Should taxpayer dollars be used to fund private education?
 

Guys,

I am doing research on this topic and I would love to hear your opinions. I am of the opinion that no taxpayer dollars should be used to fund private education. What do you think?

Are you talking about how taxpayers will pay kids (usually inner city) to go to private schools because their school is inadequate for them?
Or that the state funds private schools?

The state funding private schools is a big no no. That is why we have private schools as an alternative. If someone doesn't want there kids to go to public school, they should pay for their kids by themselves.

On the other spectrum we get inner city kids with a lot of potential that want to get out of the inner city so they have a better chance of success later in life. Each child gets a certain amount of tax dollars that fund them going to public school so the issue is should the government pay that amount to private schools so the kid can go there instead? This issue I'm pretty much 50/50 on but until we get better education in the inner city, I will have to go with letting the kid go to private school but you have to limit the number of kids.

I think the last thing our public schools need is for their funding to be siphoned off and sent to private schools, which is what this question boils down to. I'm against it too. But I'm not sure how you can turn a failing public school around. I know cutting its funding will just make it sink faster. You might as well just close it to start with if you are going to do that.

I think the answer is clearer when asking an analogous question:

Should tax dollars be used to build private roads?

The idea that taxpayers should foot the bill to send a child to a private school because the state has failed to provide an adequate public education to that child is the very pinnacle of stupidity.

Private school must remain private. And no, parents who send their kids to private school should not get a tax break any more than I should get a tax break for not driving on a road the state just built.

Rich kids get a better deal than kids who aren't. This is also true in Communist China.

should the people that do not use public schools have to pay school taxes? Should tax credit be given for tuition paid to private schools?

Absolutely not. The idea of a government supplied commodity is that you cannot opt out (of the burden or the benefit). It only works when participation is mandatory.

Opting out would eventually cause entire school systems to collapse. The costs to provide an entire education system are not incremental - schools, once built must be paid for. If a school is built for 1,000 kids and 300 opt out that leaves the remaining 700 families to cover for the 300 that left.

And it kind of kills me to hear the argument: why should a bright kid be forced to stay in a bad public school when the state could send him to a good private school? Some might worry about the one bright kid in a bad school. I worry about the 99 kids behind the bright kid that no one seems to care about. The bright kid should stay and the 99 kids who've been cheated of a quality education should be sent to private school to catch up.

The federal government needs to exit stage left and leave educating our most precious national resource, our children, to the state and local level. That's the first step towards closing the gap between public and private schools and making the entire question (the original question) moot.

But the taxpayer is already footing the bill one way or the other; the money sending the ambitious inner-city kid to private school is in theory being directly taken away from the crappy public school. It's your money, if you had a choice wouldn't you buy the better product?

Edit to add:

I'm totally with you here.

Of course that is perferable but that won't happen. Inner city schools are just on a downward spiral with multiple reasons why they are failing. I don't see how switching the 99 kids would solve anything because you don't fix the source of the problem. Plus, I would like to find a private school that would accept those 99 kids. The way I'm looking at it is that I would rather save one or two kids instead of having them all fail. Saving them all would obviously be the best idea but it is not an option.

That's the problem. Its not being taken away from the bad public school. Its being paid twice.

If the bad school costs 100,000 per year to operate and there are 100 kids in it than the cost per kid is 1,000. Removing one child from the school does not reduce the cost of operating that school by 1,000. Teacher salaries don't drop, fixing the roof isn't any cheaper, running the school bus isn't any cheaper, the light bill doesn't drop, etc. Yeah, you might save fifty bucks in books but you haven't saved any money by pulling Jimmy Neutron out of Wee Suck Elementary to use to pay Einstein Academy.

What Fairfax County did, and its public school system is already very good, is create a magnet school within the system to send the best and brightest to.

The problem is that of those 99 kids, about 40-50 of them are the real problem. The only reason the bright and average kids are being cheated out of a quality education in the first place is because the school must spend time and resources dealing with the kids who can't be made to care. Personally I'd like to see more options for expelling the bad apples from traditional schools and putting them in vocational training instead, which will ultimately be more helpful to them than a class like World Geography anyway.

