The public schools are awful. We are told this over and over, again and again, by politicians of both parties. They are terrible. They fail students. They are the reason America is not competitive. They are leaving children behind. Teachers in public schools aren’t accountable. They aren’t good. They don’t care. If you’re lucky, or rich, you can get your kid into a private school. Otherwise, you’d best hope for a charter school. God forbid your kid ends up in a public school. She’s pretty much screwed if she does.
We are told this over and over again. And very soon, we will be told this by a professional, heart-rending film, Waiting for “Superman,” by the same guy who directed An Inconvenient Truth. It’s a film that tells the story of students desperate to get out of public schools, because public schools suck.
But do public schools suck? We take it as an article of faith that they do, of course, because all the serious people agree they do. In reality, public schools do as good a job as any other school at educating students — they just don’t do it with flash and publicity. Instead, they do it day after day, year after year, under withering, unyielding attack from all sides.
We should know this, of course. The percentage of Americans who hold high school degrees has never been higher. The percentage of Americans with bachelor’s degrees, likewise, is higher than it’s ever been. And these trendlines have not suddenly changed since the advent of charter schools; no, educational outcomes have showed slow, steady improvement over the past three decades, improvement that build on top of rapid improvement between the 1940s and the 1980s. And this growth has not been built on improvement for white students only; African-American students have seen significant improvement in outcomes, to the point where 84 percent of African-Americans aged 25 now hold high school degrees, compared to 87 percent of the population at large. And all at a time when private school enrollment was declining.
Still, we hear that the public schools are terrible. Awful. Waiting for “Superman” wrings drama out of five students who are trying to win lotteries to get into charter schools, where they’ll do much better, we’re told. But will they? No. They won’t. Students who attend charter schools have the same outcomes as students who attend public schools.
This shouldn’t be surprising to anyone who knows education policy on a deeper level than slogans. Charter schools were never supposed to take the place of public schools. Instead, they were supposed to function as educational laboratories, places where educators could attempt novel experiments with willing parents, to see if educational theory x was a great idea or not. If ideas worked, they were supposed to be used in the public schools; if not, the charters were supposed to be disbanded.
Instead, charter schools have functioned mainly as a way for hucksters to gain public funds to grind their personal axes. This is not to say all charter schools are bad, of course. But too many charter schools function as barely-concealed religious schools, or schools that think education has been declining since the fall of Rome. Needless to say, unions, certification, and qualifications are verboten at many of these schools, founded by anti-union true believers, who think that the only thing standing between our children and utter enlightenment is the fact that teachers are teachers, and not temps.
This is not to say that America’s education system is perfect. No system is perfect. And we can have a reasonable discussion about how best to address that. I would start by eliminating high-stakes testing, myself, and I’d continue by getting schools out of the social-justice business. There’s no reason, for example, that schools should be providing breakfast for hungry children — they simply do because we refuse to fund any other safety net, and schools manage to wring money out of the lunch budget. We could also talk about ways to better identify “good” teachers and ways to eliminate “bad” teachers — for everyone, including teachers’ unions, agrees that both exist. But hopefully that discussion would not focus on test outcomes.
Yes, of course we should do things to improve our public schools. But all things considered, our schools do a pretty good job of doing what they’re supposed to do — teach our children. They can’t, unfortunately, fix imbalances in the socioeconomic system, stabilize unstable families, and provide students with an equality of opportunity. But that isn’t the fault of the schools — it’s the fault of the country.
All public schools do is serve as the one institution in our society that takes all comers, no matter your race, religion, gender, disability, sexual orientation, or socioeconomic status. For that, they are demonized, and for that, they are marginalized in favor of newer, shinier, non-public options. And for that, we should all be ashamed.
What I can say with assurance is that the public schools I attended sucked.
90% public school through my childhood. I had mixed experiences as a kid. Same as an adult with children.
Many public schools do suck. Probably fairer to say that many schools suck, period. However, more fail can be attributed to student/parental behavior and decisions than to the schools themselves.
Teachers unions get more of the blame than they deserve. They didn’t put education into the ditch, though, they just do their best to stop anyone who comes along to try and get it out.
Just as a side note, you might want to be aware that graduation rates for high school and even college entrance rates are poor proxies, at best, for whether the public school system is any good or not. The shittiest system in the world can have 100% graduation and college entrance rates if the culture of corruption has become extensive enough. You’d probably have spotted this logical flaw yourself if you weren’t crippled by that public school education. ;)
I’m curious to know why you think that removing “social justice” programs such as breakfast for poor children from public schools will improve them so much that you’d list it right after eliminating high stakes testing. While feeding children does not directly promote the goal of educating them, it is damn hard to educate a hungry child, and I don’t see how before-school breakfast programs (or providing meals during lunch for that matter, would this also be on your chopping block, since parents can pack lunches?) actively detract from the educational process.
