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"... might also apply to other large, racially diverse school districts in Wisconsin, including Madison."
Under the Republican-backed proposal, an independent commissioner would be able to convert the three lowest-performing schools to private voucher or independent charter schools in the first year and then up to five more schools each of the following years.
MEANWHILE:
In New York:
The state Education Department has rejected all 15 applications for new charter schools, including 12 in New York City, claiming they failed to meet academic standards....
The decision, which was made in the past week, comes at a time when Gov. Cuomo and the Republican-controlled state Senate are pushing to raise the cap for charters allowed in the state from 460 to 560. But Mayor de Blasio and the teachers unions oppose charter school expansion, as does the Democratic-run state Assembly....
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89 comments:
Do Something!!
This is a kick-the-can-down-the-road type of thing.
So the "Independent" Commissioner fires everyone and they start over. Then what? If sub-optimal performance continues, is the Commissioner fired? Is the success -- or not -- of the students affected monitored as they move through the voucher/charter system? And if they show no improvement? Then what?
Conversion to private or charter status is a big step Mad Man. After all, it is cutting the cord with the corrupt unions that spells relief for the students. Whatever one may feel about unionization, we have to recognize that over time the union stands for rules and seniority and NOT for quality. The stronger the union the less power admins have to correct problems and improve outcomes. Let's look at the record. Everyone can see the quality of outcomes declining in public education. We can't keep doing the same old thing and expect a different result.
Wow, does this mean results matter?
I endorse accountability for the schools, but wish it could apply to parents (present or missing) as well.
"MadisonMan said...
Do Something!!
This is a kick-the-can-down-the-road type of thing.
So the "Independent" Commissioner fires everyone and they start over. Then what? If sub-optimal performance continues, is the Commissioner fired? Is the success -- or not -- of the students affected monitored as they move through the voucher/charter system? And if they show no improvement? Then what?"
It's the exact opposite. Kick the can down the road means "no change.'
We have lost a generation of kids in Milwaukee, and in Madison too. Time for a change.
Yeah it's the unions. It's their fault. That's the ticket...
Is the success -- or not -- of the students affected monitored as they move through the voucher/charter system?
Charter/Voucher schools aren't measured in the same way as public schools. A voucher school can never fail. Well, until the grifters split town in the middle of the night and close the school.
While you were sleeping.
Your taxpayer dollars hard at work:
“They’re not really schools. They’re holding stations for the children and people are making money off of this,” Hicks says.
The school’s founder, Bishop Doris Pinkney, has filed for bankruptcy three times since 1995. By her own admission last year, she told the court she owed creditors, including the IRS, more than $300,000. Some of those debts represent credit card bills, in the name of the school and her ministry, Power of God, that she failed to pay. In some instances, she’s racked up more than $20,000 in credit card debt.
Notwithstanding her personal financial woes, Wisconsin continues to give her millions to run her school.
Last year, court records show she made $11,000 a month, or about $132,000 a year. Since at least 2012, she’s made six figures.
Pinkney says she’s an educator, but she has never earned a teaching license in Wisconsin. In 2011, a group child care center she ran by the same name, Daughters of the Father, was shut down by the state for “substantial and repeat violations of licensing rules,” according to the Wisconsin Department of Families and Children."
We don't need no education so stick with the teachers union.
While you were sleeping
So garage's fellow travelers are upset that 1) vouchers can be provided to special needs students and 2) only a few schools at a time can be converted to charter schools. Of course, they'd be opposed to the opposite as well.
Oh, and ALEC!!!
We have lost a generation of kids in Milwaukee, and in Madison too. Time for a change.
Is they money spent on 'a change' good money thrown after bad? That's my question.
Change for change's sake (For the kids!!!!) isn't a great idea even if it does stick it to the Teachers' Unions.
DeBlasio is such a world class douchebag it is hard to imagine any douche spilling out of the bag that is him.
We have lots of public charter schools in our area, and our regular schools are fine. Why all the angst about charters? Here, people see the charters as other options. There's a new Montessori school, an arts school, a classical academy, and an academically rigorous high school with, currently, the highest ranking in the state. (There are probably more, but those are the ones that come to mind immediately.)
If a school is terrible, why not change it?
By their fruits you will know them.
Parent(s) who are interested in their children and who want them in better schools are screwed by DiBlasio and Democrats who need to keep the plantation staff intact. Parent(s) without bankrupt spirits want their children to do better than they did, but are oppressed by the government-union complex that operates to accumulate wealth, damn the expenses of suffering!
I've got to concede that black Democrat-block voters are getting what they voted for, and they are getting good and hard
Republicans hate welfare - unless they are the ones getting it. In that case they not only love their entitlements, they don't want any sort of accountability to go along with it. (Not just vouchers - see the WEDC as an example of this too.)
