enough (although the latest drop in test scores is indicative of trouble in educational paradise). However, I think we would eventually see more kids from the later grades being routed to private schools. The reduction in student population would require the district to downsize. However, since the voucher paid is less than the public school cost per child, efficiencies should be gained by the district to invest in the remaining students. The HS might end up expanding DaVinci because of a resulting higher concentration of students benefitting from that format. Or, the general student engagement level would improve due to the results of competitive forces, and so no special format would be required. In any case it would be a win-win for the students.
[i]What if as a parent I have a problem with the public schools brainwashing my kids with a secular (read: anti-religion) mindset?[/i]
Please describe what you mean by a [i]secular mindset. [/i]
JB: [i] The reduction in student population would require the district to downsize. However, since the voucher paid is less than the public school cost per child, efficiencies should be gained by the district to invest in the remaining students. The HS might end up expanding DaVinci because of a resulting higher concentration of students benefitting from that format. Or, the general student engagement level would improve due to the results of competitive forces, and so no special format would be required. In any case it would be a win-win for the students.[/i]
Interesting to see you acknowledge (at least the first time I’ve seen it) the value of DaVinci high school, which suggests that you implicitly acknowledge that the school district has been making adjustments and responses to its customer base and changing times. (God forbid you explicitly compliment a public, tax-funded entity?) But I also take your comments as a bit of a backhanded slap at Davis High School. Apart from its football team, where have you seen DHS decline in the past 3-4 years? Its enrollments have gone up, its API score is higher than it has ever been, dropout rate has gone down, the number & % of students taking AP tests has gone up.
DHS and Da Vinci (and DSIS, for that matter) complement each other and serve different populations of students. My kid was in Da Vinci for a year, but then moved to DHS because he needed with a little more traditional structure than Da Vinci offered. But Da Vinci worked very well for a more independently minded student who could thrive with something a little different from a traditional high school. Da Vinci also benefits because students can also participate in programs that DHS offers, such as music and AP courses. Da Vinci students perform comparably with DHS students where comparisons can be made, but I don’t see where you can make the case that DV is superior.
The recent demographic trend in Davis is that parents move here more often when their kids are in secondary grades rather than primary grades. Those are families who are looking at the recent performance of secondary schools to make that decision.
Elsewhere you have said rather explicitly that you want to tear down the whole system and start from scratch. I disagree with that. There is plenty of good stuff that is working here, and where changes are needed, then I don’t see it as beyond the ability of the current school system to make those changes.
I welcome trying things out in places where the situations merits it, but I don’t think you’re making a good case that we need to do this in Davis.
[i]”Please describe what you mean by a secular mindset”[/i]
Atheism is a more politically-correct religion.
Non-atheism religion is bad and religious people are bad people.
Non atheist religion=Republican (those Repubicans cling to their guns and religion, right?)
Science explains EVERYTHING about the natural world… there is no supernatural explanation.
However, all of this pales in comparison to the social and cultural corruption of morality that results from an active rejection of anything that even hints of having a non-atheist religious connection… especially a Christian religious connection. Ignoring for the moment that this rejection is based on a misguided and inaccurate interpretation of our founding documents… the lack of a strong moral foundation (one that we can only get from traditional religion, despite what academic elites think society can be provided by simply by their brain power).. has led to a degradation of social and culture morality.
When I think long and hard about this, the issue of gay-rights is the catalyst. I am pissed at Christianity for being so ridged and slow for accepting gays as just another form of God’s children, and I am pissed at the gay rights movement and the secular left for using this as a political wedge issue to push their secular religion on society.
I think we need more prayer in school, not less. The secular mindset sees prayer in school as being more bad than good. Public schools pass than mindset on to kids.
[i]”Interesting to see you acknowledge (at least the first time I’ve seen it) the value of DaVinci high school, which suggests that you implicitly acknowledge that the school district has been making adjustments and responses to its customer base and changing times.”[/i]
I do value DaVinci. And I like the model. Although, I think it exists partially because the regular HS does not engage enough kids. However, I think separating kids this way may be the best thing. There are other models like the “High Scool of One” that seem promising enough to not require a separate school for non-template learners.
As I have said before, I am not an enemy of pubic education per se. I am an enemy of children being left behind. I think you and others are too protective of Davis schools as is, and as a consequence they are not being strategic and opportunitist enough to seek greater improvements… and as a consequence of that I expect more kids to be left behind.
Did you read this in the Enterprise about the recent API test scores:
[quote]However, this probably won’t rank as a banner year [for Davis]. All of the elementary schools in the Davis district posted lower API figures than they had in the preceding year. In some cases, the change was a statistically insignificant single-digit drop — conceivably, a “blip.” In other cases, it was a potentially more significant double-digit decline.
Last year, Davis had four elementary schools score more than 900 points on the API; this year, there are two elementary schools over 900. The fact that a slight API decline occurred across the board among the district’s elementary campuses drew the attention of Associate Superintendent Clark Bryant.
“I don’t have an answer for it yet. But I’ve already met with our elementary principals to start identifying where we need to refocus our efforts,” Bryant said.
At the junior high and high school level, some campuses went up as much as nine points, while others fell as much as 10 points on the API — not a major shift in either direction. And while Davis High School scored a very respectable 867 on the API, several other campuses elsewhere in the region posted slightly higher scores, including Rocklin High in Rocklin (881), Oak Ridge High in El Dorado Hills (879), Vista del Lago High in Folsom (881) and Natomas Charter in Natomas (876).
So the Davis district can’t claim bragging rights for the highest API among the region’s high schools this year. Nor is Davis the only unified district (grades K-12) in the region with all regular schools over 800 on the API: Rocklin Unified also has all regular schools over 800, both this year and last.[/quote]
Davis seems to be getting it’s but kicked by other districts doing better to improve.
Secularism is not atheism.
JB
I do not agree with you that the majority of liberals are atheists. Nor do I agree that atheism is taught in the schools. I spent many, many hours in my children’s classrooms and never once heard a word from a teacher that would promote atheism.
I do think that the majority of liberals do not support teaching Christianity in the public schools any more than we would support teaching Buddhism or Islam or shamanism of any variety. Now if you felt a spiritual aspect is important enough to devote class time to, I would completely support a moment of silence or quiet contemplation. Or if you would support a class that covered all of the world’s religions and their beliefs, I would support that. What I do not support is singling out a particular religion and teaching that as though it were truth.
“Smart entrepreneurs” are free to pursue profit right now. They do not need “setting free” . In this community we have Montessiri programs,
MerryHill, Waldorf, and in Sacramento a number of Catholic private schools from elementary through St. Francis and Jesuit as well as Country Day and probably a number that I am forgetting. What you seem to be advocating to me is not the free market, which already exists, but rather government subsidy of private schools because you prefer that model. You as the education consumer also are free to choose one of these schools for your children. No one is stopping you, just as no one stopped me from sending my daughter to the Catholic school of her choice. True, we had the good fortune to be able to afford it outright, but there were many scholarships available for those who could not. About 1/2 of my daughters friends were their on scholarship.Based on many classroom hours put in, I do not agree that the public schools “brainwash” children against religion. But for those who do, I think the answer is fairly straight forward in Davis. Send your children elsewhere.
With regard to your resorting to our founding documents, I would point out that these were written by men who were slave owners, who at times were prone to questioning whether or not women had souls, and who considered native Americans subhuman. While the ideals they espoused in terms of nation building resulted in the creation of a marvelous nation, I do not share your view of the seeming infallibility of their beliefs as a model for today’s world. Again, I believe in assessing each idea on it’s own merits, not simply judging it on the identity of it’s author.
“a strong moral foundation ( one that we can only get from traditional religion). You and I could not possibly disagree more on this point. Are you honestly saying that anyone who’s spiritual framework is not based on a traditional religion is immoral! Please explain to me why one cannot raise their children to consistently act in an honest, moral, ethical, compassionate manner without invoking a supernatural being.
I am sure that this is going to come as a big surprise to my children who I taught to consistently treat others with respect and caring without resorting to the threat of supernatural paternal disapproval. And if you are making the claim that nonreligious people are “immoral” how can you seriously make the claim that we secularists are the one’s claiming that religious people are bad. Surely your claim that only religious people have a moral foundation would suggest that the rest of us are “bad”. As a matter of fact Christianity teaches that those of us who are not believers are not only “bad” but are damned for all eternity. And you wonder why I am against my tax dollars being used at religious based schools !
