From Davis Guggenheim (An Inconvenient Truth) a new documentary on The American Educational System

[BrentWil]

Looks interesting. This is my pet issue because it goes right to both civil rights, social mobility, and keeping us competitive. Anyway, it did good at Sundance and looks promising.

http://www.waitingforsuperman.com/trailer

[WCGreen]

1. Damn, thanks for making me cry....

[Tansy_Gold]

2. ditto.

[WCGreen]

3. This is such a deep deep problem and the stuff they are trying

around the surface is really doing nothing to change anything...

[BrentWil]

4. Agreed...

SOmethings do work. But it is a huge problem trying to work something with Teacher Unions on one side and rich republicans on the other side that want a voucher to send there kid to a private school they are already going to. Weighted student funding is a solution I like. It attaches money to a student, based on actual need, and the money means the student and their family will have more choice.

[Catshrink]

7. RW talking points.

[BrentWil]

11. The difference between the right wing and while I would like to see is where the money goes...

They want a voucher for a child already getting a good education. I want power and control in the hands of the poor.

[Hannah Bell]

18. oh, baloney. hasn't worked so far, not going to work, except for the rich & the financiers.

[BrentWil]

31. Yes, because current solutions are working GREAT...

Now say something about Unions and more money...

[Hannah Bell]

117. they're working as well or better, per the largest study on the subject,

the stanford university study.

you gotta stop reading so much propaganda.

[William Z. Foster]

208. this "solutions" crap has got to stop

Right wing privatization shit causes all of the problems in the first place, then OMG!!!! we have a problem! The solution? More right wing privatization crap. It is happening everywhere.

[Tansy_Gold]

6. Oh, there are changes, all right.

But they're changes for the worse, not the better.

They point to a few rare successes, which usually are due to other influences anyway, and ignore all the failures.



TG

[BrentWil]

12. The current mass system isn't working..

Unless you live in the right place or can buy your way out. It is time to change that.

[proud2BlibKansan]

17. So are you planning on eliminating poverty?

Implementing parent education?

If you think vouchers are the magic bullet you have a lot to learn.

[BrentWil]

21. Did anyone say vouchers or a magic bullet?

I said, lets give more decisions and power to the poor. That doesn't involve traditional vouchers, as the majority of the money tends to go to people already sending their children to private schools and the money isn't enough for the poor to. As I mentioned, the best solution I have seen is weighted student funding, which gives money, based on need and allows those in need choice. The money follows the poor child, thus society gives a damn about the poor child.

[proud2BlibKansan]

23. They have the power now

But most are too busy surviving.

You clearly know very little about tho poor or their children.

And the weighted student funding you describe is just another term for vouchers.

[BrentWil]

29. No they don't.

They send their kids to the school they live by. That is it.

[proud2BlibKansan]

33. No not always

There are nearly 20 charter schools as well as a handful of religious schools in the city. In case you hadn't noticed, 40% of the schools in the KCSD are closing due to declining enrollment. So no, parents are not limited to one neighborhood school.

[BrentWil]

37. Yes, because the rich can buy their way out or leave..

KC has become depopulated since the 70s (despite a little uptick in recent years). Richer whites can either leave or send their kids to better schools. The poor need the same option. Attach money to the poor, and let that money go directly into whatever classroom the parents decide.

[proud2BlibKansan]

63. The charter school system gives them that choice now

Unless you think they should be able to transfer to suburban schools and the US Supreme Court said no to that plan.

[BrentWil]

69. Isn't it interesting that white liberals are always against plans that might involve "urban" kids..

having access to their children's schools. They preach more money, etc. But will fight any plans that involve them actually sending their kids to a school that some students are a certain "type".

[Hannah Bell]

118. isn't it interesting that arne's work decreased the percent of black teachers in chicago 10%,

but he pretends school privatization has something to do with civil rights.

as for the suggestion that school deform = inner city kids attending the schools of the privileged in any greater numbers than they already do --

ha-ha.

the result has been more segregation (both racial & economic) not less.


try another talking point.

[Doremus]

196. Vouchers, charter schools, and any other so-called solution that siphons $$$ from public schools

is not helping them but killing them. Period.

Cloaking a public funds grab by the wealthy in terms like "giving decisions to the poor" and "weighted student funding," you are facilitating the eventual demise of public education and carrying water for those who drool at the prospect while laughing at your naivete.


Once upon a time, a whole lifetime ago of 50 years :eyes: , American schools were among the finest in the world. There were no charter schools, no standardized testing, no vouchers, no fancy curriculum-of-the-day for sale by rich corporations. Think about that.

[BrentWil]

197. Once upon a time, teachers were supported and we didn't face the type of competition we face today

I believe in public education if you define it by the student. What I am saying gets more resources to students in need.

[Doremus]

201. Bull hockey. What you are saying decimates public school coffers and leaves the poor w nothing.

But I have a hunch you already know that.

[Tansy_Gold]

32. The "current system" isn't to blame, and the proposed "fixes" won't fix

The problem is, as posted above, poverty.

Charter schools and private schools do not have the cure for poverty. They can send successful students out the door if they have the proper material coming in the door.

Why do you think "successful" schools are all in "successful" neighborhoods? Is it because the teachers gain special wisdom just by working in a neighborhood composed of single family homes with nice yards and trees and two cars in every garage? Or do kids learn better when they have adequate food, adequate health care, books and computers at home, safety in and out of the classroom, parents who are financially able to take care of them, clothe them, keep the lights on so they can do their homework?

All the proposed fixes do NOTHING to address this, NOTHING AT ALL. Indeed, they may make the situation worse.

Imagine Charter Schools should be the poster child for everything that's wrong with "the movement." The movement's mantra was -- and probably still is -- that private enterprise can do a better job of educating your kids AND MAKE A PROFIT OFF IT. Why should ANYONE make a profit off educating our kids? The billionaire Bakkes think they should! They've put their so-called non-profit Imagine schools in debt to. . . .the Bakkes! how 'bout that! The Bakkes profit handsomely, the public schools and lots of kids lose out, and this is a good thing?????? ARE YOU SHITTING ME???

Public schools are funded through property taxes. In many many school districts, some businesses are granted exemptions from property taxes as an incentive to locate in the community. The rationale is that they bring jobs and ultimately increase the tax revenues to the community. But the burden for funding schools then falls more and more on the residential property owners, the families whose children or grandchildren or neighbors' children attend the local schools. And if the residential property owners are non-resident landlords, they will merely pass along the tax increases to their tenants who, if they are already poor and struggling, become more so, because the landlord, like the charter school operator, is in it for the profit.

It's very very easy to blame the teachers' unions because like all unions they've been painted for years and years and years as the bad guys. But what have the unions done that has made poor kids less able to learn than middle-class or wealthy kids? Has fighting for insurance benefits and retirement benefits and living wages done it? Is that it? Do you really believe that if teachers had to work without collective bargaining, without some assurances that they wouldn't be subject to firing over the gripes of an unhappy parent or student, without some peace of mind over whether they were going to have a job next year -- WHY IN THE NAME OF ALL THAT'S SANE WOULD ANYONE BLAME THE TEACHERS FOR WANTING TO LIVE LIKE HUMAN BEINGS?

Oh, I know, you never blame the teachers. You blame the unions. Why do you think the teachers organized into unions? For the same reasons that any exploited group does! To stop the exploitation! Is this so difficult to understand?

Back in the days when I was in elementary school, we didn't have very many male teachers. At K-5 Ridge School in Arlington Heights, Illinois, we had Mr. Anderson and Mr. Candelaria, who taught fifth grade. All the rest of the teachers were female. Most were married, a few were single. A few of the unmarried female teachers were far more dedicated to their students and their profession than they would have been to a family, to the extent that they were probably labeled (much like my aunt) "old maid schoolteachers." These would include Margaret Marron and Katherine Plinspach. Many of the married female teachers left teaching as soon as they had children: teaching was a field they could enter and leave more or less at will while they were primarily supported by husbands who worked "real" jobs -- or were other teachers. Eileen Boos' husband John taught at another elementary school in the same district; Norma Snap's husband Alfred taught English at the high school two blocks away from Ridge.

Teaching school, for most of the last century, was women's work. It was not a real profession and it was paid accordingly. Meaning, it didn't pay much. Teachers' salaries started to rise in the 1960s and 1970s when more men entered the field, especially elementary education, and when the unions began to have some clout. I do not mean this to disparage men teachers but rather to point out a simple fact: teaching was considered women's work, an extension of child care, and was not valued by the society. When men entered the field and had to support families with what they made teaching, they were able to bring at least some financial recognition to the career.

But the attitude toward teaching as merely an extension of child care and therefore unvalued has not gone away. State budgets are balanced on the backs of students and teachers. Poor children's health care benefits are slashed. Regressive sales taxes are passed. No one suggests raising taxes on high value commercial property or instituting a progressive property tax (higher rates on higher valuations). We protect the rich, but we blame the poor.

Now we have what has rightly been called a propaganda film. The trailer did indeed move me to the verge of tears. No child's future should be left to the whims of a lottery. EVERY SINGLE CHILD SHOULD BE GIVEN THE SAME OPPORTUNITY TO LEARN.

But are charter schools and vouchers the only answer? Are they even the best answer? Are they even a GOOD answer? Or do they in fact make "the system" worse?

When we look at the statistics that show how US children's performance has declined academically compared to other countries, is it even remotely fair to accuse the education system of failure? What other factors should be considered, and how might they impact the way our traditional public education system functions? What has changed in other countries that has brought their performance up? What factors outside the system have changed in the US? Demographics? Has there been a sufficient influx of ESL students over the past 10, 20, 40 years that has changed the performance levels? What about NCLB and the proliferation of (highly profitable) standardized tests as not only A measure of students' performance but as THE measure? We've heard about "teaching to the test," and we know it happens, but what is the overall effect on student performance?

What has been the effect of the change in the economy? We are now a sharply stratified society in terms of income and wealth. How has this affected school funding, school performance? The aging of the great wave of babyboomers into the grandparent generation -- what's that meant to schools, teachers, students? If you think that's not important or too tangential to matter, consider that there are always battles, some publicized and some not, over the tax breaks given to those who live in "retirement" communities like the Sun Cities in Arizona that do not have schools. (For the record, they are not entirely exempt and do pay some school taxes, but not the same as a "retired" person living outside those communities.)

What have been the effects of programs that have "mainstreamed" more and more children with disabilities? How has that affected funding and spending, and how has it impacted the students, both those who might in the past have been segregated to separate institutions or separate classes AND the other students with whom they now associate?

What has been the effect of providing teachers with respectable incomes and professional security in terms of job benefits? What about continuing education requirements: Has this resulted in better teachers, or worse?

Why do people become teachers, and why do they leave the profession?

One of the disadvantages of studying sociology is that it teaches you to look at the big picture, at how the various segments of a society interact with each other for better or for worse, rather than isolating tiny portions and treating them as if they function with complete independence and autonomy. And so I read of the student who graduates from college with $100,000 in student loans to repay and a degree in Philosophy that has left him or her (I can't remember which) with no job opportunities. Of course the quick response is to say that the young person and their family were stupid to spend so much money on a worthless degree, but no one questions what our world would be like if we didn't have philosophers. Are philosophers or sociologists, social workers or musicians, historians or poets of so little value in our society that we blame them for being what they are and would rather have them starve or disappear entirely?

John Donne had it right, and of course we would not have him if his words were not valued by. . . . someone. . . . enough to publish and pass along through generations of literature, and philosophy, classes:

John Donne
Meditation 17
Devotions upon Emergent Occasions

"No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were. Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee..."


And perhaps it is the Bell of Atri that tolls, but whether we are the miser knight or his faithful steed is yet to be determined.

http://www.readbookonline.net/read/3148/12677/




Tansy Gold

[proud2BlibKansan]

34. TIF financing has helped to starve my district

It's the district where the poster you are replying to claims to live. If he does reside here I'd love to know how he feels about paying property taxes to support schools while H&R Block (the world's largest tax prep firm) pays none.

This property tax issue is the one the residents in our district need to be outraged over. Instead, all too often they slam the school district which is being starved of badly needed revenue while they hop on down to the hometown company to have their taxes done. Then they stop for dinner and drinks at one of the trendy new spots in the downtown entertainment district (which also benefits from no property taxes).

And while they sip their drinks they talk about how bad the schools are.

[BrentWil]

39. KC was dying because people were leaving..

They set up tax policies to get people back into the city. I am not saying I agree with what they did. I would have done things differently. However, it was an attempt to try to fight off what was (and still may be) a dying city.

[proud2BlibKansan]

64. Starving the public schools does not help save an urban core

[BrentWil]

68. Neither does no business...

Hey, like I said. Would have done things different. But KC needed people and income.

[BrentWil]

5. Sorry...

Does look a little sad, doesn't. Your kids education decided by where you live.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

8. .

:kick:

[proud2BlibKansan]

15. Ah Peggy

Thought I knew you better.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

209. Check your PM. -nt

[MadHound]

9. WooHoo, the charter school movement has its own propaganda movie,

Funny how that comes along right in the midst of this administration's war on public education.

This movie goes to nothing that you speak of. What this movie does is present a story, an inaccurate one at that. It shows you the worst of schools, presenting their failure in order to promote the "need" to open charter schools and privatize education.

You want success in public schools, then we need to follow the examples of Japan and Iceland, start paying for it. Start paying teachers like the professionals they are instead of like the hired help. Pay for facilities, supplies and decent, healthy food for every kid. But the key word is pay, we simply do not pay for this stuff.

Our funding mechanism for education is utterly ridiculous. Any school funding issue has to be decided by the voting public, usually by a super majority. Meanwhile, at the local, state and national level, education, along with social services are the first things that get cut.

This is simply a recipe for disaster. Inner city schools get hammered because they have a low tax base, as do rural and small town schools. To bring jobs to the area, more and more corporations and businesses are getting exempted from property taxes altogether.

This looks like nothing more than privatization propaganda. Really now, Michelle Rhee, Bill Gates? That just screams profits and privatized ed.

Are you certain that this is the board you want to be posting this thread on?

[BrentWil]

10. My value is with the child and with that family...

Government money does not mean government ran. More spending does not mean better education. That has not been the experience else where in the world and it has not been the experience here. Alexandria City, Va., for example, spent $13,730 per pupil, but its high schools registered only a 73% graduation rate, with 65.0% of the seniors participating in the SAT for a mean score of 963. That picture is very wrong.

I don't want to privatize, per se. I want the money and the power in the hands of the underprivileged. A voucher system that is weighted for the need of the student (poorest getting the most), is a system that would help, if it were federal dollars.

[proud2BlibKansan]

16. Come on over to Kansas City

I'll be GLAD to show you urban public schools that actually work well. And no, they aren't charters and the kids don't need vouchers to attend.

And of course the media ignores the successful schools. The ones that fail are so much more exciting to write about.

Don't believe the bullshit.

[BrentWil]

22. I actually live in KC

KC-MO schools are awful. In fact, a heck of alot of them just got shut downI would never send a kid to them, if I could avoid it. If I had a kid, I would move to Johnson County.

[proud2BlibKansan]

25. Why does your profile say Manhattan?

I teach in one of the very successful schools in KC. I would enroll my own children in several of our schools.

I see you haven't really been paying attention. You won't learn about KC schools from our local media. They would rather tell the bad stories. And they ignore the bad stories in Johnson County.

But if you want to learn more, I challenge you to volunteer in the KC schools. I'd be more than happy to hook you up.

[BrentWil]

27. In Grad school at K-state..

Getting married in KC in August and moving back to the city. And yes, I would like to volunteer.

[proud2BlibKansan]

35. Get back in touch with me in the fall.

I will be glad to give you info on volunteering. We only have 3 more days this year.

