Do the right thing?

the teachers and their union seem to do everything for the wrong reasons, and to heck with anyone and everyone else. A pox on them.

Unions are nothing but crap and dirt thrown on the faces of otherwise decent workers.

We had a case around here where the city mistakenly sent $600,000 to some black rabble rousing group, who went out and spent it. When the mistake was discovered, the city demanded it back. the group refused. Several of them ended up in prison.

I wish the same to the union thugs.

What's the big deal?

Dock each of their next ten paychecks 10% of the overpayment--or each of their next five 20%, or jack the next one for the whole thing. What are they going to do: quit?

I don't see an issue here.

Keep the bonus, boys and girls!

The so-called "merit system' is rife with corruption, politics, and favoritism. BAD IDEA! "Tenure" with its obvious warts, protects teachers from arbitrary firings/lay-offs based on conflicts of personalities, politics, educational philosophical conflicts, favoritism, and the look on one's face when dealing with asinine administrators (my wife- one of the best teachers ever - would have been fired a dozen times over on this issue alone - she was once actually threatened with termination for "insubordination" just from her facial expression when a Superintendent was trying to force her to falsify records to secure more "Special Ed" funds - he lost - she took leave and hand carried her records right to the state capital Ed Depart to have them certified. She was NOT one of his favored people... ...). Remember - it commonly takes 3 years to earn tenure - one's ability as a teacher should be pretty plain by that time. In our district, all teachers without tenure are automatically pink slipped each year - those that are wanted/needed back, are hired back, anywhere from a month to a day before school starts again. That can be a little rough!

Teachers (from adequate to excellent, which most of them are) are largely underpaid, unappreciated, and overworked. Never mind the "9 month" thing - good teachers generally do about 14 month's work in that 9 months, then spend the other 3 months upgrading their skills, or at least trying to get sane again, not to mention spending a fair amount of their personal income on classroom supplies and teaching aids that Districts are woefully inadequate in covering. I had a screaming chit-fit the year wifey spent over $4,000 on un-reimbursed classroom supplies! She never spent less than a grand....

My wife spent 3 years, summers and evenings, and about $30,000 in costs (tuition, books, apartment rental, air fare, child care) in earning her Master's - for which she got the magnificent raise of $1,000 per year, in addition toi step raises, which, over the long run, did not keep up with inflation. Me, I got out after several years of teaching, and took a classified position in the school setting. I still get to work with the kids. Make half as much, with a tenth the stress, but my wife's and my salaries were comparable, per hour spent working. I wouldn't walk back into a classroom as a regular teacher for thrice the money, and sometimes I get to briefly sub, teach a short lesson or tutor someone - tho both my Certificates (Secondary and Elementary) lapsed years ago.

Teacher's are nuts, God Bless Them! I'm just not cut out for it.

You Jump-On-The-Bandwagon- Bash-Public-Education types are Pukes! NO WAY should there be vouchers for private-ed /parochial institutes! You want it - pay for it out of your own pocket, in addition to your public education taxes, which are an investment in Society, not just your personal offspring. And yes, I home-schooled my own kids for a couple years because we were unhappy with the public-ed situation - 35 kids in a 3rd grade classroom is outrageous! Particularily with a mediocre teacher in charge.

Public education is an investment in society's future - sometimes it's even a very good one. As such, it must admit EVERYONE, and is mandated to do it's level best to provide to the students "best" ability. Many factors contribute to shortfall, but what is the alternative! (Parental failure and lack of support is an enormous obstacle, overall)

Private/Parochial schools have the luxury of eliminating anyone it doesn't like behaviorally, academically, or socially. OF COURSE they have better performance scores! Home schooling, done right, is head and shoulders above everything else. Done wrong, it puts the anti-social little chits even further behind than if they were in public-ed.

When you read that it costs $6500 (say) average, per year, to educate a student, that's all well and good. But do realize this figure has nothing to do with the actual teachers in the trench. Included in this are the administrative costs (You get $150,000 a year to go to meetings, with NO kid contact?????!!!!), and the "Specials" which eat up large amounts of booty - from Quest (which in many places reflects whose kid you are, and not your ability), to the hopeless droolers, which by law the public education system is mandated to serve to the maximum the kid can be educated. In some cases, this may only mean to learn to use a spoon to feed himself. Literally! And it may take years!

Example: In my school, we have a "special" who is bused (alone) 20 miles from a neighboring community for 3 hours of solo "education" per day. He is a danger to other kids, so besides his own personal bus and driver for the trip, he has his own full-time teacher, a full time aide, and a self contained 20 X 30 portable (we happened to have an available one). Not to mention the damage to school property when he throws a fit..

I estimate this kid to cost the taxpayers (most of this money comes from the Federal government), a minimum of $100,000 per year. And he will never be a useful, productive member of society, IMO. He has multiple disabilities. Professionally, (in private) we refer to him as AFU. So what are you going to do - stuff him thru a hole in the ice? He sure as hell ain't gonna go to any private school on vouchers!

He will probably be instituted or incarcerated for life by the time he turns 20, if he lives that long. But his current expenses are figured into the "average cost of education"!!!!