“With regard to your resorting to our founding documents, I would point out that these were written by men who were slave owners, who at times were prone to questioning whether or not women had souls, and who considered native Americans subhuman. While the ideals they espoused in terms of nation building resulted in the creation of a marvelous nation, I do not share your view of the seeming infallibility of their beliefs as a model for today’s world. Again, I believe in assessing each idea on it’s own merits, not simply judging it on the identity of it’s author.”
I would also point out that the assumptions upon which this type of reading of the founding documents, and the separation of church and state in particular, are based exhibit a misunderstanding of the type of Christianity that was practiced by the nation’s founding fathers.
For the most part, they were deists, who did not believe that any supernatural being had any day-to-day influence upon the world–or even had any interest in the world. The deists believed that the Christian god basically set up the universe and left humankind to negotiate the world using reason and intellect.
They would not recognize the predominant brand of Christianity that is now practiced by many American Christians.
I might also note that secular humanism also arose out of the same historical moment as did deism–both were influenced by Enlightenment thinking.
[i]”Again, I believe in assessing each idea on it’s own merits, not simply judging it on the identity of it’s author.” [/i]
Ah, but what is the basis you use to judge a thing on its own merits?
Men need a moral basis, because otherwise right and wrong become defined by divisive individual self-interests and the “Marvelous Nation” begins down the slippery-slope of decline. The founding documents ultimately did not support slavery, allowed for women’s suffrage and a civil rights movement. The founders created a governance system of checks and balances precisely because they knew humans, including themselves, are imperfect by design and prone to selfish pursuits. We ignore the value of original intent at our own peril.
[quote]“We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” John Adams[/quote]
JB: [i] I think you and others are too protective of Davis schools as is, and as a consequence they are not being strategic and opportunitist enough to seek greater improvements… and as a consequence of that I expect more kids to be left behind.[/i]
I’ve made my case that the district has responded with Da Vinci and DSIS years ago and the numbers are promising and moving in the right direction, and I believe they can definitely continue to move in the right direction for the next few years, in particular at the secondary level.
[i]Davis seems to be getting it’s but kicked by other districts doing better to improve.[/i]
I see that even you are sucking up to an overachieving Davis mindset that you sometimes like to criticize — that something’s wrong with us if our kids aren’t the very highest achieving and in first place.
Families vote with their mortgages and rents. But as I said, we appear to be attracting enrollment. They can also do an out-of-district transfer if such a score and other factors are compelling enough.
[i]I am an enemy of children being left behind.[/i]
I can appreciate that, but I don’t think you’ll get to absolutely “no child left behind” until you figure out what to do with parents who can’t or won’t raise their kids in more optimal conditions. Sure, schools can help, but I don’t think you get optimal student performance from everyone until you figure out how to help the parenting/family situation for certain underperforming students.
JB
” because they knew humans, including themselves, are imperfect by design” I would state that this is what they believed and thought that they “knew”. I personally do not pretend that because I was taught something, that it necessarily makes that teaching correct. If our founding father’s had been raised as Muslims, that is what they would have believed or “known”to be correct and we might very well be living under, and adamantly defending Sharia law.
I see no evidence to support the claim that the wondrous physical universe in which we find ourselves was created by some hypothetical intelligent being. I also have no problem with those who do have this belief, as long as I am not forced to support their particular type of belief.
So as to your question of how do you judge a thing on it’s own merits? I think there is a fairly straight forward principle involved. One should treat others as they would choose to be treated. I believe that the vast majority of people would like to be treated as equals, fully respected,
be able to have enough to eat, an adequate shelter, clothing, medical care, and opportunity for education and to be able to live in peace.
For me, actions and attitudes that promote these for all will likely meet the standard as moral, while those that undermine these basic principles of mutual respect and caring, will likely not meet the standard. I think these basic principles are fairly universal in the world’s great religions, I just don’t see the need to have believe in which ever myth you happen to have been raised with in order to believe strongly in the underlying principles.
JB: John Adams was a Unitarian (as was Charles Darwin) just to give you some context for his thinking. I think you would tend to find Unitarians today to be on the liberal end of the political spectrum, but I don’t think you can categorically call them atheist.
paraphrasing: Liberals believe that…
[i]Science explains EVERYTHING about the natural world… there is no supernatural explanation.[/i]
Science is a framework for mediating and understanding objectively the world around us. Objectivity is what we can agree on through our senses. Science is not the only way to explain the world around us. There is nothing wrong with subjective experience; you just have to anticipate that not as many other people will agree with you.
JB: [i]When I think long and hard about this, the issue of gay-rights is the catalyst. I am pissed at Christianity for being so ridged and slow for accepting gays as just another form of God’s children, and I am pissed at the gay rights movement and the secular left for using this as a political wedge issue to push their secular religion on society.[/i]
I think you are seeing pushback from Republicans using the same topic as a wedge issue in the 2004 presidential election, where many states put definition of marriage acts on the same ballot in order to “get out the base”.
[i]I think we need more prayer in school, not less. The secular mindset sees prayer in school as being more bad than good. Public schools pass than mindset on to kids.[/i]
I could support this. The teacher could announce a moment of silence to collect one’s thoughts (and prayer if that’s a students choice)… just before math tests. I remember praying before math tests.
Here is a privately funded education program all ready to go:
[url]http://www.helplearn.org/index-flash.html[/url]
It is used in these schools:
[url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delphi_Schools[/url]
I don’t really want my tax dollars going to this.
Don,
That is the beauty of choice.
I absolutely would not choose to have taxpayer dollars going to the Church of Scientology via vouchers.
medwoman: [i]In this community we have Montessiri programs,
MerryHill, Waldorf, and[/i]
…St. James School:
[url]http://www.sjsdavis.com/[/url]
and Grace Valley Christian Academy:
[url]http://www.gracevalley.org/gvca/[/url]
JB: [i]As I have pointed out before, beyond what is protected by anti-discrimination laws, private schools accepting vouchers would have to meet certain statutory requirements for student/customer acceptance.[/i]
I would go much farther than that; there appears to be an implicit assumption by certain voucher proponents that private schools wouldn’t have to deal with the same red tape as public schools. I have mentioned this before, but if schools like this were to receive public money (vouchers), then it’s entirely fair that they be held to the same level of accountability as public schools, and provide the same kind of transparency found here:
[url]http://www.ed-data.k12.ca.us/[/url]
and take the same kind of academic assessments found here:
[url]http://star.cde.ca.gov/[/url]
That means opening up their books, budgets, being subject to a public audit, possibly have certain meetings open to the public, and be liable for sanctions if they don’t meet any standards that public schools have to meet. This is the kind of red tape that conservatives deplore, but this is what public accountability and transparency means.
[i]I think the biggest fear from those that oppose vouchers is that the private sector would begin to blow the doors off the public school model. They fear the loss of funding to pay public-sector teachers more than they fear the missed opportunity to save more kids from being left behind.[/i]
I rather doubt it. I think the private sector would balk at voucher programs if they were subject to this kind of public scrutiny.
Don and medwoman have spoken of their preference that private/parochial schools should be accountable to accept any student, any income, any ability that a public school has to accept. I agree. Right now, private schools can kick out a student who isn’t complying.
Diane Ravitch has several citations in her book, [u]The Death and Life of the Great American School System[/u], showing that the notion that the private sector “blows the doors off the public school model” is false, especially when you correct for income.
Wdf1:
Private schools accepting vouchers would require regular audits and compliance reporting but would not be subject to the same level of oversight and control. These would still be private companies. I’m sure those opposing vouchers would want the same governance dysfunction to exist. What better way to win than to hobble the competition… Even though it means the customer loses.
However, the real beneficial difference would be schools without unionized teachers and the asinine practices that ensure seniority is the only way to be rewarded.
Not to single out Grace Valley, but this happens to be conveniently in their admissions information:
“This includes the right to deny admission to an applicant or, in the alternative, to dismiss a student once he or she has enrolled, solely on the basis that the religious beliefs held by the student (or student’s parent or guardian) are inconsistent with the religious beliefs of Grace Valley Christian Center (GVCC).
