![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
I contend that public education is bad in the US for the same reason healthcare is expensive: lack of funds and lack of control over how funds are allocated. Contrary to popular conservative belief, some services are better when public and public services do need funding.
A procrastination in of itself
Remember private school success is often faked on some level, any school with academic entry requirements can't be fairly measured against those without, because it's easy to get students getting good grades when they were already getting good grades before coming to you.
That's before we consider the fact that kids at private school tends to come from wealthier background and thus have access to non-school related grade boosting options.
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran
It's difficult to measure what options are best for everyone across the board. I think all forms: public, private, charter, homeschool all have advantages and drawbacks. The trouble is providing the best education to as many as possible. A good way to start would be to get actual educators or former educators into the department of education, at least starting at state levels rather than people who think they know about schools but never actually taught anything.
"Sometimes the scandal is not what law was broken, but what the law allows." - Edward Snowden
A procrastination in of itself
Isn't a charter school just a private school that the government subsidises? How is that useful, all it does is drain resources away from public school and into for profit entities.
How does a desire for less government interference match up with a call for the government to subsidise failing private school? If the school are providing a marketable service than they don't need the subsidies while if they're not they should fail because the market has deemed them worthless.
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran
Face me now, Bitch!
The UMFS Charterhouse school in Richmond isn't too bad. Helps that its secularly run and not overly religious.
Watch Symphogear
Visiting from the Hoag Galaxy
I went to an International Baccalaureate school when I lived in Europe. In some circles, the International Baccalaureate is considered the gold standard of private education. It was awful. The International Baccalaureate is a huge corporation designed to cater to neurotypical people of above average intelligence. It has no ability to deal with special needs people beyond the most superficial level, it has no ability to adjust to issues and problems (if you miss the final exam in the last year for any reason no matter what, you have to wait a year to retake it. You could be in the hospital for appendicitis and you'd still have to wait a year) and they advertise their graduation rate of 80%. That means one in five students fail. That is not a sign of a good school.
Basically, the IB is a school system run like a corporation, and the only reason it's at all functional is because the individual schools have to pick up the slack that you get from a profit-driven corporation that is clearly being run by executives who have never actually taught in a school or even really know how it works.
Not Three Laws compliant.
I was just saying they all have possible benefits and drawbacks. Not that they all work or don't work across the board. I do want less government interference as many school and test standards are garbage and maybe instead of setting standards for an entire group (either state or national level) maybe setting standard at a more local level depending on needs and capabilities should be considered. My school ran its funds into the ground trying to get its test scores up to standard and ended up cutting a lot of vocational programs that could get people jobs out of high school. Granted, the Robin Hood plan didn't help anything either
"Sometimes the scandal is not what law was broken, but what the law allows." - Edward Snowden
Figure of Hourai
But allowing things to be set at a local level is inherently anti-aspiration. With increased globalisation and a need for skilled workers, it doubles with producing graduates only able to serve in the present. Vocational education is excellent, but the goal of education should be to maximise the abilities of the student, not produce the workers that the local economy desires.
Avatar Source
Oh, bother.
Increased privatization of education makes good education more of a privilege instead of a right.
Disgusted, but not surprised
Most of the vocational education had no use in that town, other than auto repair and metal shop. The rest was surprisingly forward-thinking for a small, west texas town. Stuff like Graphic Design and mechanical engineering. Maybe setting it at local levels won't work across the board, but neither really do national standards. It's frustrating and a little soul-crushing for teachers to teach to minimum standards. (Source: an entire immediate and extended family of teachers)
"Sometimes the scandal is not what law was broken, but what the law allows." - Edward Snowden
A procrastination in of itself
There's a difference between setting a standard that need to be met and demanding hoop jumping under threat of defunding.
A minimum standard is good, making it so that teachers have the time to teach nothing but what's needed to pass exams otherwise the school looses money, that's bad.
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran
Hmm. I never thought of it that way. You're probably right. And as I am unfamiliar with how any state besides Texas really runs their school system and teaching standards, I'm not sure how often other states take standardized tests and what those standards mean. In Texas though, the highest grade possible on those only means you're a C student, at least, but the state requires that the teachers teach certain aspects of the test by certain times of the school year. It's maddening.
"Sometimes the scandal is not what law was broken, but what the law allows." - Edward Snowden
A procrastination in of itself
Excessive micromanaging by a central government can stifle educational innovation, but much the same you need oversight to ensure that schools don't go off the rails and start teaching flat earth conspiracy theories.
For my GCSE History I had to learn the causes and impacts fo both world wars, what I didn't have to learn was anything about what happened during either war. My teacher however had the time to teach us that anyway. I like that kind of system, certain things the kids need to learn combined with room for teachers to teach them other things.
The problem is that not all teachers are capable of that, to get the kind of qualified teachers that can innovate and tailer classes to kids means setting quality standards for the teachers and paying them what they're worth.
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran
Too true. Which is what I like about South Korea, a good teacher could potentially make as much as sports starts through selling their lectures to schools and over the internet. It's remarkable.
Though, I would have to say, a class on flat earth conspiracy theories would be incredibly interesting, assuming I could handle all that crazy.
edited 26th Aug '17 9:46:43 PM by Serenity92
"Sometimes the scandal is not what law was broken, but what the law allows." - Edward Snowden
A procrastination in of itself
A class for adults explaining some of the crazier conspiracy theories and how they came about would be awesome, a class teaching younger children that said conspiracy theories are true would not.
As for Korea, I'll take your word on them treating teachers well, I generally hear bad things about child wealfare when it comes to East Asian schools, not that mainstream British school are much better.
