Vouchers for Private Schools & Education.

Question in passing from an outsider: Are all/most private schools in America religious, like it's the case in France?

Seventy-six percent of private schools have a religious affiliation, while the remaining 24 percent are nonsectarian.

Okay, I did not expect the percentage to be that high.

edited 24th Jan '12 2:56:03 AM by feotakahari

This creates an obvious problem with replacing public school with private school vouchers: A threat to secularism.◊

My experience with people from a private religious (catholic) school is that you don't actually have to be part of the religion to attend.

But doesn't it transpire to some of the taught stuff? Like history or the obvious sex abstinence education?

From what I understand from talking to them, there's a junk "saints" class which isn't much worse than many other junk courses that you have to meet. I don't recall discussing sex education as it's not something that comes up frequently.

Two brief points:

1 - Teachers are more united about which courses are necessary and which are icing than you might think. I have NEVER heard a math teacher arguing for fewer language arts classes — or vice versa. Likewise, I don't know of any core teachers who would suggest that elective classes are "useless." A strong elective program allows students to have SOME say in their education & fosters exploration and individuality.

2 - Abstinence-only education is rampant in public schools, not just in parochials.

I am strongly in favor of elective programs, much more than I am of having a large body of mandatory courses and an elective tacked on. I am referring to the concept of adding a course such as a computer course to the mandatory curriculum. Either an elective needs to be removed (and if this becomes the default, you wind up with nothing but required courses after a while), or a mandatory course needs to be shortened/cut.

If you'd like to argue about what courses should be on the mandatory curriculum and which courses should be offered as electives, that's starting to wander off the topic.

Well, there are alternatives. (And not that I agree, in most cases, with adding mandatory courses.) But a rotating schedule is one possibility - the new coursework is studied during class A on one day, class B the next, and so on. It takes a bit of getting used to, but it can be done.

And if it's a course that's to be added to all grade levels, the school could just shorten all class periods and add another period to the day.

I have no problem with the existence of private-education options, but I'm uncomfortable with funding private business with public tax dollars.

Adding another period to the day still shortens the amount of class time each subject has compared to how it was.

If we want, we can use a specific example. Where should we make room for a computer literacy course?

Depends. Is it mandated by the state, or does the school itself feel these are valuable skills? If the former, then you're kinda stuck. If the latter, I'd look for ways to incorporate those skills in the core classes. Math & Science classes could benefit from using social networking technology to study poll data. English and Social Studies classes could look for digital copies of original sources, type reflective essays, and so on.

Even if you're required by the state to have a computer literacy class, a school could look for ways to offer different types of courses that would fulfill the requirement: clerical typing, web design, statistics, journalism, creative writing. This would still give students some choice in how they wanted to go about meeting the requirement.

In the context of adding classes to the curriculum, I would expect that decision to be made at a higher level than a local school. A lot of those decisions are made at the state level. I still think teachers should have some input on that, but when it comes to changing the course requirements I'd expect some sort of state committee to be in ultimate charge of that decision. (This doesn't mean that there isn't some back and forth between teachers; in fact such a committee would probably work better if it was staffed by teachers, or at least people with a long experience in the education system and not just some stooge of the textbook publishing companies or other influences.)

And shit, the computer courses at my school were basically just typing classes. Not exactly useful or challenging the way it was structured. This was nearly ten years ago, and I'd hope that it would have updated by now.

So what skill loses the class time to make room for the new skill?

The issue with a lot of computer courses is that they're being taught as either a typing class (which would belong in the language arts class) or an intro to Comp Sci, which should be an elective since html code work is bad. Or at least, that's what mine almost ten years ago was like. How long ago you took a course definitely a problem when dealing with your own experiences when compared to modern courses, isn't it?

Computer courses are one of those courses where there's incentives for teachers to keep learning about their subject, though. My mom got offered incentives to do things like attend classes to update what she knows, and she's an art teacher. I imagine that's even more important for a technical computer course. Don't assume that teachers stay static. When they can they keep learning themselves so they can better teach their students. Well, the good ones do, anyway.

