Posted on 10/20/2007 5:06:36 PM PDT by decimon
Edited on 10/20/2007 5:50:08 PM PDT by Admin Moderator. [history]
Harvard professor Martin Feldstein used to tell students in his introductory economics class that economists agree on 99% of the issues in the field. From the nature of monopolies to the basic laws of inflation, Feldstein asserted, economists of all political stripes are in accord on the same principles. He claimed that what we read about in the popular press are the 1% of economic issues where the data support no clear-cut conclusion.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
What's fascinating is that the author doesn't seem to see that this is an argument against having public schools at all. If success/failure is all determined by parental involvement, socioeconomic status, and resources of the parents, then the public schools aren't accomplishing anything whatsoever. We could spend 10 jillion dollars on them or 0 dollars on them (i.e. discontinue public education altogether) - wouldn't matter. Because again it all depends on parents. Surely the authors of this study would agree.
That is, if the authors believe their own results.
I think that beyond the scope of the article. And, if the author had interjected his personal beliefs he'd be lambasted for that.
“Are private schools really better”
YES. We pulled our kids out of public last year. They were both on the honor roll and at the top of their class and scoring in the top “percentiles”. My oldest is now struggling academically at the private school because they actually have standards and don’t pad their grades. He is working hard to catch up and will do fine in the long run. I asked my other child, a 3rd grader, “What is the difference between your old school and your new school?” My 3rd grader replied, “At my old school (the public) we used to just do a lot of worksheets, I like my new school because they make you excited to learn and think.” Money well spent.
Looks like you found a good private school.
A serious answer is that state and federal requirements must be the determinant.
Private schools have limited finances and resources. Public schools have unlimited finances..my tax dollars...
I have almost no control over what happens in public schools but I do have control over what happens in a private school.
I went without a car and even heat in my house to send all 4 of my children to private school. Best thing I ever did.
Rule #2: A kid will only achieve what he is given to achieve.
Rule #3: Good public schools are few and far between.
I’ve got both my kids in private school, and I just shake my head at the things that go on in the public schools here.
For reasons why we went private see post #6. (Thanks socialis, you said it better than I could have done.)
You bet.
7 children in my family - all got into and graduated from their first choice university
12 grandchildren - all got into their first choice university; 6 graduated, 5 undergrads and one junior in high school
Among the chosen universities: MIT, Johns Hopkins, Boston College, Boston University and Dartmouth.
Fields of study: engineering (electrical and computer systems), medicine (pediatrician, obstetrician), accounting, physical therapy, and nursing (practitioners)
You support vouchers?
Sorry to indulge, but did I mention my son is now reading the entire “Hardy Boys” series rather than “Harry Potter”?
Which was the gay brother?
LOL!
A lot of maniacs at your local union skool.
It depends on the public school and depends on the private school. My neighbor had twins, sent one to a highly regarded private school and her daughter attended our public school and she said her son that attended private did not get any better education than our local public.
I know some public schools are awful. We do have a great public school system which all of my boys graduated from and did a good job of preparing them for college. My eldest graduated from Purdue and the one is currently at GaTech and my baby is a freshman at Purdue.
It also depends on the student, they get out of it what they put into it.
Which was the gay brother? LOL!!!
Didn't one transgender into Nancy Drew? It's hard to keep up with this stuff. ;-)
Sorry. I thought Time would flag an excerpt if necessary.
Ok, considering the current news about schools in Portland Maine. The pro homosexual agenda being force fed California students. I don’t even have to read the article to answer YES and in many cases homeschooling ranks above both.
That's part of it.
The big things are:
1. Bad teachers get fired.
2. Parents are involved in their children's education.
3. The generally is a highly developed sense of right and wrong involved.
Uh, well then something isn’t right if po’folks like the Frosts WANT to send their kids to a 20K per year school. Some awfully stupid people out there if a 20K per year private suburban school is “no different” than a inner city Baltimore school. Time magazine is not even readable anymore.
I was still laughing at your first one and now I am LOLing again!
Agree with your rules. But ironically good parents tend to be responsible and work hard enough to not be in the “bad public schools” areas. Crack smoking alcoholic welfare recipient parents somehow “wind up” sending their kids to crappy inner city schools. I haven’t figured out a correlation yet. I know there has to be racism involved, though. Couldn’t be any other reason.