I can see the validity of this argument. and accept it. The families that can afford, or choose to make it a high enough priority to send their kids to better schools, can always fall back on the public system if they lose the ability to.
this part i have a big problem with. especially that last sentence. educational socialism? i don;t have time to flesh this out right at present.....dammit

That sounds like a good idea, but it does mean that a lot of the 40-50 top kids would suddenly be ranked in the lower half. It is politically preferable that the vocationally-oriented kids stick around, so that everyone who wants to be, can be ranked superior.

Austin has done that with several schools. Except they turned it around--they declared the worst schools to be "magnet schools" to lure the bright kids to transfer in. That, plus strategically rearranging their students with complex bussing (kids on one side of town go to a school on the other side) they've ended up with a bunch of mediocre schools and no really good or really terrible ones. Which is one form of success, I guess.

I don't mean this literally. I'm adament that the state should not send any child into the private school system.

My point is that the focus of this issue has always been the one bright kid when I think it should be on the "other 99 kids."

We (us - you and me) are not going to fix the school system by getting Jimmy Neutron's SAT from 1150 to 1250. We WILL fix the school system if, through our efforts, the average SAT for the entire school (as but one measure of success) increases from 820 to 890 or 910 or 950.

One other problem of allocating school funds to paying private tuition is that the choice of how to best use the funds becomes a Sophie's choice of resource allocation.

In other words, this year the school system budgets $300 to send 3 kids to private school. That $300 was not spent on public education - it was withheld from the public school system to "right a wrong." Next year, there is a budget surplus of $1,000. So, do we hire an extra teacher for public school X (which would be a huge help to all 500 students there) or do we send 10 kids to private school?

Going to a bad school will hurt the kid in more areas than just an SAT score. He/she will probably take a lot of crap from the other kids which will hurt his or her self esteem and motivation. Just a different set of friends or just a group of friends in general can work miracles with both getting someone ahead and pushing them down.

If you want to fix inner city schools you have to:
Get more after school activities
Get rid of the idea that they are second rate to white suburban kids
Get good influences in the building (teachers)
Reward good grades
Pound in the idea that they need an education to get anywhere
Get rid of the idea that a 'gansta' life is glorious

If you look at them, a majority of those are mindsets, inner city kids are screwed before they even start. Giving the school more money will help a little bit but won't solve anything.

When considering the problems in education, if you had to choose, would you say this is a social issue or an economic issue?

Actually, that is not true here. In California, the schools are given money based on the head count. If a school has a high drop-out or truant rate, the funding is cut according to the population change. At this time, many schools have flat-out lied on their reporting in order to avoid having their funding cut to the point that they would not even be able to continue operating.

When I was a kid in North Carolina many years ago, the schools were funded by property taxes collected in the districts they served. As a result, the more wealthy suburbs had fantastic schools, the urban areas had strong support, and the rural areas (of which there were a lot more in those days) did not have good facilities and children often had to be on a school bus for an hour coming and going. Not to mention that until the mid-1960s we were segregated. In my time, the education system of North Carolina was considered one of the best in the nation, now it is considered at the very bottom of the list. What happened? The Feds took over, to make everything fair and legal. Before, some areas had considerably better advantages. Now, everybody has equally crappy facilities and not enough funding no matter where you live. It is hard to imagine how the situation could be made worse, but the Republican brainstorm to use tax credits for the rich to send their kids to private schools, further reducing the inadequate funding to public schools, would definitely do it.

Where did anyone first learn the numbers? An assumption without first learning facts: private schools must be better education. An assumption based in business school logic: because the education is more expensive, then it must be better. Folks - this thread is chock full of assumptions better described as lies. No wonder George Jr thinks we are all so dumb as to believe his lies about an Iraq Surge.

