h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I'm not a fan of big government, and you can't get much bigger than our schools in this country. The National Education Assciation (America's largest teacher union) is probably the most powerful single lobbying group in the nation. Even the local school systems eat up a huge proportion of our resources. I just received my county property tax bill. The schools receive something like 70% of our county taxes.

Those of us who work for the Board of Commision have to pave the roads, protect the public, fight fires, run the ambulances, numerous social services on a shoe string. Still the schools ask for more money and bond issues.

I think the following reforms would be helpful, but I don't think all of them are practical.

School size (not class size) needs to be reduced. Smaller schools have fewer problems because the school becomes a small group. Everyone knows one another, and it's psychologically harder to engage in serious violence. School size should be around 300-500 students.

Teachers in secondary schools should be subject matter experts rather than pedagogical experts. I think a person who really appreciates their subject and understands how their subject applies to the real world can teach it more effectively than a home ec teacher who reads one chapter ahead of the students in the math text. Teachers should have degrees in their field with a training certificate in education.

Parents should have a choice about where their students go. If a parent can't find an acceptable government school, they should be allowed to withdraw their students. The government should provide those parents with a voucher. The voucher should be good for half the average cost of educating a student in the public schools. This saves the state money, it promotes competition, and it allows more parents to coose a better education for their children.

I think that's enough to start an argument.

boy, did you say it!!!

first of all, let me say that i am against school vouchers for parents who cannot find an "acceptable" school. this takes money away from public schools that desperately need it. the reason these schools are failing is because they do not have the funds to provide the proper environment for a school setting. they do not have the money to attract teachers, they do not have the freedom to get rid of teachers who are less than ideal because they cannot afford to compete with more affluent districts for quality educators. they do not have the money for books, extra programs (music, sports, art, special interests, etc.) taking money away from these schools to allow students to attend private schools means everybody (except the private schools) loses.

the less "acceptable" schools tend to be in or near inner city areas. these schools usually serve more than 80% poverty level families. in the state of missouri (and illinois as well, i believe) public schools receive state money based upon ATTENDANCE, not enrollment. poverty level students tend to have lower attendance rates, due to a number of factors including illness, older children being expected to help with younger children or elderly relatives, older children being expected to work to help support the family, and then there are the less socially acceptable reasons, like drug abuse in the home, violence, dangerous routes for children to walk to school among others. While a typical u.s. public school district expects an attendance rate of approximately 95% or more, poverty level schools and inner city districts usually only get an attendance rate of 70 - 80%.

the answer of course is to promote parental and guardian INVOLVEMENT in the education process. it is not our teachers' sole responsibility to educate our children. especially with the children they are given to educate. today's children get to kindergarten with no idea of how to conduct themselves socially. they are disrespectful, with no basic understanding of what their responsibility as a student is. parents let their children run amok for the first five years of life with no direction or discipline and then expect the public school system to "fix" their kids.

*holds up super-sized shield to ward off retaliations*

that said, let me clarify that this is not the case for EVERYONE. it is the case in a surprising number of households tho. and it is not restricted to any area or demographic. it happens everywhere. i personally do my best to direct my child and discipline him, to encourage him to learn not only what he should be learning in school, but other things i feel are important. but i am not a teacher. i don't know how to teach. i am an INVOLVED parent. which is more than i can say for some of the other kids in my son's class, and other kids in our neighborhood. i say this from personal involvement with my son's class and playmates.

also, to validify my position some, let me say that i was raised with a deep respect and love for education. it was something that was important in my home growing up. my parents (not just my mother) were very involved in school functions, organizations, events, and assemblies. they encouraged my sister and i that we could do anything we wanted to do, become anything we wanted to be with an education. while i am not currently professionally involved in education, my mother and sister are educators at the elementary and high school levels respectively. and it is my ambition to achieve my degree in psychology and apply it to education in a counseling capacity to be an advocate for children that do not have one at home.

I'm thinking of a response, but unfortunatly I'm a product of the public school system so it's taking some time. Besides, I'm a little tied up with work and sleep.

take your time, it'll come. a public education always comes thru in the end. previous post also product of public education....