Denise —
It’s more that schools spend their time and resources on social justice programs when they should be spending them on education. Granted, there will be some overlap, but when we force schools to open their lunchrooms over the summer because we can’t be bothered to feed actual people through any other program but schools, we end up forcing schools to put their time and resources into feeding people. That’s not what schools are there for. We would be better served by creating a more robust social safety net that actually fed people — but that is not something I’m going to hold my breath for.
Jeff,
Schools are an obvious and effective location to place social justice programs aimed at children. Not only is Denise right that hungry children don’t learn, but schools are a natural place to feed kids breakfast. I assume you aren’t advocating getting rid of school lunch programs, so schools already need to have cafeterias.
Schools also make great locations for providing child health services, and even better places for teen health services including contraceptives.
Obviously, school budgets should be designed so the social justice component doesn’t compete with the education component for budget. Indeed, the School Breakfast Program and the National School Lunch Program reimburse schools for providing free breakfasts and free lunches, with funding coming from the USDA rather than the Department of Education, so free breakfasts don’t compete with education budgets.
Schools are also the logical place to house dormitories for at-risk youth, conduct civil defense training drills, provide a place for the militia to meet, serve as the locus for universal genetic testing and family counseling, and install any portals to the hell dimension that your plotlines may require.
That they’re a great or logical place to do something doesn’t change Jeff’s basic point:
You can have one top priority at a time. If educating your kids is your top priority, great. Now be aware that *everything else you try to do*, no matter how worthy or terrific an idea it is, is going to take time and energy away from that top priority.
The tradeoff may be worth it; not everything has to be optimized for output. Maybe the school breakfast saves eighty-three lives a year in your district, and maybe that’s worth the resultant 0.4% loss of energy and focus among school personnel.
But if you want to focus on the brass ring, focus on the brass ring, and don’t pick up gold coins along the way, even if they’re real shiny. And there are few things that have to be done *by the school* – if school breakfast is so critical in a place, then have the school loan their facilities to the local service organization that volunteers to provide the breakfasts. That won’t take away focus to the degree that a school-integrated program does.
What Robert said–and I love the line about hell dimensions, by the way. I have a similar problem with public libraries in London, which frequently have homework clubs and job centres and various services–my council is building a large new library that will include a gallery, auditorium, cafe, and meeting rooms, but has comparatively little space for books. All the time, space and money you spend on turning a library into a community centre means less for its irreplaceable and desperately important original function. People need access to books, and most of them can’t afford to buy every book they’d like to read.
I thought that the money used for things like school lunches, job centers, and the like was not fungible — that it comes from different sources, on different lines, and with different oversight than the money for teachers, books, and other core expenses. So that stopping schools from serving breakfast, for example, would not free up the breakfast money to hire more teachers; it would just mean that the breakfast money was distributed, for breakfasts, along other channels. Is that not correct?
I and my kids went to public schools all the way through high school. One of my kids got an engineering from a private university and the other got an engineering degree from Enormous State University. And I did O.K.
So my experience is that public schools in and of themselves can properly provide an education opportunity for children. Yet, at those same public schools many other kids spectacularly failed at getting an education.
Note how I’ve phrased this. Schools, both public and private, provide the opportunity for a child to get an education. They do not “give” a child an education. They cannot trepanate the child, stick a funnel in his or her head and pour an education in. It is up to the child to work and get that education – and, given that we are talking about children, it is up to the parents to make sure that the child is prepared to work and actually performs the work. My opinion is that parental failure to meet this responsibility accounts for the majority of educational failures in the United States.
School breakfast and lunch programs and other social programs are an attempt by the State to substitute for parental agency. I’m not well versed in social work, but I’ll lay odds that most social workers will tell you that the State makes a lousy parent. That’s not an argument from me to kill these programs. A child cannot learn if they come to school with an empty stomach, improper clothing or uncorrected defective eyesight. Where the State can improve such it improves the ability of that child to do the necessary work.
But a child needs support outside the classroom. Parents have to instill a work ethic in their child. They have to make sure that they do their homework, don’t blow the evening watching TV or playing on-line, provide to them or get them the help they need for subject material they don’t understand, and make them understand the overall objective and the importance of getting there. The State cannot do this.
I’ve seen the result of parental emphasis on this. Whenever I interview an kid for MIT, regardless of the economic status of the parents I know I’m going to be told stories about tutors or extra-curricular studies. I know I’m NOT going to be told stories about participation in major team sports like football or basketball. I’m not going to see a PS2 or XBox connected to the TV. I’ll be in a household where academic achievement is top priority. And almost all of these kids go to public schools – albeit very well funded ones given where I live.