[BrentWil]

41. Be back in town in August...

Would need something for the weekends or nights. Have a full time job and all.

[laughingliberal]

14. +1000 nt

[LibDemAlways]

20. How ironic that Bill Gates is in this movie. Promoting

American education in any form when his company hires huge numbers of H-1B Visa holders to avoid giving those Americans he's presumably so eager to educate access to a job . What a dirtbag.

[proud2BlibKansan]

13. Stopped watching as soon as Michelle Rhee came on the screen

Sorry. But if you think that woman knows the first thing about real reform in education we don't have much to talk about.

[Admiral Loinpresser]

162. Bob Somerby has been asking hard questions

about Rhee's claims/resume for years:

"To understand Rhee, “you have to know what happened when she taught at Baltimore's Harlem Park Elementary,” Jay says. But what did happen in those three years; did miracles really occur? In our view, no one who actually cares about low-income schools will leap to such conclusions—or assume that the Brat Pack is on the right path because they have (allegedly) seen similar outcomes. As we’ve explained in the past, it isn’t clear—it isn’t clear at all—that Rhee produced the miracle cure she has boasted about all through her career (links below). And good God! Who but an adept could believe that miracles occur in the way Jay describes? Did no one but Rhee ever think of having her kids “sit in a big U-pattern with her in the middle?” Did no one else “ma quick marks on the blackboard for good and bad behavior without ever stopping the lesson?” Even assuming, as we do, that Rhee was a highly diligent teacher, the story Jay tells is the stuff of legend. This type of story is perfectly fine—in books written for eight-year-old kids. But it’s dangerous when we find it so easy to believe that we start revamping our low-income schools on the basis of such absurd tales."

http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh112608.shtml

[Hannah Bell]

186. the story of michelle's "miracle" made me laugh. every hollywood miracle story ever.

but real life ain't like the movies, kiddies.

[proud2BlibKansan]

193. My students have sat in the U-pattern since Michelle was in grade school

Can I be a superintendent now?

[proud2BlibKansan]

19. Here ya go

Teach these kids. I do every day.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZfxIyvrAQI&feature=related

Make sure you don't leave any behind.

[BrentWil]

30. ahhhh....

Blame the kids for schools out of control... good job. They are kids, the school system or school needs to control and to discipline.

[proud2BlibKansan]

65. And if the parents refuse to cooperate?

What would your solution be then?

[BrentWil]

70. Empowerment of teachers to get people who don't want to learn out

Teachers need administrations that support them.

[proud2BlibKansan]

107. On that point we can agree

[knitter4democracy]

205. That looked awfully familiar. No blood, though.

The girl fights at my school tend to result in my having to get gloves out and clean one or both up. We've only had a couple this year, though.

Where the heck was the teacher?! That room was out of control!

[LWolf]

24. Sounds like another weapon for the privatizers and union-busters for me.

I guess it depends on what it promotes as a solution. If actual educators are asked what the system needs.

[QC]

26. That was my impression, too. n/t

[BrentWil]

28. Actual educators sometimes have other priorities..

instead of kids...

[Tansy_Gold]

36. If they have other priorities. . . . .

THEN THEY AREN'T "ACTUAL EDUCATORS"! BY DEFINITION!


(Is it just me. . . . . or was that one of the most :wtf: posts ever?)


TG

[LeFleur1]

38. Like Everything Else in America

Education was, at one time, a team concept between the schools, the parents, the children. Now the wider the wedge can be driven the better for political hay.

Our educational system seems to be judged on the worst there is in the country. I'm very afraid we're going to throw the baby out into the oil pond with the bath water. Of course things need to be improved. Teachers need to teach and teach well...but they can't do that if they are afraid of parental lawsuits, if their classrooms are loaded with children who have better things to do (or nothing at all to do), or feel put upon if required to complete an assignment, if the parents are drugged out, tired, not interested,overwhelmed, or worried about food and shelter.

It is true that some teachers have lost the will and the heart to teach. They need rehab or access to a different job. Maybe we should look into the reason they have such a feeling of hopelessness along with all of the rest of the reasons. The blame game isn't working.
I know one thing, charter schools with whatever ideals or agenda they intend to set forth are not the answer to a well rounded education. Public Education needs a shot of energy and in many cases a remodeling, but it should NOT be torn down and thrown out.

The opportunity for our children to learn is most often there. The desire to do the work it requires is too often not there. There is much wrong with some schools and that needs to be fixed, but it is my opinion that the problems in the educational system are the result of our many other problems and divisions in America.

[BrentWil]

42. There are plenty of good teachers..

However, with the current system, you can't support them over kids, pay them more then their peers, etc. In other words, there is no reward for being good.

I would NEVER say public education needs to go. Public education is the only means the poor have to better themselves. Every child deserves a top notch education. However, public money needs to go to empower the poor and it needs to go to whatever works.

[Tansy_Gold]

45. I'm sorry, but you make NO SENSE whatsoever

You say "you can't pay them more then (sic) their peers" and that "there is no reward for being good." In fact, there are incentives for good teachers, including tenure, which is one of the things you seem to be against.

Public money does indeed need to "empower" the poor, but pouring it into charter schools that rip off both the poor and the middle class and at the same time FAIL to educate the students is NOT an answer.


TG

[BrentWil]

46. Who said charter schools..

I would attach federal money to the kids of the underclass and whatever the parent decided is where that money would go. In other words, if they went to their local public school, the local school would get federal money. This would put money into schools that teach underprivileged kids and it would give those parents a choose.

There are some incentives in some districts. However, there needs to be more flexibility to design a system that works at the local level..

[Starry Messenger]

40. It's becoming rather typical here, sadly.

The insinuations that teachers have a "Sekrit Agenda". Probably with special handshakes, too. Propaganda is often used in wartime, and Capital has declared Public Education the enemy. I expect it's just going to keep ramping up.

[BrentWil]

43. Creating a boogie man adds little to the debate...

This is a very key issue and I would like to figure out how to manage it better.

[Starry Messenger]

44. Then why are you creating a boogie man?

What was the insinuation that educators have other priorities than kids? If you speak plainly you will be more clearly understood. If you just let stinkers like that hang in the room, then it creates a bad impression. Of you.

[BrentWil]

47. What boogie man did I create?

I simple argued a point you happen to disagree with. Name calling is not debate.

[Starry Messenger]

48. You argued no point and I called you no names.

What priorities other than kids would an "actual educator" have, Brent? Can you just answer the question?

[BrentWil]

49. Job stability and income...

It isn't too tough. No secrete agenda and I am not saying that they aren't legit concerns. However, in some cases, esp. with BAD teachers (and they are out there), those interests over ride the interests of the kid. As I said, I want to see more empowerment of the poor and the way to do that is education. We have to put money into the system, but more money doesn't solve everything. The poor need a choice and that choice only happens with money that they control.

[Catshrink]

51. Oh lookie here.... it's the bad teacher boogie man

we must punish all teachers because there are some bad ones.

Try this:

We must punish all police officers because some are corrupt.

We must punish all doctors because some are incompetent.

We must punish all priests because some are child molesters.

We must punish all lawyers because some are, well most maybe, are assholes.

We must punish all engineers because some of them can't figure out how to plug a well.

We must punish all accountants because some of them erred on a tax return.

[Starry Messenger]

54. Well we knew *that* was coming.

:eyes:

[Catshrink]

55. Yep, you can bank on it.

And teachers' unions are eeeevvvvviiiiillllll!

[BrentWil]

57. Who said that?

As I said, if teachers want a union they have freedom of association to do so. All I want is for poor kids to have the same choice as rich white kids. They need and are demanding in many places the ability to get out of failing schools. Giving the poor that ability is what I would like to see happen.

[BrentWil]

56. Who said punish "all"...

I want flexibility to reward, etc. I would argue on average, teacher pay would go up in poorer district. If you attach federal money to poorer kids, and let the money follow the kid, then more money goes into poorer districts and pay for teachers should go up, on average. There will be a wider variance in pay, but I don't want to punish all teachers.

Your example is nonsense. In all those cases, the bad ones of each should be gone.

[Starry Messenger]

52. Bad teachers usually self-select out of the system.

They quit. For others, there are evaluations that can impact their employment. Bad teachers do get fired. More empowerment of the poor comes with jobs and opportunities in their communities overall. Tax the fucking rich people and quit sending jobs overseas. These two things would "fix" poverty and education so fast your little free market head would just swim. Vouchers are Milton Friedman's way of funneling money away from public schools.

[BrentWil]

59. Vouchers for the rich do that...

Providing voochers for the poor help kids.

My father and mother sent their life in education. I have seen the process of trying to use evaluations to get rid of a teacher. VERY HARD.

[Starry Messenger]

61. So what if it's hard? It's still possible.

I am having trouble with your proposal here. Are you suggesting that vouchers for poor students are going to get them access to Andover, Choate, etc.? What schools do you see taking in all these children on a voucher program?

[BrentWil]

66. If it is fed money, it will overlay the current system...

In other words, in some poorer districts it might been that they simply get the funds they need, and no other system develops. In other districts you might see private schools, both for profit and not for profit develop. Schools would still work on the local level, but it would work by placing a greater value of the children of the poor. I am not suggesting andover. I am suggesting some hope, however.

[Starry Messenger]

72. So where did the part go about poor kids getting the same opportunities as rich kids?

There's a lot of empty space between Andover and this "hope" you speak of. Doesn't sound like much of a plan to me, frankly. Here is something to chew on:

http://www.pfaw.org/media-center/publications/voucher-veneer

Voucher Veneer: The Deeper Agenda to Privatize Public Education

A report by People For the American Way Foundation
Executive Summary

Today, governmental responsibilities in education and the strong connection that Americans have with their public schools are being put to a serious test. A network of Religious Right groups, free-market economists, ultraconservative columnists and others are using vouchers as a vehicle to achieve their ultimate goal of privatizing education. Their embrace of vouchers reflects their view that to be successful, privatization must be achieved incrementally. The long-term goal is to make all schooling an activity supplied by private sources: for-profit management companies, religious organizations and home schools. The movement believes that targeted voucher plans, such as those in Florida, Milwaukee and Cleveland, give them a foot in the door en route to achieving this goal. While many of those who want to privatize education choose their words very carefully, others are more candid about their goals. The Heartland Institute’s Joseph Bast has urged others who share his group’s extreme agenda to be patient. “The complete privatization of schooling might be desirable, but this objective is politically impossible for the time being. Vouchers are a type of reform that is possible now, and would put us on the path to further privatization.”

1. Vouchers are part of a broader strategy by some to privatize public schools.

Joel Belz, publisher of World—a Religious Right magazine—wrote a column several years ago sympathizing with those who oppose vouchers because they don’t want government to play any role in education. He wrote: “If helps bring down the statist system, which it will, it will be worth the temporary compromise.”(emphasis added) Supporting vouchers now, Belz argued, would help pro-privatization groups in the long run “gain a larger strategic advantage.”

2. Voucher supporters are pushing their agenda from the highest levels.

Privatization advocates have made a serious effort to bring about change, no longer from outside the system but from within the corridors of power. U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., after his appointment to the House education committee said, “I think it’s a lot easier to kill the beast when you get in the cave.” Recently, the Bush Administration appointed Nina Shokraii Rees, a staunch voucher advocate, to head DOE’s Office of Innovation and Improvement.

3. Many pro-privatization groups offer two messages: one for committed followers and another for the broader public.

For example, the Florida-based James Madison Institute has stated that it “believes that parents should have the freedom to make decisions in the best interests of their children.” Most Americans, including those who strongly support public education, would likely agree with this vague statement. These words, of course, leave unmentioned the fact that the James Madison Institute’s education policy director has signed a proclamation that calls for scrapping the public education system.

4. Many existing private schools are unlikely to accommodate significant numbers of additional students in a privatized system.

Chester E. Finn, Jr., who heads the Fordham Foundation, notes that it is generally hard to find private school leaders “who want their schools to grow, to open additional campuses, to recruit more clients.” Finn also recently admitted that “there aren’t enough private schools to go around” for would-be voucher students. Indeed, a massive number of schools would have to be built to replace all or most of the 92,000 public schools operating across America.

5. Vouchers can lead to hastily created ‘fly-by-night’ private schools unable to provide children with a quality education.

Concerns about quality are magnified by the fact that private and religious schools are not held accountable in the same manner as public schools. In fact, the CATO Institute’s David Salisbury recently argued that private schools’ ability to disregard state standards is “the very basis for school choice.”

6. Schools may not be just another economic market.

The voucher movement largely owes its beginnings to economist Milton Friedman’s beliefs that the private sector delivers goods and services more efficiently than public institutions. Ironically, some of the conditions in public schools identified by critics as problems are rooted in the dynamics of the free market system they praise. Large schools were inspired largely by private enterprise, which has long encouraged “economies of scale.” Boston University professor Philip Tate has observed that rigid class schedules, reliance on test scores and other traits of public schools “were instituted in the name of efficiency” and created a “factory model” of schooling.

7. A privatized system of education could leave too many children behind.

It is likely that a privatized education system will cater to those students who are believed to be easier or less expensive to educate. The Heritage Foundation has expressed hope that “vouchers could limit how much taxpayers must pay to educate the disabled and begin a movement toward cost containment.” A survey by the U.S. Department of Education of private schools in large inner-cities found that between 70 and 85 percent of schools would “definitely or probably” not be willing to participate in a voucher program if they were required to accept “students with special needs such as learning disabilities, limited English proficiency or low achievement.” Among religious schools, 86 percent expressed this same unwillingness to participate.

8. The public supports public education.

In a national poll this year, Americans chose “reforming the existing public school system” over “finding an alternative” to the current system by a 69-to-27 percent margin. In last year’s annual Phi Delta Kappa-Gallup poll on education, 71 percent of public school parents gave a grade of A or B to the school attended by their oldest child.

The pdf link at the bottom of the page has expanded details for the curious reader. It makes an especial point of highlighting that this plan that you espouse is beloved of neoconservatives. Perhaps you signed up at the wrong forum?

[BrentWil]

73. As I said, I will never stand by vouchers for the rich or connected..

I don't want home schooling, fundamentalist religious schools, etc. I want the poor and under privileged to have a chance. These are the people I want vouchers for http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7FS5B-CynM .

You keep saying that they are popular amount "neoconservatives" Well they are pretty popular among African Americans too.

[Starry Messenger]

74. I'm talking about vouchers for impoverished children.

I gave you a nonpartisan report debunking their efficacy. You are avoiding any questions about helping poverty itself, interesting. You have posted no articles or facts to show how vouchers would benefit poor communities. If you can find one that isn't on CATO or Heritage or some RW astroturf think tank blog I will give you a gold star. That video is from ReasonTV, which is a Libertarian organization. You seem to be fond of those. :hi:


Oh and for the bonus round-a report on the DC voucher program talked about in your video link. They flashed this website, but it doesn't say what "Reason" claims it said:

Evaluation of the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program: Impacts After One Year
NCEE 2007-4009
June 2007


Introduction

The DC School Choice Incentive Act of 2003 established the first federally funded private school voucher program in the United States, providing scholarships of up to $7,500 for low-income residents of the District of Columbia to send their children to local participating private schools. The law also mandated that the Department conduct an independent, rigorous evaluation of what is now called the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program (OSP), to assess the impact of the program on academic achievement, school safety, and other outcomes. The impact evaluation is a randomized controlled trial that compares outcomes of eligible public school applicants randomly assigned to receive or not receive a scholarship through a series of lotteries.

