4 ms·

These are not schools. I don't know what to call them, "Public institutions for young people waiting to go into dysfunctional lifestyles" comes to mind. There c

These are not schools. I don't know what to call them, "Public institutions for young people waiting to go into dysfunctional lifestyles" comes to mind. There could be others. Shut them down. Seriously. If you are failing this terribly, the very least you owe taxpayers and the poor kids and parents associated with those schools is honesty. Not spin. Not statistical bullshit. Honesty. Shut the damned schools down. The resources we are allocating there are actively working against the public interest. I'm sure the cries will come out "What to do with these at-risk kids?" That's a great question, and folks can have a wonderful public discussion about that. Unfortunately, that discussion gets into winners and losers -- various interests have various goals that they want to achieve. So let's separate that out, put it aside for a few months. For now, close them down. Immediately. Try some brutal honesty and see if it doesn't move the dial forward a little bit.

SolaceQuantum 9y ago
Why deprive students of even more resources? Why starve them? Why put parents in a situation where they have to take care of children 24/7 when over half the school qualifies for meals, that they then will no longer have and parents have to figure out where to get the extra money? The only people who will suffer the most from schools closing are the kids.
- DanielBMarkham 9y ago
  I think you've answered your own question. We've invested tens of millions of dollars into each of these institutions. They are not meeting up to the reason for their existence. Feeding kids, providing a place for them to play sports, and so on? Sounds like we may actually be doing that. Ok, so keep the buildings and fund them to achieve that purpose and that purpose only. Then, immediately afterwards, begin a discussion about education which is separate from the concerns you outline. The goal here isn't some temper tantrum to punish kids. The goal here is actually being honest about what we are doing and why. If we're honest, we might have a way forward. If we keep up the political bickering, we never will. And the kids will continue to suffer.
  - humanrebar 9y ago
    I'm sympathetic, but American politics isn't defined by its desire for honesty and dynamic problem solving.
    - DanielBMarkham 9y ago
      For far too many issues, there's this "pre-programmed" thread of political bullshit. You start with observation A. Depending on how you look at it, you either head down path B1 or B2. Each of these paths has arguments already defined. You usually end up with calling the other side some version of "asshat" Just wondering if we could break the chain somehow. Otherwise I'm going to continue to see dear friends on both ends of the political spectrum wondering how the folks on the other side could be so simplistic and stupid. sigh. Could there be some simple and easy ground rules that short-circuit this dysfunctional behavior?
  - SolaceQuantum 9y ago
    The implication of "shut them down"'implies also that children will not be in a place for 35+ hours a week out of parents hair, and will be deprived of free meals.
analog31 9y ago
There was a story on NPR yesterday, about a small region of Indiana -- a hotbed of school choice -- that looks like it will soon have no functioning schools. So this is happening already. In my view, the problem is that every kid is guaranteed a chance to attend school. This is even written into some state constitutions. Thus all of the schools are joined together at the hip, even if they don't want to be. The higher functioning schools depend on selective admissions and operating at near capacity, which in turn requires the government to operate last-resort schools. This is a continuous government bail-out of the selective schools. So you can't just shut it down because the successful kids need it. In fact, periodic or continuous government bail-outs are probably a feature of any attempt to privatize what is necessarily a public good, such as health care and possibly air travel. I'd prefer a return to totally public education and more intensive efforts to battle poverty and segregation. But a possible measure for eliminating the last-resort schools would be to take the kids who can't get into any school, and assign them to schools at random, then let the successful schools figure out how to deal with them.
- DanielBMarkham 9y ago
  Good points, and although we may have different worldviews you have some neat ideas. The problem I was trying to address in my comment was organizational inertia. If you have scores of people in a big building creating their own system of doing things, it becomes impossible to change those ways. It's not a matter of policy, philosophy, or whatnot. It's simply the way large groups of people operate. You might be able to take those same teachers and administrators, put them in tents in a park next door, and have vastly-improved results. Or not. Whatever your philosophy of "how to do good school", if it's not working in a particular instance, you have to deal with the organizational inertia first and foremost no matter how you'd like the rest of the game to play out.
  - analog31 9y ago
    In my view, the "organization" we're dealing with is the economic and environmental milieu that kids are exposed to from birth. Focusing on schools rather than addressing, e.g., segregation, is organizational inertia on a grand scale. Better segregated schools is like faster horses. Randomly assigning kids to schools would create a dis-incentive for schools to depend on segregation to achieve their results.

