School Choice - It's Time

acesfull86 said:
The past 16 months certainly didn’t help
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I don't have much love for or confidence in the teacher's unions but I do have one question for you. Why do Repubs hate the teachers unions so badly but don't seem to have a problem with the police unions? Both are the basically the same, right?

Both have lots of good and competent people trying to do the right things under difficult conditions.

Both have more than a few (numerically wise) but a very small number (percentage wise) of turds who poison the entire punch bowl.

Bad teachers make it harder for kids to succeed later in life and though this can be overcome it isn't an excuse for sucky teachers.

Bad cops can be corrupt, on the take, incompetent, or even racist homicidal maniacs. It's a little harder to overcome the bad cops.

Still I see a never ending flood of insults and complaints about the teachers unions but pretty much crickets about the police unions and yes I'm talking about the Repubs mainly here.

So, what's the difference? Surely it can't be that the police stereotypically block vote Repub and teachers stereotypically block vote Dem could it? Shouldn't all bad or incompetent professionals be purged from the system no matter which system we're talking about?

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I've mentioned this before but gotten no real responses. I know of at least 2 pretty big school systems close to my area where the teachers are not allowed to give lower than a C to a student no matter what they do or don't do in class. You know this isn't the teachers union here, right? It's the administration's edict because they don't want to lose funding because of low grades/scores.

I am FOR any reasonable plan to make the schools better but if you tear down the school systems to try more privatization and it doesn't work you'll never be able to put it back together again, just like if you tear down the post office to privative it you'll never be able to put it together again either. But that's the real intent of the far right isn't it.

Again, show me a plan where we can slowly phase into these changes without destroying the current system, at least until we KNOW what's going to work and I'll be for it. I know it needs changing but it needs to be changed to something better, not just another crappy system that feeds the greed of certain people and the death wish for public education of others.

I will give totally give you the benefit of the doubt that you're only trying to make the schools work better for Americans youths, but unless you can guarantee me these people will be controlled it really doesn't matter much what new constraints we put on teachers or the teachers' unions
1.) Parents
2.) Kids
3.) Administrators
 
acesfull86 said:
But if we’re concerned with inequality, isn’t giving poor parents a voucher they can use to send their kid to the private school an improvement over the system we have now where the rich can perpetuate their advantages?

I don’t look at this as a siphoning of funds from one school to another…I look at is as we’d now be funding flesh and blood students instead of brick and mortar buildings.
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The thing with that is the private schools can price themselves out of the voucher system. Let's say, you give everyone 10K in vouchers (making up numbers) and current PS education is 11K. They could just raise tuition to say 16K. Pricing themselves out of the price of a poor person, making more money, and keeping kids who are poor out.

If they can find a way to make it work, fine. But I don't think it's likely. I think that there is a way to make a system work. But I don't think just giving everyone a check is the way to go.
 
Are teachers in private school supposed to be making more money than public?
Because if so I got some friends that be pretty furious
 
Tapate50 said:
Are teachers in private school supposed to be making more money than public?
Because if so I got some friends that be pretty furious
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That's one of the things about private schools Tap, they can literally hire anybody to be a teacher there. Sure sometimes they turn out to be great and we've already established that sometimes public school teachers with a boatload of degrees and certifications still suck, but I would think any reasonable person would say the more qualifications a person has to be a teacher, the higher the likelihood they would actually be a good teacher. That little tidbit gets overlooked a lot, primarily by the "that degree and/or certification" ain't nothing but a stinking piece of paper.

As I've previously stated, get the parents under control and the kids under control and the administrators under control and give the teachers what they actually need to teach then you can hold them 100% accountable and I'll join you whole-heartedly. As I also said previously this is way more about politics and helping Repubs as a general rule than it is about helping kids. I gave aces the benefit of the doubt and gladly so, but even if he is 100% ONLY concerned with bettering public school education he is among the few that I've ever talked to.
 
It’s not political. It’s failing.

It’s failing kids.

Kids are being taught to play the victim.

Locally we are having to resort to vocational teaching. Our school system is seen as nothing more than a babysitter, and zero emphasis on grades/performance are given at home. Those kids drain teacher energy and time.

We had to resort to vocation because it produces tax payers not tax dependents. It appears to be a long term play for teaching a skill or trade vs general knowledge. It could be a better way for kids that would otherwise be failed by the educational system and family structure
 
Tapate50 said:
It’s not political. It’s failing.

It’s failing kids.

Kids are being taught to play the victim.

Locally we are having to resort to vocational teaching. Our school system is seen as nothing more than a babysitter, and zero emphasis on grades/performance are given at home. Those kids drain teacher energy and time.

We had to resort to vocation because it produces tax payers not tax dependents. It appears to be a long term play for teaching a skill or trade vs general knowledge. It could be a better way for kids that would otherwise be failed by the educational system and family structure
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You're not wrong in that it's failing. It's the potential solutions and the motivations of many to choose those solutions. I stand by every word I typed earlier. Fix the problems I mentioned (you know the real problems that are #1 in causing the failures and I'll go along with just about any fixes you suggest if fixing the problems I pointed out doesn't work.
 
“Why do Repubs hate the teachers unions so badly but don't seem to have a problem with the police unions?”

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OkHawk, you’d have to ask a Republican for that one. Same question for D, but change the unions. I’ve been trying to hammer that point for a year. D on one side talking about police unions, R on the other talking about teachers unions, and L are in the corner asking we talk about the common denominator?