The third-year report, Evaluation of the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program: Impacts After One Year, contains the following key findings:

* No evidence of a statistically significant difference in test scores between students who were offered an OSP scholarship and students who were not offered a scholarship.
* The program had a consistently positive impact on parent satisfaction and their perceptions of school safety.
* Students who were offered OSP scholarships did not report being more satisfied with school or feeling safer in school than those without access to scholarships.
* This same pattern of findings holds when the analysis is conducted to determine the impact of using a scholarship rather than being offered a scholarship, taking into account the approximately 20 percent of students who were offered but chose not to use their scholarships the first year.

http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/pubs/20074009/

It's a nonpartisan government study.

[Tansy_Gold]

75. .

:yourock:

[BrentWil]

78. AGAIN, It also isn't again what I would suggest.

I would suggest something like the system the Dutch use. From a study from Duke. Again, it isn't a 100% solution, but it will help

http://sanford.duke.edu/research/papers/SAN09-03.pdf

There is much to admire in the Dutch system of weighted student funding as a means of financing primary schools. The system has succeeded in its core objective of directing significant levels of additional funds to schools with concentrations of challenging-to-educate pupils. Its basic principles have been sustained with broad political support over more than a quarter century even as some specifics have evolved to accommodate changing practical and political realities.

[Starry Messenger]

86. Well, your "plan" is never going to occur.

So it's moot really. Vouchers are never coming back. It's all charters now, so if you wish to be au courant with the right wing education agenda you'd best get with the program. The video you posted before said nothing about the Dutch, so I had no way of knowing you were saying one thing and thinking another. You'll pardon the use of wiki I hope to simply underscore the fact that the Netherlands has no voucher system, so is in fact totally unlike what you proposed in your starting argument.

Netherlands
Further information: Education in the Netherlands

There is no voucher system in the Netherlands. For more than 80 years, parents have preferred independent schools. Today, around 70% of primary and secondary pupils attend independent schools.<50>

In the Netherlands, the government funds "bijzondere" ("special") schools, which are run by independent non-profit boards, on the condition that they charge no more tuition than public schools do and otherwise abide by practically the same rules as public schools. Parents are free to choose any public or special school for their children, although in some urban areas, such as Amsterdam, admissions procedures do exist. Many, but not all, special schools are religious in nature. The system arose in the early 1900s after a prolonged political battle known as the Battle of the Schools (in Dutch: "De Schoolstrijd") between religious and secular political parties, and is considered a political third rail even today. The emergence of Islamic schools is putting the issue back into the spotlight, though. Any voucher proposals in the Netherlands, and countries with similar systems such as Belgium, are complicated by the historical background of the Battle of the Schools. For a more detailed discussion, see Hooker in 'Bibliography'.

Is there some similarity you see that I do not? I can assure you that the proposals talked about in "Waiting For Superman" are probably not anything like the Netherlands.

[BrentWil]

90. If you read what I have posted...

It is clear what I want.

[Starry Messenger]

94. I read what you posted.

It is not clear what you want. If you want vouchers, which you have been advocating for hours, then this Dutch system makes no sense. The report clearly stated that it did nothing for "teacher quality" at all, so even at that level, it fails to address any of your desires. Oh well! Doesn't really matter, like I said. But for folks following along at home, I shall post the relevant passage to support *my* point, since this is a "debate" and everything. I'd like to add that the Dutch system also serves a much lower population of students so I'm not even sure how you are planning the increased cost of bureaucracy and economies of scale for adapting such a program to our already existing infrastructure. Sure sounds expensive and not at all fiscally conservative!

whether it tailors its education program to differing learning styles and student needs,
whether it systematically monitors student progress, whether its curriculum progresses
appropriately across grades, whether it has robust procedures for assuring the well-
being and safety of pupils and teachers, and how efficiently its teachers make use of
instructional time. From the scores provided by the Inspectorate related to these
process and practice measures for the years 2003-2007 we constructed an overall
measure of school quality for each of the primary schools in the four big Dutch cities,
as well as three components of that quality measure. That allowed us to test the
hypothesis that the scores were equal across schools grouped into nine categories
according to the their proportions of weighted students. We found that the overall
quality was lowest in three of the four categories of high weight schools, with the
quality shortfall driven primarily by lower rankings in the student-related components
of school quality. Thus, many of the high weight schools appear to have difficulty
tailoring their teaching program to different learning styles and often to not have
systematic approaches for identifying and dealing with the developmental needs of
lagging students. (For more details on this analysis see Ladd and Fiske, 2009).

That weighted student funding has not met the minimal goal of promoting
equal quality of schooling across the system need not mean that WSF has not had a
positive impact – possibly even a major one. We simply do not know what the quality
of schools serving disadvantaged pupils would look like had WSF not been in place
for the last quarter century.

One possible reason that weighted student funding has failed to bring about
full equality of schooling is that it does little if anything to solve problems relating to
the quality of teachers and school administrators. There is considerable evidence from
the U.S. that schools serving large numbers of disadvantaged pupils find it difficult to
attract and retain good teachers and directors (Clotfelder, Ladd and Vigdor, 2007; also
see Wyckoff, 2008 and Boyd, Lankford and Wyckoff, 2000 for summary of other
studies). Comparable data are not available in the Netherlands, although limited data
do show that high weight schools have a higher rate of unfilled openings for teachers
than other schools, which could be interpreted as a sign that they have difficulty
finding quality teachers. It is possible that the smaller classes in high weight schools
help offset the reluctance of some teachers to teach in such schools. Other than that,
however, there do not seem to be any ways in which WSF would appear to be
addressing the teacher quality problem.

Another possible reason for the lower quality of instruction in highly weighted
schools is that in the Netherlands, as in other developed countries, educators simply
do not have the particular skills and knowledge to deal with the needs of large
concentrations of disadvantaged pupils.

Were the U.S. to adopt weighted students funding, both of these issues would
need attention.

[BrentWil]

101. The Dutch system is important because it gets resources into the hands of the poor

I would suggest a program that does the same on a per student basis, but that also gives more freedom to the student and allows them to use it later on (if the cost of the school is less then the voucher), for either job training or higher education.

[Tansy_Gold]

111. The Dutch system was built on an entirely different foundation

It operates on a much smaller scale in a society that has much higher taxes and much less income disparity. And the Dutch system does not operate in a manner similar to what you're proposing.

[BrentWil]

122. No system does...

I used the Dutch because it got resources into the hands of schools that serve the poor.

[Tansy_Gold]

58. OMFG -- The horror! The horror!

It's absolutely unconscionable that the people entrusted with the education of our youth might just want (I hesitate to say it aloud) job security and (adequate????) income! How dare they! HOW DARE THEY???????????????!!!!!!!!!!!!!


And it just goes to show you that REAL EDUCATORS should be willing to work for free, because that's what it's really all about, isn't it. Teachers, like the Victorian governesses and tutors, should be servants of the rich, grateful not to be laboring in the scullery or the stables.


Tansy Gold, who is not going to add a :sarcasm: because she doesn't think it's warranted

[BrentWil]

60. Such a dramatic post..

When the one solution I presented would pump millions of dollars into underfunded districts and raise teacher pay in those districts.

Not that I even suggested it is the only solution.

[Catshrink]

62. Are you going to fix poverty and unemployment, too?

How about the culture that ridicules intellectuals as elitists and encourages kids to be or at least act stupid? Kids hear these messages from their peers - who are the only ones the really listen to -- far more than those encouraging them to learn.

Kids need to see a light at the end of the tunnel, whether that light be in the form of college or a vocational school/job. What can they see now?

Take a look at what a plan like yours has wrought. Note especially the part about transportation. How cruel is it to give a kid a voucher but no way to get to the school of his or her choice? Who will guarantee that admissions are fair and not racially biased?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x8454124

Maybe, just maybe, teachers know a thing or two about education. It's funny that Arne Duncan and his minions don't bother asking us but prefer to talk to billionaires. To Arne Duncan and other armchair educators, pedagogy is a pain in the ass.

[BrentWil]

67. I am suggesting a plan that provides hope..

Education can't fix everything, but it is a way forward. As far as transportation, if their is a high density of poor kids, a voucher system will empower them and schools will either develop around them or schools will pick them up. Either way, it gives them more power.

The plan is to give it to poor kids based on income not on race. Enforcement of federal law will insure that the admissions are not race based. THat is already on the books.

[Tansy_Gold]

77. "Hope," maybe, but not much more

Not too many years ago, the elementary school district in Peoria, Arizona, had a major problem. Developers had built so many new homes and so many new families had moved into the district that there weren't enough classrooms available when school started. Even though the district had built new schools, they couldn't keep up with the mushrooming population in the west valley suburbes of the Phoenix metro area. Even though the district anticipated increases, it wasn't enough. When the first school term began, students were crowded into classrooms barely able to hold them. Teachers were overworked Within a year or so, the situation was resolved as more schools were built to handle the influx of students.

That's one example.

Next case: Gold Canyon Elementary School in Gold Canyon, Arizona (Apache Junction School District) http://www.ajusd.org/collegereadiness/faq.html

Due to decreasing enrollment (various factors) the district had little choice but to close this school, and others. The investment in land, buildings, equipment, etc., cannot be immediately recouped. GCES has a capacity of approximately 700 students and is operating at 50% capacity. Although projections are that there won't be a need for that capacity for at least 5 years, what is the district supposed to do? They can't exactly rent it out, but if they sell it, what happens if/when they need it again?

Schools can't be built in a day, as Peoria found out. Nor can they be easily converted back to cash, as GCES is finding out. GCES will, however, at least for the time being, be maintained by the district so that the facility is available both for community use AND for school use if/when the need arises.

The point I'm making here is that public schools are dependent on enrollment, and they are difficult beasts to bring on and off line on short notice. Without the security of knowing in advance pretty much what their annual enrollment will be, they can't hire teachers, contract for bus service, or do a host of other things that are necessary to the smooth and efficient operation of a system intended to be available to any and all students within the district. The public school system is expected to be there for everyone.

If the kind of patchwork system you're envisioning comes into the picture, the public school system has to be the back-up but without any expectation of sufficient support. In comes Best Western Charter School with all kinds of promises and a lease on a vacant building. 20% of that district's students suddenly opt to go to Best Western, and the district loses a huge chunk of its state funding. And while it may also cut PART of its budget by 20%, it can't cut 20% of its teaching staff or 20% of its custodial staff or sell off 20% of its playground equipment. Too much of its operating budget is NOT dependent on the number of students, even though that's how it's paid. They can't just have 80% of a custodial staff because they still have 100% of the building, 100% of the rest rooms, 100% of the cafeteria.

Am I making any sense to you, Brent? This is why your notion of "schools will either develope around them" is nonsensical. You're talking solely about private and/or charter schools, even though you're saying that's not what you're saying. Public schools don't spring up that way, and anyway, you're talking about districts where it's not a matter of capacity -- which is the driving force behind building new public schools -- it's about "quality."

Schools have to have some job security, too, and that's one of the reasons they're funded as part of the greater community. The whole community should benefit from having a good school in its midst. I grew up two blocks away from the local high school, and even when I was in junior high, my dad and I used to walk over on Friday nights for football games. The annual Homecoming Parade was a treat for the entire town. But when a school's existence is on a year-to-year basis depending on how "popular" it is with local parents, well, that's no way to run a school district.

Your solution does NOTHING to address the underlying problems of "failing" schools, because almost without exception, "failing" schools are in "failing" communities. And those communities have failed because the jobs have gone away, the environment has gone away, the underlying hope has gone away. To give a kid a chance at a good education when that education will be of little use to him or her is not hope at all. It's a come on, it's a scam. It's a way to lure more federal dollars into the pockets of the already-got-more-than-enoughs.

You say you want the money attached to the student and that the money can stay in the local district if that's where the student wants to go -- or if, as is more likely, that's the only place he or she CAN go. But that doesn't address the fundamental problems either, because the school district isn't able to count on those funds. Might be there this year and gone the next.

It's a rightwing solution that is intended to gut public education, privatize what's left, and make a profit for the wealthy. That's all it's ever been and that's all it ever will be. There may be a few shining examples to point to as exceptions, but they will be the exceptions that prove the rule. Vouchers do NOT help poor people as a class, though they may give a few of them the illusion of a chance at hope. Vouchers are a scam AGAINST the poor, and against the working classes.

Speaking of working classes, I have a paid job I have to do.



Tansy Gold

[Tansy_Gold]

71. Your "solution" ----- and some questions

First of all, how would it be implemented? Would the DoE set standards for who is and who isn't poor enough to receive these vouchers funds? How would the DoE account for differences in existing funding for "failing" and "succeeding" schools/districts? How would the DoE reconcile the use of federal funds being spent on private, religious instruction? Would $$ amounts be the same regardless where the students lived, say comparing a DC suburb in VA to a rural district in Mississippi? What if the student wanted to go to another public school that already is well-funded?

What happens to the public district the student would normally go to? Would they lose funding since the student isn't going there? What happens if the student gets kicked out of the school they choose to go to? What happens to the funds then? Wouldn't this be a "moral hazard" for unscrupulous charter/private school operators to sucker in the parents, get the money, and then expell the students for poor performance, behavior, whatever? Do the parents have recourse if the student doesn't perform as expected? Will there be any restrictions placed on where the student can go? Private schools? Private religious schools? What about home schooling? Would there be any accountability placed on the schools that receive the vouchers funds?

How would the funds be disbursed? Would the parents/guardians just be given a check that they would deposit in their account and then use as they saw fit? Would they have to apply for the funds, like through the school similar to the way college loans are applied for?

What about those students who can't get into the chosen school, either because of lack of available spaces or other "restrictions," such as transportation, facilities for disabilities, etc.?

Your solution doesn't "pump millions of dollars into underfunded districts." It puts money into charter schools, private schools, and well-funded "successful" districts because that's where your "poor" people would take the money. What it also doesn't do is address the underlying socio-economic class stratification that is at the root of all the other inequalities. It doesn't address the fact that even if these kids get a decent education, there are no jobs for them to work at after they finish school. It doesn't address the fact that if they go to an "elite" school, they will still not have the out-of-school advantages enjoyed by their classmates -- their own computer and high speed internet at home, educated parents who have the time and ability to help them with homework, the cultural capital that will allow them to interact in the classroom on a par with their classmates.

This is where I get all bent out of shape over the whole "ethnic studies" idiocy that went down in Arizona a few weeks ago and the continuing bullshit in Texas. EVERYONE should be taking "ethnic studies" classes. EVERYONE. The Mormon kids in Chandler and Gilbert and Mesa should be learning about the art and music and history of the Native Americans who used to live on this land. The kids in Tucson whose parents and grandparents went back and forth following the crops in the '50s and '60s and '70s and were finally granted "amnesty" so they could become citizens, those kids need to know the history of Mexico and how it was affected by the political and economic and military policies of the US -- but so do the kids in Tucson whose parents and grandparents were stationed at Davis-Monthan and retired with comfortable pensions after enforcing some of those policies. Boys need to know the history of women in this country as much as if not more than the girls do. We all live in a world that is growing smaller and smaller and smaller by the minute. We need to know about ALL of it, not just our little isolated corner of it.

Your solution addresses NONE of that. It puts taxpayer money into the hands of people who on paper look like they could use it, but it forces them to put that money into someone else's hands, when that someone else might be the biggest crook in town. At stake, of course, is the education of children, and it just seems to me that your solution solves nothing and makes a lot of things a whole lot worse than they already are, which is some cases is pretty damn horrible.

And as for my "drama," it was an attempt to point out the utter absurdity of your claim, but I guess that was lost on you. Heaven forbid that any of actually get passionate about this issue. (Do I need the :sarcasm: this time? probably so.)



Tansy Gold

[BrentWil]

76. It would be a fed system in which the money follows the child..

It would not effect current funding sources. If a school admits an unprivileged kid, they get it for the time period he is there. If they get kicked out, it should be based on the percentage of the school year attended. If the child stays in his current school, the money stays there. If he goes somewhere else, it goes there.

