Democrats & Liberals Archives

luv writes; “After the preliminary year of experimenting, the state will extend partial vouchers to any child and fund a portion of the tuition to any of those schools. How is this even considered a solution? Rather than improving the system, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal proclaims, “We are changing the way we deliver education … we are letting parents decide what’s best for their children, not government.”

What exactly do you find so offensive in Jindal’s quote? Do you believe our current educational system is working well considering how we are doing compared to other countries?

The system there is broken. We can “experiment” by letting the public union system continue to produce the results it has or experiment with a system that may produce better results.

As I understand the proposed system, parents and students can also choose public schools.

We all believe in public education, but that need not be delivered by a public bureaucracy.

I find it interesting - over and over - how “liberals” have become conservative in the sense of wanting to preserve the old systems w/o significant change, expect to give more money. Meanwhile, conservatives have become progressive in the sense of wanting to try new solutions to adapt to new realities and situations.

The states are the laboratories of democracy. We have to try many things to see what works. This “experiment” will not hurt the poor kids of Louisiana who already suffer from a rotten system. Maybe the experiment will make things better for them. It cannot make it much worse.

Re improving the system - this will improve the system. The education system is the whole system, not just the dysfunctional one run by public bureaucracies and teachers’ unions. In fact, choice will improve public schools too. Most teachers are dedicated and want to do a good job. They are hobbled by outdated rules and procedures. Competition and comparison with better functioning system will stimulate reform.

“The education system is the whole system, not just the dysfunctional one run by public bureaucracies and teachers’ unions.”

C&J,

How dishonest of you!

You are fully aware that the vast majority of high performing schools and school districts are those run by “public bureaucracies” and most contain teachers” unions.

Urban vs. suburban districts is the relevant variable. It is not public vs. private, union vs. non-union or high vs. low funding. It is simply urban vs. suburban. It is low socioeconomic vs. higher socioeconomic.

C&J your confusing “trying new solutions to adapt to new realities and situations” with going back to the late 1800’s. The fact is you are proposing nothing new, just privatizing education so that in a few years it will only the rich that can receive an education.

The conservatives have been attacking public schools due to unions and not teaching creationism for decades now. This is just another step towards usurping the constitution by privatizing. It is all about power and control not education. Authoritarian control of the educational system by fascist. Nothing progressive about that.

obamaluv, your attitude on opposing a Republican idea simply because it’s a Republican idea is an example of what’s wrong with politics in this country. Have you actually done any research on the program, or do you just spit venom because “it’s the Republicans!”

A lot of Republicans have the same attitude as you have, of course. Unfortunately, no matter if an idea is worth trying, the opposing party will always be vehemently against it no matter what.

The real problem with education is that it’s a political football. We criminally underpay our teacher. Our society encourages laziness in becoming educated in the name of preserving street cred, because the people who are actually educated are stuck up elitists, aren’t they? We go around trying to bust teachers unions, making them out to be some sort of enemy, even while we try to “encourage” them by forcing them to teach to tests, lest they have students who underperform.

The incentives we put forward do more to encourage fraud from administrators looking for their bonuses, and the threat of shutting down underperforming schools only takes the schools that aren’t doing so well and makes them worse.

I have seen thirty years of this crap, and the quality of education has gone down, not up. We understood, when I started school, that the jobs we were going to get were going to determine our future, so we had education that did more than just stock us up with rote facts. I graduated just in time to note the effects as the Standardized tests sucked the life out of everything.

Meanwhile the conservatives out there have been pushing these ridiculous controversies on our educational system with creationism and intelligent design, and this BS that evolution has been cast in a doubtful light, which it hasn’t. With this kind of ridiculous mistrust of straight education, this emphasis on trying to turn the schools into places of religious indoctrination, it’s no wonder schools have suffered.

If you teach contempt, you reap ignorance.

I think the best thing we could do for this system is stop trying to fix it, and simply teach kids the best we can. Most schools are in decent shape, and the ones that aren’t, aren’t so for reasons that it will take a more integrational perspective to resolve.

What exactly is wrong with a parent choosing what their kids learn at school?

Why do liberals think the government should override what parents want for their children?

Sounds like liberals are advocating their own indoctrination.

I’m a businessman turned teacher(12 years) in order to be on my kids schedule. I can afford to do this because I saved money and filled out retirement accounts when I actually made lots of money (providing very little real value to society, BTW). Plus, my wife does extremely well as she did not want to go this route.