And its bad enough these so-called conservatives want to take my money in order to educate their off-spring, but now they won't even allow me to an elected representative that dictates how MY MONEY will be used and spent.
Using tax money for school vouchers = taxation without representation.
but now they won't even allow me to an elected representative that dictates how MY MONEY will be used and spent.
Of course Republicans would never implement this plan in their districts. They'd be tossed on their ear in the next election. We destroyed your schools, but you did save $5 on your property taxes. What a racket.
If a school is terrible, why not change it?
Agreed. But why not have the locals change it? Why the control from Madison -- in the form of the state Govt -- here?
But are there successful Charter Schools in Madison? There are plenty of Private Schools -- I don't know if these are Charter Ones.
The Charter Schools one hears about in Milwaukee seem to be run by grifters. But there must be success stories there. Anyone have a story for one?
re: NY. The science is settled. Charter Schools provide an inferior educational outcome for its students, therefore the cap should not be changed. And if that is true, then the existing 460 should be eliminated.
Or, Occam's Razor, it could be just the support of teachers' union over better outcomes for the students.
When no one ever gets fired, the authority over the teachers is gone.
That is the Teacher's Unions only demand: that no teachers are ever fired...ever...forever and ever.
The GOP blasphemy is that in reality not all teachers are good teachers.
Does anyone have an example of a "failing school" which was improved by a method other than changing its students?
Wisconsin: Open for Grifters
"A husband and wife running a private Milwaukee voucher school that abruptly closed last month — after accepting a total of more than $2.3 million in taxpayer money — now live in a gated community in Florida by the beach, records show."
"Save for one child who met the state benchmark one year in reading, no students could read or do math proficiently in 2011 or 2012, according to the most recent state test score results."
Black Americans have a mean IQ of 85. Education reform is rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.
When no one ever gets fired, the authority over the teachers is gone.
A lot of low information voters believe that it is impossible for any teacher to ever get fired, but a quick glance at Google shows that this is utter nonsense.
https://www.yahoo.com/parenting/teacher-i-was-fired-for-publicly-shaming-bully-119289264107.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/22/melissa-cairns-ohio-teach_n_2529166.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/22/stadium-elementary-teache_n_2175887.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/08/tiffani-webb-new-york-hig_n_1947277.html
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2015/05/15/student-pen-pals-police-killer/27365079/
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/ga-teacher-fired-teens-allegedly-sex-school-closet-article-1.2227759
Using tax money for school vouchers = taxation without representation.
This is all kinds of stupid. ALL public education uses tax dollars, wastes tax dollars is more accurate a term though. What vouchers can do is take a SMALLER AMOUNT of tax dollars and produce a better outcome. And if the private or public charter is poorly run it is extremely easy to address. When a public school fails nothing changes and teachers are nearly impossible to fail.
Yes Carol it is the union's fault. Work rules that keep old teachers in favor of good teachers; rules that prevent child molesters from being fired; work rules that demand more non-teaching days each year ("staff development is so important!"); work rules that keep "laid off" teachers at 100% pay in "rubber rooms" like so much equipment being stored in a closet; and then there is the corruption and graft associated with every public union known in the free world.
Go ahead and argue for the status quo Carol. I'm sure the 50-year decline in test scores will reverse itself magically ...by virtue of paying union wages.
Using tax money for school vouchers = taxation without representation.
Except the parent is taking THEIR money to send THEIR kid to somebody who can actually do the job.
"Save for one child who met the state benchmark one year in reading, no students could read or do math proficiently in 2011 or 2012, according to the most recent state test score results."
Private school...or any random school in Milwaukee? You decide!
madisonfella, all your examples were for misconduct. For just pure incompetence, it is rather difficult. I'll link to massive right wing site Salon for details.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2010/07/no_teacher_left_behind.html
To comment on certain claims re charter schools, based on the California experience, which though it is a different state, its nearly an order of magnitude greater in scale, and has far better data available to track performance, going back much further.
- Charter schools are very likely to be formed in middle-upper class communities. There are hundreds like that in CA.
- Charter schools are much cheaper per student, in raw budgetary terms, but that is only partly because of reductions in non-teaching overhead. Its mainly because they don't (in California) have to conform to the spending mandates for special ed. in particular re mainstreaming of special ed.
- Charter schools clearly outperform ordinary PS for low-SES (poor, minority) students. They DONT outperform ordinary PS for high SES.
- There is no way in evaluating a large scale implementation like CA to extract self-selection bias in the sort of low-SES students/parents that opt for charters. So MAYBE the improved performance across this type of charter school is because those best able to succeed (among the low-SES population) are disproportionately voting with their feet. On the other hand, there is very good research that indicates that those most likely to succeed do better in an environment where most others are like them (peer effects), and the improved performance is mainly due to this concentration of the likely to succeed.
