should schools be privatized?

[uberdark]

what are your feelings on this matter. i am against it personally because it allows us to hire people who dont have a degree in a said subject to teach our students. i believe florida has done this and their students test scores are showing that it is NOT working.

 

[IdofEntity]

A friend of mine works at such a school. He doesn't have a teaching degree, but he does have a degree in international language (Spanish), is the only person there that has worked in Spain, and is one of four teachers there getting consistently positive remarks from students and parents. We tend to put too much stock in teaching certifications because we assume that those certifications prepare teachers for the classroom. We also make the foolish assumption that a certification is the ONLY way to verify a persons ability to teach. Keep in mind, a sub-par teacher can be certified. They want to churn out teachers. Colleges don't use the certification process to determine a good teacher. You need only be a good (decent) student.

When privatizing schools you introduce competition into the equation. If a parent feels their kid isn't getting a good education at a school, they can choose to take their money away from this private school and purchase the services of another. Private schools are going to work their hardest to get good staff so they can continue to draw your hard earned money and beat their competition. This is why Private schools consistently outperform public schools.

I'm a product of public schools. I remember distinctly having great teachers, and having worthless scum. I remain unconvinced that teaching certifications are doing ANYTHING to improve our teachers. On THAT note, perhaps an alternative to privatizing schools would be to revamp the certification process and use it as a way to exclude poor or sub-par teachers. That would be crazy though, wouldn't it?

 

[uberdark]

that has already happened on the getting rid of sub-par teachers. certifications are harder than ever before to get and most states have begun to institute a review process and i dont know of any state that allows a life time license again. to maintain my license i must take 6 credits every 5 years. this is looking to be raised to a full 12 credits by 2015. that means as a teacher we are still learning and expanding our knowledge base. just by saying that teachers who are certified doesnt justify a good teacher the same can be said for hired non licensed teachers at a private school. when we begin to turn our schools into businesses and sell our product as the student we begin to lose the compassion and love for teaching and learning that our students crave and need sooo much of.

 

[PegaZus]

Uber, I can't find any article or website that says that Florida has privatized their schools. They are allowing vouchers for low-income children to attend private school, and just voted to allow a private school to collect 80% of the public school cost per voucher, but the public schools still exist.

Personally, I think privatizing schools can be a good thing, and it'll have some bad nuggets as well, just as anything in life. There are wonderful public schools, and then there are terrible public schools.

I've read previously that the biggest indicator that a child will do well in school are not is how involved the parents are with the education. The ones that never show up for any parent-teacher conference are the ones who've got kids flailing in class. Thus, those that pull their kids out of public school to put them through private are doing so because they're involved, thus the private school does better.

But I can see the upside of privatization. Streamlined decisions that don't have to weave through a bureaucratic nightmare. Multiple small schools that focus on different areas. The ability to hire people who KNOW the subject although they might not have a degree in that subject. Some of the best people I've learned from at work (engineers, not teachers) never earned their engineering degrees. They started by pounding rivets on the line, and worked their way up internally. Those people have a lifetime of experience and are willing to share it, but would be denied if they had to have a specific degree.

Downsides? I can see a bad school using every scheme and trick in the book to keep the money flowing. I can just see now "Lunch, as presented by Oscar Meyer" or science class, sponsored by Dow Chemicals. Redefining what a "passing" score is. I'd hope that with a privatized school system, the market would weed bad schools out and replace them with good ones. But I doubt government would allow an efficient market to actually work.

Thus, kickbacks and corruption will occur, private or public wouldn't matter.

That was a bit of ramble, wasn't it?

 

[johnboyjjb]

My response to that is simply that my history class was taught be the IT guy and my math class was taught by the PE teacher. The history class was one of my favorites but the math class was pathetic. Public school at its finest. Nope - I think more money should be flowed back into home schooling. I pay a good amount of money each year to send my kids to public schools but don't because I'm fairly certain they will get a much better education at home. And if you get them into high school or some other group schooling they don't end up being that weird home schooling type of kid.

I don't like the idea of all privatized schools but a cut in public school with some subsidizing of private school doesn't bother me if they could do it fairly.

 

[johnboyjjb]

Some of the best people I've learned from at work (engineers, not teachers) never earned their engineering degrees. They started by pounding rivets on the line, and worked their way up internally. Those people have a lifetime of experience and are willing to share it, but would be denied if they had to have a specific degree.

Hey that is me - just turned in my toolbox for an engineering desk two weeks ago. Fortunately my time with a rivet gun was limited but I still did a lot of other production related installation.

 

[IdofEntity]

You're right when you say that there is no absolute way to prevent a bad teacher from being hired. But when parents are dissatisfied with their students progress and make it clear to the school system, those bad teachers will lose their jobs so the school won't lose deposits.

