Choosing a School for your Kids: Public? Parochial? Private?

The school is the last expenditure upon which America should be willing to economize. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt

There are all kinds of good schools. And there are all kinds of bad ones. The educational mission of the wealthiest, most religious, private school can be corrupted by a student, parent or staff culture of special privilege, bullying, or worse.

But aside from the sloganistic blather found on “mission statements” -- public schools lack a practicable consensus on what they are about, and provide unique opportunities for corruption for five reasons:

• a. they are schools of last resort in a compulsory system;
• b. this makes them susceptible to constraint by underinformed courts to institute procedures often contrary to good educational practice; for example, housing students awaiting trial for even felonious offenses;
• c. special interest groups can gain control over school practices by combining vociferousness with legal ingenuity;
• d. not only naive idealists, but the weak-minded and pathologically sentimental are seduced into assuming teaching positions which they -- often with good reason -- abandon at the national rate of 13% per year; consequently
• e. most surviving educators do not possess sufficient sense of profession to take risks. They shy away from speaking out against parents, administrators, board members or politicians whose efforts distort the school’s educational mission.

Choosing a good school can be hard, even if you have the money to afford options.
For more on this topic see “The Evils of Public Schools.”
-- EGR

Educational Choice: why not?

Most of us who are parents would pay an attorney a lot of money to prevent the unjust incarceration of one of our children in a confined space with psychopaths, wouldn't we? So just why are we paying the government a lot of money to unjustly incarcerate nearly all of our children in confined spaces with psychopaths?

Most of us try hard to stay well clear of thieves, dope addicts, gangbangers, maniacs,and fools, don't we? So why then are we forcing our children to associate with them in institutions run by politicians?

While most of us don't mind voluntarily helping a stranger injured on the highway, or mediating between friends who are arguing over a misunderstanding, or cleaning up after our dog has messed on our carpet, most of us resent being forced to contribute our fair share, or to take a pay cut when management is giving itself raises, or to clean up when someone else's dog has messed on our carpet. So why do we think it's a right to be schooled, and a kindness to require it?

To examine these issues further, see School Choice: reconsiderations

-- WAC

Educational Policy Reform: wishes or delusions?

edited 6/29/19

Oh, the buzzin’ of the bees and the cigarette trees,
The soda water fountain
Where the lemonade springs and the bluebird sings
In that Big Rock Candy Mountain. --- Traditional

A fundamental fact: funding for public schools in the United States is controlled through the political system. The political system is strongly constrained by the agendas, the likes and the dislikes of people who very often have minimal personal investment in the public school system. School board members, for example, tend not to send their kids to public school.

“Reformers” of all stripes have long looked to “education” and its institutions to “reform” society. And they look to “society” to “reform” education. (This normally amounts to little more than fiddling with the public schools.)

There is a vicious logical circle here: education is to reform society, which is to reform education. How do you break into this circle? By using political means? Then how do you expect it to succeed if the politically adept people don’t want a change that might threaten their own interests?

George S. Counts, a professor of education at Columbia University, 1932, asked, “Dare The School Build A New Social Order?” A prior, more important question is whether the (public) schools can build a “new social order.” (If wishes were horses …)

Cynthia Brown, vice president for education policy at The Center for American Progress*, proposes that we “fundamentally redesign our teacher workforce system.” Who, what, where, when, how? Our teacher workforce system is very much like many another workforce system; although, the political barriers to changing public education are much less permeable than those of, say, farm workers or lawyers.

“Promote school choice,” opines Lance T. Izumi, senior director of education studies at the Pacific Research Institute.* School choice will enable parents to switch their kids from the “unsatisfactory” schools their kids are in to ones that are better. And how will they know which ones are better? By word of mouth? By advertising? Will they risk their kids’ discontent by sacrificing the kid’s friendships and comforts of the familiar merely to pursue will-o’-the-wisps of distant future rewards gotten, supposedly, through something called “academic achievement”?

The competitive conditions for school choice that Izumi proposes are not likely -- to tell from past experience -- to provide what Kati Haycock, president of the Education Trust,* proposes: to provide “strong” teachers with the kinds of salaries they deserve.

What is this “strength” we are looking for? Who will judge what they “deserve”? Our present legislative committees? Our present commissioners of education? Our present school boards?

Being serious about policy means not dodging facts or hard questions.

To examine the basic issues further, see Body Counts and Standards-Based Reform

Cordially
--- EGR
_________________________
* See New York Times, Room for Debate 3/28/2011