While I admire your passion, if you ran a business the way the School system has been run over the last 50 years, it would have been OUT of business 45 years ago.
Why does it take half the money per student in the Private School System? Why does it take twice as many Administrative positions to run the school offices than it does a Major Corporation with as many employees as students? What company can vote itself raises when the money/profit isn’t there?
You have to ask yourself why folks like me are a little indifferent when it comes to the decades of crying and whining from teachers. BTW, my daughter is an Honors student, straight A’s as matter of fact. It is her hard work not necessarily the teachers (although she has a few good ones) while the rest of her class has a grade average of 80%. If a teacher consistently has failing students, why not take a closer look? Why do students on average do better in a Private School through Vouchers than he/she performs in Public school?
Fair enough questions don’t you think?
“if you ran a business the way the School system has been run over the last 50 years, it would have been OUT of business 45 years ago.”
No doubt- but school is not exactly a business producing so many widgets per hour at a unit cost of $1.45 US.
“Why does it take half the money per student in the Private School System? Why does it take twice as many Administrative positions to run the school offices than it does a Major Corporation with as many employees as students?”
Part of that is in fact corruption, especially in big-city school systems. As far as private schools, they pay their teachers a lot less. The reason why teachers would teach in those is pretty simple- the bad students are either priced out by tuition, or screened out by an admissions process. Disruptive students are sent home. In the public school system, we are not so lucky....we accept anybody who walks through the door (or oozes under it.) And once there...unless they do something terribly egregious, they are pretty much going to be there. And some students, just don’t need to be- they disrupt the learning of other students over and over.....
“BTW, my daughter is an Honors student, straight A’s as matter of fact. It is her hard work not necessarily the teachers (although she has a few good ones) while the rest of her class has a grade average of 80%.”
Kudos to you- for being a good parent. The thing is though, the kids who excel generally do it under their own power. Her hard work should get her the best grades- and if the rest of the class wants the same, they should do what she does. (Individual responsibility- a conservate value...) And if their parents want their kids to make the same sort of grades, they should do whatever you are doing. As you might have begun to suspect, a lot of things are completely out of the teacher’s scope.
“What company can vote itself raises when the money/profit isn’t there?”
Again, public education is not truly a business. A profession, perhaps, but not a profit-based one. Private education is for profit- but as I mentioned above, they exist on a whole different planet.
“You have to ask yourself why folks like me are a little indifferent when it comes to the decades of crying and whining from teachers.”
Not really. If you teach you find that there is a great deal of indifference (and outright ignorance) of what you do.
I think those are all fair questions, but some of them answer themselves. Why do students do better in private schools with vouchers? One reason may be because their parents cared enough to get make decisions on their education. I suspect those parents also hold their kids to a higher standard.
I like a voucher system, altho personally I just think it’s time the federal govt threw up their hands and stepped out of the education business completely. They have taken what was a good education system and destroyed it.
Let the states decide how they want to pay teachers and how they want to make them accountable. And if a state is smart, they let the local people make most of the decisions.