Schools with varying degrees of funding.

I'd imagine that has something to do with that fact that even if you are religious, a good education makes you more moderate and open minded than being put through the propaganda machine that is the public swchool system and nothing else

Maybe it's drastic, but since I have consistently heard that private schools are much better and more varied than public schools, maybe we should just scrap this awful system and make it a voucher thing, so that the poorest families directly get money to send their kid to whatever school they are interested in and qualify for? At best, transportation should also be provided, and anti-discrimination laws should tighten up a notch so they don't get harrassed off of the campus for being lower class. This would save the government a bunch of money, too, because middle and upper middle class people would just pay their own money for their kid's schooling.

edited 3rd Aug '11 9:44:58 AM by OnTheOtherHandle

"War doesn't prove who's right, only who's left." "Every saint has a past, every sinner has a future."

Existing private schools do tend to be better, namely because they have a vested interest in providing a high-quality education. There's also that they tend to be able to select their student base, so they generally have things like available parents, good surroundings, etc.

When private schools are expanded out, the results are pretty much the same as you get for public schools, except people feel better about it.

http://educationresearchreport.blogspot.com/2011/07/school-vouchers-have-little-effect-on.html

Democracy is the process in which we determine the government that we deserve

The problem with that is even a private school cant do much if the electorate is convinced schools are worthless and offers no help at all in teaching a child to be attentive and to want to learn.

A voucher system won't really change anything.

Private schools tend to be better because the people who send their children there pay tuition in addition to their school taxes, and usually at a much higher rate, relatively speaking. And that tuition is set at a level that allows the school to maintain their funding at whatever amount-per-student they want.

State vouchers can't be the same as normal tuition on a per-student basis— the states simply don't have that much money. So the private schools would have to take more students that aren't paying the same amount, which will have the net effect of lowering the amount of money they have to spend per student, which will drive their expenses up without an equivalent rise in their income, which will, in the long run, do nothing but make the private schools worse.

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

Well, that sucks. So there's probably no viable solution that doesn't involve a substantial tax increase, which no politician will dare suggest because it seems people hate taxes more than they value education?

"War doesn't prove who's right, only who's left." "Every saint has a past, every sinner has a future."

at least in the midwest, a lot of people velue hard work and blue collar life to such a degree that they see going off to college or the big city as "trying to reach for the stars" or "something you should be convinced not o do because honest work on a farm is much safer"

The fact that they get to choose their students is one of the important things to remember. When comparing schools the best ones aren't those who have the best graduates, but the ones who improve their students the most.

Laws are made to be broken. You're next, thermodynamics.

When did Teachers become so hated in this country?

It boils my blood to see Fox News talk so much trash about them.

It's a vicious cycle - teachers are undervalued and not paid much, so in many cases only people who have no choice but to accept such little pay take the job, and such apathetic and frustrated teachers make people undervalue teachers even more and pay them even less. You get out what you put in - it's rare that a passioante and talented teacher is willing to work with such little money and respect.

"War doesn't prove who's right, only who's left." "Every saint has a past, every sinner has a future."

The right has been very successful in stigmatizing unions, which includes teachers under the umbrella. The left has yet to make a serious counterattack in defense of them that I've seen despite the fact that a simple analysis of how education works in foreign countries would make it very easy to defend strong teachers' unions as a concept.

Plus, you know, scapegoats are fun.

Furthermore, I think Guantanamo must be destroyed.

Tom: Funding for schools have been going down not up. Especially with everyone trying to cut corners to save. Pity they don't cut into their own personnel pay roles instead of taking out of things like schools systems. Also a few states that makes it harder to get rid of teacher in one school district does not=all schools/all unions/all states.

Who watches the watchmen?

Well, both sides are largely to blame. The education system technically isn't that short of money, now being an exception due to economic trouble, but the money's often misappropiated so that little of the money actually makes its way to the classroom.

Then there's the fact that teacher's unions have made it near impossible to fire incompetent teachers. Trust me - I've suffered quite a few.

My mother's a teacher, so I asked her today what I thought of the issue. She said that the schools that are worst off are in impoverished regions with lots of drug abuse and gang violence, and she has no idea how to fix that—money alone won't do the trick. (Also, our state has a perpetual influx of immigrants, and even as they learn English, new ones arrive who don't speak it.)

