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Rather than admit that there has been a massive erosion of confidence in public schools and working to reverse that, the worst performing school districts are reduced to pleading that they should continue to collect money that desperate parents would rather have spent elsewhere, for a better product. There’s a lesson in there, if school administrators are willing to take it.
Public schools are a scam.
https://www.ibj.com/articles/damning-audit-finds-two-virtual-schools-misspent-85m-in-state-funds
The evidence says otherwise.
Shame on you.
I am being hyperbolic. Let me clarify:
I should have also said that charter schools and private schools are scams too. 9-12 education in the US is broken and inefficient in general. But like I said, I am being hyperbolic. It’s not a scam, but it has serious issues and needs to be looked at very closely.
The institutions that teach children in the United States treat them like cattle or prisoners. In America, the school generally fail to:
A.) Teach students adequately and prepare them for higher education, whether it be college, university, or a trade school.
B.) Adequately teach students to critically think and how to be an adult.
C.) Facilitate a love for learning in children instead of facilitating apathy or anxiety about learning.
D.) Give students enough freedom to develop proper personal responsibility.
Additionally, a high school diploma is near meaningless. I would wager that the majority of students are ready for community college by 10th grade. Most schools don’t provide as much value and they advertise. Countries all over the world have figured this out and only mandate 2 years of high school before moving on to an equivalent to community college.
I’ve spent a career in business, and I always wanted good, strong competitors. I found that when I had good competitors, I by necessity had to have a better company with improved products or services. Market competition will either force you to improve your product, or force you out of business if you refuse to change. Either outcome is better than the status quo.
Your analogy doesn’t hold up for a PUBLIC SERVICE. Public schools are crippled by regulations from the state and then their funding diverted to private entities that can pick and choose which choice students to accept.
This expansion of vouchers won’t even go to needy students who are currently lacking options. They will go to upper-middle class households who are already sending their kids to private school but now get to have the state pay for it.
Joseph, thanks for your reply. My analogy was especially intended for certain public services, like schools. If public schools are crippled by state regulations, why are we allowing and encouraging that? Perhaps by examining successful charter schools, we can see where our public schools are crippled and change those regulations. I would offer Paramount Schools of Excellence as a shining example of how non-public schools are making a real difference for the very populations that public schools are leaving behind. Of course, there will be alternative schools that fail, as you note elsewhere. When parents have a choice about where to send their children to school, the schools that best serve them will be rewarded with more students and more funding. Those that don’t will close their doors. It would be wonderful if every family, regardless of their income, could be able to choose a top-notch school for their children. I’m not familiar enough with the proposed plan to know if it fully funds the cost of alternative schools for needy families. It should.
If charter schools actually were what they were sold as, and if there was sufficient oversight and consequences to being a bad school, I’d be inclined to agree with you. But right now, this is a handout to the charter school and religious groups, pure and simple. It has nothing to do with parents or kids. It’s all about the money.
A charter school stole $85 million from the state of Indiana and the response from Indiana hasn’t been to increase oversight, it’s been to hand out more money.
And, Paramount, Why only hold public schools to their standards? Why aren’t other charter schools held to high standards? Why shouldn’t they all do what Paramount does since it works so well? It’s not as though charter schools do any better of a job of educating kids than public schools (look it up).
Joe, thanks for your comments. We probably agree that the $85m scandal was egregious and oversight should be put in place to prevent fraud, especially at such magnitude. But we are throwing the proverbial baby out with the bathwater if we say that because a couple charter schools failed spectacularly in this way, then we should eliminate all charter schools. And, in fact, I would (rather the market would) hold all schools, not just public ones, to the standards of the best schools. Having talked with many people at both religious and charter schools, I can confirm that their mission is first and foremost about the kids, not the money. In this, they align with the parents.
Your question about why other schools don’t do what Paramount does is a good one. I don’t know the answer, but it’s worth investigating. And I believe their outcomes are far above equivalent public schools.
I don’t support expanding charter school programs until it can be explained how future such theft will be stopped. I never said anything about getting rid of charter schools.
And the knowledge transfer is always perceived, as you note, to be very one-way. Public schools should always adapt what private schools are doing, but private schools that aren’t functioning well (and there are many) face no such pressure to adopt what other private schools or even public schools are doing. Matter of fact, they can just go find a different school district to endorse them.
If you’re going to tell me a handful of Indiana universities are the sole endorsers of private/charter schools, and that we are going to rigorously study what they do and spread best practices around, then I feel much better about the amount of money were spending. But that’s the complete opposite approach that we are taking in Indiana, all we do is hand out money and care very little about the results.
And it doesn’t matter how low our taxes are if we don’t have a workforce that is well educated. We simply do not spend enough on education in Indiana, especially not enough to divert the bulk of any funding increases to a narrow minority of the schools in the state.
My children have been in private and public schools and I found the motivations of leadership at both the same as far as helping kids. The curriculum at the private school we were at, though, was much more about indoctrinating kids then challenging them to be their best and brightest. Which is one reason why we left…
I’m appalled but not surprised by the responses on here, private schools should never receive dollars from state funds. Ever.
JOSEPH W. I think you are right, but what regulations are you referring to?
The State wants to subsidize private school for families making $145,000/year? That’s ridiculous! Are they going to start subsidizing people buying brand new cars too? If you’re a married couple with two kids making that amount of money, you can certainly afford a house in an area with a good school district, or pay tuition for private school.