From the NY Times of 14 July 2006: Remember the point I have been making for years. The mental midget president is such a scumbag as to even have Cellar dwellers promoting his politically inspired speculation and lies into facts. Meanwhile, Ameican soldiers are being wasted to maintain the glory and legacy of that same liar. To adult Americans, it should be THE MOST IMPORTANT FACT ON THEIR MINDS. The scumbag mental midget lies routinely even to massacre American soldiers to protect his legacy. He even has some in the Cellar promoting his education lies. Why do you think I saw throught the scumbag mental midgets lies in 2002. I came from the public schools. My most accomplished friends - and everyone in the list I believe to be millionaire? All product of public schools. All came from families of moderate means.

I would say social, it isn't that we don’t' have the money to fund the inner city schools it is just that we don't know what to do with the money. If you send more money to them it will most likely be wasted, if you don't send money it only makes things worse.

In Wisconsin, there is a nation wide test and the schools that get a higher score will get more funding while the schools that get lower scores get less. I don't get the point of this except to make the rich richer and the poor poorer.

I don't know what public school you are talking about. I am talking about inner city schools not suburban schools, where you have a good point. Suburban schools are very good and are arguably better than private but inner city schools? I would like to see statistics saying that those are better than private.

tw brings up a good point nevertheless. I still think we should get some inner city kids out of those public schools and move them to better public schools. It won't cost any more money to taxpayers and give some kids a better opportunity to succeed.

Send more teachers not more money. Smaller class sizes means better outcomes for everyone. From the literature I've read, that is one of the biggest challenges faced by inner urban schools in large cities in the US. Of course, that's once they actually get the kids to go to school. Poor attendance is another huge issue which is again a social one.

Even that class size assumption has been proven, in studies, to only be a myth. Somehow assumptions again promoted as fact.

I'd love to see some research which supports your statement TW. Having done a fairly large portion of a degree in secondary education, I've read a lot of research to the contrary.

The results in Newark NJ were famous. Did you read it? Annoying. Yes - because reality is that blunt. State of NJ took control of the Newark Education system. They threw so much money into it that students in Newark had more money per student than any other state public school. And still the school system was not performing.

Money does not solve problems. If it did, then GM cars would be the world's best. Instead, GM cars are among the world's worst. When money is a solution, then we have communism or graduates of the business schools.

It is a well proven fact even in schools. 85% of all problems are directly traceable to top management. No way around god's 1st commandment. Without first learning concepts of quality, then a solution is not possible. What is the enemy of business school propaganda? Concepts even taught by William Edward Deming. Another cited an example previously: 'The Goal' by Goldratt and Cox. Different description. Same concept. Too touchy-feely for some because it also requires another important principle - coming from where the work gets done.

Throwing money at a problem is what Ross Perot described as GM's problem. Roger Smith - classic MBA - would throw money at problems as if money were a grenade. Want to see which schools have better top management? Look at the parking lot on Parents-Teacher night. 85% of all problems are directly traceable to who?

One of the biggest problems in education is poorly managed devolution. That is, giving management of schools to people like headmasters etc. On the one hand, they have student skills (presumably) but on the other, often little or no business management knowledge.

In Australia, education is becoming a huge industry. Schools are responsible for themselves and have to apply for funding grants. Get this! In Qld, private schools recieve more government funding than public! Families who can afford it send their kids to private schools, and poorer families have to put up with what they can get. It's a shameful situation.

Parents and teachers have a big impact but the whole social situation will weigh more. I gaurantee there is the same amount of corruption in suburban schools as in inner city schools yet one outperforms the other by a huge margin. Social forces outweighs this example and there is no way around it.

tw, are you arguing my point or backing it up? We were saying the same thing.

Well explain why those private schools with smaller class sizes underperform public schools? There are studies that claim smaller class size causes improvement. And studies that show just the opposite. IOW it is a wash. There is no difference correlated to class size. But it does hype more money for schools.

A correlation between percentage of staff that actually teaches verses improvement has been demonstrated. When the principle even teaches at least one class, then the school tends to perform better. But there is nothing concrete that relates class size (ie class of 30 verses a class of 15) to better performance. Just many contradictory conclusions.