I would expect any school accepting tax dollars to teach to the state content standards:
[url]http://www.cde.ca.gov/be/st/ss/index.asp[/url]
Within the life sciences, this would mean, for example, that they would have to teach evolution, teach about the age of the earth, and so on. A school teaching creationism would not be teaching to those standards. So their curriculum would have to be subject to state oversight. Unlike public schools, they could purchase any curriculum they wanted to as long as it met state standards.
JB
As I pointed out previously, choice already exists. In listings for private schools in Sacramento alone their are between 50 and 60 listings for private schools from kindergarten through high school. This does not include schools in Davis, Woodland, Roseville, Carmichael, Citrus Heights. There is no lack of choice. What there is is a lack of is what I have heard some people who favor vouchers, but would like to weaken the social safety net, refer to as redistribution of funds. I agree with you completely about choice. I have heard you imply that I do not understand choice, and yet one of my children chose public schools through junior high and then chose to attend a private high school, while my son chose to stay within the public system throughout. We researched the available schools and did what we thought best for the individual child. I do not believe that what you are asking for is more choice. That already exists. I believe that what you are promoting is the use of tax dollars to promote a particular religious, philosophical point of view.
If I am wrong, please correct me and address my ideas about a daily time for reflection, and or teaching comparative religions throughout a child’s educational career from kindergarten on. I am about as liberal as you will find ( and not an atheist) and have no problem with either of these ideas.
JB: If you would like to see how some Milton Friedman-style economic policies have worked in practice, to a greater extent than has ever been implemented in the U.S., then I would invite you to read about the recent history of Chile.
When Augusto Pinchet took over Chile in 1973 (in a military coup), he spent the next decade trying to stabilize the country’s economy. His initial advisors were conservative business types who convinced him to invite a number of newly-minted economists (w/ PhD’s) who had studied under Milton Friedman at the University of Chicago. They were nick-named the “Chicago Boys”. They ultimately instituted a number of classic ideas of Milton Friedman, including school vouchers. The results haven’t been entirely catastrophic, but in practice it has been far from adequate.
In recent months there have been massive protests in Chile against their national voucher system. It has been mostly under the radar in the U.S. news, but you can read about it here: [url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Chilean_protests[/url]
If you want to read a book about Chile’s recent history (the Pinochet years, mainly) that includes extensive discussion of implementing Milton Friedman’s ideas, then you might be interested in [u]A Nation of Enemies[/u] by Constable and Valenzuela — [url]http://www.amazon.com/Nation-Enemies-Chile-Under-Pinochet/dp/0393309851/[/url] — which is also available at the Davis public library, possibly purchased with some of your own tax dollars, in case you want to claim it for a few weeks. I think, roughly, chapters 7, 8, & 9 in that book talk about the economics of the country.
My take was that it was a realistic treatment, not particularly glowing nor particularly damning of the whole economic experience.
Great conversation. Everyone involved seems to care a great deal about the topic of education. As I have said, I think it is the most important issue of our time.
Medwoman: [i]”I believe that what you are promoting is the use of tax dollars to promote a particular religious, philosophical point of view.”[/i]
No, not at all. Remember in my model there is choice… including public schools. If the the theory of evolution is a state standard then the private voucher school would have to teach it. However, the private voucher school could also teach the theory of creationism and intelligent design. Today in public schools teachers cannot teach these theories.
I think you and others arguing so consistently against voucher and privitization don’t seem to share my ramped-up vision. Wdf1 uses an example of education privitization in Chile (ignoring for a moment that country’s Marxist-socialist-liberal history and swings); however, I am not interested in continuing to compare our education system to Chile or any other country for that matter.
Let’s assume we wanted to take our education system to the next level… exceeding anything other countries are doing… sort of like the race to to moon. What would that vision look like to you?
JB
First, a correction, teachers in the public schools can teach about creationism and intelligent design as theories. I know because these ideas were presented to my son. However, they are not presented as though there were objective evidence to support them, because there is no such commonly accepted, verifiable, repeatable, evidence. What there is, is faith and belief. And while there is nothing wrong with faith and belief, they need to be presented as such. Just as Darwin’s theory of evolution is presented as that, a theory.
You are right about something in my philosophy that is different from yours. I do not see competition as the highest good. i favor the development of a more collaborative model.Nor do I feel the need to exceed anything that other countries are doing. Instead of focusing on beating others, I would like to see as our goal that each child is encouraged to find whatever it is that he or she is most passionate about and to develop their own interest. My vision would be one in which everyone’s contribution was valued. We cannot all be high paid executives or doctors or lawyers. A functioning society needs the people who collect the garbage, sweep the streets, harvest the crops and deliver them just as much if not more than it needs it’s professionals.
I would like to see the educational system revamped much more drastically than you are suggesting. I would like to see each student paid to go to school rather than charged for it as their contribution to society. I would like to see all people who are positively contributing to society in whatever role compensated for their time equally. I would like to see the end to our economic caste system in which the amount of money you have determines the amount of status and power you wield in the society. I don’t think that my ideals are any less ambitious that yours. I just believe in a system that values individual contribution equally. I would like us to view our companions on this earth as equals and to teach our children to respect each for the unique individual that they are instead of branding them by religion or political belief or race or preferred language or any of the other artificial means we use to create barriers between ourselves and others. And yes, I do believe this is possible. I think it is a choice that is ours to make and to teach by example every day of our lives.
Medwoman: I appreciate your vision, and with some exception, agree with much of it… where we primarily differ is the path to get there.
I don’t agree that we have a caste system in this country. If fact, that is the single most valuable aspect of America and the one I am most interested to protect. As a country we are certainly not perfect, but we are far better at ensuring complete freedom of individuals to succeed or fail based on their own self determination. By top-down forced equalization we destroy self determination and this destroys one of the key things that has made us a great country… our collective self-determination to succeed.
The wealthy person up the street does not impact your prosperity, but he can influence your envy. Envy will destroy a country just as greed will. In a market-based system the market sets the value; however, it is a dynamic process. It is not perfect – some jobs having greater social value are lower-priced – but it is still far better than political elites taking over production and setting price. We cannot respond to envy and implement a system that attempts to save so many adults from themselves… and expect to succeed as a country. Doing so would destroy the country as we know it. See Cuba.
K-12 education combined with higher education is the launching pad for young people into the market economy toward a life of prosperity. A failed launch is tragic. This is the area where I DO believe we should be trying to save as many as possible from the tragedy of a failed launch. Vouchers and privatization are a key to making the improvements necessary.
The US government hands out food stamps for recipients to make their own choice where to shop for groceries. But, the government does not operate the food production and grocery business for good reason. In a competitive free market that encourages consumer choice, private providers do a much better job creating low-cost, high-quality groceries. Considering this, why does the government operate the business of K-12 education but not the food production and retail? The reason is that the teachers unions combined with Democrats have made K-12 education an adults job program that fights to maintain job value at the expense of greater education service value for the kids.
If you really want a more level economic playing field, you would support drastic improvements to our k-12 education system: one that can tailor service to the unique needs of each student despite their home challenges. For example, if home life is that difficult for a student, how about boarding school? How about a school that employs the kids working for the school so they make money and learn the value of work? The list goes on… unencumbered by the dysfunctional public microscoped-union-political-constrained decision-making process, entrepreneurs would create new models that work. I think tax-payers would open their wallets much wider if they got the vision for greater improvement. I also think private companies would invest in these education enterprises cranking out a higher quality workforce.
We have evidence that spending more on the current public school model does not produce commensurate greater value… in fact there is evidence that spending more actually erodes value. The current public school model is static and stuck. It is broken with respect to the requirements of our modern post-industrial society. It is time for drastic change that vouchers can provide.
As I think I’ve said before, I support vouchers on a limited basis to see how well they do. I know in some cases they have been popular with parents. But I would need concrete evidence that vouchers improve outcomes. I think your assumption that competition would improve education derives from your ideology, not evidence. When you say “teachers unions combined with Democrats have made K-12 education an adults job program” you are needlessly injecting your ideology.
So for example, you say “entrepreneurs would create new models that work.” No, they would reliably create models that produce profit for the owners and investors. They might well be able to market them and stay in business, or retain investor confidence by expanding rapidly. None of that is a measurable outcome that tells us that students are getting better results.
