Post a commentMy school district, Cedar Grove, NJ., uses the argument--"think of the children"--every year when the annual school budget comes up for the voters to approve. The most recent SAT scores in Cedar Grove were below the state average in NJ, across the board. Additionally, the school district employees received pay raises of 3% + for each of the next three years. The school administrators do even better with pay and benefits. Our schools have all of the extra-curriculars, as well. We spend more and more money on education, and all we get is mediocrity.
I looked up the mission statement of the Commonwealth Foundation, a conservative think tank, and this is one of their core values: "Demonstrating the power of private institutions—both for-profit and non-profit—to create a good and civil society." This is essentially the motivation behind such propaganda speeches as this letter demonstrates. They want to privatize the world, starting with public education. To do that, they must crack all unions, destabilize public schools by promoting quasi-private charters with their strict admissions policies and manipulate numbers like "per pupil spending" to make it look like there is some kind of correlation to the rate of inflation and public school spending. Look at the motives clearly stated in their mission statement and all this bashing of public schools and teachers is understandable. Nothing but hogwash.
Per pupil spending cannot be considered as an average when the disparities are vast among states and individual districts. For example, out of the 64 school districts in Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, which has some of the poorest families in the state, ranks 60th out of the 64 districts, hardly an example of outrageous spending. And don't forget that much of the federal spending is mandated by No Child Left Behind which is directed primarily towards test publishing, test prepping and neglects everything else, including the arts. This letter distorts every fact and figure for the purpose of a specific and self serving agenda.
Magistra,
Please stop making up "facts".
There are 500 school districts in Pennsylvania. Philadelphia ranks very close to the middle (274), spending just under $12,000 per pupil in 2007-08.
Charter schools are forbidden from having any admissions policies, and take student on a first-come, first-serve basis. They also serve a higher proportion of low-income and minority students, and still only get about 80% of the funding that school districts get.
Nathan, thanks for the correction. I forgot to mention that the 64 districts were in Southeastern Pennsylvania (which is a closer look at similar demographics). And charter schools absolutely do have special admissions policies that differ from the regular schools. They have interviews, applications and lotteries. They close their admissions months before school beings. They do not have to admit profoundly at risk students (it's in the law). If a school advertizes a special curriculum like arts or African culture or computer sciences, that alone is a discriminating factor. I know my facts and I know the agenda of corporations is to corporatize public everything, especially the 500 to 600 billion dollar education industry.
Please refer to the Daily News front page story about the achievments at West Philadelphia HIgh School which is turning towards a model of schools within schools, something abandoned under previous administrations. West has been redesigned according to a once very successful model. Note that car building is not on the PSSA but the skills involved in building a car are over and above anything tested on standardized assessments. The bean counters would love to try to prove that privatization of public schools is the way to go, but they cannot deny the success of programs like this within the public school framework. Charter schools were meant to do things like this and show the regular schools how. Now this once notorious high school is about to teach a few lessons to other alternative programs. Imagine. They beat MIT for the finals. Tell me that a little more money would not help spread this kind of program elsewhere.
Nathan, you know that students and their parents are interviewed in the admission process for charter schools, right? Oh, and take look at this...
http://www.firstphiladelphiacharter.org/forms/ They are a charter school, and they have an admission form that asks your child's special education information upfront! Whoa! I wonder who's discriminating there?
Magistra, with all of this talk about agendas, perhaps we should examine your agenda. You resist any accountability for public schools or for teachers. There are bad teachers who are ensured job security for life by the tenure system. Tenure isn't needed to protect the good teachers (and there are many very good teachers as well). There are school districts that consistently under-perform. Yet you don't want accountability. You just promote the party line of the teacher's union. Competition is good; complacency is not.