Apparently, when class sizes exceed 30, then some negative trends have been observed. But that is not being discussed here since industry controversy was about classes of 30 verses classes of 20 or 15.

Again, back to the point. Private schools do not outperform public schools - once we eliminate hype and myth from religious schools and from the lying president. Which are the worst performers in math? Conservative religious schools. So we should give them tax dollars?

Hmmm...I think you could be talking out of your arse TW.

We conflict on details. But the problems in education are the same as in GM. 85% of all problems are directly traceable to top management. Any solution that ignores that 1st commandment is suspect.

Like any business, education has plenty of room for innovation. And innovation does not come from business school 'experts'. Fundamental to all innovation - management must come from where the work gets done. "No child left behind" is so often cited by my education friends as how to destroy education. I am not familiar with the details. But their animosity to business school expert rationalization - including this so called superiority of private schools - is rather attention grabbing. It amazes me how a mental midget will somehow know what education needs when this same president has no qualms about killing American soldiers to protect his legacy; will destroy science to promote his man to Mars nonsense.

“Stupid is as stupid does". So where does this myth about private schools being better come from? Look at the intelligence of its promoter: George Jr proverbial liar.

So you are telling me private schools provide superior education? So you are saying we should spend tax dollars on private schools?

Private schools offer a better education because it has become a self fulfilling profecy. When you tell people they can buy a better education for their kids, they'll pay for it through they eye teeth if they have to. This means that private schools generally have more money and therefor better resources to aid learning.

They also offer better social capital which is really the main benefit kids get from private schooling. Believe me, the 'old boys' club doesn't start when you're an old boy. It starts when you're about 6.

So, the wealthy kids go to private schools. They create networks of friends and acquaintances while they're there and then when they take over daddy's business, they have a neat little package to go with it.

Education is not just about educational outcomes. If you believe that, you're living in dreamland.

#1 - Parents
#2 - Parents
#3 - Parents

If the parents don't raise the kid to respect the teachers, school and education in general, there's trouble from the git go.

If the parents don't keep in touch with their kids teachers, how do they know the kid didn't buy a box of gold stars at the corner store.

If the parents don't ride herd on the school board, how do they know if the money is being spent in the right way, in the right places.

Fuck that village raising your child...that's your job.

I pay a lot of school taxes. I've been paying a lot for a long time. I don't use the facilities, but I don't grumble too much because I believe in public education. Maybe a little when you get a tax break because you have spawn, but I don't, even though I spending a whole lot on those spawn.

And I more than grumble, when I see the schools wasting large sums on stupid stuff. Case in point; the high school pays consultants $500,000 to come up with a plan...wait for it.....to make the school look and feel less like an institution. That half million is just for the ideas....millions more to do it.

Maybe if the place looked and felt more like an institution, the little bastards would be better behaved.

I'm ranting, sorry.

Parents! ;)

No, I don't think tax dollars should be spent on private schooling.

Yes I do believe the long term benefits of private schooling can be beneficial to children.

No I don't support private education. I support the public system here in Australia and endeavour to ensure the longevity the system while encouraging reform.

The reason is because I believe every child has the same right to the same education. I don't think education should be granted depending on how rich your parents are. I believe it's a social issue and one that must be addressed with all urgency.

Every peer I believe to be a millionaire is self made and a graduate of public schools. Private school friends did well. But clearly the most successful were all public school graduates. That's not dreaming. That's hard reality.

As xoxoxoBruce notes: parents, parents .... 85% of all problems are directly traceable to top management.

Remove hype from lying political extremists (ie George Jr), and facts remain - as even City College of NY demonstrated: public schools tend to outperform private schools. City College has a long list of Nobel Prize laureates and other famous American success stories. So now the rich or religious extremists want us to pay for their inferior schools. Sound exactly like the George Jr philosophy of enriching the rich at the expense of those who don't contribute to his campaign funds.

So is the American public going to fall for it TW?

Again, I don't believe the government should fun private education in any way. Private is private.

I pay about $800. a year in school taxes. I don't plan on sending my kids to our local school for a very long list of reasons. If I could opt out of paying my taxes I would, because a good portion of my taxes is going to pork barrel stuff.