SolaceQuantum 9y ago

Why deprive students of even more resources? Why starve them? Why put parents in a situation where they have to take care of children 24/7 when over half the school qualifies for meals, that they then will no longer have and parents have to figure out where to get the extra money? The only people who will suffer the most from schools closing are the kids.

DanielBMarkham 9y ago
I think you've answered your own question. We've invested tens of millions of dollars into each of these institutions. They are not meeting up to the reason for their existence. Feeding kids, providing a place for them to play sports, and so on? Sounds like we may actually be doing that. Ok, so keep the buildings and fund them to achieve that purpose and that purpose only. Then, immediately afterwards, begin a discussion about education which is separate from the concerns you outline. The goal here isn't some temper tantrum to punish kids. The goal here is actually being honest about what we are doing and why. If we're honest, we might have a way forward. If we keep up the political bickering, we never will. And the kids will continue to suffer.
- humanrebar 9y ago
  I'm sympathetic, but American politics isn't defined by its desire for honesty and dynamic problem solving.
  - DanielBMarkham 9y ago
    For far too many issues, there's this "pre-programmed" thread of political bullshit. You start with observation A. Depending on how you look at it, you either head down path B1 or B2. Each of these paths has arguments already defined. You usually end up with calling the other side some version of "asshat" Just wondering if we could break the chain somehow. Otherwise I'm going to continue to see dear friends on both ends of the political spectrum wondering how the folks on the other side could be so simplistic and stupid. sigh. Could there be some simple and easy ground rules that short-circuit this dysfunctional behavior?
- SolaceQuantum 9y ago
  The implication of "shut them down"'implies also that children will not be in a place for 35+ hours a week out of parents hair, and will be deprived of free meals.

analog31 9y ago

There was a story on NPR yesterday, about a small region of Indiana -- a hotbed of school choice -- that looks like it will soon have no functioning schools. So this is happening already. In my view, the problem is that every kid is guaranteed a chance to attend school. This is even written into some state constitutions. Thus all of the schools are joined together at the hip, even if they don't want to be. The higher functioning schools depend on selective admissions and operating at near capacity, which in turn requires the government to operate last-resort schools. This is a continuous government bail-out of the selective schools. So you can't just shut it down because the successful kids need it. In fact, periodic or continuous government bail-outs are probably a feature of any attempt to privatize what is necessarily a public good, such as health care and possibly air travel. I'd prefer a return to totally public education and more intensive efforts to battle poverty and segregation. But a possible measure for eliminating the last-resort schools would be to take the kids who can't get into any school, and assign them to schools at random, then let the successful schools figure out how to deal with them.

DanielBMarkham 9y ago
Good points, and although we may have different worldviews you have some neat ideas. The problem I was trying to address in my comment was organizational inertia. If you have scores of people in a big building creating their own system of doing things, it becomes impossible to change those ways. It's not a matter of policy, philosophy, or whatnot. It's simply the way large groups of people operate. You might be able to take those same teachers and administrators, put them in tents in a park next door, and have vastly-improved results. Or not. Whatever your philosophy of "how to do good school", if it's not working in a particular instance, you have to deal with the organizational inertia first and foremost no matter how you'd like the rest of the game to play out.
- analog31 9y ago
  In my view, the "organization" we're dealing with is the economic and environmental milieu that kids are exposed to from birth. Focusing on schools rather than addressing, e.g., segregation, is organizational inertia on a grand scale. Better segregated schools is like faster horses. Randomly assigning kids to schools would create a dis-incentive for schools to depend on segregation to achieve their results.