As far as curriculum, I would suggest that the federal government administrator very board test to schools to a statistical sample of student. The students shouldn't even get the results. It should be nothing that one can teach for, but should give some idea of performance and improvement at a school level. You could also have some passive influence of curriculum with these tests.

As far as the other issues, leave it up to the parents once they are empowered.

[Tansy_Gold]

79. "It would not effect(sic) current funding sources."

Huh?


Just in case you've been living in a cave or under a rock the past couple of years, school districts around the country are having major funding problems. STATES are having major funding problems, and one of the ways they're trying to balance state budgets is by cutting state aid to schools. If states and school districts don't know for sure how much they will get via these vouchers from the feds, how are they going to set budgets? OF COURSE this plan of yours would affect (A-F-F-E-C-T) funding sources. Are you freakin' nuts?

"As far as the other issues," like curriculum, you'd leave that up to the "empowered" parents??? Hey, why not do away with schools altogether and just left the parents teach the kids! Again, forgive me, but are you freakin' nuts?


I'm not a teacher, so I don't have a nag in this race (other than my son-in-law in NJ) but I do have two grandsons, one of whom may not be able to go to kindergarten this coming fall because the state of New Jersey under that evil monster Chris Christie may cut funding for public schools. That's STATE funding, not district. If the state cuts funding across the board, the districts have to make it up somehow or other, and one way may be to cut out kindergarten.

Do you have any idea what that does to a bright, eager child who has been ready for school for over a year even though he'll be one of the youngest in his grade? Do you have any idea what that does to the parents who had relinquished his day care slot in anticipation of his going to school in the fall? And I'm only talking about one child in one family. ALL BECAUSE OF UNCERTAIN FUNDING.

And you want to make that uncertainty even more profound.

I hope you're getting an education here, Brent, but I have a real feeling that you're not. I have a real feeling that you've taken this rightwing piece of garbage and wrapped yourself in it like a down-filled comforter on a cold Kansas night. You haven't answered questions, you've thrown around a bunch of talking points, and you've accused dedicated public educators of a bunch of stupid. . . .stuff. In some circles that might qualify you for being labeled a disruptor. I won't go that far because I think the resulting discussion may have been beneficial for other posters and perhaps even for some lurkers.

I don't think it's been beneficial for you, and that's too bad. I'm genuinely sorry. Maybe when you finish grad school and get married and are out there in the real world for a while you'll understand better what the rest of us have been talking about.

Maybe.

But I'm not holdin' my breath.



Tansy Gold, who did once have a substitute teacher certificate, if that counts for anything. . . . . but she still doesn't know the secret handshake. . . . . .

[BrentWil]

80. I understand they are..

The money would be federal money. It would not be local money. Current funding is at the local level. Leave that in place. However, provide funding at the federal level for vouchers based on need. Let the parent decide where to take that student, rather public or private. If they go public, that public school would get more money... but the source of its current funding, local tax, would not change. If they decide to change funding based on the fact that poorer systems within the state are now getting more money, that can be dealt with on a state by state case. The bottom line is, more resources for poorer kids.

I would also suggest we start the system before the child is school age because of day care issues.

I have been out in the real world for a while. My employer is sending me .

[Tansy_Gold]

85. "Funding" is fungible.

How do you start a system before a child is in school? Just give the parents the cash to do with as they like? Give it to the district the kid lives in when he's born? Move it around with him when he moves?

If he goes to a public school for kindergarten, charter school for first grade, private school for second grade, who gets the money that's been building up since he was born? or does it get used for day care???

Schools get funds from more than just local property tax. You do understand this, don't you? DON'T YOU? Again, if a school district is struggling to cut its budget, it needs to know how much money it's going to have. It can't live paycheck to paycheck, which is what you're proposing. States likewise need to know. If that voucher money starts going to for-profit charter or private schools, that money is not remaining in the budget the way it would if it goes to the public school.

All of which gets down to another issue you haven't even touched on -- where is the freakin' money gonna come from for these federal vouchers. How much are you talkin' about? $10 billion a year? $5 billion? How much? And remember it's gotta be there every year, 'cause you can't just cut these poor kids off in the middle of their education. So where's it gonna come from, Brent?

(Shall we see if he suggests it come from private enterprise?)


Welcome to the Walmart Charter School. . . . . . . Or Microsoft, where all the teachers are H-1Bs and all the students are. . . . . .




Tansy Gold

[BrentWil]

89. Allow the government to keep track of it

Then make it a lifetime tax credit for him or her to use for further education. The child could use a set amount per year. Anything above that can grow at the rate of inflation and used during his lifetime for education.

According to the university of Michigan, there are 14,068,000 children in poverty. http://www.npc.umich.edu/poverty/ Giving those kids a $10K voucher would cost 144M plus administrative cost. Decrease the voucher amount as income goes up, and I think you are looking at a program under 500b a year. That is just quick estimation, and it would be a large program. Not undoable.

[Tansy_Gold]

96. Excuse me?

14 million children at $10,000 each per year is not $140 million. It's $144 BILLION per year.


Edited to add the quote from BrentWil to which I'm replying, just in case I screwed up and got it really wrong:

According to the university of Michigan, there are 14,068,000 children in poverty. http://www.npc.umich.edu/poverty / Giving those kids a $10K voucher would cost 144M plus administrative cost. Decrease the voucher amount as income goes up, and I think you are looking at a program under 500m a year. That is just quick estimation, but I don't think it would be as expensive as you think and it would a key investment.

[BrentWil]

98. Sorry.. you are right..

IBut yes, still not much when compared to DOD budget, etc. It would be a large domestic program but an important one.

[Tansy_Gold]

105. It would be a monstrous boondoggle

Much better to give $140 BILLION in aid to the schools. There are only, what, 92,000 of them, and they don't move from state to state, change their names when their parents divorce and remarry, go in and out of poverty, or change schools.

Brent, there isn't a single other person on this thread who is agreeing with you. All of us, some who are professional educators and some who aren't, are providing cogent and substantiated arguments against your idea. You've screwed up on simple arithmetic and you're not answering direct questions. You've spouted what has been shown over and over again to be a rightwing corporatist talking point. Don't you think maybe it's time to give up?



Tansy Gold

[Starry Messenger]

110. I just used the word boondoggle on another thread!

Mind meld! :D Maybe it's a secret word, instead of a secret handshake.

[Tansy_Gold]

112. Marx

Groucho, that is.

[BrentWil]

129. What question have I failed to give my thoughts on?

And

[Hannah Bell]

119. $144 B = 1/4 the current cost of social security. into the maws of private capital.

neo-libs & libertarians aren't very consistent, are they?

[BrentWil]

123. Who said private coperations.

The majority of the money would end up in the hands of public schools serving poorer districts.

[Tansy_Gold]

126. Social Security of course is at least partly/mostly funded by the

employees and their employers. So far I haven't seen any suggestions for how to fund the $144 billion education voucher system.

Brent's whole voucher system was supposed to help fund public education in poorer districts. In other words, what wasn't spent on the current school year for the kid to go to private/charter school would go back into the district. Now that system has altered to where the parents can use the money for child care -- virtually none of which is provided by public schools -- or saved at the parents' discretion for college.

Since charter schools aren't supposed to charge any tuition, the kid wouldn't need to spend any of that voucher money on the charter. You can bet the charter operators won't stand for that, given that they're ones being promoted in this movie that started Brent's whole discussion. They'll want the money if they get the kid, and since they're technically part of the "public" school system, they'll undoubtedly get it. So that screws the "poor" (aka "failing") district that's supposed to benefit. The kid gets out of the poor school, and the money goes to the charter operator, but the rest of the kids in the school get screwed.

Or the kid can go to a private school, which means the money leaves the district, too.

Or, third option, the kid goes to the public school, struggles and succeeds as best she/he can, and takes the accumulated $150,000 or whatever and goes to college with it, and the poor district loses again.

(What happens if the kid drops out? Where does the money go then? What if he's been in four or five different school districts over the course of his school career? Oh, I guess the government will figure that out. yeah, right.)


Wow, ain't that a great plan for helping the "poor" school districts??? :sarcasm: because apparently some here don't get it.


Tansy Gold

Tansy Gold

[BrentWil]

128. Government intakes money..

The source of the money doesn't really matter. Do you really think that your SS money that is taken out of your paycheck is treated any differently then the tax BP pays? If you do, then you are kidding yourself.

You are not understanding what I am saying. The public system, under the direction of local school boards, would be able to state how much of the voucher they will take. The same with charter schools schools. Let the parent decide and whatever is left over can go to fund post secondary education or job training. If the parent keeps the kid in the local public district, the school gets to what amounts to a federal grant for each child, up to the max amount of the voucher.

The problems you suggests are not that big. Schools could be required to offer a refund based on the percentage of the school year the child attended. It isn't too difficult of a system to work and is certainly less complicated then something such as farm subsidies.

[Tansy_Gold]

132. The source of the money DOES matter. it has to have a source.

Only rightwingers think money just gets printed.

It would be nice if it could be funded from general revenues when the wars are over, but let's deal with reality. Even if the wars ended tomorrow and so did the military budgets, there are other problems that need to be addressed before another huge entitlement project is put into place.

If local school boards can dictate how much of the "voucher" they take from the poor kid, then that's not leaving much "choice" (or, in your words, "choose") to the student or the parent. The district will take it all. So would the charter. They'd make sure there was nothing "left over."

You wrote: "If the parent keeps the kid in th local public district, teh school gets to what amounts to a federal grant for each child, up to the max amount of the voucher." Again, that's not leaving anything for parental/student choice for saving for college. Essentially, you're saying it's all about choice but then not giving them any.

You really don't know what you're talking about, Brent. You put it out there in little talking points, but you can't explain anything and you contradict yourself.

Farm subsidies are actually quite simple. Quite corrupt, but quite simple. I've worked with the farm credit system -- cotton and dairy mostly -- and it's pretty damn simple.


Tansy Gold

[BrentWil]

134. I am telling you the reality of government intakes..

New sources of income or savings would be needed, but don't kid yourself into thinking that your SS taxes goes anywhere but the general fund.

[Tansy_Gold]

141. It doesn't HAVE to go into a separate fund.

Funds are fungible, Brent. I'm the one who said that, so I think I have some grasp of the concept. I'm not stupid.

The point is, however, that there is a funding source for Social Security.

You just now, in the post I'm replying to, said that "new sources of income. . . would be needed." Well, DUH, that's what I've been asking you. How would your $144 Billion project be funded? New taxes on the rich? A national wealth tax? Cutting Social Security to all those lazy assed old folks who really oughta just die and decrease the surplus population?

We've already got a huge national debt, the wars are bleeding us dry figuratively as well as literally, Wall Street gets bailed out every time you turn around -- so how are you going to sell Congress on your new program? So far, you haven't even been able to sell half a dozen or so of us here.

Of course, since your plan is really a rightwing transfer of wealth to the already wealthy program, it probably won't take much salesmanship.



Tansy Gold

[BrentWil]

143. A funding source that might actually pass or what I would do if I could design it?

[BrentWil]

144. This is what I would do concerning the taxes...

First, I would eliminate all forms of taxes on people besides for income tax. When you pay SS tax, it just goes into the general fund and is spent. It is a HOAX and is a regressive tax. All government expenditures should be paid from income tax and all income should be treated the same. All Americans would get the same deduction, 4 times the national poverty line for an individual. You as a person would never see that deduction decrees. If you get married, your household would have a deduction of 8 times the national poverty rate. For each dependent, you get their deduction too. This would ensure that the poor and most of the middle class would never pay a dime of federal taxes. The tax burden would be completely on the wealthy and upper middle class.

The other part of this is that I think we have to eliminate corporate tax. We are in a competitive world and corporate asses can move with great ease. This is something that countries such as Sweden understand, as they continue to cut their corporate tax. ( http://www.thelocal.se/14204/20080908 / ) As a structure, we want corporations and business to grow here. We also want people to invest in their smaller business instead of taking the pay home. This continues to grow jobs, etc. The way to deal with this problem is to tax the income they distribute under the same guidelines of any other income. In other words, if you are making more then 4 times the national poverty rate, the money that you gain from either a capital gain or a dividend should be taxed at the national rate. Moreover, foreign investors should get the same deduction, but would also get taxed once their investment income grew past the amount. This would ensure there would be less incentive for the wealthy to simply move.

It would be a much simpler system, but the tax rate (which most would not pay) would be much higher.

[Tansy_Gold]

146. BINGO AGAIN! Eliminate corporate taxes!

Watch your typos, Brent. I've noted a few of them, but "corporate asses" is almost freudian.

If "most would not pay" any imcome tax, where would the income come from?


Most corporations pay little tax as it is, Brent. They've gamed the system to the point that they don't pay. now you're just going to make it easier for them not to pay. Whoppeee!


You're somethin', Brent. You're really somethin'.



TG

[BrentWil]

149. Typos aside... I am multitasking... that would still place taxes on the rich

And ensure we keep jobs here as much as possible in a globalized world. It doesn't topple the economic system, but it would ensure that the government works in the most efficient way possible to aid the excess of the system. It also provides a means for people to climb into the middle class before paying a dime of taxes.

In other words, lets make things simple, put the tax burden on the rich, and give it out in payments for the poor to use. The rich will pay more or keep it invested and growing jobs. I am for redistribution of wealth, at least to a certain degree. However, if you do it, lets do it in the most logical means we can. This isn't so radical. Many countries such as Ireland, Sweden and China see that to be competitive you need a lower rate. Else they will simply move. You may not like it, but it is reality.

Like I say, I am a pragmatic person. I want to help people. Not worrying about doing something people might not think of as "liberal".

[Catshrink]

50. NO Starry!

Don't you dare give away the secret handshake the teachers' union taught us when we got our teaching certificates.

[Starry Messenger]

53. I've said too much!

I hear knocking downstairs, Catshrink. I'll send the butler to run interference while the upstairs maids and I flee to the grounds!

[LWolf]

138. I'm sure that's possible.

In my 27 years in large and small districts, 2 states, I've yet to meet an educator who didn't want the highest quality experience for his or her students, or for all students in general.

I'm sure you know more about actual educators than I, an actual educator, do.

[Tansy_Gold]

142. .

:yourock:

[political_Dem]

81. America needs an eye-opening expose on education.

We, as a society, has been succumbing to the praise of stupidity since the Reagan years. It's time that someone cracks the whip and gets our educational institutions in shape. The worst part of it is that the cost of education is so high in this country, it is out of reach for a lot of working class folks who want aspire to raise themselves up financially and intellectually.

Worst of it all, Bush becoming President has made being ignorant an art form. No wonder the world thinks of us truly as not only the "ugly Americans", but the "ignoble, stupid, myopic and ugly Americans". :(

[madfloridian]

82. This is done by pro-charter folks. Portrays unions in a bad light.

That's a shame to present it otherwise.

[madfloridian]

83. More details about its pro-charter origins....do some searches as well.

http://www.schoolsmatter.info/2010/01/philanthrocapitalists-go-hollywood-with.html

"The documentary features several leaders in the field of education, including philanthropist Bill Gates of The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; President and CEO of the Harlem Children's Zone in Harlem, New York Geoffrey Canada; Chancellor of the Washington, D.C. public schools Michelle Rhee; Knowledge is Power Program Founders (KIPP) David Levin and Mike Feinberg; and President and CEO of Manchester Bidwell Corporation Bill Strickland.

Six-time Grammy Award-winning recording artist, concert performer and philanthropist John Legend composed the end title song 'Shine'. Legend's own Show Me campaign uses education to break the cycle of poverty through sustainable development at the individual, family, and community levels.