Let's not forget some of the more realistic reasons for students not attending school. There's apathy on the part of the students, apathy by the parents, students interested more in crime than studies.

Out of curiosity, if the attendance rates are lower, wouldn't they be saving money? Well, I'm ont so sure about that, but if these kids aren't showing up, the schools are probably better off without them. The teachers have smaller classes to deal with. I would also speculate that the truants are probably disruptive when they are there.

If I were a parent with a child in a pitiful school, I would not be concerned about the school. My concern would be my child's educaition. The quickest way to let parents reform education, is by helping them afford private schools. The government can't react quickly or effeicently to reform their failing schools. I don't think it's right to have children suffer while the government tries to get its act together.

In the long run, vouchers could save money for the school system overall. The voucher program I supported in California would have vouchers worth half as much as the public schools spent on each student. The state would get to keep half of the money from each student leaving the public schools. Now they would take an intial hit from the students who have already escaped from the public school system, but as more and more students, leave, the state is left with more money.

I really don't think money is the problem overall. We've been increasing school funding for years with little effect. In our county, we pay far more in taxes for the schools than for roiads, public safety, parks, senior and health services, etc. Then they have the nerve to ask for sales tax increases.

I someimtes wonder what the morons in our Board of Education do with the money.

I've thought about working in the schools myself. My wife is a teacher, and I did some substitute teaching to see what her life is like and bring in a little (and I emphasize little) money.

I've had a letter in to be a school resource officer for a couple of months. I think I could do a little bit of good with some of these kids. I think the school staff is falling short because they're not really interveneing early enough with high risk kids. I think there needs to be more of an effort with kids the first time they get in trouble. The ones who have been in trouble a bunch of times are lost. You just have to wait until they grow out of it or go to prison.

As a school resource officer, I doubt I could make contact with all the kids that I'd need or want to, but if I kept my goals limited I think I could have some affect overall. One or two here and there would make it worthwhile.

no no no....

every single one of the "more realisitic reasons" for kids not attending school still starts with the parents. it is my strong personal feeling (and i am fated to eternal frustration on this one) that if you lay down with a man (or woman) and conception occurs and the fetus goes to term and is born into this world with YOUR genes (not you specifically, this is a general statement), then YOU are 100% responsible for seeing that your child is given the best opportunity to succeed in this world. that starts at HOME, years before a child is ever introduced to school. this is why in my original statement i said (i think i did) that the problem with public schools is the parents, not the schools. it is not the school's job to raise a child. it is the school's job to EDUCATE a child.

next issue: when the attendance rates are lower, the STATE saves money, not the school. the school receives money from the state based on attendance trends and averages. if a school only has about a 70% attendance rate, then that school receives much less money than a school witha 95% attendance rate. since the absenteeism rates are higher in poverty level areas than they are in affluent suburbs, this means that the poor students with no resourses at home and the only educational tools being what the school provides for them receive less money from the state than the students from more affluent families. The more affluents will have adequate transportation in the home, usually two incomes, food, a home computer, medical care, a nice stable house, and so on, and they have all this BEFORE they ever see a school. then, since their schools receive more money because their attendance rates are higher, they have more of the same at school, top of the line equipment, internet capabilities, comfortable environment, and more extracurricular programs to enhance education.
in essence, the students that don't have aren't getting; and the students that have plenty are getting more.

>The quickest way to let parents reform education, is by helping them afford private schools<

let me rephrase this for you to give you a more adequate picture:
"The quickest way to let parents destroy the educational system, is by helping them afford private schools"
private school is a privelege, not a right. everyone has a right and an access to an education. what they make of it is up to them. if you have a good student in a poor school, that student will make the best of it, pulling every cent's worth of education he or she can out of what is given to him. a good student in a poor school with the proper upbringing would even go so far as to help out less fortunate classmates, in the form of helping them study, befriending them, encouraging them, volunteering for peer programs, being and setting an example. now, if you were serious about improving education, here's what you do:
not that i am against private school, i am neither for nor against it, but i am for public education. to improve public education, ban private schools. before you get your hackles up, hear me out. i am NOT against private schools. i have no desire to see them go the way of the dinosaur. i am not particularly inclined to support them in any way, but they have just as much right to exist as the bakery on the corner. BUT, to improve public schools, to bring them to the level that they should be at, private schools would have to cease to be. this would force ALL children into the public system, bringing more affluence and more money to ALL schools. making it possible for the poorest child from the most unstable background to receive the exact same education as the senator's son. wouldn't this, after all, be the very definition of equality, one of the very principles this nation was founded on?

