8 ms·

I live in an area that has a large number of Catholic elementary and high-schools; they generally have fewer restrictions than the local public schools, and enr

by mbg721 5y ago

I live in an area that has a large number of Catholic elementary and high-schools; they generally have fewer restrictions than the local public schools, and enrollment demand from non-Catholics is through the roof. Nobody wants remote learning, few people even want masks or any restrictions at all; parents hate it, students hate it, teachers hate it--as far as I can tell, nobody wants the outcome we've got, and yet somehow there's this resignation to "Well, this is how it has to be."

gruez 5y ago
If nobody wants it, why can't they petition the non catholic school board to drop the measures? Why is the catholic school board able to get away with less restrictions?
- mbg721 5y ago
  The public school board is an elected body; you can show up at your city or town or village's election and pick the members you like. In practice, few voters are invested parents, and nobody pays attention to school-board candidates most of the time. (If you follow the news, Loudoun County, VA is a notable recent example of how things can go wrong.) So many public school districts are stuck with the same corruption that occurs in any public position. The Catholic schools' policy on things like this, at least near me, is dictated mostly by the diocese. The state can withhold funding for things like special-ed programs or meals if they won't play ball, but they get more autonomy as long as they aren't violating civil-rights law.
  - barry-cotter 5y ago
    > In practice, few voters are invested parents, and nobody pays attention to school-board candidates most of the time. The teachers' union does. Not most of the time either. All the time.
- BuyMyBitcoins 5y ago
  This is going to sound dismissively cynical, but it all comes down to politics. The public school system is accountable to way more entities than the Catholic school is. Teachers Unions wield a tremendous amount of power and influence in local and state government. Actually taking on such a political machine would require an incredible amount of activism - bordering on replacing the majority of elected positions in your district. This is especially difficult because most of the lower positions are seats that the average person never thinks about or votes in. But, the unions make sure their members know about these positions and endeavor to get out the vote.
  - nradov 5y ago
    The Wisconsin state government managed to pass Act 10 in 2011 which greatly reduced the power of teachers' unions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Wisconsin_Act_10#Effect_on_unions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Wisconsin_Act_10#Effect_o...
    - yaacov 5y ago
      it’s been 10 years, do we know how that’s affected the quality of education there?
      - light_hue_1 5y ago
        Very very badly. "the law reduced average test scores on the state’s standardized exam by approximately 20% of a standard deviation": https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S027277571830551X?casa_token=xfERKj0bgfkAAAAA:BPPfplenyEeNOpX5Aa3ysn34hKpY9bX3VDI0V6z_-NXo5NLXuTxp5dTv88TWJ7qT2q7-pghp https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S027277571... "8 percent reduction in total compensation" https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/rb71.pdf https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/rb71.pdf Not only does this hold up in general, it holds up district by district. Districts that still had collective bargaining had better scores than one that didn't (even after controlling for confounds, it was the union status that made the difference). https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0160449X19883373 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0160449X1988337... Not only that, teacher shortages are worse, and they're much worse in rural areas. https://search.proquest.com/openview/5ae518d77f9e445512062085a9938153/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=18750&diss=y&casa_token=CVFTOWCUyRsAAAAA:VdwYZDBOQUsz_WOJ20Dv4_8bZI6Reof0KmQiYeHr1DdehAHR29i4yyKpoGk1Yx3pxHwHhRqN https://search.proquest.com/openview/5ae518d77f9e44551206208... So the outcome is: Teachers make less money, there are fewer teachers to be had, and students are scoring much worse. A win-win-win for conservatives!
- beerandt 5y ago
  Because private school parents can pull their kid out and take their tuition elsewhere. They actually have options and can make good on bargaining threats to walk away. Additionally, you don't have public sector or really any teachers unions to deal with at private schools. There are other factors that contribute, but aren't nearly as clear cut as those two.
seibelj 5y ago
The next step is “backpack funding”, or letting parents get a voucher for education that follows the student no matter where they attend school, public or private. This will drastically reduce the cost of private education, and combined with the widespread erosion of gifted programs and a general sense of mediocrity pervading modern public schooling, a vast downsizing of public education has started.
- hootbootscoot 5y ago
  And the US was already having issues in terms of STEM competitiveness... I believe the term is "decline" or "decadence"... I do not approve of publicly funding parochial religious schools, for example. This is a bad road to take. The would-be-theocrats don't even comprehend the damage their wish's fulfillment would bring. I had the misfortune of attending such a "school" once and found it full of fake curriculi and it set me back a year at a crucial time. It was a total joke. I attended approximately 8 different public schools prior to that and after that, including some rather lousy ones, and all were superior to these weirdo cult luckily didn't have to spend much time in. Public funding? public standards.