On the other hand... I'm reminded of catholic schools. Up until a certain time certain catholics schools in Pennsylvania (and possibly others, but I'm speaking only from what I've witnessed) refused to teach or acknowledge the theory of evolution. It wasn't until Pope John Paul II issued a statement that evolution and god are not exclusive theories that evolution was finally taught as a theory in those schools.

When the general populace is allowed to dictate the curriculum through a supply and demand system, you tend to see a stagnation of ideas. Alabama residents will end up paying more schools who don't teach evolution and instead teach intelligent design. The parents would be thrilled by that, I'm sure. It does a disservice to the students though.

And on the OTHER side...

Schools are currently grappling with standardized tests. Not that the tests themselves are bad, but schools are shaping their curriculums solely around those tests. So governmental institutions are dictating what these kids are taught not through their beliefs and a supply vs. demand system, but by positively reinforcing the school who teach only what is included on these standardized tests through additional funding for the school with the best scores. Most would consider this a limited education, and the students not as rounded.

Either way...Our kids are boned.

 

[Hendarion]

should schools be privatized?

No. Way too many reasons to name them

 

[supervike]

Well.... I send my kids to a private school. It's not any sort of 'elite' thing at all, and it doesn't really cost all that much. But, I have so little faith in the public school system in our parts, that I felt I had no choice.

Quite often the answer to solving problems in the public school sector is to just throw more money at the issue. That is not working, and I think it's failing our students.

But, being a 'free market' type guy, I do think that offering a voucher system as an alternative to public schools is a viable thing. I'm still in favor of government oversight, but you can do amazing things when competition is allowed to thrive.

 

[Shawn R. L.]

Competition is needed. The bloated whale of the gov. is now producing some of the most uninformed kids yet. Many teach what to think but don't teach HOW to think........big big difference. We have kids that can't do basic, very basic math and/or read GRADUATING! See how many kids get thrown for a loop if the cash register isn't telling them exactly what change to give. This is no smack to the kids either. If anything, it's sad. They went for over a decade to a place to be educated and weren't. One text book I heard of gave more ink to Marilyn Monroe than to WW2. How many understand what an unusual and precious thing our Declaration of Independence and Constitution are?

Either severely rein in the teachers unions or get rid of them altogether. Unless a teacher is actually sits at their desk, silent, every day for the entire year they cant be fired.......CAN'T be fired. It's crazy.

Those evil right wing homeschoolers tend to score very high compared to the kids in public schools. If a parent who has no degree sitting in a kitchen can do better than the whole, expensive, machinery of the gov. school system then something is definitely wrong.

 

[IdofEntity]

I've read homeschooling as an alternative in this thread, and my biggest concern with that is the lack of social interaction forced on students. I know some parents think to shield their children from the cruel punks in schools. Well they ARE cruel punks, and their kids need to learn how to deal with them. And how to ask a girl out. Where will kids get their first kiss? College? Their siblings? (in Alabama, West Virginia, etc) Home schooling may prepare kids scholastically, but certainly not culturally and socially.

I used to tutor a couple of home-schoolers. They weren't the norm by any means. The eldest daughter had to carry a dictionary because I was sick and tired of explaining certain words to her. Words I used on a daily basis at High School.

 

[funnymouth]

of course my opinion is colored by my experiences, but my public school was great - mostly because i had a very involved community. my wife, on the other hand, went to a private school and was light years behind when she started college. she is a very intellegent woman, but her education was lacking in the private sector - not only in math and science but in reading, and literature, and just about everything else. when she asked about college at that private school thay told her she should throw her monay away. she is now a pharmacy (pharmD) student. it has taken her years of hard work to overcome that disadvantage. i believe that it does not matter whether a school is private or public, what matters is the communities involvement in the institution, because that is ultimately who the school is accountable to. people are quick to point fingers at an institution for failing their children, but really the success or failure of their children is reflective of their own involvement in their childs education.

to be frank i am kind of disgusted by the severe lack of math and science eduction on the whole - i believe these technical fields will drive econimic growth in the future, and they are always poorly funded/supported.

 

[Evil Dave]

Competition is needed. The bloated whale of the gov. is now producing some of the most uninformed kids yet. Many teach what to think but don't teach HOW to think........big big difference. We have kids that can't do basic, very basic math and/or read GRADUATING! See how many kids get thrown for a loop if the cash register isn't telling them exactly what change to give. This is no smack to the kids either. If anything, it's sad. They went for over a decade to a place to be educated and weren't. One text book I heard of gave more ink to Marilyn Monroe than to WW2. How many understand what an unusual and precious thing our Declaration of Independence and Constitution are?

Either severely rein in the teachers unions or get rid of them altogether. Unless a teacher is actually sits at their desk, silent, every day for the entire year they cant be fired.......CAN'T be fired. It's crazy.

Those evil right wing homeschoolers tend to score very high compared to the kids in public schools. If a parent who has no degree sitting in a kitchen can do better than the whole, expensive, machinery of the gov. school system then something is definitely wrong.