Said Paramount's Goodman: "Our commitment to this movie and the issue of education is urgently important to all of us at Paramount. In collaboration with our partners, we hope to bring about a real solution."

Said Davis Guggenheim: "With these two great partners, Participant Media and Paramount Pictures, we have a chance to create public awareness around this issue, and this is the only way we can make real change in our children's schools."

Public schools...lacking money don't have a chance against such propaganda.

[madfloridian]

84. This is sad to see this posted as a civil rights thing.

[Starry Messenger]

88. Oh they always do that.

It's cynical and ugly but not unexpected. Where were these a-holes when predatory check cashing places opened up in every neighborhood in poor communities to prey on people of color especially? Where were they with jobs? Where were they lobbying to keep industry in this country? They've destroyed entire communities with their greed and free market garbage and now they turn around and scapegoat the teachers for warning that these charters and vouchers are trojan horses that suck money out of the communities where it rightfully belongs. I have nothing but the lowest contempt for their accusations.

[BrentWil]

92. Aren't you all in a hissy, because I don't agree with you...

Nothing like attacking people to make your arguments stronger. Wow.

This is the greatest civil rights issue of our age. Education has to get right. Whatever works is what I want.

[madfloridian]

95. That does it for me.

I see no reason to see you tell people they are having hissyfits when you are here pushing a blatant corporate propaganda piece as truth.

Bye.

[Starry Messenger]

100. Whatever "Brent"

I can tell you are so "down with the people" with your corporate talking points. Your line is a direct rip-off of Arne Duncan and Whitney Tilson. You might want to write your own material. Just FYI, you might do better on your studying before you try to school a bunch of teachers on education. We pretty much fed you your lunch today. Cheers! Ad homs aren't debate darling!

[BrentWil]

103. Neither is declaring victory winning...

Ask GWB...

[Starry Messenger]

104. Oh I'm sorry, did you manage to support any of your original points?

I missed that somehow.

[BrentWil]

106. Nor did you disprove..

What I want has never been tried. The Dutch system clearly gets more resources to schools that support underprivileged kids. The question is how to make those resources work in getting more better performance.

If you point is that most kids will not make it because of other factors, such a poverty, that is very true. That is not escapable. However, vouchers and their success is backed up by repeated studies. If you empower people who are not empowered it helps. The following studies back this up..


http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/91015253/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0

http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/003355398555685

http://www.jstor.org/pss/117284

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6V76-4CF5G04-1&_user=10&_coverDate=02%2F28%2F2005&_rdoc=1&_fmt=high&_orig=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1355842466&_rerunOrigin=scholar.google&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=4602ea5fcf2fffca57fbb7ddefd95c7c

[Tansy_Gold]

109. That's because you're the one making the proposal.

If you make a proposal, you have to defend it. You have to support it with facts. You haven't done that, Brent. We've offered evidence that counters your assertions. We've asked you questions that you haven't answered. Why should anyone think your "solution" is even remotely feasible if you can't explain why and how it would work?



Tansy Gold, who is not a racist, who wanted her kids to go to school and be friends outside of school with children of other "races," ethnic backgrounds, economic backgrounds and was very proud of them when they did.

[BrentWil]

113. Well, I started this by talking about a movie..

However, it quickly went to an attack on me. That is fine.

However, I think I have answered your questions. First, if you do a search on google scholar or (if you have access to it) Web of Science, you will notice study after study that confirms that giving people a choice does help. There are some studies that show it doesn't but if you look at the body of work, the evidence is clear.

Next, it is a rather simply system. A child is born below the poverty line. That child starts to get a voucher of 10K (or so depending on various factors) at a certain age. The parent can use towards education or child care. If the money isn't used or is less then the amount of tuition, it can be used for college later. Government regulates the system to protect against fraud and influence curriculum. The money can be used for either private schools or basically a grant for local public schools. The voucher will get less as income goes up. What else is there to explain? This ensures that schools that educate kids under the poverty line get more money and gives choose to kids that want it.

[Starry Messenger]

114. More simple. Here's Starry's plan:

Take away the obscene wealth from the top 1% in this country and eliminate this "poverty line". It's practical and doesn't involve magic. Or the Dutch.

[BrentWil]

116. The world is the world... it can never be the one you want..

You can start to take it away, but industry and capital will flee faster then you can drop a hat. The results will be increased poverty, etc. I am for taking more, but elimination of it would have counter productive results.

[Starry Messenger]

125. "What I want has never been tried"--BrentWil

Why should we try an obscenely expensive process that is totally untested in this country? On your bare word? That doesn't sound very practical to me, friendo. I bet my world comes faster than your world. Your world is eating up every single resource in the world. It will die violently at some point. My only fervent hope is that it won't take the rest of us with it.

[BrentWil]

127. No test it...

Pick a city, give the underprivileged the system I suggest for 10 years. See the results. Then judge.

[Starry Messenger]

131. It doesn't work Brent.

They've tested variations on this for years. The private schools don't want these kids. $7500 or $14000 a kid or whatever, they aren't going to absorb thousands of kids, especially on such sums. They have tests to enter the schools, expensive uniforms and donation obligations from the wealthy families they exist to serve. They are *private* for a reason. They don't want to serve the public. You can't make laws to force them to take kids they don't want. They are private schools. They will take in one or two kids a year, tops. How does that serve the rest of the community Brent? How does that justify such a radical change? Why not fix the "failing" public schools so they are nice like private schools and can attract top notch professional staff and serve the common man. I want every public school in America to look like Berverly Hills High School (which is public). We can do that, we have that capability if we have the will to fund it. We can instill a love of learning in kids that have stable families with jobs and futures. Your plan does none of those things, Brent.

[BrentWil]

135. Then the money goes to the local district

So no loss.. and there is no problem.

[Starry Messenger]

137. So who is this radical change supposed to benefit?

Five kids from somewhere? As Tansy posted with such perspicacity, the charter schools are not going to let that money just drift back into the general fund. Trust me, they will find a way to make that illegal if possible. that money *will* go to non-public hands. You just need to study this more friend. There is plenty of documentation on this.

[BrentWil]

139. Let it go to non-public hands..

Let it go to whoever the parents decide. The end result is the same. More funding for schools that cater to poorer kids and a system to ensure that and place the power of where the money goes in the hands of the people that lack power.

[Tansy_Gold]

145. "Let it go to non-public hands" BINGO!

Sure, let it go to the private corporations -- the "non-public hands" -- that will suck the profits out of it and do no good for anyone but themselves.

This is what your "solution" will ultimately do. It will NOT benefit the "poor" districts, and it will not benefit "poor" kids in "failing" school districts.

IT WILL BENEFIT THE FUCKING RICH.


I'm not Barack Obama. I'm not cool and collected and unemotional. I used to write romance novels for a living so I'm emotional and passionate and a goddess-damned socialist. Your scheme, and the schemes promoted in this spawn of hell movie, are rightwing scams operating under the flimflam disguise of "civil rights." "Separate but equal." "They're more comforable with their own kind." ALL THAT HAPPY RACIST HORSESHIT.

It looks good on paper, doesn't it, Brent? All the excess money will flow back to the poor districts and enable them to pay higher teacher salaries and maintain their facilities and install new computer systems JUST LIKE THE RICH DISTRICTS.

In other words, IF IT WORKED THAT WAY, it would keep all the brown and black kids in their place, in THEIR schools, in their SEPARATE BUT EQUAL schools. YOU are the "white liberal" who doesn't want the po' kids contaminatin' the nice white folks' school, now, ain't you? And honey it don't matter what color YOUR skin is, so don't even bother to tell me 'cause I don't give a damn. Michael Steele is, as far as I'm concerned, a "white conservative" every bit as much as Rush Limbaugh, George Wallace, David Duke, Trent Lott, Bull Conner, or Strom Thurmond.

But it won't work that way and you're gonna make sure it don't work. 'Cause you're gonna set that money aside in your little program so poor kids can go to the nice private schools that the rich white kids go to, of course, if they can meet the requirements. Which they can't. So then they'll try to go to the charter schools, which of course are NOT really "public" schools because they're "for profit" corporations ultimately, and the money that shoulda gone to help them po' folks in the brown 'n' black schools, well, it'll just nicely trickle into the hands of folks like the Bakkes and their 71 campuses of Imagine schools.

See, Brent, you can't have it both ways. You can't let the parents have control of the money for child care or private school or college tuition if you really want it to go to the public schools. So you have to make up your mind, and you can't keep throwin' things out there like "parental control" (RWTP) or "school choice" (RWTP) when you really mean something entirely different.

What was this, Brent, an exercise for you? Did you learn something from us, so when you take your proposal back to people who aren't quite as savvy as we are you'll be able to counter their questions with better bullshit than you tried on us?

I don't usually go off on DUers, even newbies, like this, and I'm sure my post will get pulled and I'll be in trouble, but I don't care. I also don't usually waste my time arguing with ideologues who can't even get their own facts straight, but I took you and your "school crises" movie on because I think it IS propaganda. It DOES tug at the heartstrings and it DOES engage the viewer's sympathy for the plight of the underprivileged and underserved. But what it offers is a lie, a false hope, a poisoned apple.

It's not a choice and it's not a vehicle for improving underperforming schools. It's a fucking scam. And I think you know it.



Tansy Gold, who is not a classroom teacher and therefore does not have to watch her language

[Starry Messenger]

147. .

:yourock:

I seriously was no longer in the mood for small words and pictures with this one. I just take comfort in the fact that this thread comes up high on google now for searches on this movie and it's got tons of our good info on it. Thank you Tansy Gold!

[Tansy_Gold]

150. You are most welcome, Starry

I guess I can recall so many details about my own public school experience because it meant a lot to me. I remember just about every one of my teachers, from Helen Castor in that very first kindergarten class at brand new Ridge School to my beloved Patricia Quast in fifth grade to dear dear dear Charles Schlereth in high school Spanish III and IV.

So it drives me absolutely insane when I see people knocking the public schools, and especially knocking teachers.

I'm not a teacher, and there are a lot of people who said I should have been, but it didn't work out that way. This is how I show my support.




Tansy Gold

[BrentWil]

152. Is someone doing that?

There are plenty of good ones.. they are simply located in certain areas.

[BrentWil]

151. Well, it is good for you I am no "Ideologue"

I am someone that wants to see something work. I know something about the world. Money is power. If you give money to the poor to use for education, you give them power. Whatever they do with it, private, public, charter (which I think would go away under this system, something we can discuss if you like) the poor would have the money and the power. The schools that serve them would get the resources by being the best at helping their kids.

[Tansy_Gold]

153. Your plan doesn't do any of the things you say it does.

"If you give money to the poor to use for education, you give them power."

It sounds good, Brent, but your plan doesn't really do that.

First of all, in order to implement it, you have to find funding. THERE IS NO FUNDING PLAN. So it's a non-starter right there.

Second of all, your plan doesn't really give "the poor" money to use for education. IF your plan is to give each poor child $10K per school year to go to the school of her/his choice, that's one thing. It's not going to be enough to send very many poor kids to top-notch private schools. It might get them into some local Catholic or Lutheran or other church schools, but you're going to have problems with that seeing as how it's supposed to help "public" education. It doesn't help "public" education if it goes to private schools.

If the $10K goes to a charter school, which is after all a "public" school, then it looks like the program works. Except all too often those "public" charter schools are run by for profit corporations and so the money does not go to education; it goes to private individuals. The charter schools are NOT the success story you want them to be. They do not and cannot absorb all the public school kids and educate them for a profit. That's what public NON-PROFIT schools are for.

If the $10K stays with the public school the kid attends -- whether by choice or because he/she can't go anywhere else -- that's fine, too. That's what it's supposed to do, isn't it? But then you muddied it all up by saying the parent gets to choose. They can use it for day care. They can withhold it from the public school and save it for college. They can pretty much do what they want with it.

So which is it, Brent? Is it a voucher system that the parent controls even to the point of not using it at all? Or is it a booster shot for the public district? IT CAN'T BE BOTH.

Your proposed tax structure is right out of the Cato Institute or Grover Norquist. No taxes on corporations. Just tax the wealthy -- who already have lots of ways of keeping their wealth and income delightfully undocumented. I'm sure you'd have no inheritance taxes either (even though that's "income" to the heir). Since most corporations don't pay a whole lot in taxes anyway, eliminating what they don't pay isn't much of an incentive for them to come back to the US and pay real wages to real people. That would hurt the profit margin and the income for the investors.

You don't like it when we post studies that counter your proposal, but you expect us to swallow everything you post as gospel. You've ignored every argument any of us has made and come back with "But no one has ever tried it!" as evidence that your system will work.

Most of all, you've ignored the underlying structural problem that is inherent in the capitalist system. You don't want to dismantle capitalism, and that's quite obvious. You want it to replace the (imperfect) socialist program of universal public education. The problem is, Brent, that if you give these kids an education and they have nothing they can do with it, you've given them nothing. And it doesn't take long for them to see that, even before they've graduated. They know there are no jobs. They know the system is rigged against them. They know things that you don't know, Brent, because they live in the real world.

My daughter works for an urban public school system in New Jersey. She did all the right things all her life. Studied diligently; only managed to be salutatorian of her high school class because the co-valedictorians had parents on the school board. Scholarship to a prestigious small private liberal arts college. Worked for several years as a social worker, including time with CPS in Arizona before moving to NJ. Went back to college to get her master's in speech pathology and has worked for several years in the public schools. A couple weeks ago she was notified she's been laid off. Budget cuts. No money.

Do you think poor kids, just because they're poor, don't see this? You think they don't see that there are no jobs in their communities? You think they don't know that this is one of the hardest job-hunting climates for recent college grads in decades, if not in forever?

You're either a con artist, Brent, or you're a fool. I'm not sure which.



Tansy Gold

[BrentWil]

154. None of the above..

You gave me three choices for students that get the voucher. Those are basically right. It can go to a private school or a public school. WIth this much money, more private schools would develop to serve these communities. Demand will be there if the public schools are bad. Moreover, this also gives a reason why surrounding public schools may take in kids because it would increase their funding. I think charter schools go away under this system. The whole system really doesn't make sense. A charter school is saying, here is "blank" amount of local public money, educate this kid. The problem with this is that the "blank" amount is usually less then the amount I am suggesting. Charter schools would be replaced by private schools because parents would give the money directly to them. I highly doubt a local school board is going to give a set amount to a charter school and then let the fed money go to it.

As far as inheritance, like I said, I want to count all income the same. That means, gifts and inheritance. No tax loopholes. A simple system in which the rich pay and those you simple "get" money would loss a great deal. Capital needs to cycle though the economy, not be kept forever by the super rich.

[Tansy_Gold]

156. So what you want is more private schools that are publicly funded?

Is that how you want to support "public" education? Private schools? Religious schools?


ARE YOU SHITTING ME??????????????????????????????????????????

[BrentWil]

158. I don't think I am...

What I want is the ability for poor family to have a choose. I want empowerment of the poor. Public funding does not mean government run.

One basic problem that you allude to is the problem of controlling curriculum. You are right to point out religious schools. We all know there are some crazy ass home schoolers and fundie right people, that will produce and continue to produce kids that aren't healthy for our society. I would suggest a passive solution to this. Each school that takes public funds has to give up a statistically significant sample of students to test. The test will be unteachable, because it will be very board. In other words, it should be something that students will not know most of the answers to but it will test if the school has at least taught them something if they get anything right. The results are not for the student and will be kept from them. They will however measure the performance of the school. The VERY important aspect of this is that it can be used to control what is taught, passively. In other words evolution and real science, for one.