more to come....this is getting too long.

let me paraphrase that last statement...
if affluent families were forced to send their children to public schools with the poverty level students, do you think those parents would accept the state those schools are in? if you were a legislator and the school your daughter attended was about to lose state accreditation, wouldn't you be doing something about it? do you think george dubya happily send his child to a school with a shortage of old, outdated textbooks and no football program? NO, these things would never happen. because if the people with the money and the influence and the POWER to change these things were forced to have to endure them, these situations would not exist.

as parents, and indeed as citizens, we have an obligation to educate all of our children. these children are the ones that are going to be running this planet when we have grandchildren, when we retire, when we grow old. they deserve the best start, for the best outcome.

I'm more concerned with education than I am with the education system.

but aren't you concerned about *everyone* getting that education? what happens when you take money away from the kids who need it the most?

happy thanksgiving

If their were that many people who took their kids out of the deucation system for a voucher worth half the amount that the state spends on them, it leaves the state with savings to use on thier remaining pupils. It also creates competition amoung public and private schools to come up with a better product. Families that could not otherwise afford private deucation, would be able to get it.

I think that in the long run. Everyone would be better off. It's really not that bad a deal for the teachers. You'd have to have teachers, no matter what form the school takes.

Thanks, I had a happy Thanksgiving. After working all night, the wife woke me up after 2 hours and had me amek dinner. I got a nap, and worked an 18 hour day.

Actually the states would still be losing money. regardless of how many students are enrolled, there are still buildings and grounds to maintain (and improved in many cases), curriculum to be updated, programs to provide, and personnel to be hired and retained.

money is an issue. you stated in an earlier post that you had subbed a few times, and the money paid for these times was inconsequential. full time teachers are seriously underpaid. the enormous responsibility we have given them, and expect them to live up to, of educating our children demands more than an 8 hour day. we expect them to work with our children individually, and to provide resources to aid the educational process. these men and women still have homes to run, bills to pay, obligations to keep just like everyone else. a lot of the supplies you see in childrens classrooms have been purchased out of the teacher's own pocket. crayons, paints, tools, pencils, papers, books (other than texts), posters, awards, stickers, and other specialized items depending on the class.

after spending an 8 hour day at the school, doing prepwork, teaching, encouraging, pushing, counselling, individualizing and disciplining, these teachers have to go to meetings, conferences, appointments, and then take their work home to grade.

all of this for the average starting pay of $20,000 a year. no overtime, no bonuses.

how does a school district with no money attract new dedicated, passionate educators with 4+ years of student loans behind them and normal household bills like everyone else with only $20,000 a year?

my sister began teaching three years ago. she is in a very good suburban district in the st. louis metro area (not the city schools). she works for the second highest paying district in our area. i believe she started somewhere in the ballpark of $26,000 a year. after two years of this living at home, she was working an additional part time job before she could finally afford to move out and get a place of her own.

money is a BIG issue.

The state would lose money overall, but they would also have fewer students to worry about. In the long run, they would have more money per student. They wouldn't have to scramble for money to new build schools as quickly.

What's important is that we are educating our children. Our concern as taxpayers should be the quality of the education rather than who is providing that education. If my tax dollars are going to a higher quality education in a private school then so be it.

I realize what a teacher puts into their job. I used to routinely try to prevent my wife from spending money on buying stuff for her classroom.

Teachers make decent money. Once they get advanced degrees and they've taught for a while, their income goes up considerably. I was looking at a job in another county where I would be paid as a teacher. I would carry over 4 years of experience and start at $40-44,000 and have summers off.