I don’t share your faith that competition always yields better results.
“…[i]why does the government operate the business of K-12 education[/i]…?”
Other than the historic reasons, it is considered a public good, and government operation provides government oversight: in the case of public education, oversight is provided by locally elected officials. That level of public oversight is missing with the private options. In fact. my guess is the only oversight of private voucher schools would occur at the more cumbersome state level.
Don,
Why then does the government not operate the food production industry and instead provides food vouchers?
Government subsidizes agriculture so much the point is moot. The government manages agricultural production in this country in many ways, and also provides massive amounts of support in the form of research and development dollars. Also, food isn’t education; educational outcomes aren’t milk or corn. Sorry, I just don’t see the comparison.
Jeff: If the free market is so ideal to providing basic needs, why do we have “food deserts”?
[url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_desert[/url]
I note that the government also provides school lunches. All things considered, though, I don’t know if that proves Jeff’s point better than mine. LOL.
wdf1:[i]”Sorry, I just don’t see the comparison.”[/i]
Apparently not. It was easy though.
The reason the government does not own and operate the food production and grocery industry is that private business is much more efficient and effective at it. If the government took over we would end up like Soviet-era Russia.
wdf1: [i]”If the free market is so ideal to providing basic needs, why do we have “food deserts”?[/i]
Too many moochers congregated in the same geographic areas with crappy schools and government handouts ensuring they will lack the means and the motivation to escape. Because otherwise they could flex their good ol’ American freedom and move somewhere else where more grocery stores exist.
Is your point that government running the food industry would do a better job feeding the population? I guess if you like your food choices in Cuba, that might sound like a better solution.
Here are a couple of stories about a large private industry attempting to solve this very problem, but doing so to make a profit. I would give them a much better chance to make it happen than I would any government-run program.
[url]http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1098936,00.html[/url]
[url]http://rocrockett.com/2010/08/leadership-post/[/url]
[i]moochers…crappy schools and government handouts[/i]
Here we go again.
I wonder if education researchers have investigated what factors made US elementary thru high school education prior to the 1980s such a success; helping produce the strongest economy in the world?
Why have we changed something that worked so well?
Bring back vocational education; so the non-college bound can learn some valuable skills in high school.
So that non-college educated workers can once again earn a decent living; as they could in the past;
(1) Cut back illegal immigration by 95% (this still leaves ~150,000 illegal immigrant coming in per year) so that more low-skilled American CITIZENS can find jobs; and negotiate better wages (perhaps even bring back moderate unions) due to less competition for jobs.
(2) Bring back the income tax structure to where it was somewhere in the 1960s to 1980s. Many in the upper middle classes and wealthy may whine about it being unfair; but the fact is, that when this tax structure was in place the USA had the strongest economy and most creative workforce in the world; with plenty of entrepreneurship. As conservatives like to point to the bottom line; the bottom line is that this system worked.
Many democrats whine about small percentage of upper middle class and wealthy owning most of the income and wealth in this country; to me this not as bad as conservatives whining about high tax rates. Do you really think that for minimum wage pay (about $15,000/yr) you could support yourself alone (let alone also a child) decently; while at the same time paying the same proportion Fed Income Tax as the Upper Middle Class?
(3) Impose tariffs on some goods. USA should remain self-sufficient in food; defense and aerospace industry, and have some basic metals refining capacity. The economic programming taught in universities for a long time now; the religion of complete free trade; has been overdone; we have become free-trade fanatics to the detriment of our own citizens (although it has certainly benefited the corporations, the founts of unlimited wisdom and benificence).
[i]” wonder if education researchers have investigated what factors made US elementary thru high school education prior to the 1980s such a success; helping produce the strongest economy in the world?
Why have we changed something that worked so well?”[/i]
jimt, Good question. The world has changed significantly, and our public K-12 education system has not kept pace, instead it has declined.
[i]”Bring back vocational education; so the non-college bound can learn some valuable skills in high school.”[/i]
Absolutely, but we cannot afford what it would cost in the old unionized public education model. Technology is the key for greater education value, but unlike private companies, the unionized public school system sees technology as a threat to union jobs… and they will block more efficient service delivery solutions that reduce union headcount. The union stranglehold needs to be broken if we are to make needed improvements to K-12 education.
On your point about higher income tax rates… they don’t matter. What matters is the overall tax revenue. And even with lower tax rates on higher earners, the total tax revenue for the nation and for most states has remained largely consistent when measured against GDP (however, spending has drastically increased as a percent of GDP and the trajectory is alarming). The wealthy may pay a lower income tax rate, but they are taxed in other ways. For example, payroll taxes and other taxes have expanded. Plus there is more wealth than there was in the 1960s with the top federal income tax rate was 90%. Today, the top 10% of earners pay 70% of the taxes. In 1979 (the latest data I could find) the top 10% paid 40% of all federal taxes.
Back to the union point… it seems that today every significant social cost problem has union fingerprints on it. Unionized labor appears to be the root cause. Break the unions and allow systems to be right-to-work, at-will employers, and the pace and scope of improvement will expand. Wisconsin voters seem to agree with this approach.
jimt: [i]I wonder if education researchers have investigated what factors made US elementary thru high school education prior to the 1980s such a success; helping produce the strongest economy in the world?
Why have we changed something that worked so well?[/i]
I am partial to Diane Ravitch. She is a historian of the K-12 education system in the U.S., having written several books on the topic. Her work gives a lot of context that is missing from contemporary discussion. A book that would answer a lot of your questions is
Left Back: A Century of Failed School Reforms
[url]http://www.amazon.com/Left-Back-Century-Failed-Reforms/dp/0684844176/[/url]
Her answer is that the notion that schools of the past were superior to today is myth.
After WWII, the U.S. economy was the only one standing with little infrastructural damage. Plenty of jobs were available in past decades that would more consistently allow a high school dropout to find a decent job and live out the “American Dream”, no matter what their academic performance was. By the mid-70’s and 80’s a lot of other countries were back on their feet and competing with the U.S., producing plenty of better products for cheaper prices. Wages have gone down (and overseas), relatively, for workers without post-high school education to the point where workers having only high school education or less are almost helpless in this economy. Most have to be ready for college or trade school. We no longer are far enough ahead of other economies of the world to accommodate those who don’t have sufficient education.
JB: [i]Our K-12 education system should be the new model for the rest of the industrialized world. Instead we are the laughing stock… even as we spend more per child than most countries that have better outcomes.[/i]
and
JB: [i]Wdf1 uses an example of education privitization in Chile (ignoring for a moment that country’s Marxist-socialist-liberal history and swings); however, I am not interested in continuing to compare our education system to Chile or any other country for that matter.[/i]
You compare U.S. outcomes to other countries to sound the alarm, but refuse to assess what’s working elsewhere or not and why. I would think a good U.S. businessman would carefully analyze what’s going on elsewhere rather than blindly going out on a venture that might involve reinventing the wheel or worse.
These were “exceptional” U.S. ideas that Chile instituted. As a tax-payer, I would certainly like an explanation for why we should pursue vouchers as the expected answer to our problems when it doesn’t seem to be performing quite as promised elsewhere.
JB: [i]Too many moochers congregated in the same geographic areas with crappy schools and government handouts ensuring they will lack the means and the motivation to escape. Because otherwise they could flex their good ol’ American freedom and move somewhere else where more grocery stores exist.[/i]
You’re capable of giving a more thoughtful, less knee-jerk answer than this. You imply that the free market can do no wrong. If it looks like there’s a problem then it’s because of something else, but not the free market.
[i]Is your point that government running the food industry would do a better job feeding the population? I guess if you like your food choices in Cuba, that might sound like a better solution.[/i]
I like my food choices in Davis, thank you very much. I would be more confident in the free market if healthy food choices were more readily available in many other neighborhoods, especially the ones where the “crappy schools” are mostly located.
My point is that the free market system has given us plenty of neighborhoods where the only food store is a 7-11, because it isn’t profitable for most chains to operate there. Food is a more basic need than education, in my view. What makes you think the free market will provide high performing schools in those same neighborhoods to serve the most underperforming populations of students?