I seriously doubt that if people could opt out you'd see the mass exodus of students since the law requires that they be schooled. (NY law anyway) and in our state it is more expensive to home school than to pay your school tax, and you need to be at home instead of work to home school or you need to spend a heck of a lot more than $800. to send your kid to a private school.

You just won't see the numbers fleeing if opting out was possible.

What percentage of your tax dollars are actually going to things you agree with anyway? Any guesses?

I totally, totally agree. I mentor a child in a bad section of Austin in a school that includes the child residents of four housing complexes and at least one homeless shelter. I see this every time I go there and especially when I talk to my mentee: they see life on welfare and in public housing/shelters and as a young unwed mother as normal because it's all they know. My mentee is the 4th child (other sibs are 19, 18, and 15) of a 35 year old mother who is pregnant again, this time with a Down's syndrome baby, which promises to be disastrous for both baby and family. Dad is in prison, and she was with her older sister at the mall a few weeks ago when the sister got busted shoplifting. They live in a homeless shelter, mom works at a fast food restaurant, and mom *claims* that she's off the bottle for the pregnancy but everyone is a little doubtful about this. There is no hope for change in this situation but for what ambition my mentee brings to the table, which is the reason I am there. As a relatively successful woman of 35 with no kids and no dependency on the government or drugs/alcohol, my purpose is to be proof to her that good choices yield a good life. I am one of the very few good influences in this child's life, which puts no small amount of pressure on me, but I'm happy to be there.

That said, a private school for young women is opening in Austin in honor of Ann Richards, our former governor, who was a strong, dynamic woman who overcame the gender barrier to become Texas' first elected female governor. She is known for overcoming alcohol addiction and catapulting women, Hispanics, and blacks into government positions formerly held only by white males. I've seen applications for Ann Richards' school in the counselor's office at my mentee's school, and I really hope that some of those kids will be able to attend that school and see a world bigger than the squalid one they live in so that they can strive to achieve a better life for themselves.

If a kid shows potential and has ambition, I'm all about sending that kid to whatever educational opportunity will best make that child shine and become a more fully contributing member of society. There is nothing to be gained by anyone to limit the potential of brilliance because the average kid or below average kid can't do it. It's just this kind of plan that I believe will reduce our nation from a world power to a nation of polar haves and have nots within 50 years.

amen
Parental engagement.

For someone who will probably end up teaching in a publicly funded program, I have an odd take on this issue. Public education should only be for the poor or disabled. PE allows parents to disengage from their children's lives and makes the state the parent.

How bout we spend the money better to improve the public schools lessening the need or desire for privatized education? Perhaps if we actually tried to fix what is broken instead of abandoning "the 99", we would not need to have as many private schools, thereby lessening the burdon on the system.
I don't believe that one cent should be spent on private education - period. Thats why its called private not public.

What is the goal of education? The state has goals for your children, do you?

I'd be interested in hearing more about this point of view, because at the moment it has absolutely floored me, so I think I have either misunderstood you, or you have access to information I don't.

I went to a state school (what you call a public school) as did almost everyone I know. Some of these people did have parents who disengaged from their lives, but this would have been no different if they went to private school.

In fact the few people I have known who went to private school were more or less left to get one with things - one person's family seemed to have the view that as they had paid for their son's education they had done more than most and therefore discharged their parental responsibility.

In an ideal world I think all children should attend state schools. The money that is currently spent on private education could be funnelled back into the state system via fundraising drives and donations from those who could afford it. Children would mix with all classes, types and abilities at school and therefore get a better understanding of different classes, abilities and lifestyles. And those who wanted more for their children could supplement state education with extra curricular activities. The great and the good who care about their children's education would make far more of an effort to raise the standards of state schools if it directly affected their own children.

I know it will never happen, I know it's impractical on many levels but I also know it's similar to the way I was educated until I was 12 and it gave me a great start in life.

