I live in a affluent area. The public schools suck because everyone sends their kids to private schools. Some say people go to private schools because the public schools suck. I guess it's a chicken-egg thing.
Point is that there is a lot of money in the neighborhood and similar neighborhoods in other parts of the state have excellent public schools.
What can be done to pull people away from private schools and make the public schools good?
The main problem with public schools today stems from the No Child Left Behind Act accountability measures. These were really designed to be an attack on the political power teachers unions held. But what actually happened was that testing became the dominant force driving curriculum at schools with teachers being relegated to following state mandated materials that are supposed to maximize test scores. These materials are just dreadful. My kid is in public school and had this question on a social studies workbook asking about this sentence from the lesson: There used to be over 500 Indian tribes in the United states. The question was: About how many Indian tribes were there in the United States: a) 500 b) 700 c) 900? My kid put down b. The text clearly states there were more than 500. So, the answer couldn't be 500. But the question asks "About how many". So, 500 is the right answer. These are materials for second grade.
In private school, they do not have to deal with this BS. Teachers have a lot of freedom to develop their curriculum based on what actually works and what gets kids interested. Kids actually learn a lot of stuff and ironically end up being better at standardized testing because kids with a broad amount of general knowledge consistently do better on standardized testing than kids who have spent a lot of time doing specific test prep work.
"The main problem with public schools today stems from the No Child Left Behind Act accountability measures. "
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahzahahahhaha
Wow what an idiotic statement, like the public schools were doing GREAT before that.
Try again dumb @ $$....
Schools are only as good as the people that attend them. A school that is full of low functioning, low IQ individuals will be perform poorly. A school full of high functioning, high IQ individuals will thrive.
Public or private schools have nothing to do with. The only questions is: What is the purpose of education? It is simply teaching people how to attain happiness. If someone taught you how to be healthy, how to earn a good living and how to get along with others you'd "have it made". But today the governments force their standards of "education" by law. These standards are time wasting, life wasting and provide a tiny fraction of what a person needs to know to be able to handle themselves in the world, What can be done? Protests. Just like in France. Don't let others push you around.
Precious Roy wrote:
The main problem with public schools today stems from the No Child Left Behind Act accountability measures. These were really designed to be an attack on the political power teachers unions held. But what actually happened was that testing became the dominant force driving curriculum at schools with teachers being relegated to following state mandated materials that are supposed to maximize test scores. These materials are just dreadful. My kid is in public school and had this question on a social studies workbook asking about this sentence from the lesson: There used to be over 500 Indian tribes in the United states. The question was: About how many Indian tribes were there in the United States: a) 500 b) 700 c) 900? My kid put down b. The text clearly states there were more than 500. So, the answer couldn't be 500. But the question asks "About how many". So, 500 is the right answer. These are materials for second grade.
In private school, they do not have to deal with this BS. Teachers have a lot of freedom to develop their curriculum based on what actually works and what gets kids interested. Kids actually learn a lot of stuff and ironically end up being better at standardized testing because kids with a broad amount of general knowledge consistently do better on standardized testing than kids who have spent a lot of time doing specific test prep work.
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.
I don't know how to help you, but this article might explain at least part of the problem:
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?
I truly think that public schools in these areas are bad because expectations are lower. All of the rich kids have successful parents, and those parents expect a lot from their kids and those kids have high expectations for themselves and big goals. Those kids are around a lot of other kids that have big goals and try really really hard to succeed.
Now go to a school where all of the kids I just mentioned have been filtered out of. What's left is kids that do not have as successful of parents, those parents probably don't push their kids to do well in school, they probably don't even make the kids feel like school is important. The kids at these schools do not have big academic goals and try to succeed in school, they just show up at school and hangout because they have to be there, and they do not try.
If private schools were forced to go away, these kids would mix together. Some of the 'high achieving' previously private school kids might get distracted by the non high achieving students and perform worse, but some of the previously low achieving kids might now get competitive with the previously private school kids and perform better than they would have in their previous setting.
You're always going to have some kids that just don't care, and some kids that really do care and work hard in any setting.
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?
Not the OP, but I can tell you what happened in my school district. There were three high schools for three separate school districts serving six communities.
One district served two working class communities, one middle class community and one rich community. It had excellent schools.
One district served one working class community it had OK schools.
One district served a ghetto it had horrendous schools.
The state said that the school districts were too small, cost too much in overhead, and they had to merge or lose their state funding.
When I went to the high school, ten years after the merger, it was not great, but you could still get an education if you applied yourself. By the time my younger brother started high school twenty years after the merger, it was impossible to get an education. My parents had to move a couple towns away to get to a school where he could actually learn.
The biggest problem in the high school was discipline. It only takes one kid constantly acting out to disrupt a class when you have your or five kids acting out in every class nothing gets done.