Also, on the subject of teachers' unions: At one private school, there was no tenure, and teachers weren't in charge—the founder invited her richest acquaintances to be on a board of directors with her, in the theory that they'd donate money to the school. They got ambitious, voted her off the board, and started trying to dictate the teachers' actions. One teacher refused to write recommendations for kids he didn't think were qualified, so he got forced out on trumped-up pedophilia accusations. Between this and the sex scandal the new head of the board got into, the school turned into a battleground, and a lot of good teachers quit. The replacements were inexperienced at best and sadistic at worst, and they made life hell for numerous students, including me. Teachers' unions could have avoided all that.

edited 3rd Aug '11 1:43:13 PM by feotakahari

That's Feo . . . He's a disgusting, mysoginistic, paedophilic asshat who moonlights as a shitty writer—Something Awful

Thread hop:

I didn't feel like reading all the stuff that I specifically stated that all discussions about education in America degrade into and destroys any chance of fixing the education system.

Stop talking about unions. It has no correlation to anything.

• You've funding problems in impoverished areas. You know Canadian teachers get paid like nearly double the salary as inner city American school teachers. Who the heck, who actually has merit, would want to work there?
• You've idiotic standardised tests which ruin the ability of students to learn because teachers are too busy trying to get high test scores. Metrics are used to measure the success of a policy, not to base actual funding or salary upon. This has been proven to be true in every single industry.
• There's no set curriculum and the places that do set it, have ridiculous requirements on how to teach stuff. The point is to get qualified teachers, let them know what you want students to learn and then let them handle it. It's why you delegate tasks.
• Let unions handle their labour problems stop turning every damn discussion into "I hate unions" vs "Unions are great".

edited 3rd Aug '11 1:50:07 PM by breadloaf

Relevant, for good teachers:

edited 3rd Aug '11 2:26:23 PM by Madrugada

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

where the HELL does that stupid saying come from anyhow?

Those who cant, teach?

Oh sure. lets just ignore that MOST GODDAMN DOING IN ANY VAGUELY RELEVANT FIELD OUTSIDE OF R&D COMES FROM PROFESSORS.

I swear, thats the sort of smug, idiotic shit that makes people in america think Factory work or farm work is more honorable and prestigious than teaching.

edited 3rd Aug '11 3:15:08 PM by Midgetsnowman

"South Korea has the third best education system in the world, they pay brand new teachers 3 times as much as veteran teachers in america. "

So you just argued that a school system with that much funding is only the third best? Unless you show me it is dead third in funding, either it's less than third in funding and thus funding isn't everything, or it's more than third in funding, and thus something other than funding is at work...

South Korea is as high as it is for many factors beyond funding.

It's simple stats, per pupil funding goes up, scores stay the same or get worse 1

edited 3rd Aug '11 4:05:19 PM by deuxhero

And you just killed your own argument by using the Heritage foundation as a source, which has a vested interest in keeping funding for schools low through low taxes.

edited 3rd Aug '11 4:05:11 PM by Enkufka

Very big Daydream Believer. "That's not knowledge, that's a crapshoot!" -Al Murray "Welcome to QI" -Stephen Fry

No, my argument doesn't contradict itself.

Using a source that is simply showing existing statistics (they list where you can find them) has no impact on the validity of the statistics.

^^ By that logic anything from Daily Kos, Move On.org, ACORN (or its successor entity), and other such places is equally invalid.

Which isn't to say they aren't... but if they did articles that consisted entirely or primarily of stats pulled from reliable sources (well, as reliable as government numbers are anyways), the stats wouldn't be invalidated.

personally, any time I see South Korea Listed high in anything, the first thing that comes to my mind is how distorted the claim is by other facts we arent being shown.

Stats are nice. In context. But its very easy to modify context to fit whatever the fuck you want them to unless you provide corroborating data.

edited 3rd Aug '11 4:13:53 PM by Midgetsnowman

I say that Heritage is a bad source because it intentionally distorts statistics as well as redefining concepts to suit its own agenda, such as by claiming that people aren't poor if they have a refrigerator. Daily Kosher is a blog aggregate site. ACORN is government funded. And this is off topic.

Also... ACORN? what the...

edited 3rd Aug '11 4:52:50 PM by Enkufka

Very big Daydream Believer. "That's not knowledge, that's a crapshoot!" -Al Murray "Welcome to QI" -Stephen Fry

What is there to distort? The test score vs per pupil funding is pretty clear for an arugment on school funding.