Do I have an answer, or even a proposal for this kind of thing? Nope. I'm as clueless as to "solution" as any radical right-wing blathering "public-education is evil/ worthless" idiot.....

Unless you want to consider the good old "final solution".... do you?

That would be the "sensible" thing to do. From an economic view point, it would be the "right thing" to do. Likewise from social, safety, and convenient viewpoints. did i miss any?

Damn - I feel GOOD!

What the Houston district and all districts seem to forget is that it is the tax payers money. There should be no argument. Return it. When the Air Force overpaid me back in 1970 they didn't ask for it back they took it.

las says that public education is an investment in society's future. With most investments one may stop investing and reap the benefits. I want to stop investing! Retirees need a break from the ever increasing burden of property taxes. I have paid school taxes 3 times longer than my child was in public school. I have seen too many older folk who have to give up their comfortable home and lower their standard of living because the taxes keep rising. And in my district the benefits from this constant rise has been a huge bueracracy, closed buildings due to poor maintenance, outdated computers and books but new office buildings, etc. etc.
A bond election was held to fund improvements. Defeated. Amazingly, another was held with half the pork removed. Defeated. Another try...defeated. All three times defeated not because no one wanted to support the kids but, because no one wanted more taxes. Yet a fourth time, more pork removed and it passed. Polls say it passed due to voter apathy. The people were worn down. How many times should we have to vote on the same issue? The money spent on all these elections and advertising probably could have built a new building.
I know a number of teachers. Fine people. Tough and often thankless job. But, there should be a point at which our investment stops or is greatly reduced. A senior deduction is nice but hardly noticed. When they increase the home valuations by 10K per year a 5K discount does not help much.
And when I listen to the teachers I know gripe about their long days and parent conferences, etc. it sounds bad. Then schools out and they jump in the motor home, put a few hundred bucks in the tank and head off to adventure. Or they go on a six week cruise or whatever. I would have loved to have a couple of months away from the grind to regroup!
Quit bitchin', cut out the admin. pork, stop raising my dadburn taxes and give us goal to look forward to of "bill paid" somewhere in our old age!
las said "Damn - I feel GOOD!" Wish I could say the same.

I honest to God don't know who is more at fault in the present mess in public education. A mess it is believe me.

Since I "retired" I have been doing substitute teaching in from third grade levle through high school.

There are some good and dedicated teachers who really care and there are some who are just puting in the time. Heck that is anywhere and any public service job I guess.

Now I am just talking about Texas because that is all I know about and each state is different I am sure.

There really ain't no local control anymore. School boards have no real power. About all they can do is say where the money is spent and who they hire. As for anything else the state rules, or federal, have them so bound up they can't wiggle no matter how much they may want to.

Now in the class room it is absolutely pitiful in too many cases. The State says you got to educate what they put in there and there is a lot of them that don't belong in there. They are freaking imbicles. Just a personal for instance there is one class that has a kid, third grade, who claims not to be able to subtract two digit numbers. Third grade!!!

Fifth grade kids who do not know how to multiply and divide. Several examples I have seen.

There is this one kid who, if you put any pressure on him at all he hides under his desk. Just goes into a fetal position and stays there.

They ought to be in the retard class but the State says they ain't crazy enough or dumb enough for that so they are in a regular classroom.

Hell's bells. You got to teach to the lowest levle so the good and smart kids get bored and cause trouble just out of boredom.

You can't tell a stupid kid he is stupid. Can't bruise their little egos don't you know.

Way too many products of crack head mothers and I bet at least a quarter of the kids can't tell you who their daddy is.

I honest don't see how a good teacher can keep from getting ground down.

I stay out of the internal politics so can't comment on any of that but I know it is there.

However, in my case, when you get your mind right, like the hell with this bs. Just go in, shovel out the pap they tell you to throw out there, give them the eight hours they pay me for, chuck it when you walk out the door, go home and forget it.

Doing it that way it ain't a bad job. I have worked a lot harder for a lot less money many's the day.

BCR

The money should be given back. Give the teachers and their union representatives two choices: give the money back as incremental deductions from their next several paychecks, or find another job.

las,great post.The puke reference was spot on.My ex wifes' son with a near genius IQ and the ability to get As with his eyes closed refused to participate in any school activity scholastic or sports until he finally managed to get himself expelled.No way in hell I would want to spend my working hours with some of the kids today.Some parents have the nerve to blame it on the schools and teachers.The schools are there for the 3 Rs and the rest begins at home.

It's government schools that are rife with corruption, politics, and favoritism...and they are that way simply because they don't have to show a profit. Coercively-extorted tax money goes in, and what comes out is...well, we all see what comes out. If we don't like what comes out, well, tough: it's a government "service." If education was privatized, I'm not sure exactly what method of hiring, firing, and computing raises would be adopted, but whatever it was it would be designed to produce satisfied customers and attract more business.



But the school's probably still in business, right? The superintendent may even still have a job. Stuff that wouldn't even begin to fly in a private setting because it would cause a loss of business is shrugged at in the government schools because hey, after all, it's free money. There's no competition for it; people can't avoid paying it, so what's to worry about?