[Starry Messenger]

157. Charter schools are not controlled by "local School Boards"

The can do things traditional public schools are not allowed to do, so your "highly doubts" are moot in that case. That's why they are so popular. You really need to get the background on this so you are not just going over Charter School 101. These posts really betray a shallowness of understanding of the big picture.

[BrentWil]

160. I understand the system..

Public and private money given to an institution that can run itself as it wants to. Just don't see that staying as an institution if you offer big enough vouchers. Doesn't make sense, besides in some upper middle class districts.

[Tansy_Gold]

184. "If you offer big enough vouchers"

"Then you can attract the BIG corporate operators who will skim it off like patented cream separators."




Private schools. No teachers' unions. No governmental control. Big vouchers, big profits.


This isn't about serving the poor at all (unless you're writing a cookbook). It's about providing $144 billion a year to the private school corporations. "If you fund it, they will come." Oh, they will indeed.

[BrentWil]

155. And I have posted multiple studies, btw

A simple search a google scholar shows what the majority of research points to.

[Starry Messenger]

159. That you are dead wrong on all points. Yes, that is what I see on google.

Cough up some paragraphs or give it a rest. If this were a research paper you'd be getting an F. I hope this isn't the kind of work you are turning in for class. The burden of proof is on you. That's how this works. This mysterious google scholar, does it tell me I'm wrong about Charter Schools and school boards? Yours to prove, you made the original (bad) assertion.

[BrentWil]

163. Mysterious Google Scholar?

Never really heard that. But okay. First my argument is not about "charter schools" It is about giving poor people a choice. Here are some studies that back up that it does make a difference. The evidence is there and there is alot of it.

(You normally have to pay for the full studies if you aren't in an academic institution, so I have mostly went with publicly available abstracts)



http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/003355398555685

In 1990 Wisconsin began providing vouchers to a small number of low-income students to attend nonsectarian private schools. Controlling for individual fixed-effects, I compare the test scores of students selected to attend a participating private school with those of unsuccessful applicants and other students from the Milwaukee public schools. I find that students in the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program had faster math score gains than, but similar reading score gains to, the comparison groups. The results appear robust to data imputations and sample attrition, although these deficiencies of the data should be kept in mind when interpreting the results.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6V76-4CF5G04-1&_user=10&_coverDate=02%2F28%2F2005&_rdoc=1&_fmt=high&_orig=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1356034758&_rerunOrigin=scholar.google&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=2658113d04704fa1061436d37d4ce558

Since the introduction of school vouchers in 1992, independent and public schools in Sweden operate on equal terms. We analyze the effects of competition on the public schools using data on the results of 28,000 ninth graders. Because the decision on which school to attend is a choice variable, sample selection models are used. To account for the potential endogeneity of the share of students attending independent schools, we use instrumental variable estimation. We also estimate panel data models on 288 Swedish municipalities. Our findings support the hypothesis that school results in public schools improve due to competition.

http://www.hks.harvard.edu/pepg/PDF/Papers/dnw00r.pdf

• In the three cities taken together, the average, overall test-score performance of African American students who switched from public to private schools was, after one year, 3.3 NPR points higher, and, after two years, 6.3 NPR points higher than the performance of the control group remaining in public schools. In each city, the difference after two years was statistically significant.

A difference of 6.3 NPR points in overall test performance is 0.33 standard deviations, generally thought to be a moderately large effect. Nationwide, differences between black and white test scores are, on average, approximately one standard deviation. The school voucher intervention, after two years, erases, on average, about one-third of that difference. If the trend line observed over the first two years continues in subsequent years, the black-white test gap could be eliminated in subsequent years of education for black students who use a voucher to switch from public to private school. But it remains to be seen whether the gains black students experienced after two years continue to increase over time.

[Starry Messenger]

166. I read those, thank you

Tansy kindly addressed the weaknesses in your cites just moments ago. Look up a bit. What you are not hearing is that the "giving poor people a choice" is a misnomer. It is really called "giving public cash over to private entities". When you commit such silliness as slopping on details about what charter schools are really going to do with the money, you show that you have not considered the ramifications of what you are proposing. We have spent many hours painstakingly reviewing with you the details in your plan that are weak. The money trail is the big one. I suspect I know what I'm dealing with here:

Upton Sinclair "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."


Brent: "Charter schools would be replaced by private schools because parents would give the money directly to them. I highly doubt a local school board is going to give a set amount to a charter school and then let the fed money go to it.


edit to add Brent's own words.

[BrentWil]

167. As I said before...o

The vast majority of the money would be federal money to local public schools that serve poor kids. Moreover, if you take the time to actually research what the findings are in this area, the results are very clear.

[Starry Messenger]

168. Yes, the results of research are clear.

Charters skim that cash like cream off of milk. See, I can assert things too.

[BrentWil]

171. It wasn't an assertion

It is actually backed up

[Tansy_Gold]

169. www.scholar.google.com

gives access to academic journals and papers.


Brent cited the first few to come up when searching on "school vouchers," so I think it's safe to say that that's the main objective of his "solution." Since he thinks these vouchers will ultimately do away with charter schools -- which are, after all, still "public" schools -- and replace them with more and more private schools, I don't see him as a big suporter of public education.

In my book, that puts him squarely in the rightwing, privatization camp.

How much he's actually read of these, other than maybe skimming while posting ("multitasking"???), is anyone's guess.



Tansy Gold, remaining very skeptical

[BrentWil]

172. That provides a search for them.

You have to pay for access to most of them. And yes, I have read research in this area. Just not tonight.

As far as public education, I am a supporter of giving a better education to the poor. As I said, public money does not need to be publicly ran. It can be, but it doesn't have to be. Parents need the power to figure out what works for them.

Saying something is right wing, doesn't win a debate.

[Starry Messenger]

174. I know, I'm funnin' him.

If he was writing a paper and had a page in the back for his bibliography that said "I found it on Scholar.Google go look" I don't know what I would do, laugh or cry. I just finished mentoring a senior in high school on a long paper and she was much more thorough then the activity we are seeing from Brent. I too have a feeling he suffers from confirmation bias in his search for reading material on this subject. His arguments and papers are all cited on CATO and Heritage. I knew he wouldn't be able to find much outside of those. They are the main backers of "school choice". It is entirely a right wing project, as you say. Still, we have made lovely music here today. :)

[BrentWil]

178. Here are some cites..

You won't be able to access them on the web. (Which was my point) If you care for any of the papers, give me a PM



Competition between private and public schools: testing stratification and pricing predictions
Author(s): Epple D, Figlio D, Romano R
Source: JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ECONOMICS Volume: 88 Issue: 7-8 Pages: 1215-1245 Published: JUL 2004

School vouchers in practice: competition will not hurt you
Author(s): Sandstrom FM, Bergstrom F
Source: JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ECONOMICS Volume: 89 Issue: 2-3 Pages: 351-380 Published: FEB 2005


Mobility, targeting, and private-school vouchers
Author(s): Nechyba TJ
Source: AMERICAN ECONOMIC REVIEW Volume: 90 Issue: 1 Pages: 130-146 Published: MAR 2000

Can increasing private school participation and monetary loss in a voucher program affect public school performance? Evidence from Milwaukee
Author(s): Chakrabarti R
Source: JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ECONOMICS Volume: 92 Issue: 5-6 Pages: 1371-1393 Published: JUN 2008

The impact of school choice on student outcomes: an analysis of the Chicago Public Schools
Author(s): Cullen JB Jacob BA, Levitt SD
Source: JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ECONOMICS Volume: 89 Issue: 5-6 Pages: 729-760 Published: JUN 2005

School choice: A mechanism design approach
Author(s): Abdulkadiroglu A, Sonmez T
Source: AMERICAN ECONOMIC REVIEW Volume: 93 Issue: 3 Pages: 729-747 Published: JUN 2003

INFORMATION, SCHOOL CHOICE, AND ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT: EVIDENCE FROM TWO EXPERIMENTS
Author(s): Hastings JS, Weinstein JM
Source: QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS Volume: 123 Issue: 4 Pages: 1373-1414 Published: NOV 2008

Private school vouchers and student achievement: A fixed effects quantile regression evaluation
Author(s): Lamarche C
Source: LABOUR ECONOMICS Volume: 15 Issue: 4 Special Issue: Sp. Iss. SI Pages: 575-590 Published: AUG 2008


Choice, competition, and pupil achievement
Author(s): Gibbons S, Machin S, Silva O
Source: JOURNAL OF THE EUROPEAN ECONOMIC ASSOCIATION Volume: 6 Issue: 4 Pages: 912-947 Published: JUN 2008

Parental choice and school quality when peer and scale effects matter
Author(s): O'Shaughnessy T
Source: ECONOMICS OF EDUCATION REVIEW Volume: 26 Issue: 4 Pages: 501-515 Published: AUG 2007

Educational vouchers for universal pre-schools
Author(s): Levin HM, Schwartz HL
Source: ECONOMICS OF EDUCATION REVIEW Volume: 26 Issue: 1 Pages: 3-16 Published: FEB 2007

The existence of non-elite private schools
Author(s): Martinez-Mora F
Source: JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ECONOMICS Volume: 90 Issue: 8-9 Pages: 1505-1518 Published: SEP 2006

[Tansy_Gold]

115. It's not a "simply" system. It's a very complex one

and you're not providing any infrastructure for it.

It's a huge federal entitlement package that would essentially give every poor child (by whatever definition) roughly $150,000 in free money for education with not too many strings attached. it could be used for child care (though the child wouldn't be able to exercise much choice in that) or saved for college. But if the child's parents spent the money on fancy private schools, he wouldn't have money left for college. Could he sue his parents for that?

What happens if the kid's parents divorce? Who gets custody of the money?

Do you see what I'm saying, Brent? This is a totally unworkable idea. Worse, it's a rightwing idea. And you've been expanding on it, trying to make it palatable to people who know what it really is, and we're not biting.

The trailer for the movie is heartwrenching, which it's intended to be. But the privatization of public education that it promotes is a scam, a rightwing scam. WE know better, and so should you.

[BrentWil]

121. Red cat, white cat, I just care it catches mice.

I really don't see how billions of dollars for education of the poor is "right wing".

The IRS has the infrastructure that can be used. couldn't sue your parents. Whoever gets the kid can make the decision concerning where he goes to school.

[Tansy_Gold]

130. The IRS doesn't have the infrastructure because too many of the poor

don't have sufficient income to file tax returns. And many of the wealthy post no income. Wealth and income are not the same.

There'd be far less boondoggle if the money were simply given to the poorer school districts, but the money isn't there to give to them and there's no funding mechanism in your proposal.

And as I demonstrated in another post, there's every possibility that your proposal -- the expanded version that included child care and college tuition -- would end up giving very little to poor public schools.

"Whoever gets the kid" sounds like such a simple answer, Brent, but it's not that simple in reality. I've got a friend who just gave up custody of his grandson back to his ex-daughter-in-law. The mother has legal custody and lives in one state. My friend had the boy in two different PUBLIC schools in Arizona, then in a private school in New Mexico. Now he's in Washington with his mother in a public school but she will be homeschooling him next year. Maybe. My friend, his grandfather, is far from poverty, but the boy's mother has no income of her own. She lives with a long-time companion who is reasonably stable financially. The boy's father, my friend's son, has plenty of money, has never been required to pay child support, and does not have custody. Would this kid be eligible for your $10K?

You want the IRS to keep track of all this?

Do you begin to see how vulnerable this kind of system would be to fraud, waste, and corruption? No matter how well you phrase it, no matter how attractive "education assistance for the poor" is, that's not what it REALLY is. The money will not go to the poor kids, nor will it go to the poor districts. It's a funnel mechanism, cleverly cloaked by rightwing wordmeisters, for taking taxpayer money and putting into the hands of private enterprise.

No, you probably don't see. Or if you do, you don't care. You like it that way. I'm wasting my time.




Tansy Gold

[BrentWil]

133. However, you wish to say it, the system still gives an power to underprivileged children

THe program would involve simple output of money to schools that students decide to go to. Cutting checks and simple outputs like that is something the government can and does do. WOuld there be problems? No question. IS it unworkable? Absolutely not.

[Tansy_Gold]

161. Your cites

http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/91015253/abs...

I get a "session cookie error"



http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/0033553...


May 1998, Vol. 113, No. 2, Pages 553-602

Posted Online 13 March 2006.
(doi:10.1162/003355398555685)
© 1998 President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Private School Vouchers and Student Achievement: An Evaluation of the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program*

1998 study published in "Quarterly Journal of Economics" about the Milwaukee school voucher program.

Abstract only, unless I want to pay $12 for the whole thing. I don't.

PDF (196.131 KB) PDF Plus (232.428 KB)

In 1990 Wisconsin began providing vouchers to a small number of low-income students to attend nonsectarian private schools. Controlling for individual fixed-effects, I compare the test scores of students selected to attend a participating private school with those of unsuccessful applicants and other students from the Milwaukee public schools. I find that students in the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program had faster math score gains than, but similar reading score gains to, the comparison groups. The results appear robust to data imputations and sample attrition, although these deficiencies of the data should be kept in mind when interpreting the results.


http://www.jstor.org/pss/117284

"Mobility, Targeting, and Private-School Vouchers" by Thomas Nechyba, published in 2000 in the journal of the American Economic Association. Available for $10.00




http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_ud...

School vouchers in practice: competition will not hurt you -- Journal of Public Economics, Feb. 2005

Since the introduction of school vouchers in 1992, independent and public schools in Sweden operate on equal terms. We analyze the effects of competition on the public schools using data on the results of 28,000 ninth graders. Because the decision on which school to attend is a choice variable, sample selection models are used. To account for the potential endogeneity of the share of students attending independent schools, we use instrumental variable estimation. We also estimate panel data models on 288 Swedish municipalities. Our findings support the hypothesis that school results in public schools improve due to competition.



*********************

Tansy here --

Note that all three of the studies I was able to access for information about Brent's sources are economics journals, not education. This suggests to me that his personal perspective is more of an economic one than an education one, and I think we can generally agree that there is a much more leftward slant to the latter and more rightward to the former.

Two of them are 10 years old or more.

The third, which addresses a voucher system in Sweden, deals with a much different system than is current in the U.S. The population is much smaller, the political/economic system is much more overtly socialistic, the wealth disparity is much much much lower than in the U.S.


Just sayin'.

[BrentWil]

165. There are plenty of papers out there..

Go to them. The academic research on the results there. I cannot post papers I can get from academic search engines such as "Web of Science" because of copyrights. And the only thing that is free is somethings the abstract. However, go to a local university and dig. The academic literature supports me.

[Starry Messenger]

180. More:

http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:tIYvmPjfVzQJ:www.aeaweb.org/annual_mtg_papers/2006/0108_0800_0903.pdf+school+choice+segregation&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESilKyWi_58eTvKCwiWYSfuR8mp6xkPhacXKrtFmQyDHgmI5UH6vw9LLABLDQwRnhrIpVJKJYXc6emnDzYh_DbAVv5peq-xHhCUY1zp1FZLDmzIyQzGuRgGgg9-nZBUV3UQxTRYZ&sig=AHIEtbQY7d3Klanr7G6L0mMjJRhLoR4Epw


School Choice, Racial Segregation and Test-Score Gaps:
Evidence from North Carolina’s Charter School Program*

Robert Bifulco
Assistant Professor of Public Policy
University of Connecticut
Department of Public Policy
1800 Asylum Avenue
West Hartford, CT 06117-2697


Helen F. Ladd
Professor of Public Policy Studies and Economics
Duke University
214A Terry Sanford Institute
Box 90243
Durham, NC 27708



Presented at Annual Meeting of Allied Social Science Associations
Boston, MA
January 8, 2006

We conclude that the racial- and class-based sorting of students
across charter schools in North Carolina has increased racial segregation, has contributed
to the poor performance of charter schools and has widened the black-white test score
gap. The final section discusses the implications of our findings for school choice
policies.

