Excerpt:
[S]ome of Florida’s largest school districts are facing staggering enrollment declines — and grappling with the possibility of campus closures — as dollars follow the increasing number of parents opting out of traditional public schools.... In Broward County, Florida’s second-largest school district, officials have floated plans to close up to 42 campuses over the next few years.... Broward County Public Schools claims to have more than 49,000 classroom seats sitting empty this year, a number that “closely matches” the 49,833 students attending charter schools in the area....
The enrollment declines for Broward, Duval and Miami coincide with the Covid-19 pandemic, which sent parents seeking new education choices for their children. How traditional public schools handled the pandemic, as well as disagreements over curriculum and subject matter, have also contributed to parents leaving, according to school choice advocates.
“If your product is better, you’ll be fine. The problem is, they are a relic of the past — a monopolized system where you have one option,” Chris Moya, a Florida lobbyist representing charter schools and the state’s top voucher administering organization, said of traditional public schools. “And when parents have options, they vote with their feet.”...
“The money follows the student and the family. It’s not embedded in a certain system or a certain framework,” [Governor Ron] DeSantis said in April when asked about potential school closures in Duval. “And so, the student and the family will be making those decisions.”...
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72 comments:
Faster please
Ahh, freedom and the free market at work.
The Left hates it.
"Broward County Public Schools claims to have more than 49,000 classroom seats sitting empty this year, a number that “closely matches” the 49,833 students attending charter schools"
Not one room school houses, but one-room-per-student?
For once, not an unintended consequence.
Good. COVID-19 really showed where public education's priorities were and it wasn't with what was best for the students. Parents and communities are beginning a push back.
this just shows HOW HORRIBLE choice is!
if proletariats are allow to make their own choices, they will NOT chose the dog food..
proletariats MUST be refused ALL (and ANY) choice in ALL (and ANY) issue!
FORCE the proletariats to eat the dog food!!
I'm surprised that the quoted sections don't include even a word about the public schools' closing being a bad thing, as if the schools themselves are sufficient reason for their existence.
That said - and I do support school choice - I hope that families with a child with disabilities will continue to be served somewhere. This area, intellectual disabilities especially, seems to me to be the one place where public schools, which have to provide accommodations and programming for such kids, aren't easily replaced. The kids' needs can be expensive, the kids themselves are a small minority that a charter school might reasonably not want to have to serve (and therefore attract), and so where do they go?
Jamie, I don't know about Florida, but in New York City (and maybe New York State?), charter schools are required to serve special ed students. Admission is by lottery so the charter schools can't screen them out; they must follow IEPs, etc. like any other school. The NYC Charter Schools association says that charter school students with special needs score higher in Math and ELA than public school students with special needs.
I teach in an "Old South" rural area of Florida in a Hispanic majority high school about an hour away from brochure and touristy Florida.
As this county starts replacing 1980's built schools the powers that be are running into several problems. 1) The influx of refugees from the blue states of the north east and the Midwest and 2) the missing and dearth of births of the generation following the Zoomers - there's not many of them. As a long time inner city public school teacher who sent his children to Catholic schools, I'm here to tell you that Charter School are the flexible way to go. I wish they had been around when my kids went to school in the 90's and 00's. No Charter schools yet in the very poor - by Florida standards - part of Florida I reside in along the St Johns River. In an amazing juxtaposition we are geographically cheek and jowl with the richest country in Florida - St Johns County.
Addendum: Hispanic American students are an great cohort: humble, quiet, industrious, patriarchal and polite. What a 180° difference from the inner city school population I worked with for 35 years.
This is what the liberal Teachers union and their members fear most. It's also why the lie about and vilify school choice.
COVID showed their self-centeredness. The transgender agenda and pushed the schools over the edge.
It would be worse in WI if it wasn't for Scott Walker. We also see communities like Waukesha wrestling back control of their public schools from insane liberals.
Even before school choice, weren't many special needs students the first to be outsourced from public schools by public schools?