There is a clear and present danger to public education, particularly in the big cities. Running away from it to charter schools is no solution. The issues in the public schools need to be confronted, head on - and then solved, for real. It does not matter where the chips fall. No Child Left Behind is a hoax. What we are gambling with is the education of all our children, plus the future of this country.
jfar86 - I do not resist accountability. I resist rigged, unfair and lopsided accountability. If a teacher is responsible for teaching the rock cycle, for example, shouldn't that teacher have access to real rocks and minerals to show the class? Memorizing textbook answers to regurgitate on a test is absolutely meaningless. But those kinds of science materials cost money which your friend Mr. Samuel would deny public schools. Meanwhile he represents a think tank that has as its GOAL the deconstruction and replacing of public schools via underfunding and siphoning off of students to private and/or privately run charter schools. You talk about accoutability but where was the oversight when all that graft and fraud occurred in Pennsylvania charter schools recently? Competition is only workable with a level playing field. I know an 8th grade special education class that must take the PSSA. Their teacher is working hard getting them to advance past the primer level in reading. Maybe the average IQ of the class is 55 or 60 if that. Some are practically nonverbal. Should that teacher be held accountable for their "underperformance"? When you have an answer that makes sense, get back to me.
Plumber Joe, thanks for stating the obvious. NCLB is a Trojan Horse that has allowed entrepreneurs like Mr. Samuel and his friends to leach into the public education trough and make a profit with our tax money.
I visit schools all the time as part of my job. I see the results of child abuse, lead poisoning, neglect and abject poverty. I won't say where or when or the gender, but I read a note passed to a teacher by a small child who wanted to commit suicide. That is the pit of despair in the life of a young child who should instead be writing letters to Santa and planning birthdays and having fun. That child needs attention from a counselor, a family therapist, and anyone who can intervene. Services like that cost. Needs like that are what drive up the cost of education in the inner city. Bean counters know NOTHING about it and frankly should learn to sit down and be quiet.
All hail the mighty Magistra, he who dominates the comments and yet has very little of relevance to say. I went to school, I had teachers that were horrible, couldn't care less and were unprepared, even one who was in the early stages of Alzheimers...yet he continued to teach thanks to his union. I think that throwing money at the solution hasn't worked yet. When teachers are willing to have their pay and jobs based on merit, like the rest of us, then we should address the standards in the classroom. In my district, the average teacher salary is $98,000.00/yr. They can buy a lot of rocks with that, but then it would actually be about the children and not about money. Oh, and they don't even live in the district where they teach...why? Because the taxes are too high or because they want THEIR kids to go to a better school...Magistra, how many teachers send their kids to private school?
Lori T. You must have a horse in this race too, like Mr. Samuel. You are living testimony by the fact that you can write literate sentences that somebody taught you something. Surely not all your teachers were "horrible" or you would not be able to bash them so eloquently. The union has no power to keep teachers in their jobs if administrators do theirs. But if you read any of my "irrelevant" posts, I gave legitimate examples where it is impossible to grade a teacher based on student achievement on a single test given on a single day. I wish I knew a teacher who made close to $100K. Nobody in Philly does. Only the administration like Ackerman. And are you suggesting that teachers are responsible for supplementing the school budget by buying expensive lab equipment out of their own pockets, while also paying for the compulsory education courses they must take forever? Philadelphia schoolteachers must be residents of the city. So far you are making no sense. If you think teaching is the road to riches with perfect job security, by all means try it. I dare you.
Magistra, your personal attacks are certainly more entertaining than your "facts." Firstly, I don't work for a for-profit organization, and my organization does not make use of any tax-money whatsoever. Second, if anyone, you seem to be the leech as you apparently "visit schools all the time as part of my job" (my guess is you work for the state).
More to the point, I come from a third world country that is part of the "third world" because of socialist policies that you espouse. As much as you like to think that you are doing a good deed for the down-trodden or "exploited", your policies only entrench local economies in bureaucratic management that leads to waste, hampering further the lives of children. Throwing more money won’t cure the problem of children feeling depressed. You seem to think public schools are at a disadvantage due to lack of funding and hence are unable to compete. But charter schools receive less funding and still outperform public schools.
Giving children options could make them feel less helpless. There are countless stories of students who were able to leave public schools and receive greater individual attention and are challenged to study harder and overcome their situations. Here are some stories that might be of interest to you: http://www.paschoolchoice.org/reach/cwp/view.asp?a=1386&q=571364)
Finally you talk of profit as something that is something foreign to the people you support. Unions profit when they get millions in taxpayer money.
More to the point, I come from a third world country that is part "third world" because of socialist policies that you espouse. As much as you like to think that you are doing a good deed for the down-trodden or "exploited", your policies only entrench local economies in bureaucratic management that leads to waste, hampering further the lives of children.
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