>>What's important is that we are educating our children. Our concern as taxpayers should be the quality of the education rather than who is providing that education. If my tax dollars are going to a higher quality education in a private school then so be it.<<

but aren't all children entitled to that education? how do you propose to provide it for the poverty level children, the homeless and the ones in shelters. they can't afford a tenth of the tuition, and couldn't get there anyway. are they just to be left behind and forgotten, to fend for themselves?

i guess what i'm trying to say is that success breeds success. the kids that have the money, that can go to private school, even the ones that might go with a voucher, these kids are from families with some manner of financial ability. they expect their kids to succeed. if a business owner's son graduates his private school, completes his private college, gets his fancy degree and uses it to take over for old dad upon retirement, that is to be expected.

what you don't expect is the kid that moves from shelter to shelter every night, who doesn't have a home much less the resources that come with one, who doesn't have a stable home life or support from that front; you don't expect that kid to finish public high school, be accepted to college, and perservere until he becomes the world's foremost brain surgeon.

don't these two examples deserve the same education? shouldn't they be given the same opportunities to reach the same goal? when you take any money away from the public school system example #2 loses.

sorry to keep on this, but i've just come up with another thought...

bear with me, and try to imagine this situation:

say you're a 26-year-old single mother living in the inner city with your 6-year-old son. because you have some morsel of self respect that refuses to let you become a leech on the system, you work a job at mcdonalds during the day while your son attends public school. at your son's school there are bars on the windows. the textbooks are beat up with occasional pages missing, they are three years out of date. at recess when it's warm enough to play outside your son faces the possibility of stumbling across (sometimes quite literally) drug paraphenalia. the sounds of gunshots through the open windows (in the spring and fall, there's no a/c) distracts the students attention away from the teacher at least once a week.

you'd really like to move somewhere else. even tho you know you'd never be able to afford to move out of the city, maybe you could just move closer to the suburbs, maybe things would be better there. but your hourly wage in addition to your monthly check just covers the rent and necessities. if it weren't for food stamps there would be times you wouldn't eat at all. it's impossible to save for the small move it would take to possibly improve the environment.

and every week on your paystub when you get your check, you see the tax deductions, and you know that some of those taxes are going to people who are already so much better off than you so they can send their kids to private school.

hope i haven't overburdened you with things to think about, i know you're busy.

I've never said anything abound disbanding the public schools. I've only suggested that we should allow parents a viable choice.

I think a reasonable voucher system would require the closest public school to accept all children in it's district. Parent would be able to send their children to any other public school that would accept the student. If a parent chose, they could withdraw their student, and they would get a voucher for half of the amount that the government schools would have spent on the child. That voucher would be used for entering the child in a private school or for purchasing products from a home-schooling program. The other half of the money for that student would be retained by either the county Board of Education or whoever else funds the schools for use in the public schools.

Ideally, the state government would provide funds from the genreal fund for vouchers for students already withdrawn from the public schools.

The state saves money everytime a student is withdrawn that can be used for the remianing students. The amount spent per student could be increased without increasing taxes.

I think your kid in example #2 is screwed regardless. His background will probably prevent him from doing anything of note. He will never have the same oppertunities as kid #1. Kid #1's father can already afford a quality private education.

Kid #2 does have hope. Because public schools can get more funding if they attract more students, then the qulaity of education in that school might also increase. Competition is usally a good thing.

Just to clarify, are you suggeting that people shouldn't be allowed to sned their kids to private schools or home-school them? That's the only way to make sure both your kids are getting the same education.

Furthermore, if more students leave the public school system, than are currently in private schools the state saves money overall, and can spend more per student that is in the public schools.

(Incidently, I don't think out-of-date textbooks are that much of a problem. The textbook industry in this country is a sham. They continuly print new editions with little change in content to suck up the money of school systems and college studnets.)