According to the article, in the three-year span from 2019-2020 to 2022-2023, Florida's private schools increased enrollment by 47,000, homeschoolers increased by 50,000, and number of kids in the state's charter schools grew by 68,000.
That's a loss of 165,000 students out of the traditional public schools in that three-year period and that's before the new universal choice law took effect for the 2023-2024 school year.
Give parents a choice to flee bureaucratic Democrat party public schools. and they do it?
No way, man.
Woke They/them pedo schools of condoms on a cucumber and feelings feelings feelings - are not working out?
I'm sure the Soviet-Maddow-CrookJoe left will find a way to put a stop to that and FORCE everyone back on the crap education campus.
Democracy lives in The Sunshine State.
what Public Schools need are more gay sex books in the public school libraries. What are 4th graders expected to read?
So cruel.
I see that Florida is rich in Hillsdale-affiliated Classical schools. Good for Florida.
I taught for 25 years in public schools in nicer suburbs. Both districts I taught at had competent administrators and compared favorably to private schools. Both eventually got administrations that only cared about maintaining their positions by indulging students and inflating grades. Rigorous teachers who held students accountable were targeted, so left for other districts or retired early.
School choice is the only way to hold administrators accountable. Public schools have the facilities, resources and home-field advantage, so should be able to provide a better education than a start-up charter or private school. If they can't, then parents should have the option to go elsewhere.
We have an obligation to educate children. There is no obligation to do that through a public school system that is susceptible to Leftist capture.
Private universities, even religiously-affiliated universities, became as or more corrupted than public universities. Education won't improve just by implementing school choice, but it can improve if parents demand it.
Notably, the Broward school system is highlighted as in danger of massive school closings. Broward, one of the last Democratic strongholds in Florida, has an awful school board, notoriously bad schools. While the rest of Florida has been showing incredible increases in the quality of education overall (public and charter/magnet/private schools), Broward is still the lagging sibling. Run by Democrats. Trying hard to slow the growth of choice, even as it is spreading across the state.
From our K-12 levels into our university levels, Florida has skyrocketed up the charts of the nations best schools. At least according to US News & World Reports last few years of rankings. And it makes sense. I lived here briefly 30 years ago. I would not have sent my kids to school here. On my return, we've now been here almost 8 years. We've seen the massive flow of families from New York, New Jersey, Michigan, Wisconsin, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Ohio, and on and on. And what has this inflow of people demanded: Better schools. More teachers have come here, wages going up. Add in Gov. DeSantis and his push for School Choice and...we're doing so much better today than many states. US News has Florida ranked in the top 3 nationally. And I expect two things in the near future:
>Our public schools in smart districts run by smart people, will see what's happening and improve. They need to compete now.
>The lame districts, like Broward, will complain to the sympathetic press and get stories written about how dastardly Ron DeSantis is ruining their good times. Those districts will become an afterthought to parents who want their kids educated.
School Choice is the single greatest thing our Governor has done. He's been a great Governor, but this will be his lasting legacy in the state. He's completely turned it around here.
The whole idea of school choice is to stop forcing attendance at substandard schools and have them go somewhere better. The schools could improve their services, or suffer the consequences. We see their choice clearly presented in this story. This was a slow-moving FAFO, and the schools continued to FA, so now they are FO.
"Now public schools might close"
PTL
Hallelujah!
Let's move to the cappers: Leasing back empty public school buildings to the Charter Schools on excellent terms. Expanding the school choice alternative in other states. Blacklisting the most odious executives in the Teacher's Unions and never allowing them to work in education again. Not mentioning any names, but her initials are Randy Weingarten. Creating a teacher training curriculum with standardized testing to make sure the charter school teachers entering the system actually know something, actually know enough to be up there in front of students. Teacher re-certification, just like doctors do, every few years, and a policy of mandated continuing education - a dis-allowance of the kind of intellectual stagnation that plagues our public school teachers now. Good for Florida, making it look easy with measurable results, showing how making changes isn't as hard as they're made out to be by the FatKat Status Quo.