- lelanthran 5y ago
  > The next step is “backpack funding”, or letting parents get a voucher for education that follows the student no matter where they attend school, public or private. This will drastically reduce the cost of private education, and combined with the widespread erosion of gifted programs and a general sense of mediocrity pervading modern public schooling, a vast downsizing of public education has started. This, on the face of it, seems like a good idea[1]. I don't understand why it is being downvoted. [1] I'm not in the US, if that helps.
  - beerandt 5y ago
    Because broadly speaking, public schools rely on 100% of the local school tax revenue to educate somewhere between 50-90% of the students. They rely on private school tuition to further subsidize public schools via reduced enrollment but not reduced budget.
  - 5y ago
codefreakxff 5y ago
What you are describing is anecdotal and the same problem we have with Facebook - social group isolation. You have a large number of Catholic schools in your area because you have a large number of Catholics in your area. They are operating under different principles, and so attract people who want those rules. If I went to a Sushi restaurant and proclaimed that nobody wanted Pizza anymore, or to live under the tyranny of tomato sauce and cheese, because nobody in the Sushi restaurant wanted pizza it wouldn't make sense to anyone else. I know teachers who are very supportive of mask mandates and that the schools and teachers are generally doing ok, and people who I work with who send their kids to schools with masks are very happy for the kids to have socializing opportunities. Your friends and community are free to find a solution that works for them. But it is not the only way, and it does not make sense to condemn a system that works for the vast majority of people.
- nradov 5y ago
  Mask mandates are collective punishment of children for no real benefit. I absolutely condemn them and they are not a system that works. Most European countries don't require young children to wear masks in schools. And don't presume to claim that masking children is necessary to protect adults. The adults who want to be vaccinated have been for months.
  - jimmaswell 5y ago
    The teachers on the teachers subreddit STILL go on about how bad they have it "risking their lives". It's unbelievably dramatic over what to a vaccinated person is an endemic sniffle. I think they really just want to drag out their WFH situation as long as possible, consequences to the next generation of society be damned.
    - saimiam 5y ago
      A. It’s not just an endemic sniffle even for vaccinated people. I lost my sense of smell and got it back way after my quarantine ended, like months after. Plus there’s a mental fog that lifted a long time later. I got Covid after my first shot but before my second. B. In general, being vaxxed keeps you from getting badly sick but you just can’t say. E.g., say you’re in a group of a hundred people with a thousand guns trained at your group. Just one gun out of the thousand has a live round while ten others have blank which don’t kill but can injure. Would you be willing to face those odds? Would you be willing to ask others to face the same odds? These are roughly the odds what you are asking teachers to take on.
yumraj 5y ago
> nobody wants the outcome we've got Single anecdote: we took our 3rd grader from the regular school and enrolled in an online school since at that age they were not vaccinated and we were not comfortable sending a 3rd grader to a school at all. In fact I feel that our child has done well, the entire 3rd grade curriculum is finished and will be moving to 4th grade in the middle of the school year since the online school supports that. Something that may not have happened in the regular school at all. So, as usual, let's not generalize - every one is different, both adults and children. We may move our child back to regular school in the fall since they can now be vaccinated.
- mbg721 5y ago
  This is interesting to me; my wife and I had a child recently, and our immediate response was "This is going to be a shit-show for years, let's look up how home-schooling works." If nothing else, we'll be spending a lot of time on the Star-Bellied Sneetches.
  - yumraj 5y ago
    Yes it’s going to be a shit show for years and we’ll all have to adapt, including figuring out what works and doesn’t for our kids. Hopefully by the time your child is a little older things would have settled. Best wishes! BTW, we’re not doing home schooling exactly. We’re doing an online K-12 school.
    - barry-cotter 5y ago
      > BTW, we’re not doing home schooling exactly. We’re doing an online K-12 school. You're following a set curriculum while the teaching is almost entirely being done by the parents and child. You're a great deal more similar to a homeschooler than normal schools. If you finish all your work for third grade in a regular school you do not go to fourth grade.
      - yumraj 5y ago
        > You're a great deal more similar to a homeschooler than normal schools. Yes you’re right. What I’d meant was that we’ve not had to spend time in figuring out what the curriculum is and how to cobble together the course material - the basic structure is provided so it was easy for us to transition to it.

