New Jersey Father Sues For Tuition Money to Escape Bad Public Schools

[TeePee4Prez]

I would add that private schools who are eligible for vouchers should be able to join a union and be paid salaries commesurate with the public sector.    Basically, I'd be in favor of vouchers, but with strings attached.

[jerusalemcar5]

Ban private schooling (at the primary and secondary levels, not college).  That would truly be the first step.  Bring the smarter kids back to public schools to help the less gifted kids.  And bus suburban kids to urban schools and vice versa to equalize the schools.  The differences between our urban and suburban schools here is terrible and I really think mixing would help.

[Jake]

You ever tried mixing ice cream with dog sh*t? I'm sure the ice cream doesn't balance out the sh*t to produce something partly edible. No, instead, the sh*t just ruins the ice cream. That's what you're arguing for.

[jerusalemcar5]

You ever tried mixing ice cream with dog sh*t? I'm sure the ice cream doesn't balance out the sh*t to produce something partly edible. No, instead, the sh*t just ruins the ice cream. That's what you're arguing for.

Referring to urban kids as sh*t is not an appropriate analogy.  Or rather appropriate in general.  Mixing more gifted and less gifted kids has been proven to have a positive effect on less gifted kids.  My school recently stopped segregating smart from dumb in its K-7 grades and it is yielding higher test scores.

[Jake]

It's not a matter of smart, and less smart, it's a matter of mixing kids who don't want to learn with kids who do. I'm all in favor of giving kids in urban schools the ability to attend better preforming schools, but there's no point in taking a good school and a bad school and turning both into bad schools.

And more often than not, comparing urban kids to sh*t is wildly accurate.

[John Dibble]

You ever tried mixing ice cream with dog sh*t? I'm sure the ice cream doesn't balance out the sh*t to produce something partly edible. No, instead, the sh*t just ruins the ice cream. That's what you're arguing for.

Referring to urban kids as sh*t is not an appropriate analogy.  Or rather appropriate in general.  Mixing more gifted and less gifted kids has been proven to have a positive effect on less gifted kids.  My school recently stopped segregating smart from dumb in its K-7 grades and it is yielding higher test scores.

Well, there are other considerations - was your school a 'bad' school in the first place, or was it already a good school? Schools that are considered bad don't just have academic problems, they have higher levels of violence and other misbehavior. I could see why putting smarter students in the same classes as the average students might help test scores(side question - what kind of breakdown are scores rising in? I imagine the smart kids are having higher scores for sure unless they're receiving the same higher level material that they were before), but that's only provided the overall 'culture' of the students is similar. For instance if you tried merging a suburban private school and an urban puplic one, you'd likely find that the results would be greatly different.

[Nym90]

My point is that the students who are left behind in those schools are going to be even worse off yet if the funding is cut. There still needs to be public schools in these horrid communities, even if the students aren't being educated in them very well; the alternative is still far worse. If the funding is cut, the schools will be even worse than they are today, and would eventually bankrupt, leaving no schools at all. Where are the students going to go then? Well, they'd have to go to schools farther out in the suburbs, which just shifts the problem around.

My point is that ultimately you can't solve the problem by shifting funding from inner city schools to suburban schools; you can't create something out of nothing education wise by moving around dollars, and that's essentially what vouchers would do. Vouchers rest on the fundamental premise that private education is better than public education, and thus that money should be taken away from public education and given to private education. I don't believe private education is fundamentally better, or that there is any fundamental flaw with public education. I feel that public education suffers greatly in many areas by being forced to take everyone, whereas private education has entrance standards, and rejects students who lack the ability to pay or to meet academic standards. I agree that the lack of ability to pay should never cost someone an education, and thus support vouchers to that extent, but education is still necessary in the urban areas these students are leaving behind, unless we are prepared to lift the requirement on public school attendance in these areas altogether, which would be even worse yet (leaving them to roam the streets and commit crime).

If money is being wasted or mismanaged, that needs to be corrected as soon as possible. If the local schools are to blame for the waste, then the state needs to step in and oversee the budget. If the state is to blame, the feds could step in. The solution is not less money, but more efficient use of the dollars themselves.

I'm not talking about using vouchers to shift students to suburban public schools.  I was thinking more of a combination of magnet, charter and private schools, preferably as close to where the students live as possible.  This is most definitely not intended to be a busing-type scheme.

I think we have to be realistic here.  Vouchers will take the best students out of bad public schools.  That is an outcome I am willing to accept because I think that the benefit to the better students will far outweigh the downside to the students in those schools who are already failing anyway.  I don't think it's fair to chain the better students to a corpse, figuratively, and that is exactly what we are doing now.