I have performed very well as a teacher scoring a consistent 5 on a rating system of 1 - 5 for my state system based on student performance and observations. Here’s what I see happening.
1. Teachers are paid quite poorly when you compare $ to level of education. I wouldn’t do it except that I had to quit the 65-70 hour weeks for my tweens and teens. Turns out I get a lot of satisfaction from teaching effectively in a Title I (impoverished) school.
2. This results in employing graduates in the bottom performers in their class (using GPA).
3. You can blame unions for retaining some bad teachers, but you can lay equal blame on low pay. Just a few short years ago there were teacher SHORTAGES in my district (top 20 in size).
4. Republicans are right… School districts waste lots of money.
5. Republicans are wrong… Teacher unions aren’t the ones wasting money. It is by far the usual case that district administrators waste tons to private education companies on overpriced books, questionable software, useless consultants, etc. lots of money to be made in education, just not by the educators.

LA’s approach will result in the same amount of waste, the same or worse levels of proficiency (look up current charter school data that doesn’t cherry pick students), AND will provide opportunities for special interest groups to brainwash the next generation. Imagine Evangelical Christians, Catholics, Jewish, Mormans indoctrinating kids using public funds. OK, with that?? Now imagine Islamic run schools, Black Panther run schools, Scientologists, Athiests, Socialists (THAT scares the right, doesnt it?), Communists, liberals, Moonies, etc. You get it.

This is a huge Pandora’s box. Be careful what you wish for!

Rich

Catholic and other schools do just fine in the middle of the cities and they do it cheaper.

Personally, I like public schools. They are indeed better in the suburbs, but they often spend LESS money per student, not more. IMO, suburban schools are better because parents have choices. Most of us do not exercise them, but school leaders know that we can move or send kids to private school. It keeps them on their toes and they often do an excellent job. We all get complacent, even the best of us, when we know we are the only game in town.

j2t2

YOu are the one confusing progress with going backward. In our modern society, we have seen increasing variety and choices available in almost everything. But not so much in school.

What I would envision is something like our universities, which are by far the best in the world. We offer a wide variety of public, private, profit and non-profit options and many mixtures. The only difference is that I would ask that they include more experience from community colleges in the terms of open enrollment.

We should also be using technology more effectively. We have computers in classrooms, but do not take proper advantage of distance learning etc.

The public system, w/o competition, is unable to make experiments, precisely because of its emphasis on equality. If you try to create everything at once and ensure equality, you can never make progress.

re “Authoritarian control of the educational system by fascist” Authoritarian and fascist systems are always centralized and state run. We are advocating the opposite: decentralized, innovative and experimental diversity.

Stephen

It depends on where they teach. Some are underpaid and some are paid much more than they are worth. Do you agree that we should have some sort of pay related to skills in teaching?

Another thing we could do is make it easier to enter the teaching profession. If we need certification, make it some kind of exam rather than specific course of education. I have an MA in history and a lifetime experience in international affairs. I taught a gradate seminar at an Ivy League university, but I could not teach history in most HS without getting some “education” courses. Meanwhile, some kid with a 2.0 average who took those Micky Mouse courses could get the job tomorrow, even if he couldn’t tell the Magna Carta from a Big Mac.

(Perhaps you recall the joke. A tour guide was talking to a group of US teenagers. He said, “this is Runnymede Meadow, where King John signed the Magna Carta in 1215.” “Crap” one of the kids said, “It’s 12:30. We just missed it.”)

We have a big opportunity coming up. Lots of highly skilled professionals are beginning to retire. Many might be interested in teaching, at least part time. If we make it easy for them to enter and leave the system, we can take advantage of lifetimes of experience. The hurdle is a retrograde educational establishment and - need I say - union rules that limit entry.

I must say, I bet this is going to infuriate the left; how are the libs going to funnel tax dollars to the teachers unions, how are they going to fill little heads with mush, and how are they going to use education as a political football during every election; if the school system goes private?

Even Stephen Daugherty admits that the left uses education as a political football every election:

“The real problem with education is that it’s a political football.”

But I would like to ask SD why the “the quality of education has gone down, not up”; considering the amount of money spent on education has never gone down, and the Dept of Educ has never had less workers?

Joe Ragsdale; You forget, Hillary said it takes a village to raise kids. Liberals will never agree to let parents have control of their kid’s lives. Notice the ignorant statements by Stephen Daugherty; He believes the school systems are failing and yet he wishes the parents and conservative lawmakers would just leave the failing system alone. What an idiotic statement.

It all has to do with the teachers unions and their financial support of democraps. The big test is in Wisconsin tomorrow; a victory by Walker will be a huge blow to the unions.