Another potential benefit of privatizing education. Teachers would be like everyone else: the schools would be forced to pay the good ones what they were worth, or lose them to competitors; the bad ones wouldn't be able to get a job (because bad teachers would hurt a school's reputation and impact its bottom line) and would have to find a line of work in which they were worth something to somebody.


I happen to agree with you, but I suspect my reasoning is much different from yours.


Investment? No, it's not an investment. It's extortion: protection money. An investment is something you have a choice about.


People who think it's a good investment should be free to give as much of their money to it as they want. But it's a pretty obvious injustice to force people who don't think it's a good investment to finance it.


That mandate, of course, is one of the biggest sources of failure for government schools. And parents are failing, of course, because the system enables and subsidizes their failure. They don't have to parent their kids because if they don't the system will. Take the system away and you'll see a lot more parenting going on.


You say that as if it were a bad thing. I think it's an outrage that all schools don't have that choice.


Really? I don't think so.


I seem to have lost track: which side are you on again?


Good thing there are people like me around then. The solution is privatization, just as it is in every other area of endeavor that government subsidy has screwed up. When a service is privatized, all of a sudden all the incentives wind up in the right place: excellence is rewarded, incompetence is kicked to the curb, prices go down, quality goes up, efficiency skyrockets.


Of course you do: your salary is paid with extortion money that the people are forced to provide regardless of how well you do your job. You're under no obligation to earn your keep. Some of us have to do a good enough job that people decide they want, of their own free will, to give us money in exchange for our product.

In your scheme of things Barak, who would determine the curriculum studies for these kids?

I'll answer your question with another.

Government regulations aside, who determines the ingredients in a box of corn flakes?

HUH???

Sorry.

The answer is this: directly, it's the companies that make the corn flakes that decide the ingredients. Indirectly, however, it's the person who foots the bill. A particular set of ingredients will only remain available if there are people willing to pay enough for it to keep it viable. Corn flakes that nobody likes will soon disappear from the market. Corn flakes that everybody likes will be readily available at low prices. Corn flakes with exotic ingredients that a few people like will be available, but generally at higher prices because of the ingredient prices and the overhead of lower volume.

I'm guessing a completely privatized school system would determine curriculum in much the same way.

I love people that know all about the education system and have never taught a day in their lives, never worked in a school, never dealt with kids on any real level and never worked with the handicapped( physically, emotionally, mentally). Or enjoyed all the psychotic parents that just know their wonderful Johnny would never have threatened to rape or kill the teacher, or kicked another much younger kid in the face and backed their kids as they lie through their teeth about homework, substance abuse, cheating, theft, bullying etc.

It's easy to bitch and whine...but never on any thread yet have I seen a real solution offered. And overthrowing the government and killing every bureauocrat is not a real solution!

You're technically replying to my post, but since very little if any of what you say applies to me, I'll assume you meant to direct it to someone else.

Hey Barak--Sorry late to respond but I had to put 4 hours on the road.

I kind of knew what you meant but didn't want to go off on a tangent if I was mistaken. I need to research this a bit more before I respond. I'm focused on the belief that even with privatization, the schools are still required to adhere to certain state regulations(attendance, hours, certification etc) as well as, I believe, establishing a curriculum satisfactorily sufficient for students to meet certain national testing standards for advancement and matriculation. All meaning that they really aren't purely private.

But, Let me get a little more solid on my facts before I take you on, OK?

No problem. Hope you enjoyed your drive.

I wouldn't be at all surprised to find out that the government has all kinds of regulations for private schools. That's a bad thing: there's nothing positive a government regulation on a private school can accomplish that the free market can't do better, cheaper, and more efficiently. I suspect most of the regulations the government places on private schools are specifically designed to cripple them and reduce the embarrassing difference between private schools and government schools...but maybe that's just me.

But when I say "privatize the school system," I don't mean "put the government in charge of it." I mean get rid of all the regulations, licensing, inspections, requirements, government tests, and everything else, and let the free market go to work without hassling it. The only reason all that stuff is necessary in the first place is that government schools are monopolist, coercive, publicly funded, and non-competitive. Make the livelihood of teachers and administrators dependent on people choosing of their own free will to do business with them instead of their competitors, and the landscape will look completely different.

Then how do you get the less than "well to do's" kids into a State University that requires that certain educational standards have been sufficiently satisfied prior to acceptance?

In Barakistan, of course, there wouldn't be any state universities.

But that aside for a moment, if parents are expecting that their kid is going to go to college, they're not going to send him to a primary or secondary school that isn't college prep: and college prep implies that graduates will at least be able to pass college entrance exams.

As to funding, I don't see that as a terribly big issue, as long as the funding stays private--meaning that it comes voluntarily from direct stakeholders.

Right now we have two big problems on the bottom end. One is that kids who have no business in school, and who don't want to be there, are compelled to attend anyway. The other is that many parents have no respect for or interest in their kids' schooling, because it's free and compulsory, and there's no percentage in them spending any effort on it.

The first problem would be taken care of instantly. Don't want to go to school? Fine: don't, and we won't give you another thought. Future parents would forever after have a smattering of bad examples to point to and tell stories about; but most parents, or their kids, if the parents abdicate to that extent, would understand that at least some education is vital to adult success.