by mbg721 5y ago

gruez 5y ago

If nobody wants it, why can't they petition the non catholic school board to drop the measures? Why is the catholic school board able to get away with less restrictions?

mbg721 5y ago
The public school board is an elected body; you can show up at your city or town or village's election and pick the members you like. In practice, few voters are invested parents, and nobody pays attention to school-board candidates most of the time. (If you follow the news, Loudoun County, VA is a notable recent example of how things can go wrong.) So many public school districts are stuck with the same corruption that occurs in any public position. The Catholic schools' policy on things like this, at least near me, is dictated mostly by the diocese. The state can withhold funding for things like special-ed programs or meals if they won't play ball, but they get more autonomy as long as they aren't violating civil-rights law.
- barry-cotter 5y ago
  > In practice, few voters are invested parents, and nobody pays attention to school-board candidates most of the time. The teachers' union does. Not most of the time either. All the time.
BuyMyBitcoins 5y ago
This is going to sound dismissively cynical, but it all comes down to politics. The public school system is accountable to way more entities than the Catholic school is. Teachers Unions wield a tremendous amount of power and influence in local and state government. Actually taking on such a political machine would require an incredible amount of activism - bordering on replacing the majority of elected positions in your district. This is especially difficult because most of the lower positions are seats that the average person never thinks about or votes in. But, the unions make sure their members know about these positions and endeavor to get out the vote.
- nradov 5y ago
  The Wisconsin state government managed to pass Act 10 in 2011 which greatly reduced the power of teachers' unions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Wisconsin_Act_10#Effect_on_unions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Wisconsin_Act_10#Effect_o...
  - yaacov 5y ago
    it’s been 10 years, do we know how that’s affected the quality of education there?
    - light_hue_1 5y ago
      Very very badly. "the law reduced average test scores on the state’s standardized exam by approximately 20% of a standard deviation": https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S027277571830551X?casa_token=xfERKj0bgfkAAAAA:BPPfplenyEeNOpX5Aa3ysn34hKpY9bX3VDI0V6z_-NXo5NLXuTxp5dTv88TWJ7qT2q7-pghp https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S027277571... "8 percent reduction in total compensation" https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/rb71.pdf https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/rb71.pdf Not only does this hold up in general, it holds up district by district. Districts that still had collective bargaining had better scores than one that didn't (even after controlling for confounds, it was the union status that made the difference). https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0160449X19883373 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0160449X1988337... Not only that, teacher shortages are worse, and they're much worse in rural areas. https://search.proquest.com/openview/5ae518d77f9e445512062085a9938153/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=18750&diss=y&casa_token=CVFTOWCUyRsAAAAA:VdwYZDBOQUsz_WOJ20Dv4_8bZI6Reof0KmQiYeHr1DdehAHR29i4yyKpoGk1Yx3pxHwHhRqN https://search.proquest.com/openview/5ae518d77f9e44551206208... So the outcome is: Teachers make less money, there are fewer teachers to be had, and students are scoring much worse. A win-win-win for conservatives!
beerandt 5y ago
Because private school parents can pull their kid out and take their tuition elsewhere. They actually have options and can make good on bargaining threats to walk away. Additionally, you don't have public sector or really any teachers unions to deal with at private schools. There are other factors that contribute, but aren't nearly as clear cut as those two.

seibelj 5y ago

The next step is “backpack funding”, or letting parents get a voucher for education that follows the student no matter where they attend school, public or private. This will drastically reduce the cost of private education, and combined with the widespread erosion of gifted programs and a general sense of mediocrity pervading modern public schooling, a vast downsizing of public education has started.