In any case, this is a complicated matter where the reality certainly does not match the slogans of any side. Personally, it seems clear that at the least charters seem not to do any harm to the kids in them or those left out, and they are very popular with parents.
The parents are people too, and citizens, and voters. It seems churlish to tell them to their faces that they are idiots, and evil. I have seen this in San Francisco. Anti-charter people are probably the best reason I can see FOR charters.
Yes Buwaya and anything -- charter, public/private hybrid, parochial -- any school format that brings more parent involvement improves outcomes. I taught in CA for ten years in public schools and I can attest that getting parents involved, even when it is mandated as in special education, is extremely difficult and the unions make it more difficult by limiting what admin can ask teachers to do to reach out to parents.
The union spent most of their energy illegally using state resources to lobby parents and do political outreach -- not help the school or students. I speak from painful experience not from third-party reporting.
Squeal, union bitches, squeal.
Elections have consequences.
Except the parent is taking THEIR money to send THEIR kid to somebody who can actually do the job
If they were only using their money then they wouldn't need this handout from Big Government.
When they are using public tax dollars to educate their children then the public should get a voice and a vote in how that school is ran.
Don't want me to have any say in how the money is used? Then keep your grubby hands out of my wallet.
all your examples were for misconduct
So what? The common misunderstanding among those wanting this latest government handout is that "no one ever gets fired", period. Truth of the matter is that teachers get fired all the time, for all kinds of reasons. Even in the biased article you posted they still have examples of teachers being fired for incompetence.
But the welfare-crowd don't care about facts and the truth - instead they will say anything in order to justify receiving more and more of their government handouts.
When they are using public tax dollars to educate their children then the public should get a voice and a vote in how that school is ran.
Why?
How about the PUBLIC getting a voice in how PUBLIC schools are run? All the private schools need show is better results than the shitty outcomes tolerated by public schools now.
ALL public education uses tax dollars
And ALL public schools are accountable to an electable school board. The voucher schools have no accountability to anybody except to the welfare recipients who are using their services, while those who are paying for the child's education no longer have a voice in how their money is used.
Progressives can never explain why the government should be running schools or Amtrak or medical insurance. Are any of these activities more important than food, than selling cars, than transporting goods and services?
No, just because. "We've always done it this way" is the lame excuse of small minds stuck in the past unable to change for the better.
What are you people defending? A system that fails to properly educate 80% of it's "customers"!
To fix any problem, you first must identify what is causing the problem.
PISA Scores Show Demography Is Destiny In Education Too—But Washington Doesn`t Want You To Know
Now, why is that? The American Education System seems to work quite well for Asian Americans and white Americans. Not so good for Hispanic Americans, and really badly for African Americans. I know all the educators in the audience will immediately get defensive, but please be objective, because this is a problem that really needs to be solved.
Now, I'd expect any demographic that has a predilection to not learn the language of the country they are living in to have trouble in an English-centric educational system. But what explains African American children being nearly a whole standard deviation behind that of white Americans?
Why? I've heard lots of excuses that dance around the truth, without stating it.
You cannot get good teachers to work at inner city schools, I'm told. Why? Seriously, why is that? Ask that uncomfortable question, and give the uncomfortable answer. Dancing around the problem isn't going to solve the problem.
African American students have behavior issues in class. Again, why? Why is that? What is predominant to this demographic that results in children with behavior issues?
I hear from my lefty educator friends that African American students don't value education, but they're stumped as to why that is.
They don't value jobs, either, and my lefty friends are equally stumped as to why that is.
But then, enablers never seem to see the harm they are causing.
The recent tragedy involving Tony Robinson? He woke up, smoked pot, took a xanex, played video games, smoked more pot, and then bought shrooms with his SSI money (yes, I read the whole PDF you liked to the other day, Professor, thank you for posting a link to it). I relayed the story to two friends of mine, one who is a cop in Milwaukee, and the other is a bleeding heart educator in Milwaukee. Neither were shocked by the story, and both said this is typical inner city lifestyle.
Why? Why is this typical inner city lifestyle? Why are we enabling it?
How about the PUBLIC getting a voice in how PUBLIC schools are run?
They do. It's called an elected school board.
No surprise you never heard of such a thing. Lots of low information voters, like yourself, simply repeat the talking points handed down to them without having much knowledge of what the actual facts are.
while those who are paying for the child's education no longer have a voice in how their money is used
Listen up you nosy busybody! It's none of your goddamned business HOW or WHERE I choose to educate MY children. The only opinion that counts is MINE. A child who leaves public school for ANY other option does so because their PARENT^(S) CHOSE to move them. Keep your nose out of it.