The second problem would turn into a special case of the first. If you don't pay any attention to your kids' schooling, then your kids don't get schooled. Period. You're the last line of defense: there are no taxpayers standing behind you waiting to be forced to subsidize the kids you don't want to raise.

As for where the actual money would come from...well, first, without property taxes and all the other extortion whose proceeds get fed into the public schools, there's be a lot more money floating around out there. And because the private sector always works better than the government, you could either get your kids a better education for the same money you're spending now, or you could get the same education you're getting now for less money.

The children of parents who simply couldn't afford tuition, if they seemed academically promising, could attract tuition loans.

It might work like this: you're destitute, and have a kid you'd like to put through school. I have money I'm interested in investing. So I go around testing poor kids for academic promise, and your kid passes my test. I offer you a contract: I'll pay the kid's way through school (perhaps a school, or at least class of school, of my choice), provided that A) he gets grades I find acceptable, and B) once he graduates and gets a real job, I give him five years to get established in the industry and then take ten percent of his gross salary for some number of years to repay my investment and cover my risk, with interest.

There might be groups who would be willing to pay tuition for selected kids to attend certain schools simply in exchange for the chance to indoctrinate them with those groups' chosen curriculum.

But what about the non-selected kids, you ask? The ones who are not academically promising and show no reason to expect that they'll do well in school?

They simply don't go to school. Why should they?

I'm not a teacher but if there was a pay error, they should correct it. I work as a police officer in a public school. Right now the Iowa legislature is debating raising the minimum drop out age to 18 from the current 17. In my opinion it should be 14. After 14 we use a tremendous amout of energy and money to keep less than 5% of the students in school where they do not want to be.

That same 5% are our problem children who make life miserable for the rest of the student body. With all of the efforts we put out, we might be able to keep 1% of the 5% in the building and graduate. This takes away a lot of time and energy from the students who want to stay in school and graduate. We end up teaching to the lowest and slowest student in the room. We really need to keep the state federal interference to a minimum and put the cirriculum back in the hands of the local school board. Most of all we need to let the teachers teach and make sure we keep those who can't teach out. kwg

Public education is an investment in Liberalism, not in society. It always supprises me when someone goes into teaching and then whines about the pay. It isn't a suprise. They don't hide the pay scale. I have 4 teachers in my family and they sure don't do it for the money. They all enjoy it and aren't shocked that they aren't wealthy. The biggest complaint they have is that it is near impossible to get rid of the dead weight. Why not make it competative? What has the government ever done efficiently?

What has the government ever done efficiently?
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Well, they've compelled Barak to create his own country!!

Geez, Barak - I hardly know where to start!

Especially since we are a lot closer together than we are far apart.

"It's government schools rife with ....etc????" Don't you read the news? Commie, liberal, subversive press that it is. That chit goes on EVERYWHERE, including private schools -it' s just better hidden in private schools, where the "Good Old Boy syndrome is alive and well, even more so than public schools, which at least have SOME outside oversite to them.

"The school's still in business, right?" Yes it is. So lets close the bastard down and leave that particular bush village, largely unemployed, without any educational system at all. Great move! That Super has since retired, and public education is well rid of him. I have to say, assassination was considered.....

"Another potential benefit of privatization" .... You are living in lalla-land , my friend. There are a helluva lot of communities out there whose residents simply could not afford to support a private school. Simplification of a problem to the point of stupidity is, well, stupid - and you are anything but that!

We agree EXACTLY on why vouchers for private/parochial schools are a bad idea. I think. Purse string meddling by the gov'mint. Private schools, public schools, parochial schools, charter schools, magnet schools, home-schooling.... we need them ALL, to provide choice to the broad spectrum of society - at least to the extent they can be accessed. it ain't a perfect world- we'll just have to muddle along best as we can in our individual situations. Some schools without direct government oversight on them is a Good Thing - and vouchers would change that.

"Investment" - Maybe not the precise word I want, but I cannot think of another which is better. One puts money into something expecting a return -hopefully a positive one, but there is no guarantee. (Schools, incidently, are not expected to make a "profit" in the monetary sense - and it's damned difficult to judge "profit in a societal sense 30 years or so in the future- again, we're just going to have to scrap about it and muddle along...) True, it's somewhat of an involuntary "investment" You can always quit your job and move out into the woods , living as a hermit by your wits and a sharp stick. With even ONE other person around, there must be an"investment" of some sort. The more people around, the higher number of involuntary investments. Ditto with "civilization". Unfortunately, I often think, but that's the way it is. I don't expect the serfs back in medevial times being conscripted by the local baron for roadwork thought much of the idea either, but everyone in that society or community benefited from it one way or another, from increased ease to market, more trade, better movement of troops for protection, etc. I'm speaking idealistically here - realism tends to suck big time sometimes. Maybe the roads were built primarily to extort more tithe from the poor bastards. Consider a current analogy- the US road system to the public education system. Would we be better off if the road system was privatized to each community, county, state, with varying standards and ability to fund it? I think not. Same pot of taxpayer money that public education comes out of also funds the interstate/national road system. Let's just do away with the damned government, OK? I don't like taxes either. We can all maintain, locally, if we agree, our own roads, police, schools, military, hang or banish criminals,and anyone we don't like, build our own airports, etc. All on what moneies we can talk our very own shouting distance neighbors out of. Yeah, FAT CHANCE!

