WHY is our government involved in education?

[moonman239]

I completely hate the fact that the states and the feds feel the need to make laws regarding our education. The truth is, they don't need to. This is one of those matters where the government need not stick its nose into.

If I ran in a state legislature, I would propose that: 1) the state's constitution be amended to ban any regulation of a minor's education and 2) all public schools be sold. Competition will drive tuition prices down, and those who don't have kids in public school won't be forced to fund the education of those who do.

[baja_yu]

I feel quite the opposite. "Comptetition will drive tuition prices down"? Am I wrong or are private schools 10 times more expensive than public schools? EDIT: And imagine you remove the low cost, public, option completely. You think that will make the private sector to lower, or increase tuitions even more? EDIT2: The main point is that someone above the law* has to be in charge, mainly for the sake of quality of education. Now, the fact that that very quality has been plummeting year after year is a whole new discussion topic.

* Before anyone springs that "no one is above the law" crap, I'd just like to say that people that make the law, even if only that particular law is concerned, are obviously above it.

[dilettante]

The reason (some) governments offer free public education is that otherwise education becomes the province of the rich. This is how it always was and is where public schools do not exist.

I wish somebody would go after these crooks who candy-coat things with terms like "charter schools" which are overwhelmingly "for-profit schools sucking at the teat of the taxpayer." They've been shown to have even worse outcomes than traditional public schools in the majority of cases.

If you are upset about value for your tax dollar, you should be going after the charters with your torches and pitchforks.


The funny thing is, where I live the State is now taxing seniors' pensions to subsidize businesses, a tax shift from no State pension tax to a tax used to decrease taxes on business. Thanks "no taxation" Republicans and Libertarians!

Your agenda is now clear.

[moonman239]

I feel quite the opposite. "Comptetition will drive tuition prices down"? Am I wrong or are private schools 10 times more expensive than public schools? EDIT: And imagine you remove the low cost, public, option completely. You think that will make the private sector to lower, or increase tuitions even more? EDIT2: The main point is that someone above the law* has to be in charge, mainly for the sake of quality of education. Now, the fact that that very quality has been plummeting year after year is a whole new discussion topic.

* Before anyone springs that "no one is above the law" crap, I'd just like to say that people that make the law, even if only that particular law is concerned, are obviously above it.

Everyone has a right to be educated. I'm not saying they don't. But they shouldn't be educated by the government. The institution of public schools was a bad idea from the start. The "idea" is that the poor people can go to school. If that is so, I think non-profit, donor-funded schools would be a better idea.

[baja_yu]

But they shouldn't be educated by the government.

What exactly do you mean by that?


Public schools are under-funded as it is, with a budget of just over 70bn. What makes you think that donations will be able to raise that much and more, year after year. What would happen if a school ran out of funding at some point, do kids go home until someone donates more or what? And who would decide to which school the money goes, the donors? Wont that leave some schools with much more than other, and some with nothing? Just imagine what could be done if the military budget could cut a few corners of its >1.000bn a year.

[OhGreen]

If the government didn't control the education, what guarantee is there that anyone would?

The private sector have 1 thing in mind, money.

If for any reason they don't make money, they'll shut that branch of the business (aka the school).

[NeedSomeAnswers]

I couldn't agree less, that just seems completely barking mad to me. I am all for taking the politics out of education but i just dont see this as the way to do it.

By saying that you dont want government run schools it is basically saying that only the rich should be educated in the end, as the donor model will never ever work for schools and private schools are basically for the wealthy.

Have you ever seen a Charities money intake during hard times (like now for instance??) the money donated reduces massively and a school just wouldn't survive with such a fluid and changeable source of funding, and it would be the schools in poorer places that would be hit hardest as the local people just wont be able to donate in hard times.

[BlindSniper]

Why are you against government involvement in education ? so far you just stated that you don't want them involved and I'm intrigued why.

[Shaggy Hiker]

Am I wrong or are private schools 10 times more expensive than public schools?

