the new mathFollow

It's that damn liberal controlled Department of the Interior, they're always strong-arming the President, Congress, and the Supreme Court.

Solvable how? What do you see as the major issues and how will they be smoothed over?

Anyone can say "Yeah, there's lots of problems but... it'll all be swell"

Jophiel you're an astute person, or would you care to disagree? You should be smart enough to realise that a question such as that doesn't further this in anyway. If I were capable of solving the issue fully by myself do you really think I'd be wasting my time talking about it on a gaming forum? No one here has the data necesarry to come up with a complete solution, but we can discern a proper direction here.

Do you not see a privatized school system as a progressive step in the right direction? If not then why?

So they have fewer choices? How is this an issue?

Shadowrelm, I feel deeply sorry for your child. If you get your way, she will have all her capacity for seeing a forest instead of trees drummed out of her by her rigid martinet of a father. (Also, if she learns anything from how you write, the poor kid will wind up in remedial English. Don't let this happen!)

Teaching kids to estimate is important. Kids who don't learn to estimate--to look at the bigger picture--are the kids who won't recognize an error that gives them a preposterous result (such as a negative number when calculating distance). Estimating is what allows astronomers to make use of a Hertzprung-Russell diagram. It is what allowed generations of mathematicians use slide-rules instead of calculators and computers. It is what allows statisticians to make sense of their data. It is what allows chefs to know how much cornstarch to add to thicken the sauce. It is what allows even the dimmest yahoo to know he has enough money to buy two six-packs of beer or three without having to labor over the specifics.

Obviously it's important to get the right answer sometimes, maybe even most of the time. It's also useful to be able to get a "right enough" answer and to know when that'll suffice. If you're re-tiling your bathroom, you'd better be right; if you're just buying curtains for the window, it's "right enough" to know that the window is about 24 inches high so you can go ahead and buy the 28-inch-long curtains instead of shelling out more for the 36-inch-long ones.

So instead of ranting about the inefficiency of the school system (and using appalling grammar and spelling in the process, I must reiterate), why not try understanding why the teacher is emphasizing something you don't consider important? And how else is a standardized test going to measure a child's ability to make an educated guess, if not by asking her to choose the best fit from a list of multiple-choice answers? It's certainly not the only important skill a kid learns in math class, but it's far from a meaningless thing to teach.

Being able to make a quick, accurate initial assessment of a problem instead of having to work it out in a plodding, linear fashion is a hallmark of intelligence, not stupidity. It is likely what the test and the teachers are trying to inculcate in students. But in your rigid little mind, you probably don't understand this. You are probably one of those prim and fussy little men who keep everyone waiting in line at the grocery store while you laboriously record your check (which you didn't write out beforehand, because annoying people never do) in your bank-book so that your balance will be to the penny.

You are one of the many reasons I lost my desire to become a teacher. Having to confront self-righteous mouth-breathers like you on a daily basis would have had me tearing my hair out.

My kids are "learning the FCAT" as well. The school system does do quite a bit of preparation for this testing, but there are other things outside of the example the OP posted that are taught.

I have the easiest solution yet for someone who is concerned as to whether or not their child is getting a good education:

Do more of the teaching yourself. Don't rely on the school system to teach the values or methods that you wish your child to learn.

Throwing your hands up because someone else won't do it the way you want it is absurd. You're the parent, do the parenting. Your child's first teacher is you. It doesn't take a village to raise a kid, it takes a parent.

I don't claim to know the answer to the current public school situation. However I thought I would comment on the rural town scenario. It has been my experience that the small rural town schools aren't really all that bad of schools. Most of the time the problems you see with under performing schools is in the inner city public school systems. Now I'm not saying this is always the case nor am I denying that the voucher program wouldn't neglect these people. I'm just going out on a limb and assuming most of them wouldn't want to take part in this type of thing. Like I said it is just my guess or "estimate" if you will.

I told you we were smarter.

Which didn't answer my question about those nations, though. If we're complaining about how well we score and looking to improve, it would seem the obvious choice is to emulate these other nations, not stake some completely different path.
The test scores are derived from the Program for International Student Testing. If you want to look for alternate testing scores, knock yourself out. But these are the same scores the advocates for privatization are using as their rallying cry for "changing the system". I don't think anyone is arguing with the test results from either side of the debate.
No one is penalizing you for sending your children to a private school. You can complain that you still have to pay taxes on it but, hey, I pay taxes on lots of things I don't use or plan to use. The question still remaining is: Will a voucher program make any difference in "setting kids up to fail"?