I’m not a big fan of teacher unions. They strongly resist making their members accountable for the quality of their work. It’s almost impossible to fire a teacher. I’m unimpressed with the argument that it would make them too dependent on holding the favor of their boss. I work under that constraint. Most people in a profession (teaching is a profession, right, not a blue-collar job) have the same constraint. There are lousy teachers out there. They need to go. They also need to operate under the same financial conditions as the rest of us. If the taxpayers are seeing their salaries frozen or reduced, I don’t see why teachers should get automatic 4% raises.
There are problems in some public schools that money can fix. Classrooms should be safe, heated and cooled, and properly equipped. They should have good teachers that are accountable for their work. But while that’s an important component of what’s going on in the public schools, overall the biggest issue is outside the school walls, not in them. Fix that and you’ll fix the schools.
That ‘albeit’ is a lot larger than you would like it to be. I, too, live in one of those school districts wealthy enough that the only kids go to private schools is a) they’re religious or b) they have a severe problem. I used to live in one of those school districts where the nice, middle-class white parents the next neighborhood over would make a face when you told them where your kids went. The kids at those schools weren’t bullshitting you with stories about how they never, ever play video games because they were too busy studying Cicero in the original Latin; they were too busy struggling to get a basic education.
The amount of money a school has, the kind of teachers it is able to attract, and the resources available to the parents to promote that education are huge, huge factors in what is ‘available’ to students. It’s true that you can lead a horse to water but can’t make it drink; it’s also true that your horse is going to run a lot farther if it has endless clean water instead of half a dirty bucketful to drink.
As the daughter of a 38 year veteran teacher and 6 year math coach, I could not agree more with the basic point that public discourse really disses the public school system and promotes a lot of dodgy initiatives such as charter schools and even worse vouchers.
One little known fact is that a massive study in the late 90’s called the “Sandia Report on Education” showed that school had dramatically improved since the 60’s. Basically Bush I, commissioned the study and had it all but rigged to “prove” that public schools were a dismal failure. When it failed to deliver the desired results the best designed and most extensive studies on any public education system in all history was simply deep sixed and almost nobody knows about it.
There are broader reasons for this situation than most people realize. Most critics of charter schools assume that the main political motives come from The Modern Day Pharisees (aka “Christian” Right), who simply want more parochial schools. But if you look at for example WalMart’s anti-teacher’s union agendas and the fact that the much more secular Bush I, was largely the architect of Bush II’s anti-public school policies that it’s much broader than that!!
Basically much of what it comes down to is that as Robert and Charles both touched upon, is that the public school system is, all jokes about portals to hell aside, a fine piece of public infrastructure and that this is not only anathema to
a right that hates civil society, but could contribute to a situation where the military industrial complex has more and more control over how everything from science and history, to personal health care and sex ed are taught.
Although in the short term the anti-public school movement can court the Modern Day Pharisees, the truth is that even private schools benefit tremendously from public school infrastructure.
If half or more of that system was to be replaced with say several national franchises or “brands” both parochial and secular of private schools, that even lower middle class and perhaps even some working poor families could put a child or two into with the one or more vouchers, what would fill in the gaps that is now filled with the level of public infrastructure invested in the public school system? Part of the answer is that most public schools would be at the very least more “ham and egg corporate” sort of places with smaller playgrounds and less equipments for luxuries such as PE, the arts, vocational classes, and perhaps even science equipment or foreign language options.
But a lot of the answer is that other “interests” in our society might “volunteer” to fill in the gaps. DoD, large corporations such as WalMart, Microsoft, or GM, and other ugly possibilities abound.
This ISN’T a question of secular public schools, vs. religious parochial schools. The issue is a much broader question about what sort of nation America is going to be!!!!!
(For full disclosure I went to Catholic school K-4, and public 5-graduate school. While in general I prefered the public, the issue involved the public schools providing more opportunities to study foreign and better science lab equipment. It was not a religious issue, as I voluntarily went to Catechism until I was confirmed in 10th grade even though my parents made it crystal clear that whether or not I wanted to go was 100% my choice.)
But that said, I never heard my mother complain about things like school breakfast programs or the use of schools as a polling place.
What she complains about is the societal “selling short” of what it takes to be a good professional teacher with everything from low pay to programs such as “Teach For America” to the claims from so many homeschool organizations that “anyone can teach their own children”, to a genre of “inner city school” movies that show somebody from another profession (corporate America, marines etc) take up teaching and becoming great at it in less than a year while the teachers who’ve done for 20 all suck.