Then again I spent six years at the oldest surviving children's democracy on the planet, so I have a weird set of educational expectations.
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran
Oh, bother.
Oh yeah, South Korean education is very demanding. Imagine if most of the schools in a country were like Zendervai's description of the I.B. That is South Korean education in a nutshell.
It is very demanding. I spent a bit of time with a lot of South Korean students at college. Got to know some of them very well. They made my, already easy, high school education look like peanuts compared to what they did. The point about treating good teachers well though, is something we could emulate.
"Sometimes the scandal is not what law was broken, but what the law allows." - Edward Snowden
Tell Me, Have You Seen the Yellow Sign?
- Georgia Supreme Court: no tolerance for schools’ zero tolerance fighting policies
- How letting teens sleep in would save the country about $9 billion a year
How letting teens sleep in would save the country about $9 billion a year
That's according to an exhaustive new study by the Rand Corp., the first of its kind to model the nationwide costs and benefits of later school start times.
The economic benefits would come primarily from two sources: greater academic performance (and hence, lifetime earnings) among more well-rested students, and reduced rates of car crashes among sleepy adolescent drivers.
Those benefits would greatly outweigh the annual costs of implementing the policy change, which include the price of reorganizing school bus schedules (estimated at $150 per student per year) and a flat, one-time cost of $110,000 per school to install additional infrastructure, like lighting, to support later dismissals, sports team practices and other student activities.
...States implementing later school times would see a positive return on their investment in just two years, according to the Rand report. The net nationwide benefit from increased academic performance and lower car crash rates would reach $9.3 billion a year, equivalent to the annual revenue of Major League Baseball.
Georgia Supreme Court: no tolerance for schools’ zero tolerance fighting policies
The opinion, issued Monday, says not all acts of violence in school are unjustified and that school discipline proceedings must distinguish between unavoidable fighting and “mutual combat.” Zero-tolerance policies for fighting have altered the life trajectories of students who were expelled for engaging in fights they could not avoid.
The case was brought by a student who was expelled by Henry County Schools several years ago. The local superior court sided with her, saying she acted in self-defense and that the school district failed to consider this.
The district appealed, and the fruit of that effort was a stinging decision from the Georgia Court of Appeals that not only agreed with the superior court but also established an onerous new precedent applying to all schools in the state: whenever a student claimed self-defense the school district would have to mount the equivalent of a criminal prosecution, and disprove the claim.
Henry’s appeal to the Georgia Supreme Court was a victory in that it sanded down that precedent, establishing that self-defense claims in schools are to be treated as civil matters, with the burden on the student to prove self-defense.
But the high court decision also offers clear support for the lower courts’ findings that self-defense is a legal right, even for children in schools, and that Henry apparently failed to acknowledge that in this case. It ordered the district to reconsider the girl’s expulsion, though by now she is an adult and already graduated.
edited 4th Sep '17 12:21:14 PM by CenturyEye
Look with century eyes... With our backs to the arch And the wreck of our kind We will stare straight ahead For the rest of our lives
Good on that supreme court. Always had the impression that some schools down in the US tend to be way too cavalier about civil rights. They are not limited to adults.
I am not surprised about the first point. It's been argued for a long time that school schedules rely on Hollywood Science and assume that the circadian systems can simply be rearranged at request like a cheap wristwatch.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
That is great news! I always thought the no tolerance rules were ridiculous and only hurt victims.
"Sometimes the scandal is not what law was broken, but what the law allows." - Edward Snowden
Tell Me, Have You Seen the Yellow Sign?
A valedictorian went rogue in his final speech. His school tried to shut him down.
When the principal of Wyoming Area Secondary Center in Exeter, Pa., had finished applauding the poem, Butera walked up and laid his speech on the podium: the lines he’d dutifully cleared with administrators, and those he had not.
All of high school had been like that, Sciandra told The Post. No matter that they’d both been in student government every single year, he said — any idea that went beyond decorations for some school-approved event got shot down.
So when, a week or so before the ceremony, Butera told his friend that he’d written a secret end to the approved speech — that he planned to expose a system he saw as a sham — Sciandra understood it had to be done.
Though as he sat on the field Friday, Sciandra still doubted his class president would go through with it.
Butera’s speech was now nearing its end. “I have pursued every leadership opportunity available to me,” he told the crowd. He’d been repeatedly elected class president. An honor each time.
“I would like to thank you all for that one final time,” he said. “It really means a lot.”
But it hadn’t meant much to the school, he was thinking, Butera later told The Washington Post...
“At our school, the title of class president can more accurately be class party planner,” Butera said. “Student council’s main obligation is to paint signs every week.”
...
“Despite some of the outstanding people in our school,” Butera went on, “a lack of a real student government combined with the authoritative attitude that a few teachers, administrators and board members have …”
...
” … prevented students from truly developing as true leaders …”
That is absolutely beautiful. As someone who was shot down on principle when trying to get a dress code changed, that is beautiful.
"Sometimes the scandal is not what law was broken, but what the law allows." - Edward Snowden
Tell Me, Have You Seen the Yellow Sign?
Couldn't agree more. The last thing schools need to be teaching is that organization and civic engagement gets you nothing.
Look with century eyes... With our backs to the arch And the wreck of our kind We will stare straight ahead For the rest of our lives
Face me now, Bitch!
This kid full out roasted Standardized testing.
I like it.
edited 17th Sep '17 10:49:06 AM by Demongodofchaos2
Watch Symphogear
Hell yeah! Standardized testing is absolutely terrible and only promotes mediocrity.
"Sometimes the scandal is not what law was broken, but what the law allows." - Edward Snowden