Thanks for the links about Walmart in Chicage. If any store chain could do it, I would imagine Walmart to be the best candidate. There are still plenty of neighborhoods to serve, however. I would just note that the dates on those two stories are 6 years apart. Why is the 2011 article still touting Walmart’s move to the Chicago inner-city as if it’s still a new thing? I will have to continue researching that.
[i]”You compare U.S. outcomes to other countries to sound the alarm, but refuse to assess what’s working elsewhere or not and why.”[/i]
What’s working or not working for Chile, a country of 17 million with a GDP of $15k per capita (a third-world economy), does not interest me when considering what the US needs. Last I checked, Chile didn’t have 310 million people, the largest economy, go to the moon, invent a Space Shuttle, or the iPhone or protect the rest of the free world. These two countrys’ education needs are not comparable in my view.
[i]”You’re capable of giving a more thoughtful, less knee-jerk answer than this. You imply that the free market can do no wrong. If it looks like there’s a problem then it’s because of something else, but not the free market.”[/i]
I was completely serious. It seems that “moocher” word causes some knee-jerk reaction. I’m sorry, but it is a word that works for me thanks to the definition provided by Ms. Rand: [url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlas_Shrugged[/url]
People have the choice to move if they do not like the services available in their neighborhood. I never said that the free market could do no wrong, but consumers have choice in a free market. Because of this, the free market is largely self-correcting. There is no choice, and it is not self-correcting, when the only provider is the government.
We should be leading, not looking around for whom to follow. There is already evidence that vouchers improve education outcomes. We need to expand the use of them to create the economies of scale necessary for more capital investment in private alternatives. A much better K-12 education model will emerge.
[i]People have the choice to move if they do not like the services available in their neighborhood.[/i]
But they often don’t have the means or ability to move. There are areas of the country where poverty rates are 30 – 40%. For the unemployed and working poor, the cost of moving is significant. If they have no job to move to, it is a major gamble and an expense they simply can’t justify. They are trapped in many ways.
[i]but it is a word that works for me thanks to the definition provided by Ms. Rand:[/i]
Ayn Rand was a self-centered eccentric whose social analysis was not just simple-minded, but ultimately has led to a harmful opposition to altruism and a strange reverence for wealth and avarice. It can cause people to make value judgments about people of lower income that imply they lack virtue, and fail to recognize the circumstances that keep many people impoverished. The term “moochers” is especially despicable as it denigrates people who use public assistance with a simplistic pejorative. I strongly urge you to stop using it.
It isn’t easy to get out of the inner city, get off the reservation, or get out of rural poverty. It takes a level of initiative and some amount of resources, and many people simply don’t have either of those. Poverty has increased in America. Education is one of the ways out, but I seriously doubt vouchers are going to provide schools in downtown Oakland as quickly as they will provide schools in Walnut Creek. Private companies that provide schools for vouchers will go where the money is.
JB: [i]What’s working or not working for Chile, a country of 17 million with a GDP of $15k per capita (a third-world economy), does not interest me when considering what the US needs.[/i]
You are making a good candidate for a stereotype of American arrogance and ignorance abroad, albeit well-intentioned. I have family in Chile and have visited it a few times. It is clearly not quite at U.S. standards of living, especially in some rural areas, but it is far from what you would identify as a third world country. There are plenty of places you could go there and, were it not for the language, you wouldn’t know that you were outside the U.S.
The result of the Chilean voucher system is that it isn’t promoting very much social mobility; it’s been around for more than 20 years. Crappy schools in poorer neighborhoods, better schools in more affluent neighborhoods, and you usually have to pay extra for it.
[i]People have the choice to move if they do not like the services available in their neighborhood. I never said that the free market could do no wrong, but consumers have choice in a free market. Because of this, the free market is largely self-correcting. There is no choice, and it is not self-correcting, when the only provider is the government.[/i]
Yes, choice and freedom… which is limited by income, cost of housing, location of job (if you have one), location of home, and your ability to get between those places. The more money you have, the more choice and freedom you have.
JB: [i]There is already evidence that vouchers improve education outcomes.[/i]
Then the sensible response is to share the source of that information here and let’s discuss it rather than waste time dissing Chile and thumping our chests about American superiority.
This reminds me of a quote I saw recently,
[b]“There are two novels that can transform a bookish 14-year-kld’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish daydream that can lead to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood in which large chunks of the day are spent inventing ways to make real life more like a fantasy novel. The other is a book about orcs.” – “The Value of Nothing” by Raj Pate[/b]
Don Shor: [i]The term “moochers” is especially despicable as it denigrates people who use public assistance with a simplistic pejorative.[/i]
…including, apparently, Ayn Rand herself:
[quote]A heavy smoker who refused to believe that smoking causes cancer brings to mind those today who are equally certain there is no such thing as global warming. Unfortunately, Miss Rand was a fatal victim of lung cancer.
However, it was revealed in the recent “Oral History of Ayn Rand” by Scott McConnell (founder of the media department at the Ayn Rand Institute) that in the end Ayn was a vip-dipper as well. An interview with Evva Pryror, a social worker and consultant to Miss Rand’s law firm of Ernst, Cane, Gitlin and Winick verified that on Miss Rand’s behalf she secured Rand’s Social Security and Medicare payments which Ayn received under the name of Ann O’Connor (husband Frank O’Connor).
As Pryor said, “Doctors cost a lot more money than books earn and she could be totally wiped out” without the aid of these two government programs. Ayn took the bail out even though Ayn “despised government interference and felt that people should and could live independently… She didn’t feel that an individual should take help.”
But alas she did and said it was wrong for everyone else to do so. Apart from the strong implication that those who take the help are morally weak, it is also a philosophic point that such help dulls the will to work, to save and government assistance is said to dull the entrepreneurial spirit.
In the end, Miss Rand was a hypocrite but she could never be faulted for failing to act in her own self-interest.
[url]http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-ford/ayn-rand-and-the-vip-dipe_b_792184.html[/url]
*the term VIP-DIP in this article refers to “venerated in public, disdained in private”.[/quote]
By the way, I think it takes a lot of guts for most people to ask for help.
[i]”Yes, choice and freedom… which is limited by income, cost of housing, location of job (if you have one), location of home, and your ability to get between those places. The more money you have, the more choice and freedom you have”[/i]
These are all looter-moocher excuses… someone who is a perpetual victim of circumstances unable to pursue their own self-interest because they have been trained to wait for social services to make it better, and have been dashed of hope that they are able to make their own life better. This stuff occurs even when we have Section 8 housing vouchers and food stamp vouchers and welfare payments. Why doesn’t a family take advantage of the portability of these things to move to somewhere that gives them a better chance to be healthy and prosperous? More importantly, why is it, given the trillions spent fighting the war on hunger and poverty in this country, that we still have so many hungry and poor?
A definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result. However, I don’t think the looter class is insane, I think they are blind. They seek to validate their worldview and purpose having people to save but don’t get that they are training them to be dependent. Their actions and policies are a well-intentioned crime against humanity. Social services should be there as a true safety net, but not a way of life. For able-bodied adults, it should come with strings attached and an expiration-date… both making it clear that work is required. And work is available… it is why people from south of our border keep sneaking in.
My fear is that we cannot fix so many broken adults. Their work ethic and self-determination has been hopelessly corrupted like the constituents of most forms of collectivist ideology and governance. If we are not going to pull out of this clearly unwinnable war on hunger and poverty, then at least let’s approve a surge. The surge should be education. We need to focus on their children to break the cycle. The key is a significantly reformed education system. The public school model controlled by the unions and their political beneficiaries is a prehistoric entity structured to protect itself and resist any meaningful change other than to demand more money and jobs to feed the union.
[i]” Then the sensible response is to share the source of that information here and let’s discuss it rather than waste time dissing Chile and thumping our chests about American superiority.”[/i]
Wdf1: I wasn’t dissing Chile. $15k GDP per capita is a third-world economy level. They are at the lower rungs of the economic ladder and need to climb. The US is already at the top and is at risk of falling. Our educational needs are significantly different.