<snip>

The large number of charter schools that serve disproportionately high
proportions of African Americans might be due to the fact that many applications to
establish charter schools have been oriented toward serving educationally disadvantaged
students, among whom African Americans tend to be overrepresented. As a result, many
of the successful applications were for charter schools located in areas accessible to
African Americans. That can be seen quite clearly in Figure 1 for Durham County, the
school district with the greatest concentration of charter schools in the state. The figure
depicts the location of charter schools against the backdrop of the racial makeup of the
county’s census tracts.

Although Durham is not necessarily typical, it does illustrate how
the location of charter schools might influence the racial mix of students in particular
schools. As can be seen, many of the charter schools are clustered in areas in which
minorities are in the majority, and are typically near the edge, but not in the center of,
areas in which minorities account for more than 75 percent of the population. Though
these schools could potentially attract white students, their locations clearly make them
far more attractive to minority students. At the same time, two of the charter schools are
in predominately white areas of the county, and for that reason, are unlikely to attract
large numbers of minority students.

In an earlier study based on student test scores longitudinally matched over time,
we found compelling evidence that third-through-eighth grade students enrolled in
charter schools in North Carolina exhibited smaller gains in achievement while they were
in the charter schools than when those very same students were in traditional public
schools (Bifulco & Ladd forthcoming). However, this negative average effect need not
mean that every charter school fails its students. Indeed, some charter schools are
undoubtedly doing an outstanding job in raising the achievement of their students, and
some students have undoubtedly benefited from the opportunity to change schools. Of
particular interest in this study are the educational experiences in charter schools of black
students and students whose parents do not have a college education.

[BrentWil]

190. Study on Charter schools..

Which is something that I think would go away in the system I am suggesting..

[Starry Messenger]

182. More:

http://www.epi.org/publications/entry/book_vouchers/

Vouchers and Public School Performance: A Case Study of the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program
Martin Carnoy Frank Adamson Amita Chudgar
October 2, 2007

A full eight years after the school district expanded the voucher program, it is still not possible to measure whether voucher students in Milwaukee perform better or worse than their counterparts who remain in public schools. The Wisconsin legislature made no provision to evaluate the expanded voucher plan. However, one of the main arguments for increasing educational choice is that choice induces competition among schools vying for students, and this improves student performance in all schools, private and public. The competitive effects of choice should be especially notable in low-income urban areas that are characterized by low achievement and inefficient, bureaucratic public school systems. So even without information on student performance in private schools, we can test whether student performance is improving in Milwaukee?s neighborhood public schools and whether, other things being equal, student performance increases more in those schools most affected by student flight to private schools and other educational alternatives, such as charter and magnet schools. Our focus was the elementary level, where most voucher use occurred.

We used two methods to test for improved student performance resulting from increased competition. The first method, already employed by Caroline Hoxby and, in a modified form, by Rajashri Chakrabarti, compares the fourth-grade test scores of students in three categories of Milwaukee public schools in the 1996-2004 period with each other and with a control group of schools outside of Milwaukee. This analysis tests whether the introduction of large-scale vouchers in 1998 had a significant impact on the performance of Milwaukee?s public school students. It confirms the earlier results showing a large improvement in Milwaukee in the two years following the 1998 expansion of the voucher plan to religious schools. However, we also confirm that little positive improvement took place in later years even as enrollment declined in Milwaukee?s neighborhood schools and the number of voucher applications continued to increase. This raises questions about whether traditional notions of competition among schools explain these increased scores in the two years immediately after the voucher plan was expanded.

The second method estimates the effects of various measures of competition (such as the number of voucher schools and available voucher places near a public school) on gain scores of public school students in fourth and fifth grades. Using this method, we find essentially no evidence that students in those traditional public schools in Milwaukee facing more competition achieve higher test score gains. Student test score gains are generally not significantly related to various indicators of direct competition associated with families? increased potential choice of schools or their actual exercise of choice for their school-aged children. Neither the number of private schools within a mile of a public school, nor the relative number of voucher places nearby, nor the relative number of voucher applications from the public school has a positive effect on the mathematics or language arts gains that students make in either the fourth or fifth grade.

Thus, our analysis finds little or no indication that pupils in those Milwaukee public schools that have more school choice possibilities nearby made significantly greater year-to-year gains in primary school tests than pupils in other Milwaukee public schools. The effect of other variables, such as staying in the same public school from year to year, seem to have a more consistent (albeit small) positive impact on student performance, particularly on language arts test score gains.

[BrentWil]

191. ONe of the studies that found student did no better..

Which is countered by studies that used more robust statistical analysis, which I put more weight to. If you have alot of studies that say students do better, some that say it is the same, and none that say they do worse, why not give it a try. It seems that it could help but won't hurt.

[Starry Messenger]

183. More:

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2008/0804.anrig.html

An Idea Whose Time Has Gone
Conservatives abandon their support for school vouchers.
By Greg Anrig

One simple reason why voucher supporters have become disillusioned is that the programs haven't delivered on their promises. School choice advocates claimed that vouchers would have two major benefits: low-income kids rescued from dysfunctional public schools would do better in private schools; and public schools would improve, thanks to the injection of some healthy competition. Let's start with the contention that the academic performance of low-income children would improve after they moved to private institutions. For a long time, it was absurdly difficult to find out whether this was true in the one place where vouchers had been tried over an extended period: Milwaukee. After that city's initial small-scale initiative produced ambiguous, but generally unimpressive, results (and a lot of fighting over that data), the Wisconsin legislature chose to omit testing requirements altogether when the program was significantly expanded in 1998. This February, however, a group of researchers led by professors Patrick J. Wolf and John F. Witte produced the first installment of a study intended to follow how comparable groups of students in the public and private voucher schools perform over time. At least at the outset, they found no statistically significant differences in the test scores between the public and private school fourth and eighth graders for the 2006-07 school year. For the private as well as the public school students, the scores generally hovered around the 33rd percentile—in other words, a typically low performance for schools with high concentrations of poverty.

<snip>

What about the effect of vouchers on public schools that were forced to compete for students with private ones? Voucher supporters believed that public schools would improve for two reasons. First, school administrators, faced with diminishing funds for every child that used a voucher to transfer to a private school, would be impelled to do better. And second, because parents would be encouraged to shop for the best place for their children, they would become more involved in the school they chose and hold it to higher standards.

Neither of these pressures has had a discernible impact on public school performance. In Wisconsin, this was made starkly evident in last year's results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), the federally sponsored gold standard of testing. Reading scores for black fourth- and eighth-grade students were the lowest of any state, and the reading achievement gap between black and white students remains the worst in the nation. Since about 70 percent of Wisconsin's black students attend Milwaukee public schools, any competition-induced improvements evidently haven't amounted to much. One study, by Harvard's Caroline M. Hoxby, a voucher advocate, purported to find test score improvements in the Milwaukee public schools most affected by the risk of losing students to private schools; but the gains may have been caused simply by the lowest-performing students moving to private schools, as Hoxby herself concedes. In any case, the Manhattan Institute's Stern points out that Hoxby's analysis, published in 2001, is outdated compared to the more comprehensive and recent NAEP results, and calls the public school performance in Milwaukee after years of voucher competition "depressing."

<snip>

Also disappointing to voucher advocates has been the discovery that the innovation of choice hasn't caused parents to become noticeably more involved in public schools. One of the strategies that the Bradley Foundation initially used to lay the groundwork for vouchers in Milwaukee was to create a think tank called the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute, which churned out studies trashing public schools. Last October, however, WPRI produced a report on the Milwaukee voucher experience, titled "The Limits of Parent-Driven Reform," that confessed: "The report you are reading did not yield the results we hoped to find. We had expected to find a wellspring of hope that increased parental involvement in the Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) would be the key ingredient in improving student performance." Instead, the institute found that only 10 percent of parents had been the kind of "active consumers" that would "exert market-based influence to the school system," and concluded that focusing on parental choice and involvement "cannot be seen as a substitute for substantive reforms in the hierarchy of MPS and in the classrooms throughout Milwaukee." WPRI employed questionable methodology to reach its conclusions, as it had often done in the past, but this time the results undercut an initiative the institute had championed for years.

Ultimately, the voucher experiments confirmed what their critics had asserted all along. The heart of the problem with our urban schools is neither the education bureaucracies nor teachers unions, as Chubb, Moe, and many other voucher advocates have contended, flawed though those institutions may be. Instead, as the sociologist James S. Coleman found in the 1960s, a student's family's income and the collective social and economic background of his classmates are by far the most important influences on his academic future. Not only do lower-income students tend to score relatively poorly, children of any background who attend high-poverty schools are far more likely to produce worse test results than they would in schools with primarily middle-class students. America's urban school systems remain almost universally dysfunctional, primarily because the country as a whole is about as segregated by race and income as at any time since the civil rights revolution.

[BrentWil]

192. You are giving me a newspaper article?

Really? Under normal conditions, I would want to debate the quality of the articles that you presented. But since you don't have access to any sort of academic data base, I understand. However, a Newspaper isn't a legit source to provide evidence that vouchers work or do not work.

[Starry Messenger]

198. You haven't provided *anything*

but your opinion and some titles to things you refuse to copy excerpts of. The article references other studies anyone with the resources can look up. I'm not posting any of these for your benefit anyway. You obviously have your mind made up. These are for people who are reading the thread. I don't think you have the academic gravitas to discuss this subject so there is nothing to "debate". :hi:

[BrentWil]

200. Actually I have.. here is some more... I bet it isn't "anything" again

I have provided some excerpts on studies already provide, BTW

Title: Private school vouchers and student achievement: An evaluation of the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program
Author(s): Rouse CE
Source: QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS Volume: 113 Issue: 2 Pages: 553-602 Published: MAY 1998

The results using the quasi-experimental applicant control group and the random sample of students from the Milwaukee public schools as a comparison group (when I include individual fixed-effects) are remarkably similar. On the one hand, I find that, on average, students selected for the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program and those enrolled in the participating private schools likely scored 1.5–2.3 percentile points per year in math more than students in the comparison groups.

School vouchers in practice: competition will not hurt you
Author(s): Sandstrom FM, Bergstrom F
Source: JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ECONOMICS Volume: 89 Issue: 2-3 Pages: 351-380 Published: FEB 2005

Because the decision on which school to attend is a choice variable, sample selection models are used. To account for the potential endogeneity of the share of students attending independent schools, we use instrumental variable estimation. We also estimate panel data models on 288 Swedish municipalities. Our findings support the hypothesis that school results in public schools improve due to competition.

Education vouchers, growth, and income inequality
Author(s): Cardak BA
Source: MACROECONOMIC DYNAMICS Volume: 9 Issue: 1 Pages: 98-121 Published: FEB 2005

Increased economic growth has been largely ignored as a potential benefit of education vouchers. In a setting where households can opt out of public education in preference for private education, private-education vouchers have been shown to offer increased economic growth. Taxes were held constant and it was shown that a given public education budget can be redistributed through the use of private- education vouchers in a way that will increase per capita human wealth and in some cases increase the human wealth of all households.

Private-education vouchers generated increased economic growth through a fiscal spillover. The tax base grew through a redistribution of the wealthier public-education students into the private education system where they accumulated greater amounts of human capital. This drove increases in public education expenditure, generating growth for the students remaining in public education. Similar growth enhancement might be generated by ability-tracking or selective-entry schools; however, such systems require some decision rule on how to select students.

itle: School finance - Raising questions for urban schools
Author(s): Reyes AH, Rodriguez GM
Source: EDUCATION AND URBAN SOCIETY Volume: 37 Issue: 1 Pages: 3-21 Published: NOV 2004

Decentralized budgeting, or campus-based budgeting, allows instruction to drive the school bud- get rather than a central office business manager with district-wide budget allocations; however, there is little evidence of successful budget decentral- ization models. Also, there is evidence that suggests that when charter schools compete with local public schools, there are improvements in academic performance for students who remain in the public schools; however, only in comparison with underperforming public schools are vouchers and charters effective

Access, school choice, and independent black institutions - A historical perspective
Author(s): Bush L
Source: JOURNAL OF BLACK STUDIES Volume: 34 Issue: 3 Pages: 386-401 Published: JAN 2004

The miseducation and undereducation of African Americans certainly creates a critical need for alternative forms of schooling. Though IBIs have been willing for some time now to serve in this needed capacity, their growth has been challenged by financial concerns. In the short run, funds from voucher and charter pro- grams appear to allow IBIs to expand their physical schooling operations to some degree. The degree to which the ideological paradigms of IBIs have been able to expand in the short run seems to vary. Certainly, this area needs some future research.

Title: Differences in Scholastic Achievement of Public, Private Government-Dependent, and Private Independent Schools A Cross-National Analysis
Author(s): Dronkers J, Robert P
Source: EDUCATIONAL POLICY Volume: 22 Issue: 4 Pages: 541-577 Published: JUL 2008

The main differences in the gross scholastic achievements of private and public schools in these 22 countries can be explained by differences in their student intake and by the related differences in school composition. But our analysis also shows that private government-dependent schools have a higher net scholastic achievement in reading than do comparable public schools with the same students, parents, and social composition. This higher scholastic achievement is also substantial because the reading score difference between attending a public or a private government-dependent school is equal to the negative effect of having two more siblings. The explanation is the existence of a better school climate in the former versus the latter. The different admin- istrative, learning, and teaching conditions in private government-dependent and public schools do not explain differences in this net scholastic achievement. This does not mean that private government-dependent schools do not have a more favorable student intake and social composition or that it explains the largest part of the higher gross educational outcomes of their students. Rather, it only means that next to student characteristics and social composition, the more favorable school climate does provide the explanation of the net higher educational outcomes of students from private government-dependent schools, in comparison to both public and private independent schools with the same students, same composition, and same conditions.

[Starry Messenger]

179. Looks like that is indeed outdated data.

http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:NEsW2DQJPN8J:www.vanderbilt.edu/schoolchoice/conference/papers/Ladd_COMPLETE.pdf+dutch+school+choice&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESiPZeTQ-9-FxuvG5SBDGYU9-jumYbtDfz2ufA1RQTj00UuCCmSAlilqGs9tmkeJuuCVlqOKuEcSPacmecTEWKcN6hgHDyBbIqm4DkUePyHwflKmkUaii3Wjpg3VwlUge2h75m9g&sig=AHIEtbR73muL32nQv4IT2HMi2ULZo-Cogw


PARENTAL CHOICE IN THE NETHERLANDS:
GROWING CONCERNS ABOUT SEGREGATION



Helen F. Ladd
Duke University

Edward B. Fiske
Education writer and consultant

Nienke Ruijs
University of Amsterdam


Prepared for School Choice and School Improvement:
Research in State, District and Community Contexts
Vanderbilt University, October 25-27, 2009

Abstract: ABSTRACT

The Netherlands has a long history of parental choice and school autonomy. This
paper examines why segregation by educational disadvantage has only recently emerged
as a policy issue in the Netherlands. In addition, we document the levels and trends of
school segregation in Dutch cities. We find segregation levels that are high both
absolutely and relative to those in the U.S. cities. Current efforts to limit segregation in
Dutch cities inevitably confront the deeply held Dutch value of freedom of education.

Our data show that segregation by immigrant status in primary schools is already
high in the Netherlands – and as high or higher than in many cities in the U.S. – and that
segregation continues to rise in many cities despite little or no increase in the proportion
of immigrants in the school age population. Although a number of efforts have been
initiated to reduce segregation, especially in the countries largest cities, these efforts have
thus far shown little success.