Well said Sundae. I am totally opposed to private education. I am appalled that for every one parent who, faced with a child's education being mishandled, is able to pay to rectify that, there are thousands of parents who have no choice but to put up with it. If there were no such thing as private sector education, the state schools would be a damn sight better and a higher proportion of our children would recieve a better education than they currently do.

All you are proving there tw, is that more money and smaller class sizes do not, alone, a solution make. That in no way proves that extra funding and smaller class sizes have no effect. I don't currently have the info to hand, but this was something tackled during my literacy support courses and there is plenty of evidence to show that better staff : pupil ratios improves overall results.

I also, like everybody I know, was educated in a state school. There were problems, the funding was inadequate (in the days of Thatcher this was), the teachers were underpaid and striking intermittently, books had to be shared and the school had just sold off its sports block for use as a privately run gym. Nevertheless, I got a decent education: I didn't get to learn Latin, but I did get to learn French, German and a little Spanish. My history teacher and my English teacher were both awesome teachers and completely lovely people (proper teachers, y'know, suede jackets with brown cord elbow pads, khaki desert boots and the unerring ability to spot a pupil-led plot before said pupils had even fully formulated it). Back then, it really was a tiny percentage of pupils that attended private schools and the individual examining authority had a lot more say on curriculum.

Nowadays, we are rushing headlong into a deeply privatised education system, with failing schools being strong armed into public-private status and specialist and grammar schools being allowed to leech the most able and leave behind a school which gradually sinks until it can be forced into Academy status. The curriculum is centrally set, and the specifics of teaching more and more heavily prescribed. Changes to the curriculum and structure of children's education are effected in knee jerk reactions to adverse results. Wholescale alterations which throw the baby out with the bathwater, or seek to reinvent the wheel.

Faith based schools proliferate, furthering the divisions in our society, and exposing our children to myth dressed as science; sometimes replacing the local secondary school and drawing its pupils from families who are dismayed but trapped into the system.

We over complicate the system. Education is not a simple thing, but nor is it rocket science. Well-trained teachers, enough to fully staff a school; funding for materials and books and, dare I say it, musical instruments and the odd museum trip; enough flexibility for teachers to do what they are trained to do and enough authority control to enforce standards and allow accountability.

I went to a horrible public school. We were trained to have low expectations, keep our mouths shut, and stay in line. Based on the present conformation of American society, I'd say these lessons were well learned in many places.

Individual teachers, administrators, and philosophers do care about children, but the system's purpose is to create fodder for corporations and cannons. It is a creaky system left over from the first half of the last century when mass society demanded a uniform product of minimum standards. Much like our army we're geared to fighting the last war. Even now the national standards craze further consolidates power and stifles innovation. Our inflexible system is creating inflexible people.

It is true that parents will avoid being responsible for their children no matter what system is in place. The question for me is, who bears ultimate responsibility for children? Euros believe in socialism and public schools are the backbone of that system, unfortunately some of us see that system as another form of slavery.

Absolutely! The states goals for my children and my goals may or may not be very different. My goals are for my children to be properly prepared for college and beyond. The state may recognize that some children may not have the drive, desire or whatever to go onto college and therefore their goals may be different. I recognize that in some places the goal is just to get them through - that is not all I want.

Luisa may want to look at this-

http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/index.htm

I didn't realize that Gatto had fleshed out his ideas about American education. We apparently see a lot of this the same way. When you look at his ideas remember that he was New York's teacher of the year in '91.

What I didn't express very well was that the majority of parents I knew growing up were very much involved in their children's lives. My niece and nephew are at state school and trust me - there isn't an aspect of their lives that my sister doesn't currently have input into.

Perhaps British schools involve parents more? When I was at secondary school (12+) I can't remember a month going past without some sort of communication between the school and parents for one reason or another- school fete, musical, carol concert, voting for the Board of Governors, athletics team schedule, Parents' Evening etc etc.

