Education and Freedom of Choice: Part 1

While tenure, overbearing unions whom cater to the teacher first, and failed programs have much to do with our current educational crisis, parenting skills must be part of the new initiative moving forward. The students in my public school district do approximately 30% better, on SAT scores than a neighboring school a mere 3.5 miles away. I would speculate that it may be due to the fact that a larger percentage of the children in the neighboring community are from single parent homes and the per family income is significantly less. The children 3.5 miles away are not less intelligent, so how does one explain the disparity on scores and graduation rates? A system must be developed where all children reap the benefit of a proper education. The teacher's union needs a clear overhaul, however, given they are one of the government's largest lobbyist we can be rest assured that no progress will be made. Due to the union control voucher programs will remain unavailable in most communities, due to the union control, teacher's that do not teach effectively will remain in the classroom, due to union control we will not be able to address the failed system that is so detrimental to the future of our Country. The unions must place the child's best interest first, and only then can we build an educational system that rivals others.

Should all School Board Elections be held in November when a larger and more diverse voter turnout is likely?

I live in a rural community and worked as a secretary in the school system for 9.5 years. Our children graduated with good grades and also graduated from a university. We lived below poverty level. We spent time teaching our children to read, which we were told they would not learn to read without our help. No one helped my husband or myself when we went to school. Yet we had a better education when we graduated from High School than our children. Education in our colleges and universites has progressed to a level that we cannot produce teachers who taught as well as the teachers of the 50's and 60's. I think we need to demand more of our colleges and universities. Teachers need to realize that each student is their customer. They need to teach each one to read, write and be able to do math. History can incorporated into reading and writing. Science can be incorporated into math.
There were children who were home schooled for two hours a day, who came out with a better education than seven hour public school children.
This is a huge issue. It does not have anything to do with poverty or location, but accountability. Unions want to represent teachers then if a teacher cannot produce then let's penalize the union. Maybe some of the parents should start sueing the unions if their children are not getting the proper education.
The unions helped create this problem so we should hold them responsible along with the colleges and universities and each teacher. I have long felt that a good teacher should be paid more, not by the level of their education. That doesn't make them a better teacher just more educated.
In Nevada there was an eighteen year old high school graduate teaching without credentials because the school district was short of teachers. According to the school she was doing an outstanding job.
Education is only good if it teaches you how to perform
in a job environment. I don't care how much education one has if you cannot produce anything it is of no value.

I am inclined to vote for School Board candidiates who are outspoken as anti-union. The chance of ridding ourselves of Teachers' Unions is zero, so we must seek to hammer out strict changes in the contract each time it comes up for renewal.
1. Tenure should not be a factor for job retention.
2. Teachers who are found to be introducing politcal rhetoric into courses that are not politcally oriented should be given a warning. Third time - OUT.
3. Establish measures of success for job retention and pay scale.
Editor - It troubles me how often articles about education have misspelled words and not the best grammar.
"The 'you' two? whom I speak .."
Last - All School Districts should at least attempt requiring parent education by the school giving them guidelines that will support and benefit their child's education, thus their life.

Points 1,2 and 3 are well taken. In my opinion they begin with the election to the school board of qualified people. You have me on the Editors note. All those years of Jesuit training go down to the all powerful spell checker. Mr. Casey would not be proud. Mea culpa. On your last point ... please expand on this as I'm not sure if I get your point.

There is a lot of conversation concerning the average student, the troubled student and the underprivileged student...I have not seen much consideration toward the student that is intellectually above average. We appear to be so engrossed in helping certain groups of students that we are neglecting some of our most talented students. Am I missing something? It is good that we provide means to support education equality for all. But, shouldn't we provide, just as diligently, incentives to our intellectually talented students?

This is from awhile ago but I suspect it holds true today, none the less, when my son was going through grade school there were three elementary schools in our district. One had the reputation of where all the jocks went, another where the social butterflies congregated and the last produced the eggheads and nerds. I wondered how that came about until they district held a meeting for parent volunteers (you know class helpers, fund raiser workers, etc etc). They held it in the cafeteria of the centrally located school. One schools parents filled two and one half tables, the next barely filled one and the third had two or three parents show up. I'll leave you to surmise which school had the learning driven children.

If one state would implement universal tax credits for educational choice, other states would have to follow. Republicans need to focus on one state that will give them a victory. Indiana deserves serious consideration. After 2010, Republicans will control all three branches of government. Here are the three steps that are needed:

1. Give tax credits to every family that chooses private education. Make this credit $1,000 less than the average dollars spent per student in government schools. Each family that uses the tax credit saves Indiana taxpayers $1,000.

2. Inform teachers unions that they will be able to vote for unionization in all newly created private schools. Also, help teachers understand that in private schools they will no longer be required to take standardized test. Teachers hate these test, and private schools can choose to not participate. The average teacher will support this. Republicans should not fear less testing because parental choice provides the best accountability possible. Private schools can also expel disruptive students and bullies, thus creating a better environment for teachers and students.

