Saturday, March 7, 2009
Georgia legislature to vote on school vouchers next week.
http://www.jacksonville.com/news/georgia/2009-03-07/story/legislature_to_vote_on_school_vouchers
I support vouchers, by the way.
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4 comments:
Okay, I'm lost. What is a voucher for any way.
Why would you? As a potential school board employee, you'd be cutting off your nose to spite your face. Vouchers provide a means for people to rob the school boards of revenue that could be better used to collectively educate our children.
As you have no doubt learned, education is best imparted one on one or in an environment with a low pupil to teacher ratio. Public schools cannot offer the services that they do on such a basis. And does it really cost that much to educate one child as a part of the whole student population?
People are screaming now about a 1% ESPLOST. WIth vouchers, millage rates are going to rise as surely as the sun does. We still have an obligation to educate our children. Buildings function as well with 10 kids as they do with 500. Teachers are still going to need to be paid whether they teach 10 kids in a class or 30.
Go read the proposed legislation(http://www.legis.ga.gov/legis/2009_10/search/sb90.htm), particularly section 20-2-2134 which lays out the rules for the "scholarships". Nowhere in the entire document does the word voucher appear. Polishing a turd is what I call that.
Have you looked at tuition rates for real private schools lately (not these voucher grabbing "academies" that take the public money and then close mid-year)? If parents took these "scholarships" for the maximum amount (estimated at $5000 per http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/stories/2009/02/02/georgia_school_voucher.html) they'd still wind up in the hole for tuition. These "scholarships" are a cruel joke on the Sarah Palin, Rush Limpbaugh loving segment of the electorate. Rich folks could get away with having all the taxpayers of the county subsidize a nice little portion of their little darlings' tuition each year.
Really, Jay, if you are committed to serving the public as an educator, you need to do a better job of thinking this one through.
Publius
A voucher is a certificate given by a school taxing authority to a parent of a school aged child which
can be redeemed for tuition at a private school in lieu of sending the child to a public school. These are already given to parents of children who attend failed public schools ( i.e., schools which failed to meet AYP (Adequate Yearly Progess) goals under the provisions of NCLB (No Child Left Behind)law for three years running. The vote next week is on whtehr or not to extend the priviledge to any and all parents who might wish to send their child to a private or charter school.
Now, as to what I have learned, I have learned a good bit, but I have successfully resisted NEA indoctrination. The truth is that I was quite capable fo being a way above average teacher before I ever entered the program, but one must comply with the established system - a system apparently designed as an impediment to highly qualified people easily transitioning into the field, by the way. Mostly, I've learned that the system is plagued by cockamamie theories and well intentioned but counterproductive regulations - NCLB regs being chief among them.
Unfortunately, the teacher accountability and standardized testing features of NCLB - well intentioned though they were have actually put the children in the drivers seat of public education.
Here's how. When I was in school, yuo got one crakc at a test. What you made was what you made and you had to live with it. If you could counter a poor score with enough good scores for the remainder of the year, you passed and were promoted. If not, the only thing lioke a second chance was summer school. Otherwise, you failed the grade and repeated it. The repsonsibility for passing or failing was primarily on you, then your parents, and lastly, the teacher. Now, in the public school system, 100% of the responsibility for a kids passing or not is on the teacher. Schools not passing enough kids will be deemed failures and teachers will be reassigned or fired. In rare cases, teachers may be fired before schools are certified failures. NCLB regs have removed all responsibility from parents and virtually all of it from the students.
Here's how it works in today's public school classroom. Someone at the state level determines just exactly what each teacher at every grade level in every subject will teach. Each teacher's perfor,mance reviews depend upon their students' "mastery" of those very narrowly defined "standards" (which you can find on the DOE website)as evidenced by standardized tests. So, today, after a unit is taught, the teacher gives a test. If a student fails the terst, that is not the end of the story. Far from it. At least a couple of hours of each week are designated as "reteach" periods during which those who failed the first time around are re-taught the material and either given a "re-test" (either the same test or a somewhat less difficult one)in hopes that by the time the CRCT test - the one that determines whether a school is making AYP -comes around, a sufficient number will passs to save everyones jobs for another year. Unfortunately, thje kids have been quick to ppick up on the fact thaqt the teachers and administrators are under the gun and over a barrel in this regard. As a ditrect consequence, only a very small portion - maybe fifteen percent at best - of students appaer to actually give it their best effort on the first try at a test. They know that they will get a second - if not a third chance at taking the test and / or getting some "extra credit" woprk to help bring up their average. If that doen't do it, some shcools offer "Saturday school" remediation (for which those "overpaid" teachers do not draw an extra nickel.) Then, if that still does not do it, if a kid fails no more than two of his subjects and does not fail them too too terribly, there is always summer school.
In short, the current system, designed to ensure teacher accountability, has, de facto, backfired and become a huge drag on the system and an actual impediment to high quality education of properly motivated (fear of failure is a great motivator) students. The fear of failure has been removed from the students and parents and shifted entirely onto the teachers and admministrators.
So, in adddition to being in favor of vouchers to encourage competition (i.e., let parents who actually give a damn) choose the schools demonstrably turning out he best "product")., I am also in favor of unshackling truly dedicated and capable teachers and letting them teach, getting incompetent and disgruntled teachers into another line of work, and once again seeing attaining an education adequte to ensure success as responsible adult citizen being a shared responsibility between parents, teachers, and the children themselves. Vouchers are one step in that direction.
While I find Palin physically attractive and personable, I do not find her attractive as a national candidate. Rush Limbaugh is obviouslky exceedingly effective at saying what needs to be said. He has gotten way better at it over the years, as witnessed by his remarkable noteless and prompter-free address to conservatives the other night. Thank you for "Limpbaugh." That pretty much confirmed my suspicions as to your leanings from the outset.
Thank you for explaining that, and with that said, I can't understand why in the world any one would want to be a teacher any more. Sounds like The little darlins are out doing the teachers. What ever happened to positive parenting? That's what is wrong with society today. Parents are not involved enough in their children's lives. There is always somebody else to blame for their failure as a parent because all they want to do is have the fun of making the little twits and then let society raise them instead of taking care of their own responsibilities. It is too easy to blame some one else for their failures as a parent and then bitch about it when it blows up in their faces.
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