Opponents of vouchers remain wary. They say a voucher plan would send government money to schools that can "cherry pick" students and don't have the same obligations to educate the disabled or those with special needs. While students attending private schools with public money would have to take the same standardized tests as public school students, the schools themselves would not be subject to the same accountability standards, which include the assignment of rankings and letter grades to individual schools.Those special needs and disabled children often drive the school's score down. While federal law requires that the schools provide services to such children, the simple fact of the matter is that few of them graduate and are listed as dropouts on the school performance score. That's not fair to the school.
We need to have this conversation, and we need to level the playing field. I'm not proposing that we cast those kids aside, but I am proposing that the school accountability score not take those kids performance into account. It's certainly not a teacher's fault if a child can only progress to a limited education, but at age 22 those kids have received all the services that they're entitled to receive and they end their public school experience. They're then listed as dropouts simply because they didn't graduate. Let's serve the kids, and lets do what makes sense.
Why not just give every student the same voucher as evey other student and let the schools compete for students? Schools that educate well and within budget will stay open, while schools that have grossly expensive overheads and/or poor results will lose students and either change or close. A winning solution all around.
ReplyDeleteGood idea, Jerry, except that public schools are required by law to provide services that private schools aren't required to provide. Public schools have to provide services for developmentally challenged students, high-risk students, and low performing students. Private schools don't. There are no easy fixes, but it is a conversation that we have to have.
ReplyDeleteSchool choice is a great thing, a really great thing. The most important thing that we can do is try to insure that we're not condemning the public schools by siphoning off the good students.
Until "social promotion" comes to a halt; until "No child left behind" gets tossed on the garbage pile; until chronic troublemaker kids are banned from public schools; until we are willing to admit that there really are students who are low IQ and that all kids are NOT equal, the public schools will continue to suffer.
ReplyDeleteThere also the issue of parents who simply don't give a damn.....about anything. I've talked with teachers and staff who tell me that they can't even get some low income parents to fill out the paperwork for the federal lunch program, which means the school "eats" the lunch cost, because the school will not or can not refuse to feed the kids.
I could rant about the "free" cell phone services for the "under-privileged". Or low rent/no rent housing. Or teenage single mothers, and "baby daddy" sperm providers(I refuse to call such males 'fathers'). In the name of "compassion for the "poor", we have created an under-class that cannot or will not provide for themselves. But what is the point? Most people reading it here already know this.
The system is broken, and no one is willing to make the truly tough decisions to fix it.
Great rant, Termite. The system is broken and no one is willing to get out of newspeak long enough to define the problem. The problem is 40 years of social engineering.
ReplyDelete