There is so much more in terms of both knowledge, education, and practical experience involved in becoming a truly great teacher than our society acknowledges. While there are bad teachers, too many people think that just because they can read, do math and other things that they don’t need anymore knowledge or skills to teach them to a classroom of 20 kids.
One thing about education in America that seems really dodgy to me is – as mythago mentioned above – the school district. Why should children in some places receive a better education than others? Why isn’t funding dealt with federally, with all schools getting the same amount of funding per child (with a small adjustment for local cost-of-living)? Because as is, it sounds like a pure postcode lottery that’s set-up with the intention of keeping children from poor areas from getting as good an education as kids from rich areas.
RonF:
…what planet are you living on?
mythago:
It’s certainly a major factor. As I said, “There are problems in some public schools that money can fix. Classrooms should be safe, heated and cooled, and properly equipped. They should have good teachers that are accountable for their work.” But it’s not a panacea. I see plenty of kids in my school district that meets these criteria who fail to get a good education. And that’s because the parents fail to promote what is available to their kids.
There are things that money and the State. There are things that they can’t. And those things that they cannot replace are irreplaceable.
Thene:
Planet Chicago.
Chicago teachers union refuses to give up 4 percent raises
American public education has a strong tradition of local control. From Department of Education’s website:
The system of structuring, funding and administering of America’s schools was not designed from the top down. It came from the bottom up. Americans do not want the Federal government to have control over their children’s education. They want local control – and by local they mean people that live in their community, local school boards, never mind their County or State governments. That’s where the establishment of public schools began and that’s what by and large we have. If American Congressmen and Senators tried to make the Federal government the primary controller of the school systems (and if they primarily funded them, that’s what they’d be) they’d get voted out with a vengance. Many conservatives want the Federal Department of Education dissolved. They’re not anti-public education, they just want the Feds’ fingers out of it.
Having said that, I agree that there’s an issue with how schools are funded. Here in Illinois school districts are primarily dependent on property taxes (while at least half the money is supposed to come from the state, in practice it doesn’t). So if you live in a poor district your schools have less money. People who can move out and go to areas with better schools. The property tax levy goes down because of that and because property values go down. You end up with a negative feedback loop. It bottoms out because the State provides money. But people in wealthier districts want their taxes to go to their kids, not someone else’s. It’s certainly natural for you to want your own children to primarily benefit from your work and to get ahead of other people’s kids.
But while that serves your kids it really doesn’t serve society. Kids who don’t get a good education either simply don’t become as productive as they might, which is inefficient, or they end up being a charge on society via either welfare or the criminal justice system. That costs all of us. And the property tax system is anti-progressive – someone who’s worked hard to buy a home can end up having it taken by the State once they retire because their income drops and they have problems paying the taxes. So I think that a much larger percentage of the schools’ budget should come from the State. But not the Feds – they are too far away and not accountable enough. People in California should not help decide how the residents of Illinois are going to educate their children. It’s called Federalism.
Scanlon said:
The Right hates civil society? Whatever are you talking about?
He thinks that by “civil society” right-wingers mean the government.
Scanlon, to a libertarian/conservative like Ron (or me for that matter), “civil society” means the collection of public and private institutions and social networks that make up a healthy polity. The Boy Scouts, the public schools, the churches, your local police department, Mr. Franklin the block piano teacher, the community vegetable garden, the neighborhood grocery store with lost-kitten flyers on its community bulletin board. Corporate, individual, private, public – all these things are part of the civil society.
There may be elements of the civil society that a particular right-winger would like to change or modify. I’d like Mr. Franklin to stop sending my kids home 15 minutes earlier than I paid for, for one. But saying we hate “civil society” is like saying that liberals hate government programs – huh? Pretty sure you don’t know what the terms mean.
Conservatives hate do-everything, be-everywhere, tax-the-world huge government. Huge government and civil society are antagonistic; a huge government tends to drive out the institutions that make up civil society and replace the patchwork quilt with a uniform garment. We prefer the patchwork quilt.
One thing about education in America that seems really dodgy to me is – as mythago mentioned above – the school district. Why should children in some places receive a better education than others? Why isn’t funding dealt with federally, with all schools getting the same amount of funding per child (with a small adjustment for local cost-of-living)?
Well, children in some places are going to receive a better education than others anway, simply from variations in communities, variations in teacher skill, and random distribution. So two places having different educational attainment is not a priori a problem.
Funding is not dealt with federally for a historical reason and for a Constitutional reason. Historically, the Federal government had no (as in zero) involvement in education and all such matters were left to local and state-level government. Constitutionally, the Federal government has no (as in zero) authorized authority in educational matters; it can send money to districts, as it can send money anywhere it pleases, but it can’t tell anybody much. Funding generally goes along with authority.