It's my cruelly neutral observation that this is the guy who should be an option for President in November. He gets where the real battlespace is and exactly how to fight to win it. Hopefully, when this country's fever finally breaks, there will still be enough sane people left to offer that option.
P. Galvin, Strike a Victory for Freedom
and
P. Galvin, Achieve Educational Freedom, Excellence and Harmony: Eliminate the Public Schools
These two articles, now years old, published on Lew Rockwell's website, are still relevant.
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2009/10/paul-galvin/providing-balance-americashomeschoolers/
This is the real-world competition among competing service models that made America Great. As applied to education it can only lead to better outcomes both for the private sector and for public schools that choose to heed the market signals competition brings and improve the "product" they offer. Those that don't address parental (i.e. customer) concerns will necessarily wither on the vine, as illustrated here. Unfortunately, I think public schools will be rare in the future because their union masters don't give a flying fuck what the parents want for their children. To the contrary, the unions have made "public" schools captive to one party, one ideology and twisted it into an "overpay me for life" reward for serving politics, where the anointed are blessed with high salaries that quickly climb the scales, no Social Security taxes, early retirement and generous benefits that would make a corporate executive envious. Oh and a nine-month work year.
If self-described Liberals really believe "teachers deserve!" this then they will willingly extend the same offer to private school teachers doing the hard work at a discount now via vouchers and other government transfer methods.
[Seinfeld] That's a shame. [/Seinfeld]
Why would parents sacrifice their children’s education on the altar of Dem politics?
The Greeks, Romans and Spanish were all appalled by human sacrifice. Today’s Dems are all for it; as long as they get paid!
Good. Maybe kids will finally begin to learn REAL subjects, and not Progressive indoctrination and hatred of America.
There’s another story in Politico today of Dems backstabbing Biden. If he makes a bad gaffe or performs poorly in the debate (and he will), Joe’s out.
Nobody defends our public school system anymore.
Nobody at all. It is obviously a failure. Nobody wants their money to go to it. Public school teachers wont even defend it anymore.
This is part of the reason I have hope that we will be able to peacefully subdue the leftist menace in our country. They are starting to realize that everyone hates them.
Heartless Aztec:
Addendum: Hispanic American students are an great cohort: humble, quiet, industrious, patriarchal and polite.
My daughter teaches in FL and would tell me all she has to do was level a dead-eye and say "You want me to call your mother?"
The teacher's union shot themselves in both feet w/ their pandemic horseshit.
Achilles said...
Nobody defends our public school system anymore... Public school teachers won't even defend it anymore.
Let me endorse and amplify this comment. And for any that find my assessment above too harsh, let me assure you I went easy on "the system." I know because I taught in a very difficult district (Fontana, CA, same as Gahrie, one of the recently deceased great voices we had on here), the home of both the Hells Angels and multi-generational Mexican-American gangs, and also the steel mills that built WW2 ships and post-war infrastructure. Yet I enjoyed outstanding results from my Special Ed students because I set clearly high expectations for them and they reached them to the best of their individual abilities. If they know you care they want to do better, and like everyone they thoroughly enjoy success and will build on it.
The two enemies of success there were the subset of parents who didn't care about their children's performance and bad administrators who literally turned the resources of our district into a campaign apparatus for Democrats and a make-work program for below average teaching school graduates. (Teaching school or "ed major" students are generally the undergrads who can't do math or science or have interest in literature or the arts and so default to the "teaching major" for lack of skills elsewhere.) The "good" teachers in my experience were the ones that majored in actual course like the ones in my parenthetical but
for one reason or another (mine was wanting a job that would accommodate grad school and give me summers off during the year to play music and research/write books) ended up teaching instead of doing bio-med or curating art or whatever. Most "math" teachers and biology teachers took very little math or biology in college (in case you didn't know).
