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My mother is a school board member in a rural school district in Northern California. What I can from conversations with her is that it is often not the distric
by Osiris 14y ago
My mother is a school board member in a rural school district in Northern California. What I can from conversations with her is that it is often not the district's fault when there are issues, but the state's.
The district is forced to come up with a budget months before the state approves their budget, so they don't even know if they are going to get the money they need.
When money is low, they have gone to the community several times trying to pass a property tax to raise funds to keep teachers and maintain their facilities. The community has refused to fund the school each time.
The district is constrained by their contract with the teachers which forces them to keep the most incompetent and highly paid teachers and get rid of the good but non-tenured new teachers (which are the ones that the students want to have).
The way schools are funded are a major source of the problem. For example, they are funded per student with no regard for facilities, transportation, or other fixed costs.
Lastly, there are too many crippling regulations that don't allow for flexibly to meet the various needs of students in varying districts. What works in the large LA County district is just not going to work in rural northern California.
Throwing more regulations, tests, money, etc. at the system is not going to fix it. I really wish that a large group of educators (K-12, post-secondary), administrators, parents, etc. could get together and work out something different, perhaps even radically different.
- cheez 14y agoTL;DR send your kids to a private school.
- factorizer 14y agoright. why fix the system, when you can be part of an elite?
- imbriaco 14y agoBecause your responsibility is to your kids and not to some idealistic vision of what you could be doing to improve the school system as a whole.
- wpietri 14y agoFalse dichotomy. Your responsibility as a parent is to your children. Your responsibility as a citizen is to run your government effectively. Captain TLDR above is basically saying "fuck other people's kids", which is abdicating his civic responsibility.
- chii 14y agoNobody has any inherent civic responsibility. They may choose to, at their discretion, participate. Your only responsibility is to follow the letter of the law, in such a way that benefits you the most. If one believes that the private education sector serves their kids better, so let it be for them. The welbeing of other people's kids is at most a passing concern, and it would be in fact unfair to your own kid if you had the resources to "improve" other kids but not focus it entirely on your own kid. YOu might think such a philosophy is selfish. I would agree, but only because not everyone is following such a philosophy (and of course, other inherent unfairness in the world, like amount of money you have). But such is the world as it is. I don't hold it against anyone who does the same, for I also would choose to do the same.
- wpietri 14y agoNope. Democracy is strictly a participatory sport. One's only obligation under the law is to follow the law, but that's a tautology. One's moral obligation is deeper. Of, by, and for the people: that's how we roll. Citizens who don't do more than the bare legal minimum are parasitic shirkers. Which they are legally allowed to be. But I am legally allowed to point out that they are selfish assholes. And I will.
- icelancer 14y ago>which is abdicating his civic responsibility He pays taxes that goes to schools, doesn't he? Otherwise, I am pretty sure he didn't sign a contract that said: "You are responsible for improving the well-being of kids you will never meet."
- 14y ago
- schreiaj 14y agoHow does being part of an elite come into play when it comes to parents wanting their children educated in the manner of their choosing?
- enraged_camel 14y agoBecause that privilege costs a ton of money that only the upper middle class and the elite can comfortably afford? That said, i agree with imbracio: parents' primary responsibility is to ensure their kids get a good education, rather than worrying about fixing a system that is unfit able in its current state.
- danielweber 14y agoA private school education is not really expensive in most of the country. Think around $5000 a year. I know that's not pocket-change to many people, but you hardly need to be "upper middle class" to do it.
- natrius 14y agoIt'd be within the reach of more families if they could take the money that would be going towards their child in the assigned public schools with them to the school of their choice. I don't understand why that idea became a partisan one.
- argv_empty 14y agoMost of the objections I heard were about putting that public money towards religious schooling (the interaction of government and religion being a fairly well-established as a partisan issue).
- danielweber 14y agoI'm not necessarily supporting the concept, but this seems a strained objection. It's equivocating the word "public." People who get social security (which comes from the government, and so is just as "public") can use it for religious causes and no one bats an eye. And SCOTUS has approved vouchers funded via tax credits.
- steverb 14y agoOr part of the broke. You can try and help fix the system (and probably fail) while your children suffer, or you can opt out of the system altogether and make sure your kids have the best education you can provide for them. Many people make an entirely rational decision that their resources are best spent keeping their kids out of a broken educational system.
- keithpeter 14y agoI work as a teacher in the UK, in a Further Education college ('community college' in US I think). The UK has a completely different system for funding and quality assurance in state schools, so I'm not commenting on the original article or much of this discussion as it would not help. I will say that some of the best and worst teaching I have seen has been in institutions outside of the state funded sector. Caveat Emptor.
- 001sky 14y agoThought experiment: This analysis is based off a premise that schools are for the purpose of <teaching>. This is no longer true. Schools are institutionalized means of baby-sitting and controlling large portions of the countries otherwise-unoccupied poplulation. Thus, they are run more like prisions than universities. This seems to explain the empirical data in a way which shows the system as 'functional' rather than 'disfunctional'. Although whether they are 'fit for purpose' is a political question, of an entirely different stripe. =/