"People who think it's a good investment....." Trouble is, the people who DON'T think its a worthwhile investment, or simply cannot afford it, will drag all the rest of us down with them, with their uneducated, unsocialized, criminally inclined children. They are certainly working hard enough at it as it is.

"The mandate..." Dead on. I was making an observation, not a judgement with this one. What is your alternative? 13 year old dropped-out, kicked-out hookers in the streets? Drooling spec ed kids with begging bowls in every McDonalds doorway? You think public education is expensive for the buck's return, when you volunteer work in prisons?

"...all well and good... I don't think so. " Bad choice of words on my part - I meant that as a "statistic", is was highly misleading - and not that it was necessarily acceptable - if it was even in the ballpark.. A couple beers does that to me.

"I seem to have lost track - which side are you on?" Hey, I was the one into the beer.... what do you suggest for this "student"? Euthanasia? Monetarily and socially, it would likely be far more beneficial that "educating" and/or institutionalizing him for the rest of his life. Of course, there is the "you breed him, you feed him" philosophy. His parents could just chain him in a closet for the rest of his life.....What is your solution, in Barakistan? Inquiring minds want to know.

"Good thing there's people like me around, then. The answer is privatization."

Well yes to the first- it keeps the discourse going. And no - we've been around this block above. Simplistic, simplistic, simplistic! "Privatization" is the knee jerk response to nearly everything these days, but it just isn't practical to apply to any and all situations. Hey, let's privatize the military. And the National Forests and Refuges. All "public" lands. The postal service is FUBAR, I'm afraid.

"Damn - I feel good." Venting does that for me. The public school bashing on the conservative side is one of their few philosophies that I totally disagree with. Not that it can't be done better - there is vast room for improvement. And those Liberal bastids don't have it right either....

And by the way - my job with that dastardly taxpayer-supported public education system is not protected by tenure. Paid for, yes. If I'm not doing my job well, I'm gone. Ditto if our local elected school board, local, state, and federal governments don't allocate adequate funds in that area...................note I did NOT say "provide".

Exactly right. I happen to be in the position right now of trying to get my daughter out of our regional school system and into a private school. In our observation, the school system here is definitely geared to the lowest common denominator, seldom shows consistency in enforcing their own rules, and does little to promote education above the minimum required. And for this we pay better than 70 percent of our town taxes for the "education" budget.

We live VERY close to the bone, and will apply for all the financial aid help we can, but I will be taking a second mortage of sorts to pay for what we hope will be an education that will better prepare her for what lies ahead. The local regional system may be "teaching" her, but it sure doesn't seem to be "educating" her well.

Well, one suggestion, especially if you're going to continue to respond to pieces of my post the way I respond to pieces of yours, is to figure out how to use the quote tag to make my stuff appear in little isolated boxes, so that you can put in the whole sentence or paragraph you're talking about rather than just a fragment of it. It'll make your comments easier to understand.

There's not much to it. Click the Reply link on the post you want to reply to, and then look at the bar across the top of the text area you'll be typing into. You'll see a list of square boxes with little pictures in them. One of those pictures is a pair of double quotes. In my case, it's the ninth from the left.

Click that box. It'll generate some text for you. Looking at that text should make it clearer how to use the quote tag. If it doesn't, then play around with it while using the Preview Post button to see the effects of what you're doing.


Government schools have only government oversight, which is motivated and fashioned by politics--politics that in many cases comes from small special interest groups and may have nothing at all to do with the desires of parents. Competitive private schools have far more effective oversight, which is simply, "If you don't teach our kids the way we want them taught, we're going to take our money to a competitor who will." That's the kind of oversight that governs everything from churches to landscaping services to grocery stores, and it seems to work well enough.

And no, I haven't heard a great deal about corruption in private schools. I tend to believe it would be a lot easier to hide corruption in a government school where people have no real stake in where the money goes than it would be to hide in a private school, where every dime that goes for a kid's tuition means a dime that doesn't go for food or rent or fuel or whatever.

There will always be as much corruption as the folks determining the budget will tolerate; but that amount will always be smaller in the private sector than in the government sector because corruption is a competitive disadvantage, even if no one finds out about it. A corrupt organization cannot do business as well or as cheaply as an honest one; therefore an honest competitor will draw business away from a corrupt organization. Government, by definition, has no competitors; therefore corruption in government has to actually be exposed before there's a chance that anything might be done about it. Even when exposed, though, government corruption frequently remains solidly in place (the famous Daley Dynasty in Chicago, for example) because it can't be defunded the way private corruption can be.


Is education important, do you think? Do you think people in general want to have their children educated? Yes? Then the free market will provide a way to make that happen, without government involvement. It happened quite handily before government schools came into existence (heck, kids back then learned Greek and Latin in one-room schoolhouses, for crying out loud), and it'll happen just as handily once they're gone.


I expect you mean they could not afford to support a government school if they didn't get subsidies from outside their communities. There's no reason to believe that private schools would need to be as big and expensive and wasteful as government schools. For example, they wouldn't need metal detectors or cops or multiculturalism administrators or guidance counselors or sports campuses: you could put a perfectly serviceable small 5th-through-8th-grade school in an old two-story house.