Why do you feel entitled to impose your will on strangers and their children?
Implicit in my last reponse is the fact that the PARENT or guardian is directing the money to the charter etc. In other words PAYING for it. Doesn't matter if the source is a voucher, gov't check or personal wealth. The transaction is the parent's choice.
You do believe in choice don't you?
Madisonfella unless you have worked in the system you have NO IDEA how public schools are run. For the most part neither do the school boards or the local politicians. Or the parents. When parents DO find out is when they start evaluating the other options this thread is discussing.
1) Fernandinande: Does anyone have an example of a "failing school" which was improved by a method other than changing its students?
2) J. Farmer: Black Americans have a mean IQ of 85. Education reform is rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.
3) buwaya: In any case, this is a complicated matter where the reality certainly does not match the slogans of any side. Personally, it seems clear that at the least charters seem not to do any harm to the kids in them or those left out, and they are very popular with parents.
Charter schools are a way of dealing with 1) and 2) above while maintaining the pretense that this isn't what you're doing.
This jumped out at me:
The state Education Department has rejected all 15 applications for new charter schools, including 12 in New York City, claiming they failed to meet academic standards.
If only they would make the public schools apply and evaluate their academic standards in the same way, then the public could make more informed decisions.
Kind of like how I wish you could make native-born Americans pass the citizenship test that naturalized citizens do.
If they were only using their money then they wouldn't need this handout from Big Government.
Getting the money taken from the government back isn't a handout by any rational measure.
When they are using public tax dollars to educate their children then the public should get a voice and a vote in how that school is ran.
They're using the money confiscated from them by the government. It isn't YOUR money so your opinion should be moot.
So what?
When a teacher is simply shit at their job, yes, it is brutally difficult to remove them.
Look at the absolutely crappy system you're defending, Progressives! The only metric that has "improved" in my lifetime is the per-pupil spending measure, which goes up up inexorably UP.
They do. It's called an elected school board.
My dad was on the school board for a long time, for a while as its president. If he weren't dead, this would have made him laugh.
The board is closed in by unions too. Also, the public only seems to take an interest in stupid issues. People didn't show up to talk about curriculum, but they'd show up for dumb things like Beloved Administrator being fired for offense that would obviously get one fired anywhere. (The board, of course, was bound by privacy rules not to disclose what the offense was, so it was assumed that something nefarious was going on.) When they hired a brilliant superintendent to improve the schools, other administrators and teachers decided the superintendent was mean, so they hounded him out. They also flipped out about merit bonuses to be paid from extra money only available for merit bonuses because, they said, that would engender unhealthy competition and resentment among teachers. People got mad when they created a free day care for teen high school students. People got mad when they switched to block scheduling, which was obviously superior.
Here's what being on a school board is like: doing things as they've always been done and keeping teachers happy or trying to make things better and making everyone angry constantly. Totally demoralizing.
"Squeal, union bitches, squeal."
A Charter school proponent telling the truth in this thread for once.
It isn't about the kids to the voucher people, this is just a method of political warfare. As so perfectly demonstrated here.
"And ALL public schools are accountable to an electable school board."
In modern public school governance and finance matters school boards have been sidelined. In California, and most states I know of, Federal and State mandates and takeovers of funding, among many other things, leave school boards with very limited powers.
Even in matters like Office vs instructional staffing there isn't much they can do to improve efficiency, as it is is Fed and State mandates that drives the need for bureaucracy.
Much of the mandate/process pile-on also comes from unelected State and Fed bureaucracies, that are simply not democratically accountable. No democratic system can get into those weeds to prune away the countless specific instances of overreach.
Add to that the other layer of court decisions, and legalistic prudence. These create even more constraints within which school boards need to operate.
And in the case of big city school boards, one usually sees a basic democratic failure, a disconnect between parents and politicians, where for the most part the parents are at the throats of the politicians. For good reasons - the politicians certainly don't represent THEM. They are merely on the stage of the cursus honorum of the local political machine.
We have been through this all before I think.
Mark,
"It isn't about the kids to the voucher people, this is just a method of political warfare. As so perfectly demonstrated here."
Do you read anything other than what you want to read ?
Read mine, and Marks. And then comment with substance.
"Does anyone have an example of a "failing school" which was improved by a method other than changing its students?"
Yes.
Quite a lot actually.
Look up the Inglewood CA school district for an example.
Over 20 years they managed to make major improvements in their K-5 school performance with the same population. The population mix is changing these days so the comparisons across districts isn't as stark.
