How to fix the private school problem

compressed wrote:

I don't know how to help you, but this article might explain at least part of the problem:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2019/02/22/feature/how-economic-inequality-gives-rise-to-hyper-parenting/?utm_term=.931ebdf9b027

"Income inequality" is code for "the country is not completely full of retards"

Public Schools have been sub par for a long time wrote:

This is assanine, public schools had problems long before NCLB, it may not have made them better, but it certainly did not make them worse.

It has definitely made schools in low income areas much worse. NCLB also pushed for more charter schools. Charter schools are popular in low income areas because the more involved parents will line up for lotteries and drain the smarter and better behaved kids from public schools. The charters do not have to take SPED kids and can limit enrollment to fit their business model. Charters can also dump kids back on public schools if the charter fails (and this happens a lot). So, the public schools left behind lose funding because most districts fund schools on a per student basis. And they become less efficient as an elementary school with 300 kids will need the same administration, fixed ops and support staff as a school with 700 kids. As kids leave for the charters, the good teachers see the handwriting on the wall and get jobs at schools that aren't competing with charters. The teachers that are left are the bottom of the barrel who have no options other than to ride our their career at the school.

NCLB also is perverting teaching on subjects like reading comprehension. Studies have shown that reading comprehension tests measure general knowledge. A kid who has never been to the mountains or had any good classes on geography will do poorly on a reading comprehension passage about Mt. Everest, but a kid who studied geography or who gets to go to Colorado for vacation will do much better because his general knowledge makes it easier to digest the reading comprehension passage. The "drill and kill" testing companies think that kids need to practice reading comprehension skills like inferences. But those skills are being taught at the expense of teaching kids about general knowledge subjects. So, a classroom full of 3rd graders will spend 1-2 hours a day working on test prep worksheets on reading comprehension but still end up with bad scores because they have very limited general knowledge. The testing is literally making kids dumber than they would be without it.

gdtufyufyuikfyuk wrote:

"Income inequality" is code for "the country is not completely full of retards"

Tell that to the Australians, Austrians, and Belgians.

Put me in the camp that considers the Public Schools to be the problem, and Private Schools to be an imperfect solution. Several factors are at play here.

1. Schools are better when parents are involved in the education process, both at the school and in the home.

2. Integration (obviously) and busing (less talked about) removed many of the involved parents from the public schools.

Integration - because some families were either racist or didn't want to get caught in the predicted violence that would come with Change they simply left the public school sector. This is probably more apparent in the south.

Busing - In order to enforce BvB, schools - which were historically neighborhood schools - drew from much larger, spread out areas. The parents that would be involved were now physically so far from the school, involvement was difficult. This is a nation-wide issue, to my understanding.

3. Magnet schools have taken the SGA out of every public school and left them leaderless; meanwhile, the closure of vocational schools - usually due to cries that they are a racist attempt to keep blacks out of college - ensures that kids who don't want/need to be in public school are forced to attend anyway. That is true in the areas I have taught in the south, anyway.

So, the public schools suck, and many parents who want their kids to do well in life make the choice to pay tuition to a public school on top of the taxes that they already pay for education.

I assure you, very few families decided to pull their kids from great schools because they wanted to waste money.

It's a complicated system with no easy fixes. I am in favor of tracking at the middle school level, so that kids have the opportunity to take either a college prep track or learn a life skill as early as possible in high school. Yes, I know some will say that not everyone knows what they want to be by age 15... but there are lots of students who don't know what to do with their lives at age 22, either... at least my way gives them a way to be a productive, gainfully employed citizen while they figure it out.

Wow, tons of responses and no real ideas how to fix things. I was hoping there would be ideas because I have the same problems where I live. Almost all the parents in my area send their kids to the public elementary schools, but then many switch to private at the middle school level.

no fix wrote:

Wow, tons of responses and no real ideas how to fix things. I was hoping there would be ideas because I have the same problems where I live. Almost all the parents in my area send their kids to the public elementary schools, but then many switch to private at the middle school level.