As a practical matter, Federalized funding would be difficult to make any fairer than the current system. The US is so diverse and so large, that a one-size-fits-all formula will simply end up replacing current inequalities between districts with exciting new inequalities based on random factors instead of boring old class distinctions. (Evening out the funding by child doesn’t help, because $1000 in Mississippi and $1000 in Alaska are not the same thing – a small COLA will not do the trick, and a COLA that reflects the real differences will be politically untenable at the Federal level. And what of differences in student populations and needs? If Chicago has 40% students who need massive intervention to succeed educationally while Jonestown is 10%, then giving them both the same “average” money means that average Jonestown students succeed while Chicago students fail.)
A more discriminating, site-by-site funding formulation…would be called having local school districts.
Probably the most equitable solution is something along the lines of what Ron suggested – there’s a legitimate role for state government, which DOES have authority over education in most places, to do some smoothing between districts so that poor areas aren’t so screwed.
Having said that, the emphasis on money is usually (not always) misplaced. The District of Columbia has some of the highest funding in America, and some of the worst schools. My kids have been in rural schools where the buses had duct tape on the windows to hold them up, and in suburban schools where the computer science lab was always fighting with the natural sciences lab over which set of young geniuses got to make their presentations first – and they got good educations in both places. It’s about the teacher and the student and the parent, far more than it is about anything else.
Even with a libertarian conservative definition of Civil Society, my point about the public infrastructure invested in public school systems stands. Because truthfully if half the current funding was to be replaced with questionable programs such as vouchers or charter schools, a very large piece of public space would be lost, and it is at best less than clear what exactly would replace it.
Under the status quo NGO’s and private citizens are not stopped from helping with the schools. For example in one local school district with a very high poverty rate, a local Catholic Parrish routinely donates backpacks filled with things like notebooks, papers, pens, pencils, erasers, crayons, stickers, glue, and other school supplies to poor kids. And they do this no questions asked as to the religion of the students and without any attempts to draw them into the church. Plus there are example of local organizations such as rotaries to do things such as build a playground, or donate things such as lab equipment, computers, or various items for art and music classes.
Not to mention things such as bake sales, and teachers who buy certain supplies or novels out of their own pocket. So anyone who says that the public nature of the school automatically makes it a “government-does-everything” proposition, is simply not looking at the reality.
We have locally elected school boards and Parent Teacher Associations, the latter of which hold considerable say-so in how the schools are run. The good thing about this is the sense of local-community involvement . The downside is the ease with which districts in Alabama can ban teaching on evolution.
But either way you risk degrading or perhaps losing all this infrastructure if there are more systems such as vouchers or charter schools. If the public funding. Basically if the public funding “goes” and the basic infrastructure deteriorates than I guarantee that everything contributed by other parties to the system and everything that school boards and PTAs have worked so hard to build is going to deteriorate with it. And many federal benefits supplied by the NEA are also going to suffer.
The problem becomes “What is going to fill in the gap?”, “Who both can and will volunteer to do so?”. I have no doubt that many honest citizens and local organizations, as well as businessmen with the best intentions will make wonderful efforts.
But given the sheer issues of money and scale, I think there are likely to be some unpleasant answers.
The buried truth about charter schools is that they do worse than public schools even under their own limited measurement of standardized tests. I analyzed a Time Magazine article that championed charter schools, and while it celebrated the 1/6 of charter schools that “outperform” public schools, it hid the fact that 1/3 of them “underperfom.” (Time Magazine’s Education “Reform Articles )
And this is all leaving aside the uncomfortable truth that charter schools often don’t accept special education students, or encourage struggling students to leave so the school’s test scores will be higher.
So why would Time Magazine have a front-page, glossy article about charter schools? It’s clearly not the students who are benefiting – so who is?
Superman is dangerous, if you ask me.
Perhaps where you live. In California, we have a system where retirees can confidently pay far less property tax than they should because, ironically, Californians believe it should be easier to reinstate slavery than to raise taxes.
Regarding money, it’s not just about facilities, but about the ability to attract and hire new teachers – and about the ability of parents to make up the gap. In the aforementioned “not as nice” school my kids went to, we had motivated students, invested parents* and dedicated teachers -but we also had a huge population of poor students, students who were (and whose parents were) learning English, and students whose families moved around a lot. The school did not have the resources to hire extra teachers or pay for special programs to help these kids.
However, the rich white school district a couple of miles over not only had more money for their school – you know, because they had expensive houses instead of being renters – and there is quite a difference in your school funding when your PTA can raise a million dollars a year instead of a few thousand.
*Every morning when I dropped my kids off, there was at least one parent lecturing his or her kid with ‘now you listen to the teacher!’ and parents regularly took time off their work to show up for classroom meetings. After we moved, I found out that a hundred parents stormed a school-board meeting to insist that their children receive more and better English-language classes.