It all sounds good until it’s your own kids, and then you’ll do or spend anything to help give your kids a leg up in life. There will never be a level playing field. It’s not just money either, parents that care will find a way, there are many private and charter school options that are free for everyone or at least low income families, but the parents have to give enough of a s**t to pursue these options and there are so many who don’t.
The bigger problem with public schools imo are the disciplinary issues, and this is largely what families are leaving when they go private. I’ve coached at public and private schools, they both had no cell phone policies in the classroom, but when you walk down the halls at the public school kids were on their phones in almost every classroom. Heck I’ve seen kids vaping in class at the public school, the track kids tell me it happens daily. And this is in a supposedly good public school in a good district. At the private school they confiscate the kid’s phones for the rest of the year on second offense and vaping on school property would be grounds for expulsion. It’s the same kind of stuff with dress code, they have the same basic dress code at both schools but there’s no will to enforce it at the public school. The kids learn right off the bat that the rules are a joke. I won’t even get into the fighting and crap that happens daily at the public school and is non-existent at the private school.
The public high schools are way too big, who’s bright idea was it to put thousands of hormonal teenagers in one building together? The private and charter schools are almost universally smaller and more manageable, which they’ve realized is necessary if they want to maintain some kind of order. Many studies have shown kids perform better in smaller schools, but our public education system has never been much about education anyway. The bigger schools tend to have the better football teams so who cares how the kids do in the classroom?
Until school districts and administrators get serious about enforcing the rules within their schools, learning will continue to take a back seat to all the other crap and parents who care will continue to seek out other options.
One solution is to have advanced curriculum programs at public schools that actually separate the smart kids out and hold them to higher standards. If parents know that is an option they might not feel the need to send their kids to private schools.
noprivate wrote:
I live in a affluent area. The public schools suck because everyone sends their kids to private schools.
I take it this is *not* a money thing? That is, at least in MA, parents sending kidz to private school does NOT absolve them of property tax, thus the publik skools LIKE pvt and homeschool, 'cuz money fo' nuthin'.
Thus you may mean that affluent kidz behave better? Are smarter? Are you dog whistling? What do you mean, exactly?
This is an article from Nashville about how terrible the schools are now that there is virtually no disicpline allowed by teachers.
I don't know how they get anything done, or why they even try any more.
noprivate wrote:
What can be done to pull people away from private schools and make the public schools good?
Nothing. Not in any useful time frame anyway.
Why not just move to a town (likely affluent) with GOOD public schools?
https://www.niche.com/k12/search/best-public-high-schools/Wait, I thought liberals were pro choice? Oh yeah, that's only when it comes to murdering babies.
Tnrunnah wrote:
This is an article from Nashville about how terrible the schools are now that there is virtually no disicpline allowed by teachers.
Praise G-d I live in a country where I can pack up and MOVE. Move WHEREVER I WANT--or am willing (as opposed to able) to pay for. Or even if I can't afford a place, I can *definitely* find a town with awesome schools that I *can* afford.
Sheesh. Just. Move.
Misappropriating the great Sam Kinison: "Don't send them money, send them U-Hauls!"
My Thoughts wrote:
If private schools were forced to go away, these [rich] kids would mix together. ... [and] some of the previously low achieving kids might now get competitive with the previously private school kids and perform better than they would have in their previous setting.
So. What?
What would *really* happen? Those with the means would move to a different, freer state. Duh. This ain't (yet) Soviet 'Merika.
I think a lot of school systems around the country were stung by the 2008 recession.
I know that in the county that I live in, teachers haven't had raises in the last 10 years and they have been slow to build schools or refurbish existing schools even as the population in our county has been exploding (which should lead to higher tax revenue for schools to use).
There hasn't been a will to invest in public education.
People of means with school aged children aren't going to wait for things to get better while their kids are growing up. You can't stop the aging process.
So they send them to private schools in the meantime.
If the public schools were nicer, these parents would prefer to save money and send them there.
And of course that would help the lower income kids as well.
Schools don't suck because of a lack of funds or anything of that nature. Schools are only as good as the families that send their kids to those schools. With 50% of kids being born outside of wedlock among the millennial generation, it is safe to say that 50% of the kids going to the schools are coming from broken households. Where I live, there isn't much of a private school alternative (a handful of private elementary schools, no private high schools). The private schools have been displaced by charter schools. The reason they tend to excel while the mainstream neighborhood schools fail is because nuclear families go through the hassle of getting on the wait list early and the schools can offer an advanced curriculum because they have united families sending their kids to those schools who can give the students the resources and encouragement to be successful. Good schools are the product of good families.
I grew up in a very affluent community full of doctors, executives and millionaires. The school district was really bad. Now as an adult I wonder "Why didn't the parents back then do anything about it?"