Joe Ragsdale-
The fundamental problem with self-selecting your education, or that of your child, is that everybody is, to some extent, ignorant of the world. To a large extent, actually. Unfortunately, it can be easy to get that ignorance entrenched in you, especially if you shield yourself from the ideas and realities you don’t like.

Billinflorida-
I don’t believe the systems were really failing that much, not out in the well-funded suburbs. I feel that they’ve been drawn into a failure by crappy policy that was built more on trying to do away with uncertainties in the educational system than to actually teach kids.

Teaching, especially about subjects where advanced thinking is employed, takes things beyond the realm of multiple choice.

Some don’t want kids to think anything else than what they think is suitable. Problem is, contempt for the value of the thinking of others doesn’t always translate to a lack of merit in what others think. You can be wrong.

As for this privatization crap? My thinking is that vouchers is the worst of both worlds. It’s a subsidy that private schools would grow fat and dependent on, while taking money away from public schools that were mostly doing the job fine.

YOu are the one confusing progress with going backward. In our modern society, we have seen increasing variety and choices available in almost everything. But not so much in school.

No I’m not C&J. The US has always had the choices you talked about. Still do today. What conservatives want to do is to fund the private schools at the expense of the public schools. It’s about the unions, authoritarian control and side stepping the constitution.

We also tried parents schooling their kids at home, it was the way of the world down south for may years, but was not up to the standards of northern schools. Even today parents can homeschool if they choose to. The idea that parents should be the ones to choose what their kids learn at school would lead to a shutdown as the adults fought over what should and should not be taught. It is happening around the nation as we speak.

The private schools tend to cherry pick which separates them from public schools. Conservatives like the control and power this brings but it’s exclusive in nature.

Billinflorida,

Explain how teachers unions are dependent on public funding other than teacher donations out of pocket expenses. Your statements explain only your strong feelings about positions which are unsubstantiated by fact. If you want to say that you hate liberals and that they are destroying good old American values, just say that. If you want to convince others that your feelings have merit based in fact, then use facts to persuade us.

Otherwise, understand that we hear your complaints as just another angry voice… Mad at the ‘enemy’ who is the ‘other’ in your disillusion and angst.

BTW, I’m a strong proponent of home schooling. Just be sure that you are educated enough not to retard the development of your child. I could teach my child in 2 hours what I spend 7 hours teaching a group of 25 to 28 students. Also, don’t expect me to support your opting out of financing public education as we all benefit from an educated populace.

You know, what occurs to me is that for the longest time, the people trying to destroy what was normal, accepted, and conventional, have been the Republicans. Odd, isn’t that? I mean, they appeal to what is old fashioned, arguing for a return to sectarian education, to Parents teaching their own kids what they want to teach, but for much of the last century, that simply hasn’t been the case, and for our nation as modern, industrialized, and now computerized society, it’s never been the case.

I don’t know whether people realize this, but the past is dead and gone, but the truth is, the bastard thing they’re creating bears as little relation to what once was as our own society does, perhaps less.

There was a time when people wanting to empower themselves ensured their children a public education, because they knew they couldn’t pay to send them to private school. Now, Republicans seek to push an agenda of diverting money from the public school to pay for private schooling that the parents couldn’t otherwise afford. But how does this square with the Right’s supposed anti-socialist agenda? How do they not expect the faults of a public school to follow on as people ask the question “What are my tax dollars going to fund here?”

This is yet another example of policy on the Right that is more Wish fulfillment than reality. Americans will not long allow their tax dollars to go fund private schools if they cannot determine what that pays for.

Public schools are the way they are, non-sectarian and so on, because they have to teach kids of all kinds, from all sorts of families, without favoring one kind of family over the other. It’s not mere political correctness, it’s the avoidance of discrimination in a taxpayer accountable system.

What the voucher crowd wants is to end secular education, because they find the fact that they don’t teach their particular faith appalling. They want everybody to pay them to educate their children in their faith. How does this not sound like not merely socialism, but establishment, too?

There are those who are not happy with government keeping out of people’s business on religion, who confess the faith of Jeffersonian Democracy, and don their three-corner hats, but at first opportunity repudiate one of Jefferson’s first and key contributions to the constitution: the part of the bill of rights that gets government out of the church business.

C&J,

My concern with the movement toward privatization of public education, vouchers and charter schools is not that it doesn’t have some theoretical merit in generating competition with a potential payoff in innovation and lower cost.