Inglewood, in most of its schools, managed to close about 1sd out of the 2sd gap in scores between low and high SES populations. It isn't THE solution, but it certainly helps a great deal.
This was done through a targeted curriculum and organized, scripted instruction, discipline, and heavy oversight of teaching methods.
The improvements fade in grades 6-12, the methods used apparently aren't appropriate for older children, but there is nothing wrong with getting in a good foundation while the opportunity presents itself.
It isn't about the kids to the voucher people
Bullshit! We can also take pleasure that the ENEMIES of school reform squeal though. Read the union charter, 'cause it AIN'T ABOUT THE KIDS to the union. Not. At. All.
How exactly do terms like LIBERAL and CONSERVATIVE apply in this case? Republicans are for liberal choice policies allowing parents to direct their educational spending. Democrats argue for conserving the status quo despite its obvious failure.
Another instance where the politics of labeling and shouting just doesn't get to the issues we need to address.
scripted instruction, discipline, and heavy oversight of teaching methods
These traditional methods WORK. Outcome-based education, New Math and Common Core do not. Bonus points for anyone who can spot the 5-word phrase excerpted from Buwaya above that sets union heads on fire. Actually, just O-word gives 'em the heeby jeebies.
Mike @ 11:31
My oldest daughter teaches middle school math in Fountain Valley. She makes time every month for parents to come in and discuss their kids progress. The only ones that consistently come in are the parents of Asian children.
I am so glad that our family no longer has to deal with educating our children. Jobs were rejected or taken in that consideration, and now that is no longer an issue.
I believe that discipline in the classroom is one of the larger determinations of the quality of an education offered. We were fortunate that in high school, our children filled their schedules with AP classes. I understand that at many schools, these classes are "open" to anyone who wishes to take them, and I am curious as to how that works out. I know that the AP test scores in many of those cases indicate large instances of poor learning outcomes...whereas the AP classes at "our" schools were generally filled with serious students who were well-behaved and attentive to the fast-flying work and heavy homework loads. Alternately, some of the more general required classes were nearly zoos.
Is it not true, though, that middle school and high school are really too late to affect great change in student outcomes? The biggest failure is in the elementary schools. No one should be getting out of 3d grade without being able to read, write, and do basic arithmetic unless they are mentally deficient. All of the money we spend, and all of the "great educational ideas" are not getting the job done!
I can teach young children all of those basics, as well as how to use their brains to think, question and learn about the world around them with nothing more than a patch of bare dirt for me to write in with my fingers! They would have to sit still, listen, and otherwise behave for the learning process to work...but there is no reason that behavior cannot be expected and achieved. Children will rise up to expectations, but we so often seem to give them nothing to rise to.
One day we will undersatand and agree it is the quality of the student's homelife that determines how well our schools perform. And when we reach that point, we will put this "quality of schools" issue aside and move on to something else we can fight about for years.
Oh my, after pressing the "publish" button for my last comment, I scrolled down Anne's posts to see the one about school discipline....as I was saying...
Using tax money for school vouchers = taxation without representation
The parents who use vouchers aren't using your taxes for vouchers, they are using their taxes for vouchers, and it does damn well represent their views.
Michael the Magnificent: To fix any problem, you first must identify what is causing the problem.
PISA Scores Show Demography Is Destiny In Education Too—But Washington Doesn`t Want You To Know.
Now, why is that? The American Education System seems to work quite well for Asian Americans and white Americans. Not so good for Hispanic Americans, and really badly for African Americans.
I (think I) know what you're trying to say here, and that you're being ironic, but just to clarify (because I think the data is interesting):
The article is not arguing that American schools don't do well by blacks and Hispanics, quite the contrary. The claim is that, if you parse the data by race, all American racial groups do well relative to other members of their respective races, internationally.
E.g., Asian-Americans outscore everbody but Shanghai Chinese, American whites outscore every "white" country except Finland, etc. Same for blacks and Hispanics. Of course, many of those white countries have minority populations themselves, and some of the "Hispanic" countries are pretty white (as are many American "Hispanics"), so the comparisons aren't perfect apples to apples. What they don't support, however, is the fond belief of NPR listeners that low American scores in international testing are caused by, you know, those dumb white creationists who don't value education. (Do try this at home: visit earnest SWPL blogs and point out the scores that are dragging down the national average on international tests. Hilarity will ensue.)
Now, I'd expect any demographic that has a predilection to not learn the language of the country they are living in to have trouble in an English-centric educational system. But what explains African American children being nearly a whole standard deviation behind that of white Americans?
But American Hispanics don't score lower than Hispanics in Spanish-speaking countries. And while there are no other sub-Saharan countries for comparison, American blacks score higher than 17 other non-black countries, as well as multiracial Brazil and black/subcon Asian Trinidad and Tobago. That suggests a couple of things about "the gap" that progressives don't want to think about.