In effect, you "pay twice" when you pay taxes for something you don't use, and then pay for an alternative. I squeal as loudly as possible about anything taxed, that is then spent wastefully, regardless of my personal use of it. I don't like the idea of paying taxes for someone else to get a service I would never use. I don't think that's the best use of my money.

To answer the question, from my point of view, a voucher system here in the US will probably be very little different from existing private education institutions. I don't believe it will make large differences in either direction.

You may see a larger group of privately funded, well organized, and well advertised schools taking the population from wealthier suburbanite schools. In the end, the government in the area will just grow to use the school buildings for some new program that will just cost us all more money, and move the teachers who aren't hired into the private system to other schools. Beyond this group of people, you'll probably see little change if any in the population of the public schools.

This suburbanite population, which is by and large the proponent to this type of legislation, wants this kind of schooling, because they feel like they control their money better this way. They, as a rule, will not be interested in helping someone else's kid get better, they want to make sure their kid gets the best. The others that aren't in this group, and don't hold this interest, will not participate, or not be interested in participating in such a program.

I'd hazard to guess that a few entrepreneurial spirits out there will most likely solve the whole transportation problem that has been discussed, by making available, well advertised, popular schools near major population centers as well, just to see if they can convince that group of parents that they're better suited for their kid's education than the public system.

Will any of this change the quality of education? I sent my crystal ball to the shop after that whole thing of not predicting the Superbowl spread, so I can't say for sure.

I just can't agree that standardized testing of any form is going to be the gauge for the success of a school system. I think the real gauge is the up coming work force, and it's training and education, as tested in our real production economy.

Because this group of workers is mostly privately trained by private universities and private training organizations, and not fresh out of the public education system, I don't see how making the elementary and secondary education system also private would harm the system, if proper oversight and care is given, without being overly intrusive.

Not to turn this into a debate on taxation but this happens all the time. It's pretty much the price of doing living in a society with a government.
Then why bother? Aside from the political victory. We're looking for a system to improve education not just change systems for the sheer joy and expense of it. You might well think "control of my tax dollars" is a worthwhile reason but I doubt you'll get many new votes that way and lose many of the concerned parent votes when you admit that education won't really improve much.
This is again where one needs to fully define such a program to argue its pros and cons. Gbaji sets forth an idea of all education being private. You strike a middleground of allowing vouchers to be used privately but maintaining a public system -- an idea Gbaji says is worthless. That's nothing against you, just making the point that we don't even know exactly what we're debating

I imagine it's possible that a chain of McSchools, all allowing affordable and excellent education will set up on every other street corner, thus ensuring no one must weigh travel against learning but I'd need to see the company putting their money behind it before a vote for a system on the hopes it'll happen. The mass education administration companies I've read of so far are no one I'd pay money to.
Well, there went the basis advocates of the system are using. If they can't decry the test scores, they can't emphasis much benefit beyond political gain.

I'll see if I can answer a few of these, since they raise some salient points:



That's true. But is a pretty small segment of our education system, and isn't really the segment that's having the most trouble *now*. I also think that most people are still assuming the "large school" idea, so every kid in a small community would attend one large school. There's nothing wrong with a very small school arising from privatization. In fact, I think it would become far more common. So, instead of one school serving that small community of 10k people, you've got 10 tiny schools. Each might only have a dozen or so students, but since the funding is based on a total per/student cost, they'll be able to operate just as effectively (and in some ways more effectively) at that size.

Believe it or not, there are small private schools that have only 20 or so total students. They're almost more like a collection of home-schooling, but they still count as schools. So instead of having one school serving a 100 mile radius in a rural community, you have several smaller schools instead.

Again. Competition will determine how and if this sort of thing happens, and vouchers allow for that competition. I just don't think this will be as major of a problem as you might think.




Some schools might offer bussing as an incentive. If you've got a "smart kid" and the school wants smart kids, they'll arrange to get you there. The objective here is that kids who are really smart, athletic, artistic, or whatever else, aren't stuck in the crappy local public school, which is what often happens in todays system.

I attended a private school, and I rode the bus every day. It was about a 40 minute ride (and *not* in a rural area, I lived almost on the opposite end of the county from the school). It's certainly not impossible for schools to do this if they want to.

Again. Some schools will offer bussing. Some wont. But at least there's the potential for choice. Right now, we've got parents who are willing to drive their kids across town, or put them on a 2 hour city bus ride each way to get them into another school, but are not able to due to the public school system. This may not guarantee an improvement, but at least it makes one possible.




