6 ms·

If public schools weren't awful, there would be no need for charter schools. The public school experiment has failed.

femiagbabiaka 3y ago
Tell me you only follow policy in the US without telling me: exhibit one. The public school “experiment” has been purposefully sabotaged is more like it.
- linuxftw 3y ago
  The article is about US schools.... so? How can one sabotage a house of cards? Failure was inevitable.
  - femiagbabiaka 3y ago
    I don’t believe that public schooling, an actually lindy institution worldwide, an institution that was working quite well in the US up until about the 70s and 80s (wonder what happened then hmm) that has produced world renowned schools in the US in particular, is more of a house of cards than the Potemkin village that is charter and private schools.
    - linuxftw 3y ago
      You'll need to provide evidence that public schools were working well in the 70s and 80s. Graduation rates today are higher than those decades. High school was optional for many parts of the country. The reason for the outcry now, is that we measure everything, and even the wealthier areas of the country are unable to perform to any reasonable standard.
      - femiagbabiaka 3y ago
        Note: not working well in the 70s and 80s, working will up until the 70s and 80s. But gladly, this is a great resource: https://nces.ed.gov/pubs93/93442.pdf https://nces.ed.gov/pubs93/93442.pdf. Combine with this: https://sci-hub.se/https://www.jstor.org/stable/1804780 https://sci-hub.se/https://www.jstor.org/stable/1804780. At the exact point in our history that we should've accelerated spending in public resources we did an about face in the opposite direction towards privatization and the growth of the administrator class. All of our institutions (healthcare, finance, infrastructure, education, etc.) have been low-productivity money pits since then.
        linuxftw 3y ago
        Graduation rates and attendance were even lower before the 70's, so I'm not sure what fantasy world you might be referring to. Are you referring to segregated schools? That probably wasn't an ideal system.
        femiagbabiaka 3y ago
        Oh. I assumed we were sharing information, not exchanging insults. I'm not sure what segregation has to do with anything, the data doesn't align, and many of the states focused on are in the north anyways. If you can't see the gigantic drop in test scores, lower velocity on all fronts save spending, and corresponding drop in productivity then that's ok.
      - smolder 3y ago
        Graduation rates don't actually reflect on the quality of education, I don't think, unless you're controlling for a lot of other variables. I don't typically see people controlling for them, e.g. a politician might brag that graduation rates are up in their district, arguing that education has improved, while ignoring the underlying reason that standardized tests got easier or the schools spent more time test-prepping and less time educating.
    - Dracophoenix 3y ago
      > an institution that was working quite well in the US up until about the 70s and 80s Was it really? With corporal punishment, public humiliation, and outright bullying? I would never want to live or return to a time when in loco parentis permitted schools to be run like fiefdoms.
- HDThoreaun 3y ago
  My district spends $29k per student. More than almost any other in the world. Yet some of its schools are so bad that a quarter of high schoolers opted out. It's not about funding. It's an overwhelmingly blue area, politicians are not purposefully sabotaging the schools. The government is just utterly incompetent, and worse, corrupt. And unfortunately many of the students are from households that don't emphasize the importance of education.
  - pharmakom 3y ago
    > More than almost any other in the world. You should only compare to countries with a similar cost structure.
    - HDThoreaun 3y ago
      Replace world with almost any place you can think of and the statement remains true.
  - econonut 3y ago
    Your implication that conservative politicians are more likely to be sabotaging schools than democratic politicians is hilarious. I'm quite certain both sides are equally adept at throwing good money after bad so long as the present policy they pursue is fashionable and focus group tested. They're incompetent, as you say, or, perhaps, they just aren't willing to risk their own political future because the changes that might make a difference will be unpopular with voters.
    - HDThoreaun 3y ago
      My reading of "purposefully sabotaged" is that whoever was in charge of the schools decided to make them worse for political reasons, like not believing in public education. I'm not aware of any dems doing this. I certainly agree that they have accidentally sabotaged schools through incompetence or corruption, but that's a much harder problem to fix than "just don't vote for people that don't believe in public education". My point was that elections here are almost always about improving public schools, but the government has not been able to over the course of decades. Call their stewardship what you will. Purposeful sabotage, accidental sabotage, whatever, doesn't really matter to me. What matter is that the government is not capable of enacting the voters will of having good public schools, which is why charters are so popular.
infamouscow 3y ago
> The public school experiment has failed. The American education model was modeled on the 18th-century Prussian education system designed to create docile subjects and factory workers. And by the measure it was actually designed for, I'd say it's an astonishing success. It's why you can be a high school graduate but not literate. I encourage you to do your own research on the father of American education: Horace Mann.

