On Apr 9, 2013, at 1:21 PM, Bill <anotherdrunken...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 09/04/2013 7:43 AM, Paul Stenquist wrote: > > > That's why voucher funded charter schools are needed in those other areas. > > They can provide the competition for the public schools. >Community > > involvement is another thing, but having an alternative to the public > > schools is a start. > > And when all the kids are going to charter schools via a voucher program, you > will have a de facto public schools system which is funded by a combination > of public funding and private tuition, probably to the chagrin of the people > on the private funding side (why should we pay our freight when the majority > don't?), but is a given that it will be much more expensive than the public > system it has replaced. > Why not just fix the public system instead? > We've been trying to fix the public school system for fifty years. School reform without additional motivation just hasn't happened. Any discussion of such a complex problem becomes overly simplified in a forum like this. But in very general terms there are myriad reasons why public schools have continued to fail, including powerful labor unions, politicians who depend on the labor unions for votes, and school systems overburdened with administrators and non-teaching personnel. To that add teacher education programs in the 1970s and even into the '80s and '90s that ignored things like curriculum, structure and discipline. I was a product of late sixties and early seventies teacher education. They taught us that if we loved our students enough they would learn. They didn't, and trying to teach in schools that were founded on those hazy principles was like getting run over by a freight train. Our educational system is only now beginning to recover from the mistakes of the past. But there has to be motivation to do better. Without competition, there is not sufficient motivation in many communities. Public schools will survive given the vested interest that a large portion of the population has in their continued existence. Charters won't ever replace them completely. It's doubtful that we'd ever get to 50% charters. But to ensure survival, public schools will have to complete. They can no longer be lazy and take their position for granted. And that's happening in a lot of places. This discussion seems to assume that the existence of charter shoals and voucher systems is up for debate. It's not. They're operating and, in many places, succeeding. We still have much to learn about how they should be regulated and on what basis they should be allowed to compete, but going back to a schools system that is operated only by the government isn't going to happen. That's history. > -- > PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List > PDML@pdml.net > http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net > to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow > the directions. -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List PDML@pdml.net http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