3. Explain to voters that private schools are truly public because they are controlled by parents and communities not Washington D.C. courts. Indiana wants to return again to a true "public education system." Good slogan: "Public Schools are no longer run by the public!"

These three points provide a strong platform for change. Change is justified because all too many Indiana schools are ranked as failing. Please consider these ideas, and if I can be of service please contact me.

I believe that a voucher program would work very well. I think that competition is greatly needed. Everyone knows that private schools provide better education than that of public and to my understanding they are cheaper per student. Does anyone believe that Obama is going to send his kids to public school? Did Chelsea Clinton go to public school? The only people who would be against a voucher program would be those in the teachers' union or other similar organizations First of all, they have no substantial arguement. Milton Friedman had said in his book "Free to Choose, The classic Inquiry into the Relationship Between Freedom and Economics" (which everyone here should read), "The spokepersons for these organizations never explain why, if the public school system is doing such a splendid job, it needs to fear competition from nongovernmental, competitive schools or, if public schools do poorly to educate, why anyone should object to its destruction."

The objections as I know them are;

1. the church/state issue: Should tax money go to religious schools? That is, since vouchers would be tax money, then would it be a violation of the First Amendment to use such monies in religious institutions? Well, first of all, if it really is that crucial, then the vouchers need not be accepted at private religious schools, just accepted at nongovernmental schools. Besides, it is not the governments place to decide what world view a child should learn and or not learn. Also the money could go to religious schools and pay for only those non-religious courses, and have the after school portions be about the religion and thus paid for privately. Also, as far as i know, soldiers get the GI bill. This is tax money used by soldiers of which soldiers get to choose the college of their choice and some of which are Catholic Universities.

2.Financial Costs: This objection says that a voucher plan would raise the total cost to taxpayers of schooling-because of the cost of vouchers given for the roughly 10% of children who now attend parochial and other private schools. This is a "problem" ONLY to those who disregard the present discrimination against parents who send their children to nonpublic schools. Universal vouchers would end the inequity of using tax funds to school some children but not others, because then, since it would be universal, every child would be able to get a voucher. Besides, the voucher can be an amount of which is less than that of the cost per publicly educated childed so that the total public expenditures remain the same. The smaller amount spent on private competitive schools would most likely provide higher quality of schooling than the larger amount now spent on public schools.

3. The Economic Class issue: Will there be an effect on the social and economic class structure of schooling? The arguement is that the great value of the public school has beenas a melting pot, in which rich and poor, native-and foreign born, black and white have learned to live together. This is true of small communities, but not true for large cities. In large cities, those in charge tend to tie the kind and cost of schooling with the residential location. Poor cities equals poor schools. A voucher plan would give more Freedom to the parent and allow their child to escape the flaws of inner city schools.
another point tying to the economic class issue, is that well-to-do parents would add on money with their own money to the voucher. So if a voucher was for $15,000, a well-off family could add $5,000 of their own money and send their child to a private school charging a 20,000 dollar tuition. The arguement is that a poor family would or could not do this and thus the fear is that the differences in educational oppurtunities would be wider. This is,however, crazy. A voucher program will most assuredly show drastic improvement in the education that is currently available to the poor of our nation. But who cares if the the well-to-do family can add on extra money to the voucher as long as it means better education for all, particularly the poor, then let it happen. In a generation or two, the size of the poor will decrease because of better education, and the middle class would increase, thus allowing for even more people to add on to the voucher.

A commitment to equality at the deliberate expense of the development of indidvidual children seems to be the final corruption of whatever is good in the egalitarian instinct.

Now there are other issues that i know of. The above objections were taken out of Milton Friedman's book that i mentioned above "Free to Choose"

Anyone who wants to hear and I mean hear more about milton friedman go to

www.ideachannel.tv

there you can listen to many many hours of him debating issues and explaining capitalism and debunking socialism and communism. He does so not just with logical thinking but also with empirical data collected through the ages.

I suggest Michael, that by working to improve the overall system with "choice and competition" we offer the parents of those gifted children the chance to send them to a better school where their excellence can be applied. There are many existing opportunities for those who excell in good school districts/environments vs. in bad school districts where they may never be aware of such opportunities. This will not be an overnight fix but we must begin somewhere

As I think about your remarks ... The history of the unions in schools is not one that I feel should be introduced into the private school system.

One, it is a private enterprise.

Two, the weight and failures of the "education unions" have been a large contributor to failures in American education. We find repeated and egregious examples where they serve their interests over education.

David,

It is not a spell checker problem because spell check would recognize "two" as a legitimate word. Spell check does not address syntax. Such errors are a failure of "proof reading" your writing and recognition of errors.

Peggy ... Lighten up. It was a bit of tongue in cheek shot at "me, myself and I" for not catching the error. I am the "spell checker."

David, you hit on a key issue here. We recently had school board elections here in Wichita and it I remember right, the entire voter turnout was something like 7,000 votes cast...out of a population of 400,000+. Moving the school board elections to coincide with general elections not only makes turnout sense, but economic sense!