When I say that some parents didn't care, I mean to the extent that the periodic meetings mandated by law that Spec Ed teachers must hold to develop Individualized Education Plans were difficult to impossible to arrange with these parents, many of which had no employment or other impediment to meeting. They just did not care. And every good teacher (except one) and most mediocre ones I knew well enough to acquire personal information about in casual conversation made clear their own children went to parochial or other private schools. We all knew we were outnumbered by the drones admin wanted and we could all see exactly which teachers currently working there way across and up the matrix to increase pay and continuing ed were going to become the same kind of admin soon enough.
Thus the fact my tenure ended at ten years when I left to finish my MBA and join the real world again. [Reposted after fixing some formatting errors.]
"S]ome of Florida’s largest school districts are facing staggering enrollment declines"
Oh no!.....Anyway.
In a properly functioning public school district, teachers are accountable to a principal, principals are accountable to a superintendent, the superintendent is accountable to a school board, and the school board is accountable to parents and taxpayers (voters). The state government sets basic standards and oversees compliance. The Federal DOEd (if any) should conduct research and report on best practices but not exert operational control. Where necessary, civil rights law etc. should be enforced by the DOJ and the courts.
However, as is often the case with well-intentioned programs, regulatory capture by bureaucrats and unions has resulted in the system serving the interests of service providers rather than the people intended to be served.
today's fun facts
Miami Edison Senior High School spends $12,348 per pupil on its mostly low-income black students.
Three miles away, Miami Jackson Senior High School spends $8,578 at the majority Hispanic school, which has a larger enrollment and more students who are poor.
Metcalfe Elementary School in Gainesville spends $13,732, more that most other schools in the district.
The predominantly black school has just over 200 students, all low-income, state data show.
Based on U.S. Census data for 2017, Florida’s per-pupil spending amount, on average, was $9,075.
That figure is low according to other states. Florida ranks 45th of the 50 states and Washington, D.C. in the 2017 analysis.
so..
WHAT are students getting for the $10,000/yr sent on them?
WHAT are taxpayers getting for the $10,000/yr sent on Each student?
I'm NOT saying "eliminate public school because it's expensive"..
I'm SAYING "eliminate public school because it's a FAILURE"
It's JUST expensive daycare... REALLY Expensive daycare
Does the article address outcomes, as in, are the formerly public-school-educated kids are achieving learning goals? I assume so, or that would certainly be part of the story.
I think Madison's schools are in peril from this kind of thing. We'll see how the referenda work this coming August? November? (I've lost track). I blame a School Board that thinks only one way for this debacle.
I'm in Duval, and we are seeing this roll out right now. There are "Save Fishweir Elementary" signs in yards on my street this morning.
We approved a half-cent sales tax for new school construction following a comprehensive media campaign to support the tax in 2020, at the peak of the pandemic. In 2022, we read this:
In November 2020, voters approved a half-cent sales tax, which started in January 2021. Among other things – the money goes toward safety and security, building upgrades and renovations for Duval County schools across the city.
According to the most recent update in June, that half-cent tax has already collected a six-figure sum -- scooping up $163 million since it was levied in January. Roughly $65 million of that is already earmarked for school security upgrades and infrastructure projects.
In April 2024, we read the following:
Duval County Public Schools has informed employees that it is expecting to eliminate a huge number of positions as it grapples with the loss of COVID-19-related relief funds and the impact of declining enrollment as school choice options have increased in recent years.
Initial estimates are that 199 district-level positions (11%) will be eliminated, and 507 school-based positions (6%) will be eliminated, according to the school district.
DCPS sent an email to all employees Friday afternoon laying out the potential future plans regarding measures the district is taking, including reducing staff and increasing class sizes.
Sounds like we paid (and are paying) for a pig in a poke. No one can be quite sure what is actually going on, but if you ask a Duval Teacher's Union member, it's all the fault of Ron DeSantis.
Meanwhile, this is from November 2023:
Less than two months after FBI and IRS agents raided the Jacksonville office of Duval Teachers United (DTU), there are still a lot more questions than answers about what federal crime the agencies were investigating, and who is the target.
As those questions loom, DTU now has new leadership after longtime president T***** B**** retired last week.