Probably the simplest solution to funding inequity in schools would be to have fewer districts. Most areas have more districts than they really need, and that makes for more unequal distribution of funds as well as more money for administrative costs. A district bureau that has 100 or more schools is only slightly more expensive than on with a couple dozen. This sort of move would make for less class segregated districting simply by virtue of the geography of having fewer large districts instead of many smaller ones. But it would also keep the school board elections relatively local.
Another pro-feminist and pro economic equality proposal that, would benefit education: Expand the public school system to include preschool and nursery school for any child who wants it. Allow children to enter public nursery school at 2 years old, and have every tested for developmental issues that can be addressed early at three. But don’t make anything beyond developmental tests obligatory until six.
I don’t see how moving to state-level funding or bigger districts would eliminate the problem. Why should kids in Connecticut get way more educational funding than kids in Mississippi? It sounds like an interesting idea, though, if only because income disparities tend to be greater in red states than blue ones.
Also, wow, am I ever not interested in having this conversation in a way that fails to respect that education is a human right. I have no response to handwringing about the poor rich people or to pretences that the sorts of inter-district disparities that so many of you have brought up on this thread are a-okay. None.
Incidentally:
Evidence, please.
Part of the reason why school in Connecticut are likely to have higher funding than schools in Mississippi is that the costs of everything are higher in Connecticut!!
Land and utilities cost more in Connecticut. Cost of living are higher in the richer states and therefore salaries to attract good teachers and a living wage for the janitors, cafeteria workers, and bus drivings would be higher.
So if each child had exactly the same amount of money nationally, children in Connecticut would be shortchanged, simply because it is more expensive to run a school in the richer states.
But equally importantly, is that for decades much of Red America-especially the South-has been bandaging its social problems-some of which related to much higher levels of economic inequality than most of Blue America-by paying less money in taxes, while receiving more money in pork barrel funds from the federal government. And frankly, the results have been shitty in terms of national politics!!
Of course, we can’t rule out the possibility of some Federal moneys going to help the schools in the poorer states. But let’s stop subsidizing Southern elitism, Scots-Irish/Borderer games of tolerating massive inequality in their community while labeling anyone who advocates social progress as “elitists” even if they don’t have much money, and unwillingness of the pay-day loan owning Red State politicians to do anything about the crummy status quos they always seem to keep creating.
Perhaps the best and most expedient way to force change on the Red States with their massive social inequities, would be to put more rich and poor people within the same states into similar boats. Make it so that the rich Mississipian have to share more in the way of schooling realities with poor Mississipians. Then without or without Federal help they will have to start developing solutions within their own states, rather than always taking tax money that mostly came from Blue America while, always scorning it as “elitist snobs”, “coastal wackoos”, and “unpatriotic yankees”.
If education is a human right, why are you on a computer typing on blogs instead of selling it to pay for three year’s of schooling for some poor kid in Chad? Is your electronic entertainment more important than someone’s RIGHTS?
In general, discussing non-rights as though they are rights is extremely dysfunctional to rational discourse. Education is a privilege. It is a privilege the benefits of which are so great, it makes a great deal of sense for us to extend the privilege as widely and as effectively as we can manage to do. Using words in ways that do not correlate to their consensus meanings, because that usage is more emotionally fulfilling, is poetic – but leads to bad conversation and worse policy.
Make it so that the rich Mississipian have to share more in the way of schooling realities with poor Mississipians.
Yeah, Mississippi. Because in places like New York, the children of the rich go to school with the children of the poor!
Your critique of red state politics may be on-base, but if you think that the red states are socially stratified while the blue states are more of a giant Benneton ad…you might want to look again.
Robert,
I’m sure there are plenty of causes that you find to be much more dire than arguing on the internet, and yet you are apparently yet to sell your computer to donate to those causes. So please, let us not accuse others of cheapening discourse with emotional language when you yourself added nothing of value in that entire post.
Also, you’re off base with accusing Thene of misusing the term “human rights”. The UN recognizes a right to education in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. So whether you believe it should be considered a right or not, it is pretty much the consensus of all UN member nations that it is, in fact, a basic human right.
I don’t believe in “human rights,” per se. The UN can say what it wants, but it has basically no ability to enforce the rights it recognizes.
Be that as it may, however, in the US every child has a legal right to an education. So it’s certainly not inaccurate to speak of children’s right to an education in the US context.
The UN is fundamentally wrong about so many things that one more wouldn’t be any surprise. As Amp notes, a UN right is like an IOU from Santa Claus. If you have the proper emotional age (6) it might make you feel all warm and special inside to have it, but if you try and cash it in at Toys R Us they’ll laugh you out of the store.