They would have to sit still, listen, and otherwise behave for the learning process to work...but there is no reason that behavior cannot be expected and achieved.
Sure there is:
demographics.
Seriously, some people make the argument that Black boys cannot behave that way.
The voucher schools have no accountability to anybody
Given that this article is about the government not allowing these schools to open, apparently they are accountable to someone.
Most importantly, they are accountable to the parents who chose to send their kids there. parents who are much more likely to be involved in their child's education and to hold the school accountable.
Seven out of ten of the very worst performing schools in Milwaukee are voucher schools.
Garage, your link is to what amounts to an Op-Ed piece.
Anglelyne said...
Yup. And if the cause for our lagging PISA scores were caused by the American Education system, then none of what you said could be true.
But our PISA scores are lagging. Why? Because a certain demographic is dragging it down. And I want to know why that is.
The four year graduation rate for African Americans in Madison Wisconsin is less than 50%! Why? That's a shit sandwich no matter how you try to dress it up. And I'd bet, of the less-than-50% that do graduate, a sorry percentage are functionally illiterate. Seriously, why are we accepting and enabling this?
But Mayor de Blasio and the teachers unions oppose charter school expansion, as does the Democratic-run state Assembly....
Not enough opportunities for graft and featherbedding.
The only opinion that counts is MINE
Not when your grubby hands are in MY wallet.
It's that simple - you don't want me to have a say in how my money is spent then quit using my money.
You sound just like those assholes who think they are entitled to use food stamps for their lobster, steak, or whatever else they want to spend it on, because they think it is "their" food stamps.
You charity cases all think money just magically appears from nowhere. No wonder you can't support your own family without a handout from everyone else; you're totally clueless on how finance and economics works - to you its just "free money", and thus you don't give any more thought to it then how the heck are you going to spend it.
You're just a typical welfare queen - you think you're entitled to everything while accountable to nobody.
The libs squeal because charter schools step on their air hose, not out of any concern for the students.
Michael the Magnificent nails it. Sadly.
There is no amount of money that will solve this problem. You could shove a million dollars a year per pupil into the system and it would not help.
The problem is not money. The problem is culture.
We have been through this all before I think.
I think we left off right about when you were going to explain why having absolute zero voice in how my tax dollars are being spent is much better than possibly having a somewhat weak voice in how my tax dollars are being spent.
Go ahead and argue for the status quo Carol. I'm sure the 50-year decline in test scores will reverse itself magically ...by virtue of paying union wages.
I don't give a shit about the status quo. Unions are red herring conveniently used by MY party to avoid talking about the real problem: the moronic and violent students (and their dysfunctional parents).
As long as teachers have to deal with the aggravation, I expect them to maintain whatever legal bureaucratic armor they have.
"It's that simple - you don't want me to have a say in how my money is spent then quit using my money. "
Its not in your hands, at all.
None of us have any real control over how much is budgeted, nor how its allocated, or how its spent, or how its audited.
None, not a bit (beyond lip service and marginalia), no matter how elections go.
Democracy, in this regard, is already completely futile.
garage, I noticed that the article you linked to included no actual evidence of the claim of the "7 of the 10 worst performing schools are voucher schools". It seems to be little more than the opinion of Ruth Conniff, EIC of the Progressive (and not a terribly good writer, to boot)
Perhaps you can do the legwork the author couldn't do and back up the claim you and the author are making here.
You charity cases all think money just magically appears from nowhere. No wonder you can't support your own family without a handout from everyone else; you're totally clueless on how finance and economics works - to you its just "free money", and thus you don't give any more thought to it then how the heck are you going to spend it.
So parents who pay their property taxes for shit schools should just shut up and take it?
Why should they have to finish your insane fetish for shit schools?
Why should THEY have to pay property taxes in this case?
madisoninga is really worked up over this.
How delightful.
So parents who pay their property taxes for shit schools should just shut up and take it?
Hell no. Even tho that is EXACTLY what you are saying about taxpayers without children. We're supposed to just shut up while you take our money.
I'm already paying for a school for your kids, and that school allows me to have at least a small voice in how my money is being spent. If you're not happy with the school provided then work to change it. If you don't want to put forth that sort of effort then there are other options available that don't involve dipping into my wallet to pay for a special school for your little darlings.
If you can't afford a Cadillac-school on your Chevrolet-salary, then use open enrollment or home schooling as other options. Claiming that a voucher from the government is the only choice available is utter bullshit.
It is the laziest choice though, and to some people that is the only choice.
The problem is not money. The problem is culture.
Exactly.