My crime is noticing all these things I have shared with you today. I'm not supposed to do that.
Jamie, at least where we were in Colorado, school districts would not give up the extra money they were given for a Special Needs student, so parents couldn't send them to a charter school that would have accommodated them. I think that specialty special needs serving charters could eventually show up if the funding was done well, but there's too many roadblocks right now to make an entire school.
Our charter takes everyone. My high schooler has someone in his grade that has special needs. Everyone is kind and gives him extra leeway. This is markedly different than the regular high school where many of the kids are more segregated, at least that's what I hear.
I will also point out that enrollment is falling everywhere. People stopped having babies.
Mrs. Whatsit, thank you for the info about how charter schools in NY provide for kids with intellectual disabilities! It did occur to me after I posted that there were probably people here with expertise in this area.
I used to direct a small developmental preschool in PA - I had good enough admin skills but no educational background, so I replied heavily on my very well qualified teachers when it came to parents' questions about school choice for kindergarten. There was a "kindergarten center" near us, a public school campus entirely dedicated to kindergarten, that my teachers thought very highly of; it had good results in "graduating" children ready to read no matter what their pre-kindergarten experiences had been - whether they'd been in one of those (in my opinion unnecessarily and even harmfully) rigorous preschool programs in which the kids spend all morning in front of a computer, or had never set foot in a classroom, or had a diagnosed learning delay or disability.
But of course, most children will come out of any kindergarten program using any pedagogical methods ready to read. So...
Public funding for private schools and homeschools may seem great at first but will eventually drag those options down, making them indistinguishable from the public schools. Fight for tax cuts, not for vouchers. If public funds pay, then bureaucrats get the control.
[S]ome of Florida’s largest school districts are facing staggering enrollment declines — and grappling with the possibility of campus closures — as dollars follow the increasing number of parents opting out of traditional public schools....
It would appear the dogs don't like the food.
Kathy said...
Public funding for private schools and homeschools may seem great at first but will eventually drag those options down, making them indistinguishable from the public schools. Fight for tax cuts, not for vouchers. If public funds pay, then bureaucrats get the control.
The key here is the fight over who gets to assign accreditation.
"I will also point out that enrollment is falling everywhere. People stopped having babies."
The white kids are being taught that they're evil, the black and brown ones are being taught they're victims of the whites and everyone is being taught the world is ending. As well, the schools are actively advocating for allowing the kids to self-sterilize. When the kids become old enough to have kids of their own (the ones who still have their genitalia), they're not. I guess the schools didn't think far enough ahead when it came to their doom-and-gloom lessons.
Deep blue Seattle, where dogs outnumber kids, is looking at closing 20 elementary schools next year, for all the same reasons. Critics are pointing out that closing buildings saves less money than reducing staff, but the union hates the idea of layoffs. Meanwhile, local private schools have waiting lists.
All of this because the left and many on the right are too chickenshit to expel the morons, defects, and social rejects who populate the bottom of the class rankings. Kick out the bottom 3% every year and you'd eliminate the vast majority of disciplinary problems and low test scores.
Make schools compete.
Simple.
But liberals don't want competition, because good schools might not push their radical agenda.
Public funding for private schools and homeschools may seem great at first but will eventually drag those options down, making them indistinguishable from the public schools. Fight for tax cuts, not for vouchers. If public funds pay, then bureaucrats get the control.
That wouldn't work because Leftists will always claim "tax cuts for the rich" and that "Republicans hate public schools and defunded them." But if we eliminate the useless Federal Dept. of Education (started under Jimmy Carter) and block-grant that money back to the states to administer through Title II and IV and whichever ones they already administer anyway in schools, then the already growing homeschool/charter school/private school options would flourish in Free States putting more pressure on states like CA and OR that have restrained but couldn't stop them.