Rather, my concern is that it avoids addressing the fundamental problem of low performing urban school districts: an exclusively low socioeconomic and minority student body. Since the middle class flight from the cities to the suburbs in the early 60s, urban school districts have been left with the task of educating only minorities and students from very poor families.

The results are entirely predictable. Suburban public schools with students from high and middle income families do very well. Urban schools with students exclusively from low income families do very poorly.

This is not rocket science. The most consistent and powerful predictor of academic performance is the socioeconomic status of a student’s family. In addition, it has been found that minority or low socioeconomic background students perform much better in schools with a mixed socioeconomic student body.

Until we address the segregated nature of our school districts, I don’t believe that we will make much progress. We can tinker around the margins with charter schools and vouchers for private schools but the fundamental problem will remain. Librick’s caution about the benefits of charter schools when student “cherry picking” is controlled is well taken.

I sent (and paid for separate from my school district taxes) two children to private school through high school. This was in a school district that had “A” rated public schools. My choice. I used to think that it was fair that a taxpayer with children should get the benefit of public funding for private school vouchers, since one less child in public school ought to proportionally decrease the burden on the public schools. The arguement that vouchers “robbed” the public school system has always seemed more an excuse for turf-guarding and rent seeking than a real issue.

Still feel that way, but I am not a proponent of vouchers anymore. “He who provides the gold rules.” The surest way to screw up what is good about private schools is to take money and hence have to put up the BS (like FCAT testing) that the poor souls in public schools must endure.

Concerning teachers pay: Most teachers, private and public, are dedicated souls. If you want to know how the market values teaching, look at the salaries paid to the (non-union) private schools. That’s the market value. Perhaps we value the skills too little, or perhaps education departments attract low skilled persons (perhaps because of the pay). I’d be inclined to think that the problem is that unions protect the average status quo instead of awarding excellence.

I’ll make this trade concerning teacher pay: no unions; principals can hire and fire at will; parents/children can go to any public school in the District with no restrictions; and pay teachers $150,000 per year. That will change the culture faster than any of the incremental “nibbles” at the edges of the problem.

By the way, concerning the last paragraph of my post above: I’m being way generous with the pay. My private school teacher spouse doesn’t belong to a union, can be hired and fired at will, and the parents can “vote with their feet” if they don’t like the school. That’s accountability. The pay is a third of $150,000.

As for this privatization crap? My thinking is that vouchers is the worst of both worlds. It’s a subsidy that private schools would grow fat and dependent on, while taking money away from public schools that were mostly doing the job fine.

Posted by: Stephen Daugherty at June 5, 2012

What an extraordinary comment by the Lib-in-chief. If one were to change this sentence to be about public welfare subsidies rather than schools would SD agree with its content?

Rich

The problem with education of poor people is the poor education and cultures of poverty.

Public schools used to do a better job of fighting poverty. They did an excellent job making extremely poor and backward immigrants into good Americans a century ago in New York and other big cities. My benighted ancestors were among the beneficiaries. I am really glad that no well-meaning experts did not attempt to freeze in place the habits and culture of my grandfather, which was inappropriate success in a modern industrial country.

I fear that - as a society - we have lost the will to take on this civilizing task and even lost the conviction that our own culture is worth promulgating. I specifically used the word civilization to annoy some people. If you are so annoyed, ask yourself why? This certainly effects education, but it itself not exactly the quality debate we are talking about here.

We can increase the quality of education by increasing choice. This will not save everybody, but it will allow some people to save themselves or at least save their children.

Do we believe monopolies with limited incentives will ever produce the best quality? We would not transfer to the care of bureaucracies the responsibility of supplying us food. Some societies have tried and failed miserably.

So what we have now is a monopoly aimed at the poor. Meanwhile, the rich or sometimes just the more determined, have choice. Help the poor by giving them choice too.

Mike in Tampa states:

“By the way, concerning the last paragraph of my post above: I’m being way generous with the pay. My private school teacher spouse doesn’t belong to a union, can be hired and fired at will, and the parents can “vote with their feet” if they don’t like the school. That’s accountability. The pay is a third of $150,000.”

Nice. So your saying that your spouse isn’t worth that much? OK, let’s pay your spouse $5,000 a year. Don’t like it, too bad. Now that’s accountability for you.

t

Why do you think they pay her so much? Because they feel she is worth that much. Why would they want to pay her less and risk losing her services?

It is not being generous to pay the going rate for talent; it is just good business. The problem caused by unions and some regulation is that they try to force people to pay more than the services are worth to them.