Amp is also right that education is a legal right in the US. This is a mistake but that discussion would be off-topic so I’ll refrain from the derail. Since it is considered a legal right here, though, then at least in the US context we can speak of educational rights, if not human rights, and not be counterfactual. My error.
Robert wrote:
Depends, though, and I say this not to argue with Robert, because I don’t fundamentally disagree with the implications of what he’s written here, on what you mean by good education. If a good education means that a student has learned how to think for her or himself, to solve problems, etc. using basic skills–and I mean basic here not to suggest level of ability, just the skills that we all would agree a student ought to have–then I think money matters a whole lot less than people might think, as compared to the teacher, the parent(s) and the school–though mythago’s point about money being necessary to attract and keep good teachers is more than apt. Indeed, I would add to it, that this money is not only about salary; it’s also about having enough money to fund the kind of classroom that enables such teachers to teach with full effectiveness. My wife is a damned good teacher; one of her biggest frustrations is that the school where she works does not have enough money adequately to fund her classroom. She does not feel that she is able to work to her full potential; she feels stymied; and that, as much as any complaints she might have about salary or anything else, contributes to her lack of job satisfaction and would be a motivating factor in her decision to go elsewhere, should that opportunity present itself. So, while it is true that a good teacher can teach well even without adequate funding; it is also true that such a claim is a little bit of an oversimplification.
I know that there is an “on the other hand” here, but it will have to wait. Sorry.
More money is almost always better. It’s a multiplier. Good teacher/student/parent combo, with resources to use = multiplied effectiveness. Bad teacher/student/parent combo with resources to use = no effectiveness. Zero times anything is still zero.
Oh, that’s WAY too simplistic. Some people want government entirely out of the business of education. Some want government schools to include particular religious practices – as it happens, I’m old enough to remember saying the Lord’s Prayer to start off the day, and when I was in 6th grade I can remember reading a selection of a Psalm in front of the class every day (I think that was because we had a Jewish kid in class, so the Lord’s Prayer was out). Others want the schools to concentrate on academics and drop the more social engineering or particular moralistic aspects. Then there are many whose objections are based not so much on academics but administration – making teachers more accountable, etc. There’s quite a broad spectrum of objections on the right to how the public schools operate and what the proposed solutions are.
I want to explore this a bit (and it’s probably a threadjack) because it seems central here:
Scanlon:
I questioned this, and Robert commented:
and proceeded to give examples of many other institutions that he views as being included as part of “civil society”
To which Scanlon responded:
So, now, Scanlon – what do you mean by “civil society”? Do you think that it’s the government? You seem to think that what Robert gave as an example is a “libertarian conservative definition”. What’s yours?
Scanlon:
Are you under the impression that Blue States don’t have massive social inequities? California is a Blue state. Drive from Hollywood to East L.A. Illinois is a Blue state. Drive from the Gold Coast to the West Side of Chicago. Drive from the North Shore suburbs the entire length of the state south to and through Cairo via East St. Louis. Social inequities abound everywhere regardless of the voting patterns of the state.
Actually guys Red States on average DO have more social and economic inequities than Blue States and to try pointing to problems in Blue States or uphold some sort of claim that any particular Blue State is a utopia, in order to deny that profound differences exist is just “working the refs” style bullshit.
But the facts of the matter are pretty indesputable. The correlations between the “redness” of a state with a high Gini index and Blue states with a relatively lower one, is pretty strong. And having done Americorps in Georgia and lived on food stamps in Seattle, I don’t need any of the same patronizing lectures my cousins step father used to give me telling me to go to this or that neighboor to support his claim that African Americans are worse off now than in 1855. Because these games aren’t going to work on me.
The facts about American politics are clear:
1. The correlation between the Gini index (unequal distribution) of income, and the percentage of voters go Republican is almost 1 to 1.
2. In Red States (with the exceptions of Southern “white” males and married Southern “white” females, Mormons, and some professions such as cops, journalists and members of the military) a higher income is a drastically stronger predictor of whether or not somebody will vote Republican. In Blue States (with some exceptions such as naturalized US citizens, African Americans, Jews, and members of traditional Peace churches) social views start to matter more and income less.
3. Blue States have a higher overall turnout rate and smaller urban/rural voting gaps, while in Red States being poor is a much stronger predictor of not being able to vote.
4. Red States get more money in taxes from the Federal government and Blue State residents pay more.
The issue of “money vs. teacher quality” is a false choice.
Although teachers matter a lot more the fact of the money is that funding schools is a tough business. Some computer labs are actually given by donations.
But people who always want to cut school funding and argue that teacher dedication is what matters most should think about some basic facts.