Framing new laws as "parental choice" was the brilliant move our dumb Congress made. They need to take it further, tasking the DOJ to vigorously enforce civil rights for both parents and students and then limit teachers from any political advocacy. Restore the meaning of "extra-curricular" as sports and debate teams and student government, not gay pride parades. Tax money spent on actual education, rather than the democrat money laundering scheme it is now, would only benefit the country in the long run, especially if vocationally focused high schools were recognized and promoted for their value to communities and students. Just as we have performing arts charter schools, we should have vocational arts charter schools.
"This area, intellectual disabilities especially, seems to me to be the one place where public schools, which have to provide accommodations and programming for such kids, aren't easily replaced"
My dad has been a special ed teacher for 40 years, very good at it, everything from teaching in juvenile halls to severely emotionally disturbed, to regular schools and a mix, to working with severe mental illnesses, such as schizophrenia, or just really behind. Great majority of his time working for the county or local school districts.
When budgets are cut, the first to go are what you're talking about. Maybe not formally, since much are mandated by law, but cutting experienced and capable teachers (who get paid more) and replacing with long term subs or such. The programs get cut not the teacher, but the teachers then have to get shuffled around.
So, your argument is right on the surface, but the actual reality is that public schools almost always will make cuts affecting the most vulnerable and protect the powerful/influential. Meanwhile, there's a rising number of private and charter organizations who are working with the kinds of students you're talking about.
Sorry, not sorry. Could not happen to a more deserving profession (except for "journalists").
Everyone SHOULD call this a good thing. Good teachers will be able to keep/get jobs. Bad teachers will get what they deserve. Schools will have to focus on teaching and not all that other crap that they currently do instead of teaching. Win/win/win, teacher union hardest hit.
mezzrow: In 2022, we read this:
According to the most recent update in June, that half-cent tax has already collected a six-figure sum -- scooping up $163 million since it was levied in January.
Not sure who wrote your quote, but they need a better editor - 163 million is nine figures, not six.
“Deep blue Seattle, where dogs outnumber kids, is looking at closing 20 elementary schools next year, for all the same reasons.”
Repurpose as homeless shelters?
Not sure who wrote your quote, but they need a better editor - 163 million is nine figures, not six.
Glad you noticed. That's straight out of the local newspaper. They are a mathematical Grauniad at times. Draw your own conclusions.
My information indicates they have even fewer layers of editors today than in 2022.
Rick Scott had a big role in this before DeSantis, didn't he? I was in rural south Hillsborough County for a few years, and Tampa had a bunch of charters schools. All the liberal people I knew drove their kids for hours a day to get them into special "arts" or "environmental" charters (it would be amusing to map the carbon footprint of shuffling those kids around), rather than sending them to the local schools filled with the poor offspring of the growing illegal immigrant population. Charters gave them cover for not actually demanding more rigor and less chaos in the local public schools. They didn't have to admit that they just didn't want their children educated in the reality created by their politics. I saw the same thing in Atlanta.
So charters alone are not a silver bullet. Many of the charter schools are more leftist than the public schools. And the kids left behind in public schools are subjected to an ever-more distilled, raw partisan resentment education and increasingly dangerous classrooms.
But the local religious schools paid teachers so little that it was literally financial suicide to teach at one.
We need more nuns. Lots and lots of nuns. Pre-Flying Nun types.
It's a start, but the problem will not go away, until the teacher unions are disbanded, sued and rightfully prosecuted under RICO.
How dare they attempt to use school choice programs to educate the students. The purpose of public schools is to provide jobs for teachers and union dues to give to Democrats.
"The purpose of public schools is to provide jobs for teachers..."
Lots of those teachers have demonstrated that they're not really interested in doing the job, they're just there for the paycheck and pension.
Old school
"Whatever kids live near the building"
https://youtu.be/p35NoVBMucU
New school, the student is that which matters rather than just being the passive audience and revenue source.
Jamie
This area, intellectual disabilities especially, seems to me to be the one place where public schools, which have to provide accommodations and programming for such kids, aren't easily replaced
I understand where you are coming from.
But I see the Greatest educational system in the world dismantled by politicians. Today the Public schools are abusing all the Students.