That's why we sent our daughter to Catholic school. But it has been a mixed blessing. This year our new principal has behaved in ways the children (and their parents) recognize as anything but godly. Nonetheless, the superficial piety (much of it emanating from this same administrator) has continued unabated--holy water on a pile of crap. As a result, even though we are forced by contract to pay thousands of dollars more in tuition, we are pulling our daughter out of the place and homeschooling her.
Additionally, I had to confirm with the teacher that they really don't have homework. Maybe 2 times per week is all. At private school, they started homework in Kindy.
I'd be cool with vouchers so long as the federal govt didn't get to stick their fingers in and tell the schools how to run the place. I don't think they'd stay out of it and that's have the problem. Crappy parents make up the other half.
You're thinking of The Hardly Boys, and they both play for the alternative team. /South Park
You are obviously a good parent. I do agree that involved parents, whether it be public or private, are the number one reason a kid succeeds. Your child will do just fine with you as a parent. We didn’t have a choice because we live in Crazyfornia and the state wants to turn the children here into cross-dressing/environmental worshipping/God hating automatons!
Funny, just today JK outed Dingledork as a pedophile.
Private schools vs. government schools? I don’t know, I suspect private, but I can say with a good degree of certainty that homeschooling beats them both.
I’m a public school teacher at an alternative-school. I do my best to counter the left-wing indoctrination that permeates the curriculum. As a department head, I’ve actually lobbied to make world history an elective (instead of mandatory) while extending economics and American government from semester courses to a full-year courses. Let’s just say the marxists in my school-system didn’t like that one bit.
A department head from another school actually showed Al Gore’s “Inconvenient Truth” and then had the kids debate it. He provided no rebuttal - video, written, or otherwise. I should also mention that he is as crazy as a !@#$-house rat.
At the lunch-table, my vice principal told me that all teachers should be making at least $80,000 a year (higher if they had more experience). Oh, and he was not joking. He’s a raging Democrat. When I told him that my relatives were traditionally Republicans and that farming had been their primary occupation up through my grandfather’s generation, he said, “ I don’t see how you could be a farmer and vote Republican.” I snapped back that, “It was because they didn’t feel that the tax-payers should subsidize crops that no one wanted to buy. But if they were slightly less principled, I’m sure they would have voted Democrat.”
I like the dry sense of humor. Good job.
I am reasonably sure that the results were cooked just as those of the Lubienski study were that were touted by the MSM. Subsequently, faculty at the Kennedy School of Governent revealed the Lubienski study for the fraud that it was. This is just another instance of the ed establishment lying in order to pursue its agenda. In this case, it is trying to fight off vouchers.
we have to pay for private school tuition on top of the taxes that go to public school. The schools are on the financial edge but that’s the only way we can give a religious education...that’s more important than beating public school on general academics.
Not really. More accurately, it is an argument for a return to smaller, neighborhood public schools, which had been the norm in the pre-racial-integration days, and which were pretty darned successful at education students.
The problem stems directly from the "consolidation" mentality of building "cheap/more efficient" gigantic central schools, and busing students in to them from great distances.
That school is controversial because it's a public school.
I can see the pros but the cons are just to great IMO. I don’t support vouchers. My grandkids go to a private Christian school. We are not wealthy and have to give up some stuff to make it happen. Others can too. I hear what you say about tax money but I’m afraid that is a lost cause (for now). If the government starts paying for private schools it will just be a matter of time before they start making them “public” I pay to keep my grandchildren from being exposed to that doctrine.
Certainly true, and that's a secondary reason we are taking our child out. In fact, the superintendent of Catholic schools sent all the parents a long, long letter which can be summed up briefly: "These are our schools, not yours, and we'll run them any way we please. If you don't like it, you can leave, and if you give us trouble, we'll kick your kids out."
A public school administrator could not be so blunt (nor threaten to expel students for the views of their parents), but leaving a public school would not hurt the institution one bit. Leaving this place may create an incentive for some serious housecleaning.
Amen!
I'd agree. Wouldn't have changed a thing.
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