hootbootscoot 5y ago
And the US was already having issues in terms of STEM competitiveness... I believe the term is "decline" or "decadence"... I do not approve of publicly funding parochial religious schools, for example. This is a bad road to take. The would-be-theocrats don't even comprehend the damage their wish's fulfillment would bring. I had the misfortune of attending such a "school" once and found it full of fake curriculi and it set me back a year at a crucial time. It was a total joke. I attended approximately 8 different public schools prior to that and after that, including some rather lousy ones, and all were superior to these weirdo cult luckily didn't have to spend much time in. Public funding? public standards.
lelanthran 5y ago
> The next step is “backpack funding”, or letting parents get a voucher for education that follows the student no matter where they attend school, public or private. This will drastically reduce the cost of private education, and combined with the widespread erosion of gifted programs and a general sense of mediocrity pervading modern public schooling, a vast downsizing of public education has started. This, on the face of it, seems like a good idea[1]. I don't understand why it is being downvoted. [1] I'm not in the US, if that helps.
- beerandt 5y ago
  Because broadly speaking, public schools rely on 100% of the local school tax revenue to educate somewhere between 50-90% of the students. They rely on private school tuition to further subsidize public schools via reduced enrollment but not reduced budget.
- 5y ago

codefreakxff 5y ago

What you are describing is anecdotal and the same problem we have with Facebook - social group isolation. You have a large number of Catholic schools in your area because you have a large number of Catholics in your area. They are operating under different principles, and so attract people who want those rules. If I went to a Sushi restaurant and proclaimed that nobody wanted Pizza anymore, or to live under the tyranny of tomato sauce and cheese, because nobody in the Sushi restaurant wanted pizza it wouldn't make sense to anyone else. I know teachers who are very supportive of mask mandates and that the schools and teachers are generally doing ok, and people who I work with who send their kids to schools with masks are very happy for the kids to have socializing opportunities. Your friends and community are free to find a solution that works for them. But it is not the only way, and it does not make sense to condemn a system that works for the vast majority of people.

nradov 5y ago
Mask mandates are collective punishment of children for no real benefit. I absolutely condemn them and they are not a system that works. Most European countries don't require young children to wear masks in schools. And don't presume to claim that masking children is necessary to protect adults. The adults who want to be vaccinated have been for months.
- jimmaswell 5y ago
  The teachers on the teachers subreddit STILL go on about how bad they have it "risking their lives". It's unbelievably dramatic over what to a vaccinated person is an endemic sniffle. I think they really just want to drag out their WFH situation as long as possible, consequences to the next generation of society be damned.
  - saimiam 5y ago
    A. It’s not just an endemic sniffle even for vaccinated people. I lost my sense of smell and got it back way after my quarantine ended, like months after. Plus there’s a mental fog that lifted a long time later. I got Covid after my first shot but before my second. B. In general, being vaxxed keeps you from getting badly sick but you just can’t say. E.g., say you’re in a group of a hundred people with a thousand guns trained at your group. Just one gun out of the thousand has a live round while ten others have blank which don’t kill but can injure. Would you be willing to face those odds? Would you be willing to ask others to face the same odds? These are roughly the odds what you are asking teachers to take on.

yumraj 5y ago

> nobody wants the outcome we've got Single anecdote: we took our 3rd grader from the regular school and enrolled in an online school since at that age they were not vaccinated and we were not comfortable sending a 3rd grader to a school at all. In fact I feel that our child has done well, the entire 3rd grade curriculum is finished and will be moving to 4th grade in the middle of the school year since the online school supports that. Something that may not have happened in the regular school at all. So, as usual, let's not generalize - every one is different, both adults and children. We may move our child back to regular school in the fall since they can now be vaccinated.

mbg721 5y ago
This is interesting to me; my wife and I had a child recently, and our immediate response was "This is going to be a shit-show for years, let's look up how home-schooling works." If nothing else, we'll be spending a lot of time on the Star-Bellied Sneetches.
- yumraj 5y ago
  Yes it’s going to be a shit show for years and we’ll all have to adapt, including figuring out what works and doesn’t for our kids. Hopefully by the time your child is a little older things would have settled. Best wishes! BTW, we’re not doing home schooling exactly. We’re doing an online K-12 school.
  - barry-cotter 5y ago
    > BTW, we’re not doing home schooling exactly. We’re doing an online K-12 school. You're following a set curriculum while the teaching is almost entirely being done by the parents and child. You're a great deal more similar to a homeschooler than normal schools. If you finish all your work for third grade in a regular school you do not go to fourth grade.
    - yumraj 5y ago
      > You're a great deal more similar to a homeschooler than normal schools. Yes you’re right. What I’d meant was that we’ve not had to spend time in figuring out what the curriculum is and how to cobble together the course material - the basic structure is provided so it was easy for us to transition to it.