Why do you think Public Schools will do a better job with disabled students, than the student body at large. If govt funding follows the Student, it should follow the disabled student the same way. With the corresponding improvement of services.
Tucson had a vacant school campus due to declining enrollment. A charter school tried to buy it. TUSD sold it to a developer.
But the local religious schools paid teachers so little that it was literally financial suicide to teach at one.
We need more nuns. Lots and lots of nuns. Pre-Flying Nun types.
My kids went to a religious school (Episcopal) and several teachers told me it was worth teaching there even if the income was lower.
I agree about nuns and Christian Brothers but that bird has flown. The reason the school w2as Episcopal was wonderful head master who founded 4 or 5 schools in OC CA when Catholic parishes would not. The head master, Father Sillers, who was in his 70s, would even attend students' Bar Mitzvas.
They're government schools, not public schools. The public is allowed little influence or even knowledge of the relentless message of radical-left wokery and subordination to collectivist Big Nanny Government delivered by the teacher's union drones.
Fuck the government schools and fuck the teacher's unions. I hope they all lose their jobs.
Oligonicella: Reminds me of a story my dad (93) told me about teaching junior high. This would be about 65 years ago. He sent home a report card and inthe comments wrote Mario could do better if he wouldn't talk so much. A few days later a little Italian woman was at the classroom door wanting to talk to Mario. Out in the hall you could hear her say "I tolda you once I tolda you twice - you keepa your big mouth shut!"
Mario was quiet for over a week.
My sons went through the public school system in Fl. A frustrating waste of time. I ended up supplementing their schooling with Kumon Math and Reading through elementary school. This even though they were attending an International Baccalaureate feeder program and had an extra hour of German every school day.
By 10th grade the oldest was in private school. I placed the youngest in private school in the 6th grade.
If I had the chance to do it all over again I would homeschool them.
I wonder whether the teachers’ unions realized that they were starting a doom cycle when they decided to stay home an extra year? It’s easy to predict the next steps in the dance:
(1) School boards will try to keep as many schools open as they can and will try to keep as many union teachers employed as possible by reducing class sizes.
(2) Despite this, there will be layoffs.
(3) The union will insist on retaining the longest-serving teachers, at the expense of losing the best ones. Some of the longest-serving teachers will be among the best, but the vast majority of them will be burned out cases and time-servers, gaming the pension system rules.
(4) Consequently, the overall quality of teaching will decline further, and more parents who care about their children’s education will leave the public school system.
And in the end…
(5) The public school system will consist of children who don’t care whether they learn anything (and whose parents don’t care either), taught by teachers who don’t care whether their students learn anything. The teachers who care about teaching and the kids who care about learning will be in charter schools.
The point of the public schools was to make sure everyone got an education. The defenders of public schools have lost the plot. The public schools were the means, not the end.
Big Mike: My dad's last couple of years as a teacher was as a "consulting teacher". He had several new teachers he would observe and he would critique from 35 years of experience, give them tips on classroom management and lesson planning and presentation. Despite a semester of student teaching it takes time to develop as a teacher, and an old hand watching and advising is a great help. Dad thought it was worthwhile.
@Mikey, I made a point of saying that not all of the longest-serving teachers are burnt-out cases and time servers. My younger son will be 38 next month so my experience with public schools is not current. But my sons encountered enough burnt-out and/or time serving teachers in their respective 13 years of education that I have no doubt at all in my mind that I have the main outline of the doom loop right. I also observed the teachers’ union fighting fang and claw to save the career of a very bad teacher who not only violated school policy in ways that the regulations spelled out as grounds for immediate dismissal, but many children — I’m not making this up — actually needed therapy after a year in her classroom. At the same time I saw an affirmative action (Hispanic last name) principal force out some very good teachers from her high school and the union did nothing to save their jobs.
I put our daughter through K-12 on my dime. I saved the state school districts money as they did not have to provide a seat for her. It would be just and fair if they paid me for this service. I’ll settle for fifty percent of their cost. So at $6K per year I figure they owe me $36,000.
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