Now, who is enabling this culture? Who is voting to feed, house, heat, transport, and babysit this culture, at taxpayer expense? Who is unwilling to shame this culture out of it's self-destructive anti-social behavior? Who spends all of their energy pointing fingers of blame in every other direction? Who cries "racism" at those who state hard, provable, and uncomfortable facts? Who is it who tells those in this culture that they cannot possibly succeed because the country is aligned against them, so there is no point in trying? These are the people who are responsible for enabling this culture to survive and entrench itself.
@Madisonfella:I'm already paying for a school for your kids, and that school allows me to have at least a small voice in how my money is being spent.
You have no voice over the public schools that take state funds are not located in your district, but you pay for them.
Vouchers for school choice are no more a "handout" than public schooling. Exactly no more, and no less.
I strongly suspect you are not against the redistribution of tax dollars from people who pay a lot in taxes but little in services in principle. Your scruples are curiously specific.
"and that school allows me to have at least a small voice"
A very, very very small voice. So small nobody cares.
In the meantime, the kids and their parents haven't got a voice, or no bigger than yours anyway, and this whole business is about them. There is no "work to change the system". The system is invincible and overwhelming.
With choice/charters/vouchers at least the parents and their kids have a voice, they can vote, effectively, with their feet. They can flee. They can bypass and escape the unreformable behemoth.
And since these things are generally limited to mid-to-low income people, it is a progressive, populist voice, a tactic for guerrilla war and subversion in aid of the oppressed.
Hell no. Even tho that is EXACTLY what you are saying about taxpayers without children.
That is PRECISELY what you're saying. The government takes your money, is incapable of educating your children --- and you whine when somebody takes their money back and goes to somebody who CAN do the job?
I'm already paying for a school for your kids
I can guarantee you're not.
and that school allows me to have at least a small voice in how my money is being spent.
Not quite. You may wish to have control of other people's kids, but you really, truly lack that.
If you're not happy with the school provided then work to change it.
Leaving it is good enough change. Why sacrifice MY kids to improve a failed system?
If you don't want to put forth that sort of effort then there are other options available that don't involve dipping into my wallet to pay for a special school for your little darlings.
I'm taking MY money back. Stop stealing my money and we'll be cool.
If you can't afford a Cadillac-school on your Chevrolet-salary, then use open enrollment or home schooling as other options. Claiming that a voucher from the government is the only choice available is utter bullshit.
The government STOLE THE MONEY from me.
I'm taking it back.
Don't like it? Don't care. It's not your money.
Of course, seeing somebody without kids opining on schools is amusing. You don't know the first thing about what you're talking about.
It speaks poorly of a system where somebody is required by law to use it because nobody would do so willingly.
I assume the public school only people would prefer to shop on behalf of WIC and foodstamp recipients and to select the doctors of those on Medicare and Medicaid.
"Seven out of ten of the very worst performing schools in Milwaukee are voucher schools."
I don't believe it. Parents have chosen to be there.
EMD said...
Garage, your link is to what amounts to an Op-Ed piece.
He actually thinks shit like that is reasoned editorialism.
Precious
Garage is a wonderful example example of public school training in the modern era. Students are not encouraged HOW to think, they are told WHAT to think.
"Tell 'em teachers up 'aer if they give you any sh!t, Imo come up 'aer an' kick 'er a$$" It's not the father that tells kids this. It's usually the grandmother. The father and the mother are in jail or rehab. Kids like this are taught not to be taught from an early age.
I had classes where 1/3 of the students were this type.
Mark said...
"Squeal, union bitches, squeal."
A Charter school proponent telling the truth in this thread for once.
It isn't about the kids to the voucher people, this is just a method of political warfare. As so perfectly demonstrated here.
5/21/15, 12:34 PM
Projection is strong with this one.
What the opponents of vouchers seem to ignore is there wouldn't be a need and demand for them if the public schools were good.
One thing that ought to be considered is reducing or eliminating welfare benefits to the parents of disruptive and non-performing students along with conditioning welfare benefits for the students based on standardized test scores for numeracy and literacy. It's not like they are doing taxpayers any favors.
In the local public school system there is great furor over the underperformance of a certain minority. Newspaper articles showed the absolute values of test scores versus race and there was, of course, a significant correlation.
If it weren't so serious, it would have been funny to read the reactions of the leftists, but no talking point was left behind.
What the lefties overlooked was a related story published last year in the same paper: PTA participation. The schools that did the best, had tremendous PTA membership - several at 100%. The struggling schools has membership rates below 20%. A coincidence, I'm sure.
I'd add to cubanbob's comment that a driver's license shouldn't be issued to someone who doesn't have a high school diploma or GED. We are often reminded that driving is a privilege and not a right, so let's add some heft to that privilege.