I don’t disagree that parents and family structure are an even bigger problem than schools, but that’s a lot harder to fix. Other than changing tax incentives around the margins, I’m not sure what lever there is to pull to ensure more kids grow up in 2 parent households where those parents are engaged in their kid’s education.

This isn’t meant to be anti union. I’m a simple guy - the K-12 education system is largely a monopoly market in most places > there’s dissatisfaction with outcomes > competition leads to better outcomes in almost all instances > we have places in the country that are trying vouchers/ school choice schemes > people in those systems overwhelmingly like them > why aren’t we doing more of it?

The monopoly aspect is more of an issue for me than the union aspect.
 
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Oklahomahawk said:
Fixing the education system and cleaning up both the teachers union and the police unions would probably easier to accomplish.
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True but fixing the parenting issue likely fixes both down the road.

We are producing victims and what am I owed societies.
 
Tapate50 said:
I’d say place more emphasis on two parent families and a lot of this fixes itself.
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Step 1- stop incarcerating so many parents over bull**** that has nothing to do with protecting people. Problem is it's taken 50 years to destroy the country to the point we are now in terms of families but people want solutions that fix everything instantly or they rather stick with the same failed policy that is destroying families. Our government takes kids from parents who smoke pot and gives them to pedophiles who rape them then claim no responsibility for what happened. How there isnt a weekly active shooter at CPS I will never know.
 
School choice, ending the drug war, getting rid of the minimum wage, and repealing zoning laws/other barriers to new housing (in place of idiotic ideas like rent control), are all potential fixes sitting out there to help address racial inequality.
 
Generally, it is a bad sign when a political candidate has the endorsement of professional groups like teachers unions that they will have to deal with later when in office. Ditto for other professional groups in the medical profession, police, prison guards, farmers, bankers, real estate developers, etc, etc. Those groups are part of the political landscape and will continue to do their part. But it up to the voters to understand what their role is in the political ecosystem. The most powerful lobby in Washington is the housing lobby. Realtors, etc. They are strong on both sides of the aisle. No one notices because there is virtually no one who tries to stand up to them. But they have constructed for themselves a very lucrative system of subsidies that works mostly through the tax system.

Recently the Supreme Court gave the American public a rare victory over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Hallelujah!
 
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https://hechingerreport.org/opinion-when-black-parents-benefit-from-school-choice-it-doesnt-perpetuate-racism/

Andre Perry and other critics of school choice say we don’t need “escape hatches.” They believe that when I seek out and obtain an education that meets my daughters’ needs with the funding assigned to them, I am removing “support” from the public school. But I must be clear: The funds allocated to my children do not stay in the school if I remove them, whether or not I do so via a scholarship or voucher— because the money doesn’t go to the school. It goes with my children, and it should follow my children to any educational option that meets their needs.

None of my children, nor the children of any low-income or Black families, “belong” to the government school system. And we should not be criticized for seeking other opportunities and means for meeting their needs when they’ve gone unmet for so long. We need not apologize for using their entitlement to a publicly funded education on their own education.

To tell Black parents that freedom and liberty are “fraudulent” is insulting and untrue. To throw out the merits of self-determination through school choice in the Black community, because there may be people who have used it in racist ways, is unserious. To take that logic to its absurd end would be to say that Black people should never be farmers because our ancestors worked the fields of racist white slave owners.

Perry suggests that supporting or utilizing school choice programs “promot[es] racism,” even when many of the families who do so are Black Americans like myself. And they support the availability of these options.

Am I, a Black woman who makes the conscious decision to utilize a school choice program that benefits my children, choosing to be “anti-Black”? Should Black children not have access to educational opportunities that meet their needs simply because of their socioeconomic status or the neighborhood in which they live? Should Black parents not be afforded the respect and deference they deserve when they want to exercise their agency in demanding other options for their children?

It is the residentially assigned system of public schooling that has plagued the Black community for far too long, not the options for leaving that system. In fact, polling data show that a majority of Black voters support school choice programs, including the use of vouchers.

School choice programs give Black families an alternative to subpar schools, which is why Black “school choice moms” protect those choices with their votes. If anyone is “promoting racism,” it is those who are still standing in the schoolhouse door trying to block Black families from entering, or leaving, the schools they wish to.

If we really want to reform America’s racist system of public education, we should start by empowering Black families with the freedom and resources to choose.
 
https://reason.com/2021/07/06/critical-race-theory-nea-taught-in-schools/

…the National Education Association (NEA) appears to have accepted the conservative framing of CRT: namely, that it's not merely confined to academia but is in fact also being taught in K-12 schools. And the NEA thinks this is a good thing that should be defended.

At its yearly annual meeting, conducted virtually over the past few days, the NEA adopted New Business Item 39, which essentially calls for the organization to defend the teaching of critical race theory.*

"It is reasonable and appropriate for curriculum to be informed by academic frameworks for understanding and interpreting the impact of the past on current society, including critical race theory," says the item.

Consistent with its defense of CRT, the NEA will also provide a study "that critiques empire, white supremacy, anti-Blackness, anti-Indigeneity, racism, patriarchy, cisheteropatriarchy, capitalism, ableism, anthropocentrism, and other forms of power and oppression at the intersections of our society." The implication is that these critiques are aspects of critical race theory, which in a weird way makes this an example of the activist left basically accepting the activist right's new working definition of CRT as "all of the various cultural insanities."

This is no small matter, given that many progressives have rested their entire defense of CRT on the idea that it's a very narrowly defined aspect of elite law school training. Judd Legum, formerly of ThinkProgress, has said the notion that CRT is taught in K-12 schools is a lie.

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We need school choice
 
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