Hypocrisy at it's finest isn't it? Let's see the Constitution states provide for the common defense which is easily intrepreted as spending the GDP of most nations on weapons with enough destructive force to make the post war Earth pointless to reside in. However promote the general welfare means telling people you're struggling? Too bad die and decrease the surplus population. Stockpile billions of dollars of nukes that can pollute and contaminate that we later have to spend billions properly disposing of. Or spend the money on education, healthcare, green energy, infrastructure? I am sure Franklin, Washington, Jefferson and all of the rest would vote for the former over the latter. Like all true patriotic Americans.
The problem with vouchers is that the children that don't get them end up at a school that only contains the biggest difficulties and challenges. At that point public schools will lose any of the gifted students, the model students, students that can push a classroom and a school towards success. It will be left almost entirely with students who are in danger of dropping out, criminal records, discipline problems, special ed students etc. If the public schools have problems now, wait until that's all they have. Also good luck finding teachers who want to teach at that kind of school. You don't make public education better by abandoning it. No child left behind is fine in concept(though it wasn't a DOE idea, it was legislation from congress.). The problem is that it wasn't funded, and then each state could determine what the requirements were and how to implement it, so that it's totally uneven. Another problem with it is that somehow eventually 100% of the students have to pass the standardized tests or that school is a failure. 100%? it will never happen, there are people who come to the country from abroad at 10 years of age, and have never stepped foot inside a classroom. There are students who some many disabilities that they have no chance to pass the test, yet somehow the school has to get to 100%. But again that isn't really the DoE.
Sounds like an excellent opportunity to gain market share by starting a school that caters to these types of students. If no one wants to go to a public school it should be abandoned. We shouldn't tolerate failure, or subsidize it. Whoa whoa whoa, you mean an impersonal federal system with good intentions turns out to be flawed and ineffective? Hard to believe. In a private system, flawed and ineffective systems fail and are abandoned. In the public system, we just fund it more. Another flaw is that your grade level is determined by your age rather than competency, and timed served in the classroom is a major requisite for completing that grade. Just dumb. In my ideal curriculum, reading/writing/arithmetic would be paramount, along with personal finance, public speaking, computer literacy, logic/critical thinking. It would be modular and largely self paced. It would be year round. But my system wouldn't be for everyone, and I would have to convince the customer of its worth. That's something the public school system doesn't have to do, they are funded regardless of how parents evaluate their performance.
If someone wanted to be in education for the money they should. If someone wants to be in education for the idea that all children should get a quality education they shouldn't. No, privates schools don't want all children. But all children deserve to have a basic education. I do agree we shouldn't tolerate failure or subsidize failure that's why it shouldn't be abandoned by the Fed, and instead be made to keep on improving. Parts of public education fail, other parts do great things, turn lives around, and provide opportunity to people who otherwise wouldn't get a chance. Better to keep improving things that work, and fix things that don't. Don't cut off the nose to spite the face.
I just read this post and laughed. Have you ever been involved in education? I don't give a damn about your time as a tutor. Have you ever been a teacher or a principal? An administrator? If not, you have no idea what you're posting about. Thank God you aren't in charge of making any decisions related to education. How do you know that curricula of any given state is lacking? Have you read through the standards and aligned them with learning objectives? Have you analyzed the relationship between those standards, state-testing scores and graduation statistics? I'd guess not. The majority of teachers and administrators work 80+ hour weeks to give students the best education possible. And yes, I am a teacher in a Title I school. Sylvan has nothing on what we provide to our population.
Unfortunately, Commodore's views might just be bat-**** crazy enough to land him a job on the Texas State Board of Education.
Do you really want to bring up test scores and graduation rates as a testament to the value of public schools? That's not really the point anyway. The point is that the standards of a state administrative agency should not be forced on me or my kids. They do not have a monopoly on education expertise, far from it in fact. My mother has been a public junior high/high school teacher for 10+ years. Our family has had plenty of conversations that start with "If I ran the school it would be X Y and Z." One thing we've talked about is cameras in every classroom, particularly in some of the discipline problem schools my mom has taught at. They would keep both the parents and teachers honest. Obviously there might be some downside to that as well. You are free to call me clueless and crazy, but I'm not forcing my standards and ideas on anyone like the state does. <object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/asd6wTlkVAk&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/asd6wTlkVAk&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object>