Remember though. There are no more "standardized tests" upon which a schools budget might matter. You're assuming all schools will have the goal of competing for the highest standards in all cases. But the government gives a voucher worth just as much to the "D" students as it gives to the "A" students, right? Schools will compete for the voucher money, not for the "best performing" students. So your D student might end up in a school that specializes in dealing with low achieving students instead of the local generic public school. That's a bad thing how?

Everyone seems to approach this as though the best/richest students will get into schools and all the other students will be left standing around with no where to go. That simply wont happen. Schools will appear tailored to the needs of each type of student. And parents will be able to choose to send their child to the best school that child can qualify for (and qualifications could vary wildly). That does not always have to be academic accomplishment. You could have schools that specialize in athletics. Others that specialize in arts. Some that specialize in science. Some that specialize in "special needs" students. Some that specialize in "trouble students". For every child with a voucher, a privatized system will find a way to provide an education that will entice that child's parent to spend it in their school.

That's the advantage here. I don't see selective enrollment as a problem at all. I see it as the greatest strength.



Expensive private schools are already out of reach of those who can't afford them. This doesn't change that at all. What it does do is create a whole slew of private schools specifically aimed at providing the best education possible for the per-student voucher value.

I'm just not sure of the point of even mentioning the 25k+ per year tuition schools. That's not part of the discussion. We're talking about whether a private school could do a better job of educating students for the same per-student cost that public schools do. I'm firmly of the opinion that they can. Of course they wont compete with the high end, high cost private schools. But they aren't intended to. They're intended to be a publically funded education that's better then the current publically funded education. So can we restrict the conversation to that area?

Well, I think you do need a standardized method of testing and comparing schools if only for purposes of accreditation and the like. Particularly in a model where we have thousands of individually owned and operated private schools, one needs a way of telling what a diploma is worth and whether a person is worth hiring or admitting to university. Likewise, we're supposed to say that parents will choose "better" schools but how are they to know which is better if any school is free to grade on their own merits and scales? You can debate "results" but (a) it'll be years before any school has a proven record of students being hired and (b) said results are open to wide intrepretation especially when they'll influence how many dollars the school gets.

There's a question as well of standardized education. Within a range, you're pretty aware of what a high school education entails and what people are supposed to learn. The programs are determined by state guidelines from elected officals and then refined by elected local board members. A lassiez-faire system of education means that my tax dollars are being "wasted" on "special atheletics schools" or "art schools" and the like. If I'm supposed to be worrying about our students competing in a global market against Japan and India and Korea, then why should my taxes be wasted on giving some idiot a 4.0 for playing football or painting pretty pictures. We currently maintain such programs as part of a rounded education but they're also the first to be cut when budgets are tight because we recognize that sports and art aren't the goal of competitive education. This isn't even mentioning the issues of tax dollars funding religious education; again, 80% of existing private schools are church affiliated. We can make strict guidelines prohibiting use of vouchers at such institutions but it's one more thing to consider.

Currently, in America anyway, the question of whether or not private schools outperform public ones is still open to debate. Cleveland's voucher program resulted in slightly higher reading scores and slightly lower math scores -- pretty much a wash for the effort involved. The public isn't overly jazzed up about the idea and many even see attempts at privatization as the government attempting to shirk its responsibility instead of fixing the system. You can argue those points but that's how people feel.

Ironicly, none of the pro-voucher folks here picked up on the fact that most Western European socialist nations use voucher programs in some form or another. I was unaware myself until I read into it last night, but that should be Talking Point #1 in the Voucher Advocate's Handbook

I mention this for the sake of disclosure. I'd hate anyone to think my previous questions about high ranking nations were disingenous for the sake of politics.

Well, I think you do need a standardized method of testing and comparing schools if only for purposes of accreditation and the like.
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yes, i agree.

the problem is attaching any kind of weight to the results. if that weight is important enough, like, say, funding for your school, you end up with kids being tought how to pass the test, which results in the test itself being WORTHLESS for evaluating the kids in the first place. it becomes tainted. not a true representation of what the kid has learned during his time in the educational system, but an indicator of how well jonny learned how to GUESTIMATE instead of learning to find SOLUTIONS to math problems.

testing itself is a good idea. attahing weight to the results is not. it taints the results making testing pointless.

the problem is not the FCAT, the problem is attaching school funding to the results.

as far as vouchers, i can only tell you they are a dismal failure both in Florida, and in Texas where they were first introduced. all they end up doing is subsidizing private school for upper middle income famileys. the poor still cant afford to pay for the other fees associated with private school, vouchers or no vouchers.

they only work for the people who need them the LEAST, which is exactly what the republican party intended. just like the tax breaks. the wealthy benifit greatly, the poor get less medical services, less housing assistance, just less.

this is the path of the moral majority.