Yes and no. Vouchers give control of private schools to the government, yes, which I object to: but no, I don't think anybody needs public schools or charter schools or magnet schools.


One puts one's own money into something expecting a return. One does not put other people's money, taken from them involuntarily and by force, into something expecting a return and call it an investment: that is simply theft, nothing more.


This is your definition of voluntary? Something is voluntary if your choice is between doing it and becoming a hermit? Sounds like we need to do a little work on the concept of private property.


Turns out not to be the case. Spin me a scenario and I'll show you.


Not a good enough argument for me. I expect you'd benefit one way or another if you stole everything I owned from me and murdered me to cover it up; doesn't mean I think it's a good thing or that I'm about to let it happen.


Absolutely. Last summer, Penny and I had the opportunity to make a 4000-mile road trip across the country. Even with all the government regulations in existence, I still noticed that compared to government interstates, the toll roads and turnpikes were in much better shape, had higher speed limits, handled their road construction in such a way as to maintain traffic flow, and so on. Heck, in west Texas we ran into a forty- or fifty-mile stretch of road construction where the speed limit was 35mph (down from 70 or 75mph), and the traffic congestion brought us several times to a standstill. I'm a big fan of private roads. Free-market competition always beats government oversight hands down.


You'd make me one happy little monkey.


What if they're right? Maybe it is a bad investment. Look, it's their money, isn't it? Who are you to decide how they should spend it?


My alternative is the free market. If the market thinks it's important to educate people like that, then they will be educated. If the free market doesn't mind 13-year-old crack whores on the street, then there'll be 13-year-old crack whores on the street. If (as I suspect) it turns out the free market believes kids like that should be kept off the street and prevented from hurting themselves or others, but sees no profit in trying to educate them, then that's what would happen.


Yes.

Don't worry, I think the government has completely screwed up the "justice" and penal systems as well.


Around here, it's closer to $10K/kid/year.


No, but least it's always more practical than government.


Absolutely.


Better and better.


Take away its monopoly and force it to be competitive, and it'll shape right up.


I'm sure that's what they tell you. But how do you, or they, or anyone, know whether you're doing your job well? It's not as simple a question as it may at first appear.

Me, I know I'm not doing my job well if nobody chooses to pay me any money for the result of it, or if the amount of money they choose to pay me isn't commensurate with what I have come to expect for it. If that happens, then I need to figure out how to provide a better service, or learn to be content with less money.

But you don't have that barometer. Nobody chooses to pay you anything: the money you're paid is extorted by force from the people who earn it. If they had the opportunity to choose to pay you or not, and to choose how much to pay you in return for your services, do you think they would pay you as much as you make now? More? Less? You don't know. I don't know. Nobody knows. That's what I mean. Since you don't--and can't--have any idea how much your work is worth, you also can't have any idea whether you're earning your keep.

Very simple really. If the over payment is not returned, then the receipients are thieves. Anyplace I've worked, employee theft is grounds for termination on the spot.

I teach low-end urban, because I'm cool like that.

Now I teach high-performing kids in the morning, low-performing kids in the afternoon. According to my State ratings, I am a wonderful teacher in the morning, I am a horrible teacher after lunch. I also have to work three times as hard to get anything achieved in the afternoon.

The BEST predictor of how kids will do, private school, charter school, magnet school or private, is the income level of their parents. We have schools in our area falling into all four categories. Most often kids merely reflect the norms of where they grew up and most often well-to-do parents value education.

Some poor parents value education too, including a disproportionate number of immigrants, their kids tend to do well too. Private, magnet and charter school kids are often predispoosed to do better because of the simple fact that they have parents who are involved in their education at all, that and the fact these schools sometimes have competitive entrance standards.

Although I teach where I do out of idealism, I would NOT recommend such for new teachers starting out today. At present we are stuck in the fallacy of rating "schools", and of rating teachers mostly by test scores (politically much more expedient than rating parents and communities). "Schools" as entities do not exist, individual students do. Recently we had the daughter of Korean immigrants, who attended "low performing" schools here her whole career, get outstanding AP and SAT scores and get accepted to Harvard, West Point and Yale: Same schools, same teachers, different parents.

I'm thinking those mistakenly-rewarded teachers cannot immediately pay back the money because it is already spent, disappeared into bills due, the teachers themselves too busy to take notice.

Merit pay? I don't want a nickel of it because a) schools and districts at present do a poor job of evaluating teachers and their impact and b) the best teachers ain't motivated by monetary concerns anyhow.

Barakistan? Maybe this was addressed, but what to do about parents who wouldn't send their kids to school AT ALL if it weren't already free (for them) and the fact they got hauled into court and fined? A lot of parents fall into this category.

Do we want an illiterate underclass? Yeah? I know... "They're illiterate already"... Um, no they ain't, you want to see what REAL illiteracy looks like? Go to a country where school attendance ain't mandatory.

Birdwatcher

So Birdwatcher, should the Houston teachers give back the money or not? That was pretty much the gist of this to start with. My point was that these teachers have zero personal ethics, and the teachers union, as usual, scores even lower on the ethics test.
Whine and moan about money being needed for education the kids, and then steal it. Just makes me even more convinced that the teachers and their blood sucking union are THE problem in American education today.