From the report” “Evaluation of the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program: Final Report,” U.S. Department of Education, June 2010:
[quote]The Program significantly improved students’ chances of graduating from high school. [/quote]
From a report: “School Choice as a Latent Variable: Estimating ‘Complier Average Causal Effect’ of Vouchers in Charlotte,” Policy Studies Journal, November 2007:
[quote] After one year, voucher students had reading scores 8 percentile points higher than the control group and math scores 7 points higher[/quote]
From a report: “Another Look at the New York City School Voucher Experiment,” American Behavioral Scientist, January 2004:
[quote] The voucher students had higher scores, but the results did not achieve statistical significance. Subsequent analysis has demonstrated that this occurred because the study used inappropriate research methods that violate the norms of the scientific community; if legitimate methods are used, the positive results for vouchers become significant[/quote]
From a report: “Principal Stratification Approach to Broken Randomized Experiments: A Case Study of School Choice Vouchers in New York City,” Journal of the American Statistical Association, June 2003”
[quote] After one year, voucher students had math scores 5 percentile points higher than the control group.[/quote]
From a report: “The Education Gap, Brookings Institution, 2002”
[quote] Washington D.C.—After two years, black voucher students had combined reading and math scores 9 percentile points higher than the control group.
Dayton, OH—After two years, black voucher students had combined reading and math scores 6.5 percentile points higher than the control group.
New York, NY—After three years, black voucher students had combined reading and math scores 9 percentile points higher than the control group.[/quote]
JB: [i]These are all looter-moocher excuses… someone who is a perpetual victim of circumstances unable to pursue their own self-interest because they have been trained to wait for social services to make it better, and have been dashed of hope that they are able to make their own life better.[/i]
And should we give a pass to Ayn Rand and her husband for taking social security and medicare, noted above? With prudent investing of all the cigarette money she spent, she certainly shouldn’t have needed public assistance.
wdf1: [i]”And should we give a pass to Ayn Rand and her husband for taking social security and medicare, noted above?”[/i]
She was a producer that paid into the system. Capitalist support the pursuit of self interest on moral grounds. Lacking a moral imperative only fools stand on principle while unnecessarily harming themselves. For example, I pay my tax bills even though I think I am over-taxed. Why risk harm to myself from the IRS just to make a stand on principle? Instead I will pay my tax bills while I opine against them.
Rand was against government-looters stealing from producers to distribute to moochers. She wasn’t against productive people that paid into a system to be able to benefit from their investment.
Note that over 50% of Americans now pay zero income tax but have full access to these same benefits and more.
Apparently Randians can rationalize anything.
This “50% of Americans pay zero income tax” has become a popular talking point on right-wing media. They pay zero income tax either because of tax credits or deductions, particularly the home mortgage deduction, or because they make too little income to meet the minimum taxable income. Are you proposing that we tax the poor? Or that we eliminate the home mortgage deduction? Or are you just scoring rhetorical points against the poor again?
You really seem to have an active hostility to low-income people.
Again: looters and moochers are extremely negative, derogatory terms. Why do you keep using them?
JB: [i]Note that over 50% of Americans now pay zero income tax but have full access to these same benefits and more.[/i]
There’s income tax, but then there are payroll taxes. Social security and medicare are assessed separately from income tax. At least that’s how it looks on my pay stub. As far as I understand, not paying income tax doesn’t preclude you from paying into medicare and social security. So a lot more than 50% pay into the system.
Do you pay your taxes differently?
Don: [i]”Apparently Randians can rationalize anything.”[/i]
I think we can rationalize most rational things. “Objectivism” sort of implies this tendency.
[i]”You really seem to have an active hostility to low-income people.”[/i]
No, I don’t. If I did I would be hostile to much of my extended family… which I am not. The first step in recovering from substance abuse is to be honest about your addiction. Call it tough love. Note that I was raised in a single-wide trailer in the Midwest. Anything I wanted other than the most basic necessities, I had to work for. As far as I know, my mother never used public assistance… it was a point of pride. Having been poor and worked my way to a comfortable life I think gives me some perspective on the situation and some license to have an opinion about it.
I even have much affection for most looters… the ones that are motivated from the heart. However, the ones that exploit the mysery of people lower down the ladder of economic prosperity for political gain are worthy of significant scorn.
wdf1: Yes, you are correct that other taxes are paid by those working. But with a real unemployment rate of over 20%, a large fraction of the 50% pay zero taxes other than consumption taxes. Many actually earn credits in excess of their total tax liability. I think when you don’t particiapte in the cost of something that provides benefits, you become a dysfunctional stakeholder of that thing. We need much more of the population paying some tax so they feel a vested ownership of their government and share a taxpayer’s perspective in the topic of taxation.
[i]”Again: looters and moochers are extremely negative, derogatory terms. Why do you keep using them?”[/i]
It makes the point I am trying to make. It is sort of the same as the left referring to me as a greedy banker. The one I really like is “bankster”… at least that is creative!
What terms do you recommend I use instead to make my point?
“Working poor” and “people on public assistance,” depending on the demographic you are referring to.
For those who want to research the efficacy of vouchers, here is a useful link: [url]http://www.swcollege.com/bef/policy_debates/vouchers.html[/url]
JB: [i]Many actually earn credits in excess of their total tax liability. I think when you don’t particiapte in the cost of something that provides benefits, you become a dysfunctional stakeholder of that thing. We need much more of the population paying some tax so they feel a vested ownership of their government and share a taxpayer’s perspective in the topic of taxation.[/i]
Credit the Bush tax cuts, supported by a Republican congress, including many of the current leaders, for structuring the current income tax system in this way.
[i]”Working poor” and “people on public assistance,”[/i]
Don, Geesh… don’t I already use enough words!
What about for the looter reference?
[i]”Credit the Bush tax cuts, supported by a Republican congress, including many of the current leaders, for structuring the current income tax system in this way.”[/i]
Wdf1, I don’t think Bush and the GOP were the architect of our progressive income tax system. I have always been a flat tax advocate.
Don: Nice reference link. Thank you. I will be spending some time digging around in there.
Me too. I just looked around a bit and see it is packed with interesting stuff. As I said, I’m not opposed to vouchers in principle; I just worry about implementation and unintended consequences. The more data and evidence, the better.
Don’s voucher link above seems to be a good review of information available up to 2002, based on the publication date on that page and on the dates given for the linked pages. Almost 10 years ago.
Some more recent commentary and summary of voucher studies, from Diane Ravitch, [u]The Death and Life of the Great American School System[/u], 2010, published by Basic Books.
[quote]By 2009, studies by different authors came to similar conclusions about vouchers, suggesting an emerging consensus. Cecelia E. Rouse of Princeton University and Lisa Barrow of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago published a review of all the existing studies of vouchers in Milwaukee, Cleveland, and the District of Columbia. They found that there were “relatively small achievement gains for students offered educational vouchers, most of which are not statistically different from zero.” The could not predict whether vouchers might eventually produce changes in high school graduation rates, college enrollment, or future wages. But they did not find impressive gains in achievement. Nor was there persuasive evidence that the public school systems that lost voucher students to private schools had improved. Since no one claimed that the voucher programs had produced dramatic changes, Rouse and Barrow cautioned against anticipating that voucher programs were going to produce large academic gains in the future.
pg. 129; referece cited: Cecelia Elena Rouse and Lisa Barrow, “School Vouchers and Student Achievement: Recent Evidence and Remaining Questions,” [i]Annual Review of Economics[/i] 1 (2009), 17-42.[/quote]
Regarding the Washington, D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program:
[quote]The students who experience gains in reading were those who entered the program from schools that were [i]not[/i] in need of improvement, those who entered the program in the upper two-thirds of the test score distribution, and those who entered in grades K-8. Females also seemed to benefit, though that finding was not as robust as the others. The groups that did not experience improvement in reading (or math) were boys, secondary students, students from SINI (Schools In Need of Improvement)schools, and students in the lowest third of the test score distribution. The students who did not see any gains were those in the highest-priority groups, the ones for whom the program was designed: those with the lowest test scores and those who had previously attended SINI schools.
pg. 130; reference cited: Wolf et al., 2009, [i]Evaluation of the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program: Impacts After Three Years; Executive Summary[/i], v-vi, xiv-xviii.[/quote]
Don: [i]”Apparently Randians can rationalize anything.”[/i]
JB: [i]I think we can rationalize most rational things. “Objectivism” sort of implies this tendency.[/i]
To build on Don’s comment above (9/5/11, 11:01) on Ayn Rand, Rand seemed to have issues with maintaining friendships and intimate relationships, and to me suggests strong personal insecurities in play. And it seems to come out in her philosophy in devaluing empathy and altruism. Inasmuch as she was atheist, I am surprised that certain conservative factions aren’t more critical of her vision in similar ways that they might criticize Darwinian evolution and certain liberals as being somehow Godlessly materialist.
