Vouchers
I won’t say much on it today, because I already made my case in this post seven months ago; if you want to see my full opinion on private schools, vouchers, and how to really make the school system work, then read that post.
But I will note today that the whole private school voucher push from the right wing is not about giving your kids a better education. That was made clear by the fact that the Bush administration is still pushing vouchers even though their own studies say that private schools offer little or no advantage over public schools.
So why are they trying to privatize education? A lot of reasons. One is religion. You can’t push religion in public schools because of that damned First Amendment, but privatize and you can proselytize to your heart’s content. It’s also religious subsidization: churches will boom in the private school market, receiving a lot of money and a lot of new converts. Another is class warfare: privatization and vouchers will finish off the job conservatives have been doing for decades of tearing down public education, leaving a hellish shambles left for those who won’t have enough money to add to vouchers to get into a private school. Authoritarians in government and religion have always benefitted from a poorly educated population, with the better-educated living within their own fold.
This is a common theme in the Bush administration, and Republican government in general: dismantle environmental protection and call it “clean air and water”; destroy social security and medicare and say you’re “saving” them. The same goes for education. Every system the conservatives want to utterly destroy they first say they will rescue.
In this post and the previous one, you and the commenters seem to completely ignore the issue of Teachers Unions. Bad teachers are pretty much impossible to eliminate from the system as things stand now.
Also “throwing more money at the problem” doesnt always work. See the issues in NYC in regards to balooning budgets in a system with near zero success qualifications.
Whereas “Education” (big E) has been a darling subject of the US Left for ages, its an area that they have consistantly failed to deliver results and somehow always blame someone else for their failures. I dont particularly affiliate myself with one party or the other, but “education” means alot to me.
In this post and the previous one, you and the commenters seem to completely ignore the issue of Teachers Unions. Bad teachers are pretty much impossible to eliminate from the system as things stand now.Actually, I did, though I did not mention unions by name. I said that it “might take an act of Congress or something even more drastic, but the current state of public schools must be re-evaluated and re-written from the ground up.” By that, I meant that everything might have to be trashed and reworked, including unions–not just teachers, but also maintenance and everything else, as so much graft and political dealing has inundated and saturated the system that it has become artificially expensive and ineffective. Which is why I mentioned that it might take an act of Congress, in order to sweep all of that aside. You’ll note my mention of the reorganization of administration and teaching, with teachers starting out as office workers with a few classes who would have to prove themselves to rise to well-paid, full-time teachers; that would not fit in with current teachers’ union structures. I did not state as clearly as I intended that tenure would not be included in the package (I know I wrote that, it must have been on a forum somewhere else). Performance would have to be maintained for a position to be held. Maybe they’d be willing to give up job security for such a system if pay scales were right, but I would guess that like all other unions, they’d try to get the best of both worlds. My view is, shape the system to best serve the kids, and if that goes against what unions want, screw ’em.Also “throwing more money at the problem” doesnt always work. See the issues in NYC in regards to balooning budgets in a system with near zero success qualifications.Again, as I said in the prior post, “I’m not saying just dump the cash on the school doorstep without a plan, but fully fund the program, dammit.” In other words, don’t just dump money in and step back and see if it starts working by itself; what I thought I had clearly articulated was to fully fund the system and not go cheap on paying teachers what they’re really worth. Build excellent structures designed to optimize performance, built strong to last long and wear well; buy all the supplies needed (no more of this forcing teachers to buy notebooks for the students, or not having enough textbooks to go around BS); perhaps most of all, decrease class sizes, down to 10-15 students per teacher–that makes a huge difference, believe me–but it’s expensive, which is why schools typically move the other way. I mean, fully fund the system. That’ll take lots of money, and we should be willing to pay all of it.
As for NYC, I don’t know much about the particulars of that situation (do you?), but I’ll bet you that a lot of it has to do with the simple fact that being located in NYC costs a lot more accounts for the lion’s share of the budgeting–and that most of the rest had to do with paying inflated salaries connected with political/union deals as well as graft. I’ll bet that most of the extra money spent did not go to paying for the things I said were needed. Am I right?
Actually a big part of the problem for NYC is that city tax money (most of the state tax revenue) goes into the same pot up in Albany and does not come back proportionally. That plus all the graft associated with the local unions and the Democratic party machine. Oh, complete lack of accountability of the Board of Ed was a problem as well. Guliani tried to tackle this without alot of success, AFAIK Bloomberg has done a bit better.
Full funding is worthless without accountability BTW.
As for your act of Congress point, well that is obviously a tough one since schooling is local under states rights.
Can’t respond to most of your comments re: NYC as I don’t know the situation. However:Full funding is worthless without accountability BTW.I don’t think that I even suggested that accountability be absent.As for your act of Congress point, well that is obviously a tough one since schooling is local under states rights.If the 10th Amendment prohibits the federal government handling full taxing for and funding of education, then it would take Congress and the states to pass an amendment to the Constitution–which, alas, is highly improbable.
I still say it is the only good answer, though.