Whine and moan about money being needed for education the kids, and then steal it. Just makes me even more convinced that the teachers and their blood sucking union are THE problem in American education today.
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With American education or America period? The more you explain how the union numbers are down, the more influence on America they seem to have. Teachers are so overpaid because they have a big bad union? Last time I looked, teachers weren't making all that much, but no matter, they have a union so they must be over paid and lazy.

For the record, i don't blame the teachers or the union, I blame society. Teachers as well as parents have the deck stacked against them with outside influences that all but teach kids how to fail and rebel.

You want to compare teachers of today with those of yesterday? Start with the students of today compared to those of yesterday and you will find the problem, not a union.

Yes, they should give the money back.

Well. at least you're picking on teachers now direct, last time you weaselled out and said "no, just the union".

An interesting quandry here. If it were me, give me a payment plan and I'll pay it back, prob'ly I'd scarcely realise I had it in the first place, or the payment plan neither.

In the meantime, are the teachers responsible for the contractual failure of the district? Having received that money in good faith.

For example, if a charter pilot receives a bonus from a client at the client's initiative and accepts it in good faith, being assured he deserves the money by terms of contract, can the client then ask the charter pilot for the bonus back later?

Would you?

Birdwatcher

Where in the constitution does it state that education is a legitimate function of government? "Public" education, "public" housing. Who wants to live in "public" housing? The public education system is hurting. I say this as a parent, grandparent, former (retired) educator (teacher and administrator) and current school board member. It's a mess. Who else wants to do something besides complain? Believe me folks, I'm trying to do my part.

Give the teachers the choice of a couple of repayment plans, then withhold from their pay checks.

Schools are just the Miner's canary. If all the teachers had to worry themselves about was the curriculum, there would not be a problem, however look how much time is spent on problem kids, kids who don't speak English, kids who don't give a damn.

In one way, society is dumping the whole problem on the teachers. Kids show up to school with attitude and then the parents want the teachers to fix their problem? Dropout rates soar and we blame teachers, it doesn't have anything to to do with the teachers.

As far as the wayward bonuses, well how about we put that towards all the personal money a teacher spends on their class...anyone who has been a teacher, or married to one knows what I'm talking about. Probably number one argument between a teacher and their spouse is the amount of the household budget the teacher spends on their classroom. Oh well, they are overpaid anyway.

Absolutely they do. But why do they fall into that category? I'd say it's because government subsidies like welfare and guaranteed schooling enable them to. Stop subsidizing failure and apathy, and I think you'll get a lot less of it.

But parents who still don't want their kids to go to school, or who don't mind if their kids don't want to go to school? They have every right to make that decision. It's their life. It's unjust to forcibly take that choice away from them, even if it's a stupid choice.


Look: we do have an illiterate underclass. I've been to prison, and I've seen some of it. It's not very big, but it's there. Still, a person has the right to decide for himself whether he wants to be illiterate, and you don't have any right to say otherwise unless he's your kid. It is, after all--say it with me--his life.

In this case birdwatcher, you are partially right. However, it is important to note that I am not 'picking' on teachers in general, but I AM pointing out that some of the Houston teachers are unethical, and their Union is worse.

So far as receiving the money 'in good faith', try that line if your bank over credits your account by mistake. This is the same thing.

If, in your somewhat specious final point, if the bonus money was not due me, of course I would return it.

If I were the Houston school district, I would go to court to recover the money, and then disband the entire bonus program. That way the teachers and their union would not be faced with ethics problems like this in the future. They have already proved they are not up to the task.

I agree Cra, that the Government really has no Constitutional authority to be in the education biz, but then, most everything the Government does has no direct origin in the Constitution.
However, the Constitution DOES authorize the legislature to pass laws, and those laws authorize various Government functions that are not directly authorized by the COTUS.
The Supremes are the check on this power. If a someone has a gripe, then they should go to court.

More folks should read the document. It can be informative.

Then how do you explain even more widespread failure and apathy in those nations where education ISN'T mandatory?

Interestng you would cede the right to parents to cripple their kids' lives (granted, many are doing a pretty good job of that already). In Barakistan then, are we to have NO child welfare laws? Can folks make like a bunch of them notorious Iranians and marry their daughters off at age nine? Bind their feet like old-time Chinese? Have 'em go work six days a week at the Nike factory? Sell 'em into the sex trade?

Birdwatcher

I doubt it, I'll bet the wording of the bonus policy is so obtuse NO ONE can tell who is exactly due what, hence the error in the first place and now the Union's legal case.

Cases I am aware of the "school" is awarded the money for being "high performing" and the Administration at the school dispenses it as they see fit.

The whole case is surprising really, in Texas the teacher's unions are ordinariliy pretty toothless.

Birdwatcher

Good point, and it does show the ultimate failure of a totally libertarian political view. Anarchy is the goal of libertarians, and anarchy is not a sustainable system. Thats so simple a concept, that even the cave men understood it. Amusingly, that fact eludes American libertarians.

Give me some specific examples.