I suppose that's one of the areas we differ in our view. You seem to have faith that a large percentage of teachers are good at their job. I stick with my assumption of a bell curve with the big blob in the middle being mediocrity, until proven otherwise.

You're also assuming that every single teacher makes no effort to keep up with the subject they teach. Apparently including those who teach computer courses, in which it is vital to keep up with because that stuff changes so much in the space of a year. Now, I can't say that schools are updating their tech every year, they can't afford too. But we shouldn't assume zero effort on the part of the teachers when that simply isn't true.

All I know is that, the teachers in my high school were pretty badass.

I'm not actually sure how much the education for the classes have changed (standards or not). The computer course thing was an example of a class being moved onto the mandatory section of the curriculum. If you want, we can pretend it's 1990 and we're having to argue that a subject needs to have something happen.

As for teachers not updating, I'm assuming most of them are lazy gits because I assume that about people in general as a whole. Arguing such an assumption is a bit too far off topic.

Updating hardware constantly would be very expensive and I believe many such complaints of outdated "hardware" in certain elections are just trying to throw up a "thing we can do to feel like we've fixed the problem until the next election comes around" issue than actually thought through.

You cannot be a teacher and be lazy.

Sure you can, you just suck at teaching.

I have a suggestion for how to improve the lot of teachers (and therefore the number of quality teachers).

When you go to college and decide you want to be a teacher, you can enroll for federal/state funding for your degree. The government funds your education with a loan until you receive your degree.

Once you receive your degree, the government (whichever you got your loan from) would tell you where they want you to work that year (singling out schools that badly need teachers within its jurisdiction). If you work there for a year, not only are you paid, but a year's worth of your loan is wiped out. The next year, the teacher is given the same option - work where the government wants him/her to, or begin paying the loan back. Each year following the teacher's graduation, they can work away their student loans, and the government gets teachers where they need them.

As soon as the teacher finishes eliminating their loan through working at government-selected locations for the appropriate number of years, or is ready to start paying the loan back in the traditional manner, they can look for jobs at schools they want. They'll already have experience and they can continue working without the stress of having to pay back student loans.

So what skill loses the class time to make room for the new skill?

While typing, if you're horrid at it, CAN be slower than writing things out by hand, editing is almost always faster (yay copy-paste!). Thus, typing papers on the computer actually frees up some class time.

Language arts classes also usually have standards that deal with author's purpose and/or perspective. Working with websites to determine bias or trustworthiness ties with that.

Students who are already familiar with word processing documents become 'local experts,' answering questions about which drop-down menu or keyboard shortcut to use to get a certain feature.

It hasn't been any more labor-intensive to have a student type an extra copy of our notes or assignments onto our class website than it would be to have them write it out by hand & put it in a binder as I'd done previously. From what I've seen it involves less work, and again, it's easier to edit. I also don't have to worry about pages going missing.

I stick with my assumption of a bell curve with the big blob in the middle being mediocrity, until proven otherwise.

Well, that's mediocrity in comparison to other teachers. You could say the same about oncologists: as a group, you've got a bell curve, with the big blob in the middle being the "mediocre" ones. But I'd think that "mediocre" in that case would mean highly trained and quite effective.

Highly trained is a sound assumption, effective is something that needs study. And a willingness to say "this is the level of failure I am willing to accept" which a lot of people have issue with. Take for instance the dollar amount attached to a human life, no one likes discussing it, but it is something that has to be factored in unless you take the "perfection or bust" route. Same with education I guess. One of the problems with using a voucher system is that a lot of the prositives that come from private schools stem from being optional and the screwups getting shuffled off, which wouldn't be allowed in a voucher system. Or you'd just have a bunch of kids who didn't get accepted to any school, anywhere.

Yup. NCLB, with its 100% proficiency requirement, is one example of "no one wants to admit that perfection is unattainable."

http://www.storiesfromschool.org/2012/01/who-deserves-my-time.html

This blog post sums it up well on a personal level.

http://www.joebower.org/2012/01/stephen-krashen-on-poverty-and-literacy.html

Illustrates the utility of reducing poverty.