Yeah, you're wrong. A factor of 10x is WAY too low, at least in the US. With the possible exception of some religious schools, private schools currently require "a gagging bagful" of money, which puts them FAR out of reach of the average citizen.


@moonman: I'd like to hear you explain your reasoning a bit more. Different people have different views, but what little you have said thus far strikes me as being so staggeringly delusional that it makes me suspect that I don't really understand what you are saying. The only group I know of who want to keep the government out of financing education, as it is doing, are some select groups of people who don't believe that people should be educated in anything other than the bible (and even that should only be for boys). Is that your motivation?

[SambaNeko]

With his other thread in mind, seems like he's just angry over having to take a standardized test.

[abhijit]

With his other thread in mind, seems like he's just angry over having to take a standardized test.

You beat me to it. I was going to ask - did anything go wrong with the CAHSEE?

[moonman239]

What exactly do you mean by that?


Public schools are under-funded as it is, with a budget of just over 70bn. What makes you think that donations will be able to raise that much and more, year after year. What would happen if a school ran out of funding at some point, do kids go home until someone donates more or what? And who would decide to which school the money goes, the donors? Wont that leave some schools with much more than other, and some with nothing? Just imagine what could be done if the military budget could cut a few corners of its >1.000bn a year.

I think that might be less likely to happen if they took out those who can live without having two parents that are too busy working to educate their children themselves.

[baja_yu]

Those that you are referring to a very few compared to the majority, and are usually the ones that can afford private schools in the first place. And, if you ask me, a lot of people aren't fit to be parents, let alone in a position to educate them.

[moonman239]

Those that you are referring to a very few compared to the majority, and are usually the ones that can afford private schools in the first place. And, if you ask me, a lot of people aren't fit to be parents, let alone in a position to educate them.

Okay. So what would you propose as a solution? I would say, maybe the government should just fund the public schools without telling them what to teach. Let the students demonstrate their ability to become intelligent, independent adults. For heaven's sake, don't judge their education based upon how well they do on a stupid multiple-choice test. They, as I said before, don't measure how educated a student is.

[SambaNeko]

Okay. So what would you propose as a solution?

He's not the one arguing for change; the onus is on you to articulate your solution and why it's superior.

They, as I said before, don't measure how educated a student is.

In fact, they can. Given that your teacher(s) properly instructed you, and you put in the effort to study, practice and understand the material, you should be able to prove your knowledge and pass a test. Why not stop scapegoating "the government" here and try addressing the source of your trepidation over your exam?

[baja_yu]

I would say, maybe the government should just fund the public schools without telling them what to teach.

What part of the curriculum do you have a problem with exactly?

Let the students demonstrate their ability to become intelligent, independent adults. For heaven's sake, don't judge their education based upon how well they do on a stupid multiple-choice test. They, as I said before, don't measure how educated a student is.

The first problem is that very few students actually have the enthusiasm to learn. This is nothing new. Most kids always looked at school as a necessary evil they must go through, waiting for the bell to ring to run out. If it were up to kids we probably wouldn't have schools at all. But if kids new what was good for them there wouldn't be a need for things like parenting.

Second, don't take grades so hard. No one will judge you solely based on your grades nor will your future depend on you having an A or a B.

Third, a test can be written or oral. Both have their good and bad sides. In a written exam you can test more students in less time, you can hence ask more questions and test a broader scope of the subject, but you don't get exactly the quality and level of the knowledge. With oral questioning, it takes more time, and since you have to ask/test students one by one, you have less time to ask questions so you ask fewer, so some parts of the subject may go untested. Maybe you get asked more questions from a lecture you learned well, and a few or none from a lecture you didn't study at all, or vice versa. You could say in both cases that the oral exam was inaccurate and unfair. But, you get a better feel for how well the student knows a certain subject and if he actually understands it or if they just memorized the textbook by heart. Between the two I'd prefer the latter, but that will require smaller number of students per class, and because of that more teachers, so more funding.