In Barakistan, laws would be private phenomena, not government decrees. The answer to the question of what's against the law would depend heavily on context.


Probably not near the sorts of places you or I would live, no.

But you'd have a tough time, I think, convincing a private judge that you had the right to forcibly confine somebody else's kid for several hours a day against his or the kid's will for a period of twelve years or so.

I see a real Librarian concept escapes most people. Freedom and personal choice are the keys. This includes respect of property, rights and freedoms of others. Anarchy depends on violence and no respect of individuals,including others property.

There is much confusion and misinformation about the Librarian system. I guess what scares the bajeebbers in people is the responsibility of being a Free man and all that comes with it. Being a slave to a gubbermint, basking in the handouts given, being extorted of their labor and the need not to have to think are the ideals of those today. 99% don't even realize the dictatorship we're in now.

What system will you chose once the dictatorship is over with?

Our Republic and the failed attempt at democracy or mob rule has failed just as it has for any other society seduced into the experiment.

Not so. Anarchism is the goal of certain libertarians--namely, anarchists like me. There are many minarchist libertarians who envision what they call a "minimalist" government.


Just a bare assertion? No justification?

justification? It's not worth typing out all the types of government through out all the years of human civilization, to show that anarchy is counter productive for any gathering of humans numbering more than one.
There are times Barak, that I feel you have as your single intention, to show how silly your libertarian thoughts are. Your philosophy does not work for 99.98% of all rational persons.
A dream world must be a wonderful place to reside.

Well, that's convincing.

Barak, I dug this one up on account of some unanswered concerns.

Here's the last exchange on the thread between you and I....



First off, why would folks in Barakistan need "private judges" to rubber stamp their own particular set of laws? Indeed, do they HAVE laws, and if they do who enforces them? Since if a Barakistani broke his or her own previous laws the assumption would be that they had decided those laws no longer applied to them.

The second question I had was more disturbing. I asked if Barakistanis could go the child labor/sex trade route with their own children if they so chose and you replied vaguely "not near the sorts of places you or I would live"...

Meaning I suppose that those inclined to such practices could set up their own communities where such things as the victimization of their own children were legal? And that the rest of us would be obliged to recognise these areas?

I don't think I'll be moving to Barakistan any time soon...

Birdwatcher

I was kind of vague on purpose, because it's a fairly complex issue, and exploring it fully would mean a whole other thread; but "law" in a free society would be a free-market phenomenon, not a government phenomenon. It takes a little work to wrap one's hair around the concept. If there was a market for law in a particular domain, people would compete to make money coming up with law concerning that area. Customers--in most cases probably private judges--would buy and employ the laws that seemed best to them and that attracted the most business and made the highest profits.

Law is only necessary in a case of disagreement: if two parties agree that what one of them did to the other is either acceptable or unacceptable, and they agree about how the situation should be resolved, there's no market for a law. (Under a government, legislators will make laws anyway, because that's what they do, but nobody would choose to buy their services if the money wasn't being extorted from him by force.) And in a case where there is a disagreement, there are almost always several different possible resolutions: many unwise choices, a few wise ones, and occasionally a really, truly brilliant stroke of Solomonic genius (for example, "You decide how to cut the remaining piece of cake, and then she gets to choose the piece she wants.") That's a perfect environment for a free market: the available alternatives compete, and the best one wins, making somebody rich into the bargain.


Theoretically, in a free society, this sort of thing would be possible. However, practically it wouldn't be particularly likely, and if it did happen it wouldn't be very long-lived unless everyone concerned was satisfied with it. (And if that's the case, there's no reason for it not to continue.)

You would have no right to go into such a community and say, "What you're doing (or not doing) offends my sensibilities, therefore I claim the power to coerce you to stop (or to do it)." However, for such a thing to continue in a free society, you'd have to have people say, "I was sold into the sex trade when I was a kid, and I really think it was good for me; therefore, I'm going to stay right here in this community and sell my own children into the sex trade as well." No one would be forced to stay in a community that compelled him to do such a thing against his will, because everyone would have the power to secede at any time from anything he didn't like.

Therefore, if he remained involved, the conclusion would have to be that on some level he did like it.

Laws would be intellectual property to be sold? Well, its not like THAT policy will lead to any disagreements as to who gets what (sorry, no serious sacasm intended).



Why on earth would anyone choose to agree with a decision that went against them, save only on the strength of their prior word?(which taken as a whole is an unreliable quantity at best). Why wouldn't they just go out and find a "private judge" who would rule THEIR way?

Like you said... "No one would be forced to stay in a community that compelled him to do such a thing against his will, because everyone would have the power to secede at any time from anything he didn't like....". Maybe I'm missing something here...

Specific to the abuse of children...



There are abundant examples, historical as well as present, of children being forced into sex, privately or commercially, and then continuing that lifetyle as adults. There is no reason to believe the practice "wouldn't be very long-lived" absent outside action.

Neither in Barakistan, near as I can tell, would there be any legal recourse against those who opted to begin sexually abusing or selling or otherwise damaging their own children even though they themselves were never victims. Look to any number of cults (a couple even professing to be "Christian") where this has occurred. Another example: What could possibly stop Satanic communities from sacrificing their own?

Birdwatcher