In your example of the McDonald's mother, if she was accepting food stamps, she would be a 'a leech on the system'. It's not like it's hard to get a good job in this country. Heck, our fast food restraunts around here pay more than minimum wage. I did temp non-sense temp work for a bit at $6-$9 an hour after the temp agency took their cut. If she was really smart enough to realize that money was being taken out of her check to support people sending their children to private school, then she should realize it's a more efficent way of providing education than the current system. She would probably have the oppertunity to send her own child to a private school as well. There are private schools with tutition costs half of what the state spends in inner cities.

I see thie whole issue as a win for everyone except for school boards that want to keep power in the hands of the government, and teacher unions who protect their constituents' jobs at the expense of the education system and the students.

If I didn't enjoy thinking about things, I wouldn't be here.

You two have put up some interesting thoughts about the funding of American education, but seem to have missed the point that schools, both public and private are academically far behind where they wee twenty years ago. I have taught in both parochial and public schools and no longer opt to be a part of a system that does not push it's students to learn. Well, they do learn, but mostly how to get around the rules, their parents are the models for this and they simply practice this skill in school. How can a child bring a loaded .357 magnum to a school, which he got because his father was not keeping it properly secured, and have his parents fight his suspension because 'nobody got hurt'? Yes, that was the reaction of the parents! Discipline and academics are more important than money. I have taught in one of the poorest districts in Texas and my students learned because I designed lessons so that they would learn. You don't have to have textbooks or anything else to have a learning environment, just an environment in which learning is king. That my friends begins at home.

I can't tell you how pleased I am to hear another voice, and a different part of the subject. Vouchers are kind of boring.

Most issues in education would be better if there was more parental support and responsibility. I suspect we have to opperate under the assumption that we can't depend on that. Unless you've come up with some clever method that I haven't heard of.

As I see it we have two major problems with discipline in schools. The first is that they're too large. You have to many rats in a can, and they go a little crazy. With the school being such a large social group, it's easy for children to be lost. It's also easier to be violent against a random victim that you don't know. There have been some experiemental schools in New York City with student bodies of about 300 problem students in poor areas. They have far fewer (per student) discipline problems than in larger schools.

The other major problem, and one that can be more readily addressed is the fact that administrators have their backbones sugically removed before being promoted. Adminsitrators have to enforce discipline if they expct teachers to be able to teach. If administrators don't remove problem children, how can we expect teachers to teach while disruptive students have can do whatever they want without fear of discipline?

I do think our schools still do manage teach, but not nearly enough. I learned enough by the time I started the 10th grade to drop out of High School, get my GED and start college. I guess my high school was doing a fair job, however, I didn't think it was doing enough.

I have a new voice to add: I worked for 10 years in administration in a Vocational-Technical school, one of two serving Polk COunty in central Florida. My job was maintaining the computer system and data for attendance, grades and placement. And over the years I watched various experiments performed upon the school system at state and national level, always for the reason that education and teachers had to be improved.

Every time a new set of standards is imposed on a school system, I guarantee that you shave more time off teaching and give it over to preparing and submitting reports to committees and departments. It becomes Kafka-esque, to discover that the state has found yet another way to demand the same information from us, in order to prove that students are improving in the school or that the school is finding jobs for its graduates. Preparing that report means making sure that the teachers were entering grades/attendance/placement info at the computers in their classrooms (don't ask when), which I would convert into raw reports of sorted information, to be turned into a report by the assistant director, who had to do it herself because the county had recently got rid of all those useless and superfluous clerks.

As for attendance! Florida had this brilliant idea of suspending the drivers license of any student with 10 or more unexcused absences. Well, first off, you have to make sure you are keeping exquisitely careful data so that you can PROVE attendance allegations ("Good morning Mr. Shamp, this is Sandra up in computer resources. You haven't taken attendance yet.. Well, you haven't entered it in the computer. I know you have students to teach, but I have to produce an attendance report for the Guidance Department by 8:45...") And then, once you have the student coerced into the classroom you are faced with a young person who has decided not to learn and who may hold back the others with his or her destructive attitude. Vo-Techs are very often the school of last resort for the hardcore non-learners out of regular high schools; our resource officer has always been kept fairly busy.

Well, I have so many thoughts on the matter that I'm spewing like a volcano!