It's a complicated system with no easy fixes. I am in favor of tracking at the middle school level, so that kids have the opportunity to take either a college prep track or learn a life skill as early as possible in high school. Yes, I know some will say that not everyone knows what they want to be by age 15... but there are lots of students who don't know what to do with their lives at age 22, either... at least my way gives them a way to be a productive, gainfully employed citizen while they figure it out.

I’ve worked for both:

Teachers in public schools have training, get paid more and get a pension. But you don’t choose who you teach.

Private schools demand more for less pay, little or no retirement contribution and do not need to be a certified teacher or follow laws for those with special needs (I.e. no special education). But you get to teach rich people.

Those people go to private school to get away from the poor, the diversity and “drugs.” They’ll give some black kids scholarships for “need based aid” to play basketball and football with no academic support. They throw those kids in with a coach who teaches social studies to pass. A form of segregation.

It’s about separation from the lower class.

Private and public wrote:

It’s about separation from the lower class.

Are you saying that the lower class creates the problems or that the problems are just perceived?

LOL, sew them good. Have no idea if you could sue them, but I'd like to hear from any lawyers on here because the hidden camera thing is not good.

sew them wrote:

LOL, sew them good. Have no idea if you could sue them, but I'd like to hear from any lawyers on here because the hidden camera thing is not good.

sorry, wrong thread. private schools suck, btw. white priv

I fail to see how private schools are a "problem". If someone who already pays taxes to the public school system wants to spend more of their money to send their child to a school that supports their value system, then they should be free to do so (only 14 states allow vouchers, so in most instances people are tasked with paying the full cost of the education). The problem with many public schools is not the schools themselves. It is a lack of involvement from the parents. People who send their kids to private schools simply do not want their kids around a bunch of other kids whose parents suck.

I am in favor of tracking at the middle school level and then fielding the best prospects at the college and post grad levels.

Stop wasting resources on marginal students (education is not for everyone).

no fix wrote:

Wow, tons of responses and no real ideas how to fix things. I was hoping there would be ideas because I have the same problems where I live. Almost all the parents in my area send their kids to the public elementary schools, but then many switch to private at the middle school level.

Yeah, mostly just grousing about how bad it is with little to no real world responses or suggested solutions. The problem is that what many have touched on, public schools are good IF good people are attending them. There is no school in the country that is a "good school" that is in a predominately poor black neighborhood, that just does not exist.

A lot of it goes back to that ol Psych 1001 Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. If a kid is worried about the most basic of needs like food and safety there is no way they can move to to concerning themselves with English Lit, or mathematics.

Here is what I would do, but again this is like fantasy stuff that would be impossible to implement in US public schools.

1. Smaller schools, especially HS and Middle schools.

2. REAL vocational options for kids that are not interested in college prep. I don't mean some token shop class building a bird house, I mean REAL job training. Survey employers and ask what they need from entry level employees, and go from there.

3. Differential pay for teachers. I want smart people, and I want the smarter people teaching the hardest academic classes. A person teaching advanced math should make more than someone teaching kindergarten or gym. Sorry it's just a supply and demand thing. Make it where someone is choosing between being an engineer or teaching math.

Teacher pay should not just be based on years served.

4. Eliminate tenure. It's just an outdated ridiculous system that protects the worst and does nothing to aid the best.

5. Allow those kids that are not interested in school at all to get their GED as soon as possible. Put them in GED prep classes.

6. Allow bright kids to move on to harder classes as soon as they master the subject matter. If you are in the 6th grade but you can do 9th grade work, start that kid on it, don't make them wait.

7. More "real world" classes that teach kids how to live when they are an adult. We eliminated a lot of this stuff in the 70's and 80's with the push for EVERYONE GOES TO COLLEGE and that's been a failure. Kids need to learn how banks work, car loans, mortgages, household budgets, how to shop for groceries, how much will they interact with the local government (who do you go to for car tags, pay a fine, etc...)