An evolutionary and natural competitive strength of humans is their ability to organize successfully into communities. Humans, by nature, are not like tigers, who are generally more solitary predators, constantly figuring out how to hunt and take down their next meal, and more solidly acting for individual self-interest.
Rand’s works have value to me for pursuing various what-if scenarios, the way many consult Orwell, Huxley, or other futurist/dystopian works. But to use Rand’s vision as a basis for building such a comprehensive political framework is no different to me than using the works of L. Ron Hubbard as a basis for a political movement. Nothing wrong with considering ideas, but to frame a political agenda so comprehensively on Rand’s philosophy ignores larger realities and more complex frameworks that we operate in.
Using moocher/looter terminology is perjoratively value-laden and generalizes to the point where you probably miss other important realities. I suppose I could define a group of people who had values I disagreed with and call them “assholes”, and define the group of people whose values I agree with as “exemplars”. If I start loosely and regularly throwing those two terms around in discussions of politics and values, then I have effectively eliminated plenty of opportunities to have civil and respectful discussion. To me, this is further evidence of Rand’s difficult personality influencing her thinking.
wdf1: [i]”I am surprised that certain conservative factions aren’t more critical of her vision in similar ways”[/i]
They are. Pat Buchanan said he had to flog himself while reading Atlas Shrugged to get through it.
One big problem I have with the left template is that they have done so much work to demonize conservatives by connecting them with the most of extreme of religious views; they have lost objective sense for what true conservatism is and has been. Even you, wdf1, point out that my assumptions that liberals are Godless is incorrect. Well the same is true in reverse for conservatives… many of them are objectivists and hence have some difficulty with religious faith.
The media overplays the religion topic and hence we have this as our political debate template and we get candidates like Obama who has to fake his faith, and candidates like Bachmann that has to model herself to it for… both for “electability”.
There are frankly only TWO social issues in conflict: the rights of gays and abortion. Issue like prayer in school and signs of Christmas are the de minimis challenges that, again, the media blows out of proportion. In fact, none of the modern issues of separation of church and state warrants the level of political divisiveness we have today between the left and the right over religion… especially when the entire country is at risk of complete and final failure.
Another thing that I bristle about… that conservatives and conservative views lack empathy and a sense of altruism. The way I look at it is that liberals take the easy heart-route… they gravitate toward a short-term feel-good fix at the expense of long-term health of those they attempt to save. There is much more REAL empathy, altruism and compassion in tough love and I find it consistently lacking in the liberal viewpoint. Rand, in this respect, is much more altruistic than was Marx. You don’t even need to accept this as a subjective viewpoint: just check the evidence of the altruism displayed by all forms of collectivism over the ages… the ideologies responsible for copious human misery, suffering and death.
American liberalism is just the old collectivist sheep in new clothing. Its justification comes from the same impulses… the one that says that there are subsets of more intellectually-capable people that should be the ruling class that can make things better for the common people. No level of claim of objectivity can wash this connection away. The ideology of American liberalism is much more dangerous than is the ideology of American conservatism… this fact is well-documented in the history of humans… except for that history that the liberal left seeks to re-write.
In terms of empathy and altruisms… how does the Democrat/liberal support of the public school status quo when American education outcomes and drop-out rates are some of the worst in the developed world?
By the way you can call me an “a**”. It really does not bother me. I have been called worse by people that disagree with my viewpoints and my way of explaining them. However the one ugly label that liberals seem to use freely is “racist”. Give some thought to how it might sound to someone on the right being called racists by the once proud party of the left… to hear that they are appalled with the words “moocher” and “looter”. And you wonder how those on the right claim that the left has lost its minds?
I remember one time in New York City I was watching two guys arguing on the street corner waiting for the light to change. There were many cuss words emitting and also the words “idiot, “liar”, “stupid”, “asinine”, “Bush” and “Clinton” could be heard even over the traffic sounds. The people around them barely paid attention. I was across the street and expected a fight to start. We crossed the street and stood next to them waiting for the same light. At that point one of the guys says to the other… “so where are we going for lunch?”
Frankly, I value this more direct communication approach and think we have about destroyed the art of discourse with the politically-correct hyper-sensitivity to certain words and phrases. Sure the speaker has some responsibility to understand his audience and be sensitive. However, I think communicating about ideas with people from a variety of viewpoints and life-experience requires us, as listeners, to grow thicker skin. Diversity and acceptance sometimes seems to be a one way street for my friends on the left.
JB: [i]…Obama who has to fake his faith…[/i]
Why do you think Obama is faking his faith? Do you see his connection to religion differently than Clinton, Reagan, or the Bushes?
Have you read Obama’s Audacity of Hope? I think you’d be surprised at how politically conservative he can be (for a Democrat), at the context behind his policy views, and how frank, candid, and respectful he is in acknowledging conservative perspectives. It would probably give you a sense for how predictable he actually is, and how overblown conservative rhetoric of him can be.
[i]The ideology of American liberalism is much more dangerous than is the ideology of American conservatism… this fact is well-documented in the history of humans… except for that history that the liberal left seeks to re-write.[/i]
Outside of the framework of a well-functioning democracy, I think you could say that about conserve views as well as liberal.
[i]However the one ugly label that liberals seem to use freely is “racist”.[/i]
I don’t defend throwing around that term, most especially directed against individuals as opposed to policies, unless it is well-justified.
[i]Frankly, I value this more direct communication approach and think we have about destroyed the art of discourse with the politically-correct hyper-sensitivity to certain words and phrases.[/i]
And coming from you, you can probably find a little more tolerance for it from regulars in this forum; you probably would raise the ire of a casual or infrequent reader.
As to the NYC conversation you overheard, I am aware of that phenomenon. You could not get away with that as publicly and readily in many communities in the south (the traditional “deep south” of the U.S.) without the interaction going badly.
This form of communication (writing), here, lacks facial cues (winks, raised eyebrows, smirks, gestures), inflection, pacing, and volume to enhance, soften, moderate, or refine your meaning.
[i]Democrat/liberal support of the public school status quo when American education outcomes and drop-out rates are some of the worst in the developed world?[/i]
I don’t think Democrats and liberals as a whole have supported a status quo. Many Democrats have supported charter schools, and accountability (standardized testing and measurements for outcomes). Democrats have supported the Common Core Standards in education at the national level, as have many Republicans. I welcome trying out new ideas in certain districts or communities when the situation is bad and not getting better, but I don’t agree with the view that the whole system is broke and needs to be torn down.
I think the voucher system, as presented in its broadest form, is being sold as a remedy to fix what isn’t working in schools today, but I’m not convinced (see sampling of quotes above). To a certain degree, parents already have much more choice than existed in the past, because nowadays one can have intra-district transfers (especially if your school is in “Program Improvement”), inter-district transfers, individualized instruction (such as DSIS), and charter school enrollment. What doesn’t exist is public subsidy of private or religious schools, which is what a broadly implemented voucher system might propose.
I see bad schools as more typically a symptom of a declining community, not the other way around.
[i]”I see bad schools as more typically a symptom of a declining community, not the other way around.”[/i]
wdf1: I see the declining community as a symptom of:
– A decline in traditional moral values
– A decline in traditional practices of spirituality
– A drastic expansion of entitlement expectations
– Way too much immigration of poor people
– Too much multiculturalism with too few assimilation into American culture
– Empathy policy for circumstances over consequences for behavior
– Crappy schools combined with global economic competition and a migration to an information economy
– A lack of educational improvements necessary to help make up for all these other problems
More importantly, I think the solution lies in addressing all of these things I listed.
