PA changes NCLB Testing Rules for Charter Schools w/o Feds Approval

[eaglesnut]

Do some Public/Charter Schools have off tomorrow in some states? Pathetic.

Happy.............Columbus Day?

Some businesses do to (not mine). There are plenty of days where kids learn more out of school than they do in it.

[eaglesnut]

Look at the graduation rate of too many school systems and tell me the education system is not broken.

I know how to fix it! Lower graduation standards and drive up the graduation rates!! Problem solved!!!

[DutchBird]

This is a problem in medical schools (aka our "best" and our "brightest"). PhRMA is writing their books.

It is in general... conversely, it is also why some conservative groups have deliberately aimed to gain control over Texas and California school boards. Because publishing houses market their text books to three major markets: the NE, Texas and California, and the rest of the states basically has to make do with these three options. Their aim is to get science replaced by religious pseudo-science - or at least have their speudo-science given equal merit and validity - in many textbooks, as well as a complete rewriting of American history in their favour... and grabbing control of the school boards in Texas and California would mean that they control the content of the vast majority of text books used in US high schools.

[eaglesnut]

Yeah that's one of the inherent problems with central planning.

Anyway, it's far more worrisome that our doctors don't learn about nutrition simply because "there's a pill for that."

[SWertsch]

By having bad materials, I didn't mean the stuff in schools. I meant kids.

NCLB is the devil.

Vouchers benefit the wealthy and advantaged, not the those who need them.

[DutchBird]

By having bad materials, I didn't mean the stuff in schools. I meant kids.

NCLB is the devil.

Vouchers benefit the wealthy and advantaged, not the those who need them.

True... I would not be surprised if the Voucher money would be translated directly in a 90% of Voucher money tuition increase... therefore making private education even more expensive and out of reach for the majority. At least that seems to be the standard operation procedure for private enterprise management with these kinds of systems (similar happens with housing subsidies to lower incomes - immediately leads to a rent increase by the housing corporations and so on; or with insurance rebates).

[ForWhoForWhat?]

Should all of public schooling be villified? In some cases, yes big city public school districts aren't up to snuff, but plenty of suburban and rural (and some city) parents are happy with their kids public education.

[Raid]

I haven't met one that owned a home that was happy about the cost of this abomination called 'education'.

[ErkTheJerk]

I went too pulick school and I'm dueing good.

[Raid]

I went too pulick school and I'm dueing good.

You went to public school 30 + years ago ya goof. Before the 'me generation' became teachers.

[PopeyeJones]

Should all of public schooling be villified? In some cases, yes big city public school districts aren't up to snuff, but plenty of suburban and rural (and some city) parents are happy with their kids public education.

This is a combination of public ed being partially financed through local tax dollars, but it's mostly the inputs thing again. If you take the same kids from a "successful" suburban school and swap them with the kids from a "failing" urban school the "failing" urban school will be "successful" and the "successful" suburban school will be "failing."

[PopeyeJones]

If a store sells inferior products or a business gives bad service, most customers will not come back and that store or business will eventually go bankrupt. If public schools sell bad education, year after year, why don't they go bankrupt? Why aren't they shut down?

The metaphor just doesn't work though. Imagine two cell phone companies. All cell phone companies source their hardware from suppliers. Let's say one company has a supplier with a product failure rate of 1%, and another company has a supplier with a failure rate of 40%. In business company #2 would go to a different supplier. If hardware = children, company/school #2 can't go to a different supplier. If company two is FORCED to use their same supplier, we have to use a different metric to evaluate them: are they better or worse than other cell phone companies that use they supplier w/ a 40% failure rate. Right now you're just saying that every company that uses that supplier sucks (ignoring that students are like hardware, but public schools aren't like businesses in that they can't source different raw materials to work with).

(and just to be clear, I'm not blaming kids for schools failing, although I can see how it could be read that way in pointing out why the public ed/business metaphor doesn't work. If you want to see where the blame should go IMO, see my post on p. 1).

In private schools, if the school does a bad job educating children, parents will soon take their child out of that school. If enough parents take their kids out of the school, that school will go bankrupt. A private school depends on the voluntary consent and tuition payments of its parent-customers to stay in business.

Yep, private schools do depend on tuition from parents. That said, people send their kids to private schools for many reasons. Of all of the things their paying for, higher math and reading scores for their kids --if there at all -- are very low on the list of outcomes.