Quote:
Originally Posted by kelkat";p="
My husband is a public school teacher (and he'll tell you that is one of the reasons our boys are homeschooled). He ran into one situation where a kid was passed (even though he was failing) so that the school wouldn't have to deal with him anymore.
The public school system is (for the most part) a failing system that is sucking the financial life out of the community. If the local school systems had to compete for monies (if the money followed the student like it does in other countries and the student could go to private or alternative schools) then they'd get their act together or go out of business.
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This overlooks the fact that there is great difference between one school district and another. It doesn't even always take a great distance of travel to find such disparities. I went to a crappy school. My wife went to an elite public school less than twenty miles away.
Ultimately it comes down to how much the community around the school values education. Are they willing to pay millage? Are they willing to do their part in getting kids prepared and kept up? Do they care enough to be hard on their kids instead of strong-arming teachers into giving a free pass?
If not, then privatization will do nothing. Competition is based on demand... and difference in public schools is based mostly on demand (also on the wealth of those demanding, to a lesser extent- but there have been some poor schools that have turned around in recent years... it's not all wealth). People get what they are willing to pay for in public schools, like it or not.
The crappy school districts of today, if privatized, would simply have private institutions that push their unmotivated kids through and are cheap enough to please the customers. Good school districts will produce good students, as they already do. The difference?
A poor person that saves up to move into a nice neighborhood so that the kid can go to a good district will be screwed when he has to pay out of pocket for an elite private school.
What we need is to improve schools for the kids that are behind. Privatization is a better-the-best-and-^#%#-the-rest idea. And really the kids in the top public schools don't need any more motivation or training than what they're getting.
Our top educated kids are as good or better than any in the world. It's the average kids that are being screwed.