Your question is a loaded one, but I will answer it. Just as I have answered a number of times on previous threads. 1) Not every parent is capable of homeschooling, either for financial, physical. or mental limitations. I taught at an inner city school for 2 years. 6 classes 20 weeks semesters roughly 20 students per class. Roughly 480 students in 2 years time. Only 8 of them did not come from single parent homes. Over 60 of them were being raised by Aunts and grandparents. All of them had to work to make ends meet.
2)Special needs children. There is a myth going around that it costs an average of $X to educate a child. The truth is that quite a bit of the cost goes to special needs children (No I am not complaining about Special needs children I am simply stating a fact) Schools are able to meet the needs of these children because we have been able to focus these services into one place. With that comes quite a bit of reporting that has to go to the state and federal agencies.
3) Selfish parents. Let me give you an example I administrate the "Teacher Assistance Team." We meet at the request of either a parent, Guidance counselor, or teacher, for students that are not having sucess in the class room. We had a parent that swore up and down that her child had a mental disability and could not function in a normal class room setting. She was also saying this in front of and directly tot he child. She kept haranguing the principal and his teachers. The Principal asked me to do the two required random observations on the boy. After the second one I met with him in private and told him that I did not note anything that caused me to believe that he was a Special needs student.
Sadly in order to placate this mother we had to send him for for evaluation. Mental, Physical, Social, and a full homes study. This cost just over %5,000. The finding was that the kids was perfectly normal. This money could have been better spent on a child with genuine needs.
One other thing you need to be aware of is that I fully support Homeschooling, Private, Parochial, Charter schools and vouchers. I believe that the competition would do every one good. I am also confident in my teaching abilities. I can say with our bragging that you won't find a batter cabinetry teacher in the entire valley and I am every bit as good a drafting teacher as the other 4 teachers in the valley.
Now I know that it gets the homeschooling extremists frothing at the mouth when I offer to give them a list of students that they can take and use to prove their theories on, but I only do it because it really gets them to show their true colors.
Sorry I didn't reply sooner, but I'm just starting to emerge from the latest cold.
Anyway, first, I notice that you only answered the least important point, the throw-away line, of my last post. LOL. Why am I not surprised?
The first main point of my post was to show you that by your own words, you agree in a general sense with wintertime - that that the single most important factor in educational success is a child's parents, not the sort of schooling method in use. And thus, even when public schools “succeed,” the real success accrues more to parents than to the schools. That is the premise that sustains the secondary question, why bother with public schools?
The second point is to demonstrate that public schools are suboptimal means of educating children. That they don't always fail, per se, but often fail to get the best results possible.
Not that they always and everywhere fail, but that they seldom help children develop to their highest potential, and more often actually get in the way, become a hindrance to learning.
The bottom line is that public schools just don't usually “add value,” at least not in proportion to their cost. You, yourself, trumpet the fact that you folks can't generally overcome the effects of bad parenting. I agree! So, why go through the expense?
I'm not suggesting, nor have I ever suggested, that everyone should homeschool. At times, I've estimated, optimistically, that as many as half of families could likely be good homeschoolers, if they were to make the effort and the sacrifice. But that leaves the other half.
Nor have I ever said that there is no proper role for government in primary and secondary education.
All I've said is that as currently configured, public schools are usually the worst choice for parents wishing to educate their children. But it is true that for many, the public school is currently the only choice.
At this time in our history, I don't think that Americans are going to make the tough choices needed to fix public schools.
A good place to start would be to ban teachers’ unions and punish and exile from education anyone who advocates for them. Teachers’ unions are intrinsically evil.
Another good starting point would be to abolish (or at least dramatically scale back the size and scope of action of) school system hierarchies, to make each school largely independent, like a charter school, and to encourage private businesses to buy and run most “public schools,” and run them on a competitive basis, with 100% school choice for every parent.
Perhaps providing tax credits to families for each child of school age that equal a high percentage of the average cost of public education would be a good thing to do. So if a school system is spending $20,000 per year per kid, then parents would receive a refundable tax credit of, say, $15,000 per year.
Disadvantage local school boards in running their own “company-owned” schools, giving favor to privately-owned and run “franchises” that obtain funding through the system, however it's configured.
Eliminate by law the bachelors degree for education. It is a fraud. Rather, require that teachers hold at least a four-year degree in the field they'd like to teach, or a related field (At my sons’ high school, there is a teacher with a masters degree in toxicology, requiring him to know a lot of biology and chemistry. Though he holds degrees in neither biology or chemistry, he teaches both subjects. Really well.). Add a course or two on pedagogy and the logistics of managing large numbers of children, especially for primary school teachers. Maintain separate degrees, preferably at a graduate level, for single-school administration.
Get rid of elected school boards. Unify the authority to spend the money (which usually inheres to a school board) with the responsibility to raise the money (which usually resides in an elected town, city or county council). Make the folks who come up with school budgets be directly responsible to the taxpayers for the taxes required to fund the schools.
In other words, blow up the current system, destroy or reduce most of the current hierarchical structures, make folks more directly responsible for their actions, retain the goal of universal access to education, make it competitively-based
I'm not going to do more than provide these few broad brushstrokes, I'm not going to delve into the details, because, frankly, these things just aren't going to happen anytime soon, and I'm not going to waste much of my time on educational fantasies.
For the time being, we're stuck with the system we have. We can, at best, help around the edges. The main goal of folks should be to starve the beast. At every opportunity, with every chance, at every turn, in every decision, take the path that reduces resources to the local public schools.
But public schools aren't really my focus. They mostly suck. They don't harm some kids, but other kids they do harm. They don't get in the way of getting an education for a large number of children, perhaps even a majority of them, but they hinder many and absolutely fail a large minority (at least 30%).
My focus has been on homeschooling, and expanding the space for homeschoolers to operate freely. My goal is to reduce as far as possible government interference in homeschooling, with the ultimate goal of banning governments from exercising any power whatsoever of any sort over homeschooling per se.
My next focus has been on the practical aspects of homeschooling, both in my own family, and in my community and among all homeschoolers.
I'm not anti-traditional schools. I sent my older son to Catholic high school, and my younger son is a junior at the same school. We considered strongly homeschooling through high school, but in balancing the trade-offs, one from the other, we chose a traditional school for their high school years, after having homeschooled from 1st (or in the case of my younger son, from pre-school) through 8th grade.
I'm not even anti-public school. Because, from my vantage point, every parent should first concern him or herself with his or her own children, and what's best for them. And at times, a public school may be the least-bad choice to make, especially where there are the [rare] public schools that have good academic programs and good academic track records.
But to the degree that I think about public education, my view is that the system is very broken, and we could do worse than to just shut down all the public schools and start from scratch.
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