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Local caring and local responsibility are key to any system of quality education. The public schools I grew up with in the American midwest (all lower middle c

by grellas 17y ago

Local caring and local responsibility are key to any system of quality education. The public schools I grew up with in the American midwest (all lower middle class) were uniformly good but this was 50 years ago when such schools were widely funded by local sources (e.g., property taxes from the community), did not have to account to the distant bureaucracies or have to focus on prepping kids to meet minimum proficiency tests by which educational results could be measured with mirrors, and did not have to deal with unions whose goals seem to be as much about promoting the interests of their members via ever-expansive forms of public funding as they are about helping kids learn. The public high schools I attended in California in the late 1960s were also good, and it was naturally expected in that day that the vast majority of the kids would not only graduate but would also be literate and reasonably taught once they did so - there too, all funding was purely local. The key is to have the schools, whether public or private, in the hands of people who care really care about what the kids learn and that means local people who know them and know their families. This element has largely been lost in modern America's public schools, and it is a real tragedy. It is nice to see the resourcefulness of parents who seek to overcome the resulting mess but this is a struggle that is often just plain desperate in light of the overwhelming problems that now beset the public schools. This piece reminds us that there is always hope where people really care.

DrSprout 17y ago
>this was 50 years ago when such schools were widely funded by local sources This is really the only significant part of the equation. The system is basically designed to fail. You pass a tax levy for X mills, which brings in X amount of money for the school system, and never a dollar more. Property values go up, but property taxes do not. The budget therefore shrinks every year due to inflation, and every 10-15 years the situation gets so dire that the district has to put a ballot issue up for a tax "increase" to get funding back up to the levels of 10-15 years ago. In most areas of the Midwest, this poor voter understanding of how schools are funded has resulted in a steady decline in school expenditures, even as actual costs of education have outpaced inflation.
- tokenadult 17y ago
  Use Minnesota, which has a very different system of school funding, as a reality check on whatever you say about public policy and how it influences schools. http://www.mnhs.org/library/tips/history_topics/18public.html http://www.mnhs.org/library/tips/history_topics/18public.htm...
- jbooth 17y ago
  ++ In Massachusetts, there's a cap of 2.5% for property tax increases without a ballot measure. This means that almost every year, local budgets are shrinking relative to inflation. You know what the most common complaint I heard was when these issues went to ballot? "Screw those councilmen, they want to raise our taxes so they're holding these services hostage." What's the phrase about it being impossible to make people understand something that they don't want to?
  - anamax 17y ago
    > In Massachusetts, there's a cap of 2.5% for property tax increases without a ballot measure. This means that almost every year, local budgets are shrinking relative to inflation. Doesn't MA reassess on transfer? CA does, so property tax revenues grow faster than the cap. Note that CA also does "catchup" - the bill goes up by the cap whenever the difference between the assessed and real value is greater than the cap, no matter what's happened to the real value. That's why property tax bill is going up this by the cap year even though the value of my house took a 30% hit last year. It's the same for anyone who has owned for more than 5 years. Note that housing inflation has been more than other inflation, so trailing housing inflation doesn't imply that the local govt is losing ground. > "Screw those councilmen, they want to raise our taxes so they're holding these services hostage." Since that's how govts actually behave.... Look at what they do and don't threaten to cut and ask yourself if those are rational priorities. Or, do those two lists tell you that they're using the "cut" list to keep funding for the "don't cut" list. Note - you have to look at both lists, not just the "cut" list. And you have to look at the amounts for the various items.
    - jbooth 16y ago
jbooth 17y ago
RE: unions, there are 2 issues I think. A) (perception), unions are more concerned with benefits for their members than educating their kids. Uh... so? Who else is going to advocate for them? They have to eat too, and every small town in America trots out a bunch of reaganish bullcrap about how the school system should be able to do more with less but they all expect a raise in their private sector job if they're doing well. We drop our kids off at school for the day, drive to work on clean, safe streets, and then bitch about how the public sector employees should get by with no yearly raise, without even bothering to inform ourselves about our local budget. B) (reality) Unions are oftentimes more concerned with the preservation of power, access and position for the top union officials than they are with either the benefits for their members or the quality of education, except for cases where the latter two feed into the first (fortunately, fairly often). This is how it actually works. Unions have their problems but it's not because the teachers are greedy -- teachers are already doing a difficult job for low pay, presumably because they care about education. Anyone who whines about unions or about teachers expecting a fair pay check is free to try it for a few years - last I checked there's a huge shortage of qualified math and science teachers.
- sitmaster 17y ago
  No one would complain about unionized teachers if they were doing a good job. All people see is vast sums of money going in and functionally retarded children coming out. This could be because of bad teachers, bad parents, stupid/unteachable children, etc, but the unions' only solution is always "more money." Is it unreasonable to think, then, that the unions are acting in bad faith? The teachers are the only ones who get to elect the union leaders so they are responsible, directly or indirectly. There's a huge shortage of qualified teachers because of the nonsense teachers ed requirements for certifying teachers. You've probably seen many articles on how ridiculous and shoddy these curricula are. These requirements exist at the behest of the unions to protect their members from competition.