While I'm typically against the heavy hand of Goverment requirements such as I've suggested, I'm more against irresponsibility costing me a fortune by supporting the lazy and unmotivated.
Mike is a valuable voice from the trenches. I taught in public and private schools and the difference is profound. I was educated in public and private schools, and experienced the same.
The teachers unions have ruined public education. And the reason is basic. The FIRST and MOST important function of a union is to protect its members. So, when teachers union fat cats say, "It's about the children" it is a flat ass lie, on its face!
Any bureaucracy will naturally become more and more corrupt over time unless some action is taken to mitigate. The reason for this, I believe, is there is always a significant portion of the population that is of limited usefulness for whatever reason (lack of talent, poor temperament, laziness, etc.) but desperately wants to live like someone more useful. The “useless”, for lack of a better word, tend to gravitate to bureaucracies where demands are less and actual talent and effectiveness can be negated through politicking, both office and government kind. Once they get into positions of authority, they tend to drive out the useful people, given they are threats to their position, and they tend to undermine the purpose of the bureaucracy for their own ends. Eventually the original goal of the bureaucracy and the real goal of the bureaucracy are unrelated. At this point, the bureaucracy is useless and should be destroyed. If it is still useful, perhaps it can be reformed. Alas, government bureaucracies rarely ever suffer for their sins; typically, all it results in is larger budgets given that money is obviously the problem.
To relate this to the subject at hand, it is clear that the school bureaucracy has reached a critical level of corruption in many parts of the country, especially in the cities. Schools are supposed to do a certain job. If they cannot do the job, you need to consider one of two scenarios. Scenario #1 is the school is incompetent, in which case you need to fire a whole bunch of people and start over. Scenario #2 is the job is impossible, in which case you have to consider whether your standards are too high (possible) or whether there is even a purpose for the school to exist at all. I’m quite serious about that latter possibility. When a school teacher can go on television and say he should get paid the same regardless whether he actually educates anyone at all (something I have personally witnessed), it becomes a serious consideration that the institution is indeed useless.
In any case, this is an attempt to rattle the corrupt educational bureaucracy. Good for Wisconsin. Bureaucracies need to be rattled on a regular basis. There is nothing like danger to their phony baloney jobs to get people to actually do their jobs. If the public school system with all its faults proves superior, then the charter and voucher systems will eventually go away. I seriously doubt that will happen though. It is also wonderful that a fraudulent or ineffective school can be shut down. That’s what is supposed to happen. As Romney says, it is great when you can fire people. Too bad public schools tend to be immune, which is one of the reasons we are in the mess we are at the moment.
All of the teachers/union in the local school districts in my area voted to take a day off this last Monday to protest the state budget. They didn't mention that they increased the state budget for education by a goodly amount. It is just never enough. They had the kids out there with signs too. Because that is better than being in class.
All I could think is that I am forced to pay their salaries. God I wish I could choose to send my kids somewhere else.
Did someone case aspersions on those who believe its difficult to fire a teacher?….
In New York City, it often costs taxpayers $250,000 just to fire one incompetent teacher. Some teachers remain on the payroll even after being convicted of serious felonies, requiring districts to hold disciplinary hearings behind prison walls.
The Washington-based Center for Union Facts says that from 1995 to 2005, 112 Los Angeles tenured teachers faced termination — 11 per year — out of 43,000. It also said 47 New Jersey teachers out of 100,000 were fired in a 10-year period.
from right wing NBC broadcasting to low information viewers.
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/25430476/ns/us_news-education/t/superintendent-bad-teachers-hard-fire/#.VV_1zsai1g0
It's remarkably difficult to fire a tenured public school teacher in California, a Times investigation has found. The path can be laborious and labyrinthine, in some cases involving years of investigation, union grievances, administrative appeals, court challenges and re-hearings.
The Times reviewed every case on record in the last 15 years in which a tenured employee was fired by a California school district and formally contested the decision before a review commission: 159 in all
Building a case for dismissal is so time-consuming, costly and draining for principals and administrators that many say they don't make the effort except in the most egregious cases. The vast majority of firings stem from blatant misconduct, including sexual abuse,
from the low-information right wing LA Times
http://articles.latimes.com/2009/may/03/local/me-teachers3
The city will spend a whopping $29 million in 2013 on the salaries and benefits of outcast educators who are deemed too dangerous or incompetent to work in public school classrooms but cannot be immediately fired, the Daily News has learned.
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/education/city-spend-29m-paying-educators-fire-article-1.1477027
And in addition to the dollar costs, think of the damage that bad teachers are doing to kids who need to learn for their future.
Thanks for spending time with us low information commenters!! You’ve really contributed!!!
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