Do Poor Kids Deserve Lower-Quality Education Than Rich Kids?

[xchrom]

http://www.epi.org/publication/school-privatization-milwaukee/

Do Poor Kids Deserve Lower-Quality Education Than Rich Kids? Evaluating School Privatization Proposals in Milwaukee, Wisconsin

During the past year, Wisconsin state legislators debated a series of bills aimed at closing low-performing public schools and replacing them with privately run charter schools. These proposals were particularly targeted at Milwaukee, the state’s largest and poorest school district.

Ultimately, the only legislation enacted was a bill that modestly increases school reporting requirements, without stipulating consequences for low performance. Nevertheless, the more ambitious proposals will likely remain at the core of Wisconsin’s debates over education policy, and legislative leaders have made clear their desire to revisit them in next year’s session. To help inform these deliberations, this report addresses the most comprehensive set of reforms put forward in the 2013–2014 legislative session.

Backers of these reforms are particularly enamored of a new type of charter school represented by the Rocketship chain of schools—a low-budget operation that relies on young and inexperienced teachers rather than more veteran and expensive faculty, that reduces the curriculum to a near-exclusive focus on reading and math, and that replaces teachers with online learning and digital applications for a significant portion of the day. Rocketship proposes that its model—dubbed “blended learning” for its combination of in-person and computerized instruction—can cut costs while raising low-income students’ test scores (Rocketship Education 2011).

The call for public schools to be replaced by such tech-heavy, teacher-light operations comes from some of the most powerful actors in local and national politics: the major corporate lobbies, including Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, Americans for Prosperity, and the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce (MMAC). It is these groups, rather than parents or community organizations, that provided the impetus for legislators to consider proposals for mass school closure and privatization in Milwaukee.

[Warren Stupidity]

1. Kids have a responsibility to be born into the right sort of families.

Or some other ludicrous bullshit.

[jwirr]

2. In some ways IMO it should be exactly the opposite. The poor children need a way to improve

their lives so education is of great importance to them while many of those rich kids can get a job working for daddy whenever they want. We see it all the time. It is called inherited wealth.

[daleanime]

3. K&R....

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

4. No, which is why 'school district funding' is a bad idea.

All taxes collected for education should go to the state, and be distributed by guidelines that require the oldest or most damaged buildings around the state to be repaired or replaced before newer ones, etc.

Not community by community, so that the kids of wealthier communities get quality education and the kids of poor communities get threadbare education.

And good teaching begins with good teachers. Not tech toys.

[L0oniX]

5. Well... there's nothing worse than stupid rich kids.

[Octafish]

6. An education is the cure for poverty.

Top Secret, though.

[DirkGently]

7. How else are we going to keep them poor?

If we give everyone an equal shot at education, we'll run out of poor people before we know it, thus reducing the incentive to become rich and feel superior. EVERYONE will want to be poor.














Ahem.