School choice programs have been successful
politico.com
politico.com
The article isn't actually saying that the school choice programs have been successful in the sense of "improving education across the board".
The article isn't actually saying that DeSantis is closing schools. It's that people aren't enrolling in public schools. That said, I don't really have a dog in this race. I don't live in Florida and I'm not the biggest fan of the school system. Public, private, or otherwise.
> Broward County Public Schools claims to have more than 49,000 classroom seats sitting empty this year, a number that “closely matches” the 49,833 students attending charter schools in the area, officials noted in an enrollment overview
It sounds as if some public schools (charter schools) are becoming more popular while others (traditional public schools) face declining enrollment.
Edit: and this is Florida, not Texas. Florida is much less successful than Texas in terms of public education.
School choice is a reaction to a problem. If public schools were excellent, most parent would ever look for alternatives. Of course, there are always people who prefer private school. I get it. I went to both private and public schools from K-12, in two countries.
My experience was that US public school education (Massachusetts) from several decades ago was seriously deficient when compared to schooling in a Latin American (Argentina) system. I was far better prepared, across the board, with a classical education, to the point that my classmates in the US seemed, well, pretty ignorant and incapable.
What's terrible is that the situation in the US has likely degraded significantly over the decades. My kids have been through the public system in CA. I can tell you in no uncertain terms that, had it not been for a significant amount of learning at home --across a range of subjects-- they would have come out unprepared for the real world. It's that bad.
I can only imagine how much worse it likely is in less affluent neighborhoods. It must be absolutely terrible.
These topics, for me, always come back to the same issue: Our government failing us across a wide range of verticals. Be it healthcare, safety, education and just plain intelligent progress, their score card is mediocrity at best and, quite often, abject incompetence. Earlier today I was reading about the Department of Transportation only building 7 or 8 EV charging stations with a program funded in 2021 to the tune of $7.5 billion dollars. A similar thing has happened in CA with the sad (and expensive) joke the high speed rail project has become.
At some point voters need to start understanding that the people we are voting for and hiring to work for us could not give one flying turd about any of us, our kids, our safety, our health and wellbeing. They are all political animals interested in the riches to be had through party affiliation and warfare. Nothing else matters. Nothing. And this is how we get here; to a point where we spend insane amounts of money per student in K-12 and end-up with results bested by third world countries.
How you vote matters. And some of these decisions have generational effects.
Do you have some ideas as to the answer(s)?
Is it simply a matter of adopting a better educational approach that has been shown to work in another country, or would that also fail in the US?
They do not base changes to the curriculum or teaching methods on evidence. They could roll stuff out at a few schools, measure impact, and only expand the best programs, but instead they make changes based on what is fashionable that year, with predictably bad results.
School funding (at least in California) has been diverted somewhere else. I’m not sure where it goes exactly (education income taxes are supposedly earmarked at the state level, and the education fraction of our local property taxes must be spent outside our district — I’ve seen the district budget, and know how many houses it serves). Anyway, K-12 is embarrassingly underfunded, especially given how rich this state is. As a side effect, there isn’t funding for enrichment programs, and the school mostly just focuses on behavior problems instead of academics. Some of the kids that act out the most are clearly smart and bored.
If a private school did 35 kids in a class paying 35K (that's 1.2 million per class) they'd have teacher aids and amazing everything .
State budget act in CA is 23k per student. Wealthy areas for another 5-10k.
We have an amazing teacher fighting insane classroom ratios and requirements. At 1m a class it shouldn't be like that.
From my perspective, part of the issues is the turning of education into a political battleground. On top of that add the fact that K-12 schools in the US are run by thousands of unionized little kingdoms, each with their own agenda. And, of course, the almost total lack of meritocracy or evolutionary pressure in elevating capable teachers and administrators to what is, perhaps, the most important job in the nation.
Quick example: We live in a fairly nice area. When one of my kids was in middle school, the science teacher was this guy who was a Chiropractor when he wasn't at the school. Let's call him Dr. Z. Dr. Z got angry at kids when they asked questions. He asked them to write them down on a piece of paper and leave them on his desk and never to interrupt him. He would answer the questions next class, or never.
Dr. Z is a moron. I say "is" because he has been in this school district for some 30 years and is likely to milk it for all he can.
Dr. Z taught the kids that the moon does not spin on its axis...it is stationary...because we only see one side of it. Dr. Z, is a moron. I always talk to my kids about school, both to be informed and to undo the damage. After many examples of this I called a meeting with the Principal and Dr. Z and proceeded to read both of them the riot act. They did not give a shit. Not one bit. Neither one could be fired for delivering false and shit education. We were able to undo the damage at home. I am sure lots of families did not and had no clue what was going on.
This is a problem. One of many. Dr. Z, objectively speaking, should not be anywhere near kids or teaching science. Yet, the broken system we have protects him and will pay him a pension for life when he finally retires. And like him, many more.
There's a lot more to unwind there. I don't have the time to do it. The way we vote matters. The consequences of voting for the wrong people can be generational.
These schools are then predominately attended by upper middle class and rich children, and that cohort has enduring benefits socially and economically.
School choice should require that every dollar spent to advantage your child over others is taxed at 2 dollars and that money offers opportunities to underprivileged children.
I don't think any serious person can deny that public schools aren't performing at high standards internationally, but let's not have the solution be yet another system that advantages the rich.
Seattle public schools have lots of incentive to keep your kids in their schools: if you leave the district (moving or going private), they lose that funding to other school districts in the state since a Washington state supreme court ruling in 2013 that basically pooled education property taxes across the state in a single pool to be distributed by child-in-school.
Now, whether they actually execute on that or not remains to be seen. Cancelling the high performance classroom option is a huge bummer for many parents who actually have options (to move to Bellevue or send their kids to private schools). They are afraid to ask why kids for the actual reasons on why kids leave the district (and they tend to be the rich north Seattle kids rather than the poorer South Seattle kids that leave, creating even a larger hole in their budget). I wonder if they are hoping Eastern Washington just joins Idaho, solving all of their budget problems.
What do you mean? What kind of kids, are getting "bussed in", and from where?
Oof, the author comes out swinging right out of the gate.
This is a great end-run around "Separate but equal". Poor communities can't afford, and so they opt for homeschooling as public school close or lose so much funding they can't function. Then white affluent communities can have the most well funded schools, given generous public grants, and other bribes they enjoy for being the core support for spread Conservative tyranny.