The parents of course. I can't stress how much I believe that. It's very difficult to take a child from a home where there is no respect, discipline, love of learning, manners etc etc and expect them to perform well in school. And parents are responsible - ultimately - for their children's education. But they are also responsible for their children's health - it doesn't mean that every parent should be capable of performing surgery on the kitchen table. I know it's stretching the point, but it is more cost effective to educate children together and I believe it is reasonable to raise taxes to do so.
We have had a right-leaning watered-down socialist government for the last 10 years. In the last 100 years Conservative rule has far exceeded Labour or Liberal rule. I grew up seeing access to education as practically a right, rather than a socilalist ideal. And I grew up under a right-wing Prime Minister.

I prefer to see it as a form of freedom. It doesn't matter whether your parent is poor. They might have a low IQ, or they might simply be lazy. If you work hard and are blessed with some natural talent you will be able to use the education society has given you to benefit yourself and indirectly society in return. I thought that was one of the central tenets of American life - that any child can grow up to be the President?

This how I think we can ease the situation.

Pay the teachers more and on performance. Teachers get paid shit and no one can deny that. No one wants to become a teacher anymore so the would be best in the buisness go off in different fields. I also think that paying teachers based on how long they have been working is horrible for the system. Teachers have no motiviation to teach well and like any other person, will do the minimum and try to just get by.

Along with bad parents, this is another big hitch in our system. Without any motivated teachers, there is no way to make a class interesting for the students, even kids interested in that topic. Get good teachers back in the system and it will start to flourish.

But don't the rich kids parents who send their kids to private schools also pay taxes that subsidize the public schools? In which case, isn't that an imbalance in the educational funding? After all, they are paying taxes for school system to which their children are not participatory in? So, just for the sake of arguement, shouldn't the private system be subsidized so the parents can get benefits from their tax dollars as well?

Keep in mind, I have not changed my stand on the issue. I just want to hear all sides here :)

My take on it is that it's no different than celebrities paying 40% tax on their income, which amongst other things helps to subsidise drug counselling and treatment on the NHS. They pay again to book themselves into a private clinic when their own addictions get out of hand. If it's important to you, and you can afford it - go ahead. Just don't take funding away from people who have no other choice.

We pay taxes for the benefit of society - so that poor people's children have a chance to grow up to benefit society in return.

No, no, no, no, no. Everyone must contribute to paying for public schools or the system will fall apart. It is like having the choice to pay social security taxes or give to private charity, if you were given the choice and everyone gave to private charity then welfare would fall apart. It is the parent's choice to send their kids to private schooling, they shouldn't hurt other kids becuause of their choices.

This is often repeated, but I'm not sure I believe it. There are lots of teachers in my family. All of them are able to lead solid middle class lives. I briefly considered teaching when I graduated from college. I had no certificate, so I was only qualified to work in a private school. Those private schools really did pay shit to beginning teachers.

I know that teacher pay varies wildly by location, but in my hometown, Arlington, VA, a beginning teacher get $42K, the average teacher salary is $69K and the max teacher salary is $91K. I don't think they are underpaid. See page 37 of this report for all the jurisdictions in the DC area. By the way, Prince George's County, which is a high crime area in Maryland, with many minorities, has a similar pay scale. Beginners $41K, Average $55K and max $84K. Those schools are worse than Arlington's schools, so it's not just about money.

Also, those figures are for nine months work.

Griff: Thanks for the John Taylor Gatto link. I put that up a couple of years ago when we had this conversation in a different form. I see there is a lack of parental engagement and a desire to make the schools responsible for *everything*. But I think that is also part of the zeitgeist; you know, complete abdication of personal responsibility.

As Piercehawkeye points out: Maybe the system falling apart wouldn't be the worst thing. (somewhat tongue in cheek) It is being disemboweled by the current admin anyway. "No child left behind" could also be "no child allowed to proceed" depending on how you look at it. The push to make schools "faith based" would be another way of funneling an enormous amount of tax money (which would still be collected, just redirected) from schools to halliburton and bechtel etc.

An educated populace is a liability for our current admin and they know it. You can't have a democracy with out an educated populace.

I need to eat lunch now. and then have recess.