by grellas 17y ago

DrSprout 17y ago

>this was 50 years ago when such schools were widely funded by local sources This is really the only significant part of the equation. The system is basically designed to fail. You pass a tax levy for X mills, which brings in X amount of money for the school system, and never a dollar more. Property values go up, but property taxes do not. The budget therefore shrinks every year due to inflation, and every 10-15 years the situation gets so dire that the district has to put a ballot issue up for a tax "increase" to get funding back up to the levels of 10-15 years ago. In most areas of the Midwest, this poor voter understanding of how schools are funded has resulted in a steady decline in school expenditures, even as actual costs of education have outpaced inflation.

tokenadult 17y ago
Use Minnesota, which has a very different system of school funding, as a reality check on whatever you say about public policy and how it influences schools. http://www.mnhs.org/library/tips/history_topics/18public.html http://www.mnhs.org/library/tips/history_topics/18public.htm...
jbooth 17y ago
++ In Massachusetts, there's a cap of 2.5% for property tax increases without a ballot measure. This means that almost every year, local budgets are shrinking relative to inflation. You know what the most common complaint I heard was when these issues went to ballot? "Screw those councilmen, they want to raise our taxes so they're holding these services hostage." What's the phrase about it being impossible to make people understand something that they don't want to?
- anamax 17y ago
  > In Massachusetts, there's a cap of 2.5% for property tax increases without a ballot measure. This means that almost every year, local budgets are shrinking relative to inflation. Doesn't MA reassess on transfer? CA does, so property tax revenues grow faster than the cap. Note that CA also does "catchup" - the bill goes up by the cap whenever the difference between the assessed and real value is greater than the cap, no matter what's happened to the real value. That's why property tax bill is going up this by the cap year even though the value of my house took a 30% hit last year. It's the same for anyone who has owned for more than 5 years. Note that housing inflation has been more than other inflation, so trailing housing inflation doesn't imply that the local govt is losing ground. > "Screw those councilmen, they want to raise our taxes so they're holding these services hostage." Since that's how govts actually behave.... Look at what they do and don't threaten to cut and ask yourself if those are rational priorities. Or, do those two lists tell you that they're using the "cut" list to keep funding for the "don't cut" list. Note - you have to look at both lists, not just the "cut" list. And you have to look at the amounts for the various items.
  - jbooth 16y ago

jbooth 17y ago

RE: unions, there are 2 issues I think. A) (perception), unions are more concerned with benefits for their members than educating their kids. Uh... so? Who else is going to advocate for them? They have to eat too, and every small town in America trots out a bunch of reaganish bullcrap about how the school system should be able to do more with less but they all expect a raise in their private sector job if they're doing well. We drop our kids off at school for the day, drive to work on clean, safe streets, and then bitch about how the public sector employees should get by with no yearly raise, without even bothering to inform ourselves about our local budget. B) (reality) Unions are oftentimes more concerned with the preservation of power, access and position for the top union officials than they are with either the benefits for their members or the quality of education, except for cases where the latter two feed into the first (fortunately, fairly often). This is how it actually works. Unions have their problems but it's not because the teachers are greedy -- teachers are already doing a difficult job for low pay, presumably because they care about education. Anyone who whines about unions or about teachers expecting a fair pay check is free to try it for a few years - last I checked there's a huge shortage of qualified math and science teachers.

sitmaster 17y ago
No one would complain about unionized teachers if they were doing a good job. All people see is vast sums of money going in and functionally retarded children coming out. This could be because of bad teachers, bad parents, stupid/unteachable children, etc, but the unions' only solution is always "more money." Is it unreasonable to think, then, that the unions are acting in bad faith? The teachers are the only ones who get to elect the union leaders so they are responsible, directly or indirectly. There's a huge shortage of qualified teachers because of the nonsense teachers ed requirements for certifying teachers. You've probably seen many articles on how ridiculous and shoddy these curricula are. These requirements exist at the behest of the unions to protect their members from competition.