Great Post.
In Louisiana we are fighting over a property tax increase to provide more funds for public schools.
What we have found is that our smaller rural parishes, with less money, regularly outscore the larger more urban parishes with more money.
Money does not seem to be the issue.
Is it Parenting? Teachers Unions? Cultural Difference between the areas? Population? I tend to believe it is a mixture of all of this, with a healthy dose of many seeing education as a "want' rather than a "need".

I've read homeschooling as an alternative in this thread, and my biggest concern with that is the lack of social interaction forced on students. I know some parents think to shield their children from the cruel punks in schools. Well they ARE cruel punks, and their kids need to learn how to deal with them. And how to ask a girl out. Where will kids get their first kiss? College? Their siblings? (in Alabama, West Virginia, etc) Home schooling may prepare kids scholastically, but certainly not culturally and socially.

I used to tutor a couple of home-schoolers. They weren't the norm by any means. The eldest daughter had to carry a dictionary because I was sick and tired of explaining certain words to her. Words I used on a daily basis at High School.

I've seen some parents avoiding this by starting group homeschooling. Where several families combine their efforts and school the children together.

 

[Shawn R. L.]

We've become soft. There's the assumption that what we have is no big deal and thus it tends to go fallow. Foreign students from poor countries often do really well because they came from having nothing and can't believe what is available here and THEY GRAB it. We keep looking at the system to magically infuse the kids with knowledge but there is no such a sense of hunger. Hunger for not only what can be but hunger to not have things the way they were or could become again, which people from impoverished countries will have as a fire under them.

 

[funnymouth]

very true - in terms of resources even the most "underfunded" schools here are wealthy. i remember seeing a video of some 13yo kids in indonesia doing calculus on a tiny chalkboard in a grass hut.

 

[IdofEntity]

So what I'm gathering from Shawn R.L. is that it's less important whether a school is private or public, but that they know WHY they should learn. The motivations behind learning. There are the advantages of having a great education, of becoming a learned individual, that are hard to duplicate. How do we make our kids want to learn? With me it was simply a dire need to satisfy my curiosity. I was taken to the Smithsonian when I was 4 and saw bones of beasts I couldn't even imagine. I had to know what they were, why they died. I saw my father take a soldering iron to a cassete player's board once and I had to know how that thing could take magnetic residue and translate it into sound.

Even now I'm talking on this forum about these things in order to satisfy my curiosity, and people bring up excellent points and conclusions. How is it most children don't feel this? How can we spark that curiosity?

 

[Evil Dave]

So what I'm gathering from Shawn R.L. is that it's less important whether a school is private or public, but that they know WHY they should learn. The motivations behind learning. There are the advantages of having a great education, of becoming a learned individual, that are hard to duplicate. How do we make our kids want to learn? With me it was simply a dire need to satisfy my curiosity. I was taken to the Smithsonian when I was 4 and saw bones of beasts I couldn't even imagine. I had to know what they were, why they died. I saw my father take a soldering iron to a cassete player's board once and I had to know how that thing could take magnetic residue and translate it into sound.

Even now I'm talking on this forum about these things in order to satisfy my curiosity, and people bring up excellent points and conclusions. How is it most children don't feel this? How can we spark that curiosity?

One way is to change the way we teach. Our schools teach things as a matter of fact, children are rewarded for regurgitation of these facts and promptly forget it, as they do not have the experience to realize that this information may be useful in the future. We need to show them the application of principles rather than just the principle itself.
IE: In school I was lousy at Triginometry. I saw absolutely no use for it. When I graduated and actually used it in the military, I picked it up quite easily. I saw/understood the purpose/use of it.

 

[IdofEntity]

One way is to change the way we teach. Our schools teach things as a matter of fact, children are rewarded for regurgitation of these facts and promptly forget it, as they do not have the experience to realize that this information may be useful in the future. We need to show them the application of principles rather than just the principle itself.
IE: In school I was lousy at Triginometry. I saw absolutely no use for it. When I graduated and actually used it in the military, I picked it up quite easily. I saw/understood the purpose/use of it.

Kind of like those kids that used to insist they'd never need to know how to calculate the area under a parabolic curve, and now they're rushing to revitalize their math skills? Makes sense. But how do you convey that need to the kids? In math and science it shouldn't be that difficult. In the arts? Who can honestly say they'll need Macbeth? How do we convery the principles behind the works of Salvador Dali? It baffles me at the moment...

To stay on tread topic though, is a state run school or a private school better equipped to make those changes to it's curriculum? Private Schools tend to be quicker with curriculum adjustments, but State schools are the far larger audience.

Would one way to stop the mindless regurgitation be to stop issuing funds based on standardized tests? Maybe funds should be awarded for lower absentee rates? Or for percentage of students who qualify or are accepted for higher education? Wait nix that last one. It'd be a disservice to the tradesmen/tradeswomen such as electricians, carpenters, etc.