1. Payroll: An elementary school with grades K-8 and four classrooms for each grade, has more than 36 teachers (9X4) and probably more than 40, when you count the PE teachers, the art teachers, the music teachers, the shop and home ec teachers, and more. Even though “underpaid teacher” is almost a truism you have to come up with over 40 teacher salaries every year for that one basic school. For high school you generally have even more teachers. And that doesn’t count the principle and assistant, the school nurse, the janitorial and maintenance staff, the school psychologist/speech therapist, the special classes for LD students, the cafeteria workers, the bus driver(s), the librarian, the teachers’ aides and more-even if some teachers have other roles.
2. Basic building and infrastructure: If you want to think about how much it costs to simply buy a property, build a school, maintain a school building, perhaps update certain facilities, and then somebody perhaps get rid of the property and have it demolished for another purpose or build another school, think first about how expensive it is to do so with a house. Then compare the size and and scale of even a “McMansion” to even the most pared down and minimal structures you are likely to find used as a public school.
3. Utitilites: Repeat house experiment where you look first at utility bills in your own house and consider the numbers of building, the percentage of time in which the lights are one, and the number of people using the toilers. Do even the most conservative math.
4. Insurance: Most people aren’t aware schools are required to have this. But it speaks for itself.
5. The price of even the most basic school bus fleet.
6. Chairs, desks, books, papers, pens, paint, glue, equipment, office supplies, the school nurses equipment, miscellaneous items. It all ads up!
7. Even the most basic labs, PE facilities, art equipment, shop items, home-ec items, and more.
8. Cleaning supplies and equipment. Repair supplies. The Janitor’s tools.
9. The food and supplies in the school cafeteria.
10. Administration costs at the district level.
Take these costs and consider how many schools there are in most districts and how many districts there are in most areas.
Pretty soon even the biggest “teachers over fancy gadgets” purists, have to face certain realities.
Disclaimer: I’m a teacher. At a “bad” school (fairly low test scores) in a “bad” school district (read–68% non-white and poor, in a revenue-limit district surrounded by 10% non-white and well-to-do, basic aid districts. And to explain: a basic aid district has higher property taxes–and gets to keep all of them. A revenue-limit district sends its property taxes to the state and is given what the state thinks is appropriate. Which is between $1,000 and $5,000 per student per year.) I’ve been teaching for more than 20 years. And for more than 20 years, I have spent (at a minimum) $6,000 per year on materials for my students. Yes, that says that I have given $120,000+ to my students over the years.
Yes, there are bad teachers. Let me rephrase that: there are people who are poor teachers (who have limited knowledge of their subject matter, or who struggle with discipline, or who don’t really like kids.) There are also poor doctors, dentists, accountants, coaches, preachers etc. It’s only teachers who get constantly belittled, insulted, and degraded vocally, in print, and, now, in a documentary whose producer and director refused to do their homework and at least look and listen to the other side of the story. There are also BAD teachers: teachers who do physical or emotional harm. Yes, the bad teachers should be removed/fired/canned quickly. They are. Poor teachers also can be removed/fired/canned, but they also can be helped to become better teachers. Tenure does not guarantee a lifetime job; it guarantees due process in the firing. Why tenure? Because teachers–especially good teachers–WILL cause controversy in their classrooms. It’s how people learn to think for themselves, but there are parents and other community members who don’t like it. When a parent tells a teacher he or she cannot teach _A Christmas Carol_ by Charles Dickens because the parent doesn’t want the child exposed to anything about Christmas, that’s controversy. And it happens. When a teacher is told by a parent that the student should not be exposed to any religions other than the one the parent expouses, that’s demanding that the teacher go against the required curriculum (for example: when teaching the history of the period from 450 CE to 1780 CE throughout the world–or even just in Europe). And it happens. Tenure allows teachers to teach.
I’ll be honest. I’m tired of being the scapegoat. I teach children–of all colors, races, creeds, religions, and sexual persuasions. I don’t care about any of that. I feed them when they are hungry, because a hungry child can’t learn. I give them pencils, paper, and other materials because I want them to succeed. I call parents to compliment and to warn. I ask parents for their help and support, and give explicit ideas as to how to help and support. I listen to my students and give them advice when they want it, just an ear when they don’t; I know that a child in crisis can’t learn. I report suspected child abuse. I watch for undetected learning difficulties, and do what I can to get the child support. I’m a teacher, and that is what we do. I expect my students (all 170 of them–I teach seventh grade) to rise to the occasion, work, learn, and succeed. I give my own time (you think teachers come to school at 8:15 and leave at 3:15? Hah!) I’ve taken a pay cut this year after 4 years of no raises. And to repeat myself, I’m tired of being cast as the villain. Come and do my job, and THEN complain.