Tell me you only follow policy in the US without telling me: exhibit one. The public school “experiment” has been purposefully sabotaged is more like it.

linuxftw 3y ago
The article is about US schools.... so? How can one sabotage a house of cards? Failure was inevitable.
- femiagbabiaka 3y ago
  I don’t believe that public schooling, an actually lindy institution worldwide, an institution that was working quite well in the US up until about the 70s and 80s (wonder what happened then hmm) that has produced world renowned schools in the US in particular, is more of a house of cards than the Potemkin village that is charter and private schools.
  - linuxftw 3y ago
    You'll need to provide evidence that public schools were working well in the 70s and 80s. Graduation rates today are higher than those decades. High school was optional for many parts of the country. The reason for the outcry now, is that we measure everything, and even the wealthier areas of the country are unable to perform to any reasonable standard.
    - femiagbabiaka 3y ago
      Note: not working well in the 70s and 80s, working will up until the 70s and 80s. But gladly, this is a great resource: https://nces.ed.gov/pubs93/93442.pdf https://nces.ed.gov/pubs93/93442.pdf. Combine with this: https://sci-hub.se/https://www.jstor.org/stable/1804780 https://sci-hub.se/https://www.jstor.org/stable/1804780. At the exact point in our history that we should've accelerated spending in public resources we did an about face in the opposite direction towards privatization and the growth of the administrator class. All of our institutions (healthcare, finance, infrastructure, education, etc.) have been low-productivity money pits since then.
      - linuxftw 3y ago
        Graduation rates and attendance were even lower before the 70's, so I'm not sure what fantasy world you might be referring to. Are you referring to segregated schools? That probably wasn't an ideal system.
        femiagbabiaka 3y ago
        Oh. I assumed we were sharing information, not exchanging insults. I'm not sure what segregation has to do with anything, the data doesn't align, and many of the states focused on are in the north anyways. If you can't see the gigantic drop in test scores, lower velocity on all fronts save spending, and corresponding drop in productivity then that's ok.
    - smolder 3y ago
      Graduation rates don't actually reflect on the quality of education, I don't think, unless you're controlling for a lot of other variables. I don't typically see people controlling for them, e.g. a politician might brag that graduation rates are up in their district, arguing that education has improved, while ignoring the underlying reason that standardized tests got easier or the schools spent more time test-prepping and less time educating.
  - Dracophoenix 3y ago
    > an institution that was working quite well in the US up until about the 70s and 80s Was it really? With corporal punishment, public humiliation, and outright bullying? I would never want to live or return to a time when in loco parentis permitted schools to be run like fiefdoms.
HDThoreaun 3y ago
My district spends $29k per student. More than almost any other in the world. Yet some of its schools are so bad that a quarter of high schoolers opted out. It's not about funding. It's an overwhelmingly blue area, politicians are not purposefully sabotaging the schools. The government is just utterly incompetent, and worse, corrupt. And unfortunately many of the students are from households that don't emphasize the importance of education.
- pharmakom 3y ago
  > More than almost any other in the world. You should only compare to countries with a similar cost structure.
  - HDThoreaun 3y ago
    Replace world with almost any place you can think of and the statement remains true.
- econonut 3y ago
  Your implication that conservative politicians are more likely to be sabotaging schools than democratic politicians is hilarious. I'm quite certain both sides are equally adept at throwing good money after bad so long as the present policy they pursue is fashionable and focus group tested. They're incompetent, as you say, or, perhaps, they just aren't willing to risk their own political future because the changes that might make a difference will be unpopular with voters.
  - HDThoreaun 3y ago
    My reading of "purposefully sabotaged" is that whoever was in charge of the schools decided to make them worse for political reasons, like not believing in public education. I'm not aware of any dems doing this. I certainly agree that they have accidentally sabotaged schools through incompetence or corruption, but that's a much harder problem to fix than "just don't vote for people that don't believe in public education". My point was that elections here are almost always about improving public schools, but the government has not been able to over the course of decades. Call their stewardship what you will. Purposeful sabotage, accidental sabotage, whatever, doesn't really matter to me. What matter is that the government is not capable of enacting the voters will of having good public schools, which is why charters are so popular.

infamouscow 3y ago

> The public school experiment has failed. The American education model was modeled on the 18th-century Prussian education system designed to create docile subjects and factory workers. And by the measure it was actually designed for, I'd say it's an astonishing success. It's why you can be a high school graduate but not literate. I encourage you to do your own research on the father of American education: Horace Mann.