I frankly don’t know how you think we should fix the problem of a declining community if not solving all or most of these things. It is a theme I hear from the defenders of the current public education model… but then they never provide any compelling idea for improvement. Either you don’t think there is a big enough problem to justify more drastic reform, or Davis schools are fine so you don’t care about the other problems, or you just think it is as good as it can get and we need to learn to live with it… or you are holding out for us just throwing money at the current public school system even though there exists complete evidence that it will not improve outcomes.
JB: [i]Absolutely, but we cannot afford what it would cost in the old unionized public education model….(and more slamming of teachers’ unions)[/i]
Massachussetts, New Jersey, and Connecticutt are some of the most pro-union states, putting some of the most money into education, and they’re getting top performance among their students.
Here’s one thing that happens when a teacher doesn’t belong to a union:
[url]http://www.care2.com/causes/arizona-teacher-fired-over-bumper-sticker.html[/url]
JB: [i]I frankly don’t know how you think we should fix the problem of a declining community if not solving all or most of these things.[/i]
Work to develop an ethic of community service and volunteerism within communities that show symptoms of decline. Local politicians working with business groups — Rotary Club, Chamber of Commerce — safety entities (fire/police), religious groups, nearby colleges, universities, professional schools (law schools, med schools, business schools) to focus on serving and developing volunteer/internship efforts. Work to make it cool to volunteer. Make community service a component of a degree program (many colleges have already done this).
Comment on parent volunteering and school outcomes:
[quote]Research has shown that you should make the extra effort to be physically present in your child’s classroom. In fact, attending class meetings and volunteering at school better predicts literacy development than your family’s income.
[url]http://www.greatschools.org/students/academic-skills/1572-surprising-facts-about-academic-learning.gs?page=1[/url]
[/quote]
wdf1: That makes sense. Heck, if I just teach the class I would also improve literacy development for my kids. Then again, why not just home-school them?
I don’t have a problem with volunteering in general. I am thankful for those that can and do. However, I think there are few people these days that have the time for this. This is especially true for the low income kids that are the most risk for poor outcomes or dropping out. As a parent, you would either need to not be working, or working in a job that allows you to take time off, or work eight hours a day or less, or have a flexible schedule. That is the point about K-12 school… mom and dad are working during the time their kids are in school. Also, many of the low-income parents are not well enough educated themselves to help in the classrooms or for other things. Wouldn’t a more well-to-do parent put those kids at even a greater disadvantage by raising the bar for their kids’ outcomes? That is the way I see it. If you tend toward egalitarianism – which I think you do – I don’t know how you do not have a problem with a model that favors kids of well-educated and wealthier parents over the rest.
I don’t remember any parents volunteering when I was in grade school. You advocate this now. What has changed? It seems to me you are using this as a crutch to make up for the fact that our public schools cannot provide adequate educational services. If the system requires volunteers to fill the gaps, then the system is not working well enough. I think a part professional / part volunteer model can work for some things (e.g. fighting fires), however, it seems to me that you would create a larger gap between student haves and have-nots using this approach for the schools.
This is more evidence that K-12 public education as we know it will be going the way of the dinosaurs. It cannot happen soon enough IMO.
[url]http://www.digitalpromise.org/[/url]
This is supported by the US Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, and a bipartisn group. It is a public-private partnership, that is a “hand-up” to ramp up the private sector for developing new products, services and methods for drastically improving education.
JB: [i]This is more evidence that K-12 public education as we know it will be going the way of the dinosaurs.[/i]
I actually happen to be old enough to remember reading articles and seeing TV shorts touting educational TV (eventually PBS) as being the catalyst for changing education by leveraging technology and innovation. It’s produced some good material, but it hasn’t changed education that much.
[url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Educational_Television[/url]
Maybe past fads have informed me not to get too excited about these things. The value of your house will still be connected, at some level, to the performance of your local schools.
wdf1: I think you have your heels dug in resistance to this vision. However, resistance is futile. Education has to change drastically or there will be fewer and fewer that can afford homes. I tend to care about that more than I care about the additional home equity provided upholding the myth of public school excellence in my neighborhood. Once new models of excellence begin to take root, the late adopters, like Davis, will certainly not have bragging rights about their school quality.
It is interesting to me that progressives like yourself are so conservative about public education. Your ideas on volunteering are admirable, but impractical and completely insufficient. By 2015 South Korea will have done away with all paper textbooks. Uruguay provides a computer to every student. The US leads the world in just about every industry that we compete in. Our public education system is a relic of the past. It has long since exceeded its shelf life and is completely out of synch with the modern world. Our education paradigm needs to shift in a big way and the union-political machine and their supporters are only blocking necessary progress.
JB: [i]It is interesting to me that progressives like yourself are so conservative about public education.[/i]
It is interesting to me how much stereotyping and labeling you do. If that’s how your mind works, then you might enjoy this.
You Vote What You Eat: How Liberals and Conservatives Eat Differently
[url]http://blog.hunch.com/?p=48884[/url]
One thing they left out is that probably certain conservatives are likelier to drink the tea.
Perhaps one day you and I will sit down and share some arugula, cabernet, and dripping buffalo steak casserole. But only after I’ve had my pilates workout.
JB: [i]By 2015 South Korea will have done away with all paper textbooks. Uruguay provides a computer to every student.[/i]
It’s interesting how you admiringly bring up what other countries are doing at certain times, and then dismiss at other times what other countries are doing (especially when it comes to school choice/voucher/privatization schemes) on the platform of “American exceptionalism”.
JB: [i]Once new models of excellence begin to take root, the late adopters, like Davis, will certainly not have bragging rights about their school quality.[/i]
DJUSD is not a late adopter. Da Vinci HS does both, as a matter of fact. I believe that the state of California and other states will move in this direction by necessity.
I also happen to think that shifting to digital textbooks is a good thing, and yes, it would be good for all students to have computers to work with those textbooks. That is happening at the college level in the U.S., probably more than you realize.
I think our difference is that I believe that a community based/neighborhood model will persist longer than you do. Parents will move to neighborhoods where they think the best schools are, and that the quality of the schools will be related to the quality of the community.
You seem to think that community based education is irrelevant.
[i]”It is interesting to me how much stereotyping and labeling you do.”[/i]
Wdf1: I’m sorry if I got this wrong, but I thought you had previously labeled yourself a progressive. I wasn’t attempting to be derogatory. I was just commenting on what I see as a unique contrast. The term “progressive” indicates a tendency to promote and accept change. If you are conservative, you would tend to more change-averse. However, related to public education, many people that identify themselves as progressive are adamantly apposed to changing the system of public education. Conversely, conservativestend to support drastic change to education.
I find this interesting and a bit perplexing.
[i]”You seem to think that community based education is irrelevant”[/i]
No, I think a public/union model is incapable of providing the level of high-end, high-quality education services required to allow the US to maintain its standards of living.
I would support ongoing public education if it gave any indication that it was capable of becoming a dynamic, variable, technology-enabled, customer-focused, excellence-driven, provider of education services. The fact is that there is nothing being proposed by this old system other than blaming parents and crying about funding cuts. The best we get is a fear campaign to protect the status quo. That is substantially inadequate.
JB: [i]I would support ongoing public education if it gave any indication that it was capable of becoming a dynamic, variable, technology-enabled, customer-focused, excellence-driven, provider of education services.[/i]
I like most of what I see in Davis, and I think it is moving in the right direction. I would like to see other districts emulate aspects of what’s going on here.
JB: [i]The fact is that there is nothing being proposed by this old system other than blaming parents and crying about funding cuts.[/i]
On the other hand, you have a penchant for blaming teachers unions. I think any negative impact of teachers’ unions is a lot smaller than you claim, and as such it focuses on the wrong issues. There is no correlation between level of union membership and activity (in a given state, for instance) vs. student performance in their schools. If there is, please share.
I think most parents in Davis do a great job supporting their kids in school. I don’t hear notable parent blame going on.
I welcome you to read the Diane Ravitch book for some alternative solutions.
Education costs money. There is very little in the way of cutbacks in higher education, but a willingness to raise fees. Yet grade schools are cut as if there shouldn’t be any consequences for doing so.
Not really focused on education, but a great interview with Jennifer Granholm (who has a new book out) that ties a lot of economic issues together in ways that are are obvious, but not often discussed in the political arena these days.
[url]http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-september-22-2011/exclusive—jennifer-granholm-extended-interview-pt–2[/url]
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