Speaking of lunch, at our local school the kids get a 20 minute lunch break. The grade schoolers have lunch at 10:30 in order to accomodate the middle and high schoolers in shifts in the cafeteria. Recess? 15 minutes.

That's not living, I wouldn't wish that on an enemy.

Glatt: Well maybe it was just where I came from. I think my school paid almost three times less than the surrounding schools so that issue got pounded in my head year after year. Teachers do get a lot of benifits so if a teacher has a spouse that makes a decent living they could live pretty well together.

Wise words. We don't elect officals on issues anymore (did we ever?) but on popularity. Sometimes I get the feeling that the presidential race is more suited to be a Homecoming King kind race than an actual poltical race.

I doubt it. Most teachers I know do so much work from home that if you averaged it out to an hourly or weekly rate of work it would be way more than 9 months work. Bear in mind also, that just because the schools close for 9 months, does not mean that teachers stop working for the other three. Most teachers I know do a lot of work during the holidays: administration type work; learner progress charts; marking work; writing lesson plans; engaging in additional training to keep up to date; escorting classes of children on school camping trips etc.

My experience is different. Public schools were more flexible whereas the private (read Roman Catholic) schools were of the grind 'em down and form them into drones, regimen.

Living in the suburbs, bordering on rural, public school was local and for High School, bussed to the city. They had three High Schools, Classical, Commerce and Trade. The names pretty well describe the schools goals but it worked. Then when it was my turn, my town and the next town, built a regional High School, which I had to attend or go to private(RC) school.

Now instead of three choices with three distinct paths, there was Public/Private school that was college prep or skate. Either you were going to college or they didn't give a shit ....as long as you weren't disruptive. Here's your diploma. You can't support yourself? We're always looking for bus drivers and crossing guards.

A halfway decent system should realize that some students can't or won't go to college, and provide alternatives. But hey, don't blame me....I just pay thousands every year, I have no input.:rolleyes:

What do private schools teach? Why do conservative Christian colleges do particularly poor at education? This was demonstrated in the Cellar on 3 Aug 2006 entitled:
Evolution’s Backers in Kansas Start Counterattack Substancially missing in their curriculum was math and science. Calculus and statistics not taught. No wonder a student is so easily manipulated in attributing it all to god. As one student from a Christian College noted (when his only math is called business math - better called accounting); we are being trained to spread the word. How is that any different from Middle East Madrassas so criticized by conservative western leaders; schools that also train extremism – religious inspired politics? Why would we criticize Middle East governments for financing their 'private' schools and yet do same domestically?

Just like reasoning for Saddam’s WMDs, this advantage by financing private schools is predicated on popular myths. If the problem is quality of education in public schools, then fix the problem. Instead micromangers want to impose massive programs from the top without first learning the problem. Will throwing money at a problem solve it? Yes when the micromanger comes from business schools. But then those same people said Einstein could run any restaurant better – a concept taught to micromanagers in business schools.

Will making class sized smaller solve all problems? Yes where the micromanger read some study – rather than also read the other studies that demonstrate no. But again, the devil is in the details. Micromanagement is the concept behind “No child left behind”. I don’t know any education industry professional who talks kindly of that micromagement example. Details quickly get lost in executive summaries and micromanagement. Forgetting details – such as what is the problem – and taxpayers should now finance private schools.

Nothing would solve all problems.

Making class size smaller would solve some problems. If class size were irrelevant, then there would be lecture halls in elementary schools.

The public school, which contribute to fabulous American success in 1900s, is an investment by every worker. Only countries that educated everyone achieved. Even if it is an illegal immigrant who will be here the rest of his life - we all pay for his education because that is investing in America's future.

The average student costs more than $20,000 annually to educate properly. You want to send your kid elsewhere? Fine. But like the single man and grandparents - we all pay annually to educate kids in public schools. We all must make that investment annually. That was America's secret to success. That invest is necessary for America 20 and 30 years from now. Unfair is to not have everyone paying annually for the education system.

Want to send your kid to a private school? Fine. Nobody is stopping you. But still, just like every taxpayer who does not have kids, you must pay for a public school system - to invest in the nation.