Let’s talk about the whoopin the dems have taken in Wisconsin. Since one of the achievements of Walker has been with the schools systems, it is interesting to see that after millions of union worker’s dues being spent in WI, the Wisconsin people have spoken loud and clear. I wonder if the 99% OWS supporting Stephen Daugherty is not willing to concede a Tea Party victory. Or perhaps the left don’t want to talk about WI. I was a life or death necessary win before, but now it doesn’t really matter, right?

I was born in Wisconsin, graduated from UW and lived there the first twenty-seven years of my life. I am proud that my native state is showing the way for the people to take back their government from the special interests.

President Obama won Wisconsin by nearly 14%. According to the Milwaukee Journal/Sentinel, Walker is beating his Democratic opponent by 17%. This lead will diminish as the night goes on (Democratic precincts are always slower to report returns) but it is clear that Walker is not only winning; he is kicking ass.

The interesting thing about his Democratic opponent is that he too was distancing himself from the unions. Liberals are sorry they picked this fight. All the occupying, whistle blowing, threats and even crapping in the parks cannot overcome the will of the people properly informed.

There is an old saying that people don’t really know how stupid you are until you open your mouth and start talking. The American people didn’t really know how much trouble Obama and the democrats were in, until they pushed this issue. Now the American people know how vulnerable Obama really is. Obama did not support Barrett because the WH knew the polls were against Barrett, and Obam did not want to be supporting a looser. He was in a no win situation on this one. The very fact that 37% of union families supported Walker is a testimony to Obama’s woes. These are CNN’s numbers.

t:

The going rate for classroom teachers seems to be around $50k. Union shops (public schools) go for more, especially the top-heavy administration. I personally doubt that K-12 educators are worth $150k in the market, but was being deliberately provocative. Would the union bosses and reps accept a lot higher salary, if it meant accepting the other things I listed? I doubt it. I think that would say a lot about their motivation. The constant refrain is that “we don’t pay teachers enough”. The unpleasant accompanying fact is that with higher pay you may find better qualified persons than you have now.

I am sure my (highly qualified) spouse could compete at a higher salary range, if the market was paying that.

After seeing the 50% drop off in union membership after dues were made non-manditory (in WI), I suspect the rank and file teachers would easily trade “free market” for higher salaries.

It would be an interesting experiment to pay teachers $150k, but allow easy change of personnel as I proposed. I suspect that many persons attracted by the higher salary would find that they are not suited to teach, especially in the lower grades. I appreciate the difficulties in teaching that have nothing to do with classroom lessons. On the other hand, having subject experts (in comparison to education majors) teach in junior high or high school might be a benefit. You might see a multi-tier pay system, based on the job and the skill of the person. (Sort oif like the rest of the private sector.)

LibRick,
AMEN

And to all those others who don’t seem to realize that along with their incredible salaries, teachers must also pay for any extras in their classrooms - i.e. tissues, chalk,decorations, rewards for younger children, scissors, etc. My ex- husband, lousy man that he was would spend anywhere for $200 to $400 a month just to replenish the supplies he needed in order to do a basic job of teaching - and he wasn’t all that good. So that’s saying a lot. Of course his money was spent in the 1990’s. Heaven only knows what he spends today.

Royal Flush-
The mistake you make is thinking that I’m an indiscriminate advocate for government. I do recognize, despite your disbelief, that there are some moral hazards to just handing people money without accountability. That was one of my major gripes, for example, with the Medicare Benefit, with much of the spending in Iraq.

I advocate for a government wisely configured, a government that is up to the job of keeping order and stability in the country, while at the same time preserving its freedoms. I can’t encapsulate my point of view easier in a catchphrase like “smaller government” or “starve the beast”, because I’m not interesting in that kind of blind oversimplfication.

As for the Subsidies? You’ll have to be more specific. On reason I employ that objection with the whole Private School Voucher matter is that the main selling point on Private schools is that they are independent, not part of a public sector that pays for them even when they’re not doing well. Private Schools are supposed to be haunted by the possibility that they’ll go out of business if they don’t please the customer.

If they can count on a bunch of students attending school whose parents aren’t footing the bill out of pocket, with money that taxpayers will sooner or later attach strings to, then you’re defeating the purpose of two of those main appeals, watering down the need to compete for scarce tuition dollars, and reducing the independence of those schools to innovate towards those standards.

You might as well just work to improve the public schools, at that rate, because sooner or later your private schools will come to more resemble them than the competitive private institutions you were thinking of when you proposed the value of those vouchers. Better to let each kind of school preserve its virtues than undermine both in the quest to break the public school system.

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