We do not address in this paper the extent to which school segregation represents
an educational or social problem. On the one hand, any given level of segregation in the
Netherlands could be less problematic from an educational perspective than in the U.S.
because the program of weighted student funding helps to offset the adverse educational
effects of disadvantage. On the other, it is quite plausible that having such segregated
schools is highly counterproductive with respect to the goal of integrating immigrants
into Dutch society, which has long been built around principles of inclusiveness and
equity.

The longstanding tradition of freedom of education is by no means the only
determinant of the high levels of segregation in the Netherlands. Our comparison of
school and residential trends suggests that residential segregation is also a contributing
factor. Whatever their role in creating the problem, however, the twin aspects of freedom
of education – the right of parents to choose their child’s school and the operational
autonomy afforded to schools – make it is very difficult for the Dutch to do anything
about their high levels of school segregation. Any proposal to reduce segregation,
whether through voluntary agreements among schools or governmental policies, will
inevitably involve a trade-off with a deeply held Dutch value.

This is the latest research on the topic.

[BrentWil]

91. It is a civil rights "thing"

[madfloridian]

93. It is an "education" thing. They have pushed this new segregation stuff...

cloaked in the message of reform.

[Name removed]

97. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Tansy_Gold]

99. Actually, no, it's usually white conservatives who do that

Like the rich white conservative people in Estrella Mountain Ranch who didn't want the kids from Buckeye, Arizona, some of whom might be brown or black, from attending the new high school in the same district, a school that was being built to be a "showcase" for the district, "state of the art" and "cutting edge" in every way, while the school the poor kids went to had faulty air conditioning and tainted water and leaking roofs and toilets that didn't function.

Where you get off playin' the ol' race card is beyond me, Brent, but I'm thinkin' a lot of people are gonna pretty soon have enough of you and you're gonna be preachin' to your own little choir.


Tansy Gold, who found out this afternoon that her daughter the tenured speech pathologist got laid off from her school position in New Jersey thanks to Gov. Christie's budget cuts

[BrentWil]

102. Delete

[Tansy_Gold]

108. I see. So now you're calling all white folks racists?

That's a new one.

You've already had one post pulled for that kind of comment, and it was the second time you'd made it. Seriously, Brent, you need to take a different tack. You're runnin' into some real strong head winds.



TG

[Hannah Bell]

120. sure, that's why it's resulted in a declining percentage of black teachers & increased segregation

by race & income.

because it's about "civil rights".

lol, civil rights for finance capital.

[BrentWil]

124. That isn't backed up by evidence from black students..

http://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?collection=journals&handle=hein.journals/flr74&div=34&id=&page=

[Starry Messenger]

136. Since we're just posting links now, here's another one that addresses yours.

http://www.civilrightsproject.ucla.edu/research/deseg/equity-overlooked-report-2009.pdf

Enjoy.

[BrentWil]

140. Posting studies on policies I do not advocate does not prove your point..

Or represent the vast amount of academic literature that does support my positions.

[Tansy_Gold]

148. It's not our job to post studies "proving" policies YOU advocate

That's YOUR job.

OUR job is post studies that do NOT support the policies you advocate and then it is YOUR job to rebut them.

Start presenting the vast amount of academic literature that does support your position.






Tansy Gold

[Tansy_Gold]

164. Available for $24.95

As a grad student, maybe you have access to all this for free, but not all of us do.

[BrentWil]

170. And I would give it to you,

But I can't post it because of copyright. I would email it to you, if you like.

You can also go to your nearest college.

[Hannah Bell]

185. That's a theoretical paper. Here's the research on actual *practice*

Los Angeles—February 4, 2010—

Today, the Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles at UCLA issued "Choice Without Equity: Charter School Segregation and the Need for Civil Rights Standards," a nationwide report based on an analysis of Federal government data and an examination of charter schools in 40 states and the District of Columbia, along with several dozen metropolitan areas with large enrollments of charters. The report found that charter schools continue to stratify students by race, class, and possibly language, and are more racially isolated than traditional public schools in virtually every state and large metropolitan area in the country.


http://www.civilrightsproject.ucla.edu/news/pressreleases/pressrelease20100204-report.html

[maryf]

187. thanks HB

this is critical info...

[madfloridian]

87. It also pushes mayoral control of schools....that takes away local control

and puts it in the hands of one person. As Michelle Rhee says, mayoral control helps them "reform" things faster.

It is a blatant propaganda piece.

[Tansy_Gold]

173. Stewart Nusbaumer's review at HuffPo is a vicious slam on teachers

and teachers' unions.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/stewart-nusbaumer/sundance-emwaiting-for-su_b_446938.html



have at him.





Tansy Gold

[Tansy_Gold]

175. Read the comments after the review at IMDB

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1566648/

read the reply comments to the original comments. Teachers are paying attention to this film and speaking out about it.

[BrentWil]

176. Have at him..

This is such a sensitive issue for you, isn't it? I mean, it isn't that I have an idea that I think will empower people that you disagree with... it is that because I have that idea I must be either crazy or evil. With him, it is a "have at him". This is not something that you seem to want even debated.

Just an observation.

[Tansy_Gold]

181. Nusbaum takes the attitude

that the major thing wrong with the entire American education system is teachers' unions. Get rid of the unions and all will be well, according to him. I disagree with him, and I am allowed to do so.

Yes, it's a "sensitive" issue for me, but as I recall, you opened this thread by calling this your "pet issue." Why is it okay for you to have a "pet" issue, but I can't have a "sensitive" one?


I have not called you crazy or evil. I have suggested that you are libertarian or even conservative/rightwing in some of your philosophy. While I may personally equate those with craziness or evil, I have not put that notion in any of my posts. In the interest of rational discussion, I have tempered most of my comments to you, though admittedly not all. I may have suggested you were freakin' nuts, but I did not call you crazy or evil.

I disagree with your idea. That is one thing. I do not require that you give up your idea or change your mind.

What I do require is that you debate your idea in a rational way. That you cite relevant and pertinent facts, rather than just the first three journal articles that come up on a search. I require that you be consistent in your argument and honest.

You have bounced around from being against vouchers to being for them, from being for charter schools to being against them, from insisting the money would go to the schools to insisting the money would go to the kids to insisting the money would go to the parents to hoping the money would go to corporations. That's a rightwing/liberatarian stance.

You've cloaked your statements in classic rightwing doublespeak. "School choice" is not about choice at all -- it's about restricting choice to private, for-profit educational facilities. "Helping poor kids" is about helping them stay where they are.

You don't want money to go directly to poor-performing schools. Why is that? Why is it about choice and not about the schools? Because you really don't want to help that most socialistic of all American institutions: free universal public education??

I honestly think you want the teachers' unions broken because teachers should be treated like servants, not professionals. Teaching is "women's work," and it hasn't had much respect ever. I hear no calls for the dissolution of police officers' unions even though some police officers have been accused of, charged with, and convicted of abuse and even torture and murder. Why then are teachers' unions fair game? They shouldn't be, but they are. That's that Stewart Nusbaum seems to be saying, and think my fellow union supporters should know that and be encouraged to enlighten the benighted Mr. N.

This thread is now well over 150 posts long. Virtually no one has come to your -- or your idea's -- defense, Brent. DU is a pretty diverse community, and almost every issue has its supporters and detractors. This is a thread that has been at the top of GD for a full day now and it hasn't attracted anyone to jump in on your side. That should tell you something, Brent. It should, but it probably doesn't.

You are an ideologue. You have this idea in your head and it's so fixed there that you can't get it out. You will defend it rationally or irrationally, because you don't really even know what it is. It's something you heard and you thought it sounded good and you could agree with it. But you didn't think it out, Brent. And maybe you don't want to because you're afraid that if you do, you won't like it so much any more. And it's hard to admit a mistake when you've invested so much of your ego in something.

When I said, earlier in this post, that I "require" certain things, I didn't mean to imply that you were under any obligation to actually DO those things. But rather, that's what *I* require from you before I will respect your opinion even if I don't agree with it. I don't and I can't respect you because I think you're being dishonest, with us certainly and also with yourself.

I do not personally know any of the other posters on this thread. Indeed, I only personally know two other DUers at all, and neither of them have posted on this topic. I have, in fact, disagreed and disagreed rather vehemently with some of these posters in the past. But I respect them because I believe they are being honest and rational, even when I don't agree with them.

You could have laid out a detailed plan for your "solution" to the American education crisis. Instead you threw out a bunch of rightwing talking points and accused "white liberals" of being racist. That's not rationality, not in my opinion. But I'm quite sure you don't give two shits about the opinion of





Tansy Gold

[BrentWil]

189. Really?t

I have been totally consistent in stating I want education dollars to be in the hands of the underprivileged. Simple as that. Call it weighted student funding, call it means tested vouchers, call it whatever you want. That is what I am for. Do I think it is the only solution? No, absolutely not. However, it is something that can make things better.

I cited the articles as representative of the vast majority of the articles that are out there. They either find that school choice improves test scores or that scores do no better. No research I could find says that students do worse. That is key to me.

I have no problem with unions. That is simply silly and not something I mentioned.


You keep saying I am not addressing points you make. What points?

[Tansy_Gold]

194. And I want poverty erased.

Putting money in the hands of the underprivileged is a noble idea, but it is not a plan. As Hannibal Smith says, I love it when a plan comes together, but Brent, you don't have a plan. You have a vague notion, a Miss America dream, but it's not a coherent plan.

We have come back at you, with reasonable politeness, and shown you why your spaghetti hasn't stuck to the wall. And like a spoiled three-year-old you've just said "But that's what I want," as if that makes it so.

It doesn't. And sadly, I fear that this movie will effectively tug at the heartstrings of viewers who are voters and will prompt a great deal of the same kind of spaghetti-throwing that you've done here. It will prompt emotion-based responses that will fail in terms of helping "underprivileged children" get a decent education but will succeed marvelously at transferring more wealth to the wealthy, which ultimately exacerbates the problem it was meant to help.

I'm done with you. You're a vampire of my time. I don't mind posting for the benefit of the lurkers when I know I'm not ever going to reach the targeted poster, but I've wasted enough time on you and your pie in the sky bullshit.




Tansy Gold

[BrentWil]

195. What is unreasonable about the government creating a mechanism

to give payments to institutions. It is something they are going to do with health care, the last time I checked. The bureaucratic mechanism to do it isn't that tough. You are providing a check to a public private or private school and then keeping track of the difference between the check amount and the total amount for possible future use. You are providing a weak argument based on the government can't do something when in fact it is doing similar things in other areas.

[cap]

199. Go Tansy! I did go to Andover and...

you'd be surprised how many of us agree with you! In fact, the debate you are having with Brent was similar one we had in our urban studies class. Our class president, scholarship student from Harlem, would be cheering you on. Boy, was he pissed off at some of the stupidity and cluelessness spouted by some of the kids from that big white bubble known as Princeton.

The Voucher program would be a nice subsidy to Andover but not a needed one. Our endowment is enormous.

I was a scholarship student and came out of a substandard school in the foothills of Appalachia. My Dad taught community college there. He had to dumb down his exams so that he didn't flunk the whole class! But he could only dumb them down so far because organic chemistry is required on the state nursing boards and he had a lot of nursing students.

Give the parents the money and let them make the choices! Ha Ha Ha. The blind leading the blind. These folks don't know what they dont know! As far as they are concerned, having their kids bark out the same facts that they barked out 20 years ago is just fine. Oh yeah, and having a great football team. I do think the point of my first high school was so we could have a football team; it definitely was not education. The parents wouldn't know that their kids need to know something about nanotechnology or Chinese. They do not understand how education and the way that it is taught changes over time. Part of our problem is the lack of culture and education on the part of the parents. It sounds so very elitist but it is true. Acknowledging this will be the first step in rectifying the problems. Let's start with getting a respect for culture and an acknowledgement that everyone from a Walmart worker to a CEO needs it. In South Philly, the stone cutters had opera streaming from their open windows. I can't think of any working class community today that reveres culture and this is one of our problems.

At one point, in my community's history, education was revered. I don't know what happened to us. The way that the local state teachers college got started was this: The Coal miners realized that their kids needed to learn to read so that they would not have to go to work in the mines. They petitioned the state repeatedly to start a teachers college. The state of Maryland wouldn't do it; so the miners literally dug the foundations by hand and built their own school over an abandoned coal mine and then petitioned repeatedly for accreditation. The school never ranked well on any scoring mechanisms but at least it was there. This mentality is gone. Why do we want to go back to this kind of hand crafting education with vouchers? It is the long and hard way about getting an education.

Whatever happened to the concept of getting your kids to be taught by people who knew more than you did! That your kids will be better prepared than you were! That's why my parents sent me to Andover. They wanted better than themselves. In their heart of hearts, they wanted what Andover provides given to every student. Before they sent me away to school, they tried to work it out with the local school system. That school system was starved both financially and mentally.

When my parents died, the community gave us a lot of money which we gave to the community college to start a scholarship fund for the needy. My parents believed in the public school system and tried to provide education to every student.

[Starry Messenger]

177. Heritage wrote a glowing review too.

http://blog.heritage.org/2010/04/20/waiting-for-superman-to-rescue-education/

The decline of public education stands out as a subject ripe for the lens of a documentary filmmaker. In Waiting for Superman, to be released by Paramount this fall, the producers do just that, pointing a critical eye to the plight of public education in America.

The film’s name comes from the idea of a child wishing to be rescued from a bad situation–in this case, from a school system that often leads to nowhere but failure. Other recent documentaries on this topic–such as The Heritage Foundation’s Let Me Rise, Teamworks Media’s The Street Stops Here, and the Moving Picture Institute’s The Cartel-highlight the failures of public schools and the subsequent negative consequences on low-income and disadvantaged children. Waiting for Superman reveals the gridlock created by school district bureaucracy, apathetic teachers, and teachers’ unions. As families across the country continue to fight for education reform, these documentaries give a face to those who are engaged in the day-to-day struggle.

According to The Washington Post:

Waiting for Superman tells the stories of children in several cities — Los Angeles, Harlem, Washington D.C. — interspersed with interviews of educators – Rhee, Harlem Children’s Zone founder Geoffrey Canada, the founders of the KIPP charter school network — to demonstrate the appalling state of public schools in America…. What stays with you, though, are the faces of the children who are being cheated and the tears of their parents who want better for them. It is actually painful to watch these mothers and fathers and grandmothers lose out in lotteries for precious spots in charter schools.

In Waiting for Superman, Guggenheim addresses the stranglehold public sector unions have on K-12 education. The Washington Post writes:

The film…is harsh on teachers’ unions, board of education bureaucrats and politicians who give lip service to change.

I have a couple more links in a thread here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=219x25324

[maryf]

188. the stats are skewed between countries

The US uses all its students in its reports, many countries do not include special ed or trade schools. Also, when you go to the number of kids who graduate in 5 years the numbers of graduates increases immensely, plus no mention of GED's...sorry no time for stats, on the run, but do note they say 4 years to graduate in the trailer, some kids just can't do that...That said, we do need help with our kids' literacy levels...charter schools aren't going to help but a few...

[maryf]

204. Self-Edit...

gotta stop writing in the morning on the fly...my post appeared to support charter schools more than I do...charter school's help pocket books more than kids...help public schools!! stop defunding them...

[Doremus]

202. Very easy to see who is on the Broad payroll here. nt

[Hannah Bell]

203. i wonder if davis is any relation to *the* guggenheims? not that common of a name. i think.

[maryf]

206. I can't find a connection...

His father Charles was raised by "German Jews in Cincinnati" according to one source, nothing connecting him with the Solomon Guggenheim, though there was a defense secretary named Davis in Solomon's family...odd that Charles' parents names weren't given...I thought

[William Z. Foster]

207. thanks

Thanks Tansy and Starry - great work.