8. Discipline would be a very high priority. School is a place for those that want to be there. If you do enough to show that you don't care, we will move you on and out. Teachers should not fear for their safety, neither should good students have to fear or tolerate the disruptive idiots that don't care.

9. Reasonable school uniforms and dress code.

10. More teachers, counselors, academic coaches, tutors, teacher's aides, less administrators with nebulous jobs and high pay i.e. I want to take the money we spend on all these central office admins and put them on the front line interacting with actual students/parents.

There you go my Top Ten.

Private schools suck because they take away a lot of the best students which would make public schools better. It's a small minority of rich people ruining it for everyone else.

Private and public wrote:

I’ve worked for both:

Teachers in public schools have training, get paid more and get a pension. But you don’t choose who you teach.

Private schools demand more for less pay, little or no retirement contribution and do not need to be a certified teacher or follow laws for those with special needs (I.e. no special education). But you get to teach rich people.

Those people go to private school to get away from the poor, the diversity and “drugs.” They’ll give some black kids scholarships for “need based aid” to play basketball and football with no academic support. They throw those kids in with a coach who teaches social studies to pass. A form of segregation.

It’s about separation from the lower class.

Commit crime and create general disruption. Shout "segregation" when every civilized person with a choice decides they don't want to be around you.

Bad schools are bad because of the people who attend them, not because of some edict handed down from the upper class. These schools aren't even underfunded. The students at bad schools just choose to make the funding go to security and babysitting instead of education, while the students at good schools skip the metal detectors and the high salaries that are necessary to get teachers to work in a war zone and opt for better academics instead.

If I showed up for a job interview and found that the employees were robbing each other and doing/selling drugs, I wouldn't in a million years take a job with that employer. Yet I'm supposed to send my kid into just the same kind of environment every day for the sake of diluting the concentration of gangbangers by 1/3,000?

no fix wrote:

Wow, tons of responses and no real ideas how to fix things. I was hoping there would be ideas because I have the same problems where I live. Almost all the parents in my area send their kids to the public elementary schools, but then many switch to private at the middle school level.

The only example that I can think of as a fix for poor parenting is an extended learning time school that goes from like 9AM-5PM with no homework for the kids. It has met with moderate success in Massachusetts and New York. Basically it helps confront the single mom epidemic that is so prevalent in this country.

Of course parents staying married and having kids when they can afford them is the better solution, but somehow that has become unrealistic for the current generation.

Incredibly thoughtful post.

I would agree with virtually all of this. The only real exception would be #3, and even then, I think the spirit of the point is correct, even if the example marginalizes the impact that good K teachers can have on brain development.

There are places, particularly in the south, where almost all of the affluent kids go to private schools. Those same parents, who are politically and socially connected, push to keep property taxes low. The result is that public schools are not well resourced. It is basically the segregation academy model. It may be true that the entire part of the country might not qualify as affluent. Maybe those just have higher income inequality. In the city where I currently live approximately 70% of the school age population is white. In the local public schools only 40% of the school population is white. A high percentage of white (and affluent) local kids go to a large network of private schools, many of which were founded as segregation academies. It is not ONLY about race, but there is no doubt that this tracks largely by race in the south. There is quite a bit of money but also quite a bit of low wage service occupations here but tax rates are low and schools are not well funded compared to other localities in the state.

Define ‘affluent’ wrote:

I have never heard of a part of the country that was truly ‘affluent’ that didn’t have a great tax base and as a result, good public schools, even w/ some parents sending their kids to private schools.

So I think one of these is true:

1. Your community is not really that affluent (maybe only small pockets are)

2. Your public schools are actually pretty good.

3. Your town is in a school district with poorer communities, bringing down the quality of the public schools (usually in this case the rich town will pull out)

Care to clarify?

Precious Roy wrote:

The main problem with public schools today stems from the No Child Left Behind Act accountability measures.

No, public schools were a disaster long before No Child Left Behind. That act certainly didn’t help however.

There is no reforming public schools. There is only mitigating the damage they do to some children.