I think the approach would have to be determined on a case-by-case basis, without the burdens of political correctness.  We need to acknowledge that some of the students in these schools are a severe problem and are preventing the education of the others.  The two groups need to be separated.  Either take the problem students out and put them in special schools where they can be warehoused until they begin their prison terms, or allow the better students to escape from the clutches of these bad schools.  Vouchers are intended to accomplish the latter.

Let's just say that vouchers are wildly successful, and that 75% of the students in certain bad public schools manage to successfully transfer out.  You still think that school should get the same funding it got before with 25% of the students?  That's insane, honestly.

As far as correcting problems of waste as soon as possible, that's a dream.  There is no infrastructure in these areas to do that, and the problem goes much deeper.  The people elected to run things are stealing, and those who are supposed to be watching them are stealing too.  The root of the problem is disinterested parents, because with interested and involved parents, these things would not be allowed to happen.  There is really no way to fix it, other than having an outside force, such as the state, take over the schools.  That hasn't worked well either anyplace that it's been tried.

I think that if a focus was put on improving the communities, in terms of attracting businesses into the area and attracting a better quality of citizens into these communities as a result, that the schools would also be turned around in the long term, so the 75 percent figure you refer to would never be necessary. I support vouchers as a short term solution, to ensure that no one is denied an education on the basis of their ability to pay, but the vouchers should be part of a long term strategy, which would be to revitalize the community. Part of that strategy involves strengthening the existing schools, as well, and smaller class sized from the students who have left for vouchers would be a part of that, although certainly not a silver bullet in and of itself by any means.

I realize that it varies from one school to another, but I don't think that waste and mismanagement are inevitable results of public education, given that they do not exist in the vast majority of schools. Thus, problems on a local level can be dealt with, and improving the quality of the community as I've mentioned my strategy for in the last paragraph and previous posts on this thread, would also help increase the demand for clean, honest government. Any sort of a successful long term startegy has to begin with a focus on the community. I agree that the bad community encourages waste in the school system, since no one cares enough to vote the bastards out of office who are doing it, but again, changing the character of the community will help alleviate that problem.

[Undisguised Sockpuppet]

Ban private schooling (at the primary and secondary levels, not college).  That would truly be the first step.  Bring the smarter kids back to public schools to help the less gifted kids.  And bus suburban kids to urban schools and vice versa to equalize the schools.  The differences between our urban and suburban schools here is terrible and I really think mixing would help.

No. Absolutely not. We need to get the smarter ones out of the crappy urban schools. Also make a ban on busing.

[dazzleman]

Ban private schooling (at the primary and secondary levels, not college).  That would truly be the first step.  Bring the smarter kids back to public schools to help the less gifted kids.  And bus suburban kids to urban schools and vice versa to equalize the schools.  The differences between our urban and suburban schools here is terrible and I really think mixing would help.

The busing part has already been tried.  It was a disaster.  How many times does a liberal idea have to fail before it is dropped?

[adam]

A) As someone who used to spend a lot of time around kids, I can say that they often distort or exaggerate the truth.

B) Even if this situation is 100% fact, this is a problem with one teacher and thus needs to be handled as such. The teacher would need to be replaced, and that's about all there is too it. We can't be shifting kids out of public schools because one teacher is a prick.

[Bleeding heart conservative, HTMLdon]

FF

[Undisguised Sockpuppet]

Ban private schooling (at the primary and secondary levels, not college).  That would truly be the first step.  Bring the smarter kids back to public schools to help the less gifted kids.  And bus suburban kids to urban schools and vice versa to equalize the schools.  The differences between our urban and suburban schools here is terrible and I really think mixing would help.

The busing part has already been tried.  It was a disaster.  How many times does a liberal idea have to fail before it is dropped?

These are liberals. What do you think?

[jerusalemcar5]

Alright.

What we need to do is eliminate "bad schools".  If the gangs and groupings oif kids from bad neighborhoods are split from each other it'd be harder for them to be violent and dismiss schooling.  Does anyone deny that.  Switching one group of kids with another does nothing.  But if you mixed up suburban and urban schools and had schools in nice neighborhoods it'd be better.  All students should be in equal schools with equal equipment and with a diverse population.  This will help schools expand.  Not busing random groups.  But mixing up the fundamentals so you can't tell what's a urban school and what's suburban.  What is good and what's bad.

[Undisguised Sockpuppet]

Impossible and a bad idea. Firstly there's economic dispartieis between different areas of the US so its not going to happen(equalization). Secondly, we need a peon/serf/slave underclass to do the sh**t jobs and prevent the globalists/big corproatiosn from colluding and ensuring illegal immigration being tolerated.