Many conservatives, including Trump, say that "school choice" is the solution to failing schools, particularly those in inner cities.
Although I do agree many public schools are disasters, I for one believe this is a bad idea.
I have sent my daughter to a private school since she was in kindergarten, and I can tell you that there is nothing "magical" about private schools except for one thing---the parents are very engaged in their child's education. The facilities and many teachers may actually be better at many public schools.
When parents are highly engaged in their children's lives, the children are much less likely to be involved in crime or other destructive behaviour. The schools are more likely to teach within the guidelines that active parents insist.
Many of these private schools are not filled with children of rich people, but rather those that will sacrifice to find ways to send their kids to school. I have known dozens of parents that help serve lunch or volunteer in other ways to get educational discounts. I spent a year myself as a bus driver, and I still found the means to send my daughter to a private school.
If sending kids to a private school suddenly became free, easy, and sacrifice-less, the halls would be filled with the same problems public schools face. A week or two ago, another GAW anon, made a post about how he was one of two other parents attending a school board meeting.
Really, what positive contributions could these private schools hope to receive from these School Choice newcomers?
I totally hate how much they system keeps feeding these schools, but I believe the solution needs to start by parents involvement. We've started to see a little of that around the country, as countries have gone too woke.
I think what we need is to let the money follow the kids. Then each school will try to keep their students. Lots of charter schools will open up. There will be more accountability for bad behavior if the school loses funding. Choices always brings up quality. I feel like a school choice helps the private schools too. They need to up their game to keep kids.
I think the idea is less about private school being "free" and more about schools having to compete for the student. My public schools are a joke (at the high school level) and I would love to see some alternatives, if only to jolt our USD Administrators into action.
Yup, if a school is doing real well with teaching the children more people would want to send their children to that school. This way, schools may actually want to start TEACHING children again for starters else, they wont get money because, no one will want to go there. One thing I find nice on this is the fact that even in the poorest of neighborhood's, if the money is following the students , those students may actually start getting a decent education since there will be an incentive for schools in that area to improve since, if they do, they will get more students and will have the money needed to improve and hire people will be proactive about teaching and so on and so forth...
Make the schools be the ones that need to pass a parent's test with high marks on a yearly report card. heh heh.
You clearly don't understand "school choice".
Non-government schools would be an option for parents that otherwise don't have any options. Then it would become necessary for the parents to put some thought into what is the best solution for their child's education. Free market forces would do the rest...
This would be a HUGE improvement.
The argument for school choice is not that it is the perfect system, or the best. And as a program, it does not touch on parent involvement, which is likely the single biggest factor in a child's development and learning regardless of their school.
Instead, the argument is that public schools are wasting your money, are unresponsive and even hostile to parents' wishes, and that's wrong. School choice is a way to reassert control of how your money is used, and simultaneously reassert control over your children's education. The case is entirely economic and political.
It is also an expedient step in the how-to-get-there-from-here situation, because the funding is already earmarked, parents could migrate at their own pace, and new schools would be economically incentivized according to parents' desires as opposed to the wishes of unions and bureaucrats. And it would do nothing to restrict your involvement.
Thank you for including me in this post. I'm the one of two parents who went to a school board meeting. (But I'm not a parent, rather just a tax paying citizen who sees an additional idea that can improve school reading scores.) At then end of this month I will be going back to my School Board District with an idea. I want the preschool pupils to begin learning how to write in cursive. I bet my idea will not see the light of day in the meeting because the School Superintendent has to approve me being on the agenda. No worries because I have a back up plan to get my idea into the hands of the School Board Members. Where there is a will, there is always a way.