[KiwiDexter]

Just a thought, with no Government involvement who exactly will determine the various schools levels of achievement academically each year?

Okay that might be a Commonwealth thing where the Government administrates public examinations for state wide rankings - grades lead to acceptance at various tertiary institutions.

I think I'm quite happy with the Aussie "Free" education system, there's a choice of Private education of course for those that can afford it or disagree with current public education.

[abhijit]

The Government wants to make sure that everyone in the country can read and write. An educated population is better for the workforce. If education were to be made completely private, in a short period of time, it would also become completely optional.

Then the Government would have to import it's workforce from other places in the world and also figure out way of exporting the uneducated population somewhere.

[InvisibleDuncan]

Yeah, you're wrong. A factor of 10x is WAY too low, at least in the US.

That's high compared to the UK. Here, the government pays roughly £6k per year per student, and the top public schools charge about £10k per term, meaning that they get about £36k per year (including the government's £6k), or 6 times the state fees. Lesser public schools charge from about £3k per term, meaning that they receive about £15k per year, so only 2.5 times the state fees.

[Shaggy Hiker]

Frankly, I feel that the way we are pricing and funding higher education in the US is unsustainable. It sounds like the UK is doing a better job, at least with public schools. In 0-12 education, I think the funding is a bit better, but only because private schools can be as exclusive as they want. If you don't want to pay outrageous amounts, you can always go somewhere cheaper.

I suspect that the whole source of this thread had to do with not understanding the budget system of the public schools in the US. The budgets are generally a matter of public record, and are published openly in some parts of the country, but it's mighty dry reading, and I doubt many people attempt it. I used to be somewhat immersed in it when I was much younger. My mother, in particular, was involved in the budget process at town and school level, and I overheard plenty on what really went on. I'm sure there are places that are quite different, but in this case, it was a bunch of (mostlY) reasonable people making earnest arguments for and against whatever. The result could often defy logic, and was a great example of herd mentality, at times. It was somewhat gratifying, though, and it left me very skeptical that a different funding source would even work. Funding by donation is out of the question. There would be no education in such a setting, and the country wouldn't survive that.

[Xanith]

Frankly, I feel that the way we are pricing and funding higher education in the US is unsustainable. It sounds like the UK is doing a better job, at least with public schools. In 0-12 education, I think the funding is a bit better, but only because private schools can be as exclusive as they want. If you don't want to pay outrageous amounts, you can always go somewhere cheaper.

If you look at the median cost of a private school education it is generally far lower than the true cost of a public school education. The reason why so many people are ill informed as to the total cost of the K-12 public education system in the US is that generally the average cost reported per student does not include things such as capital expenditures, debt service, and employee health and retirement benefits (huge cost).

You just have to look at how much state and local governments spend on the public schools, about 500 billion a year, or about 27 cents out of every dollar on the state and local level, to know just how expensive the public school system is in the US. My local town budget about 2/3 of the tax money collected goes to the public school system.

Spending has exploded the last 15-20 years and there hasn’t been any gain in the quality of a public school education. So simply pouring more money into a failed public school education system isn’t going to work. What is needed is more choice and competition added to the system to improve it. Reforms will be needed to the public school system in order for it to survive, of course that will be up to the individual states on how to accomplish that reform.

X

[Shaggy Hiker]

Good to see you Xanith. I'd go further than you did with that first part, though. I would be willing to bet that most people don't know even the reported cost per student for public schools, let alone the true cost. Where I grew up, the property taxes were divvied into three chunks: Town, County, and School District. The smallest of those three, by a fair amount, was the County portion, and that was a portion that rarely changed much and people had virtually no say in. The next most significant of the three was the Town portion. Much of that was routine stuff that nobody ever really had a say in (and nobody really cared that much, either, as it was pretty non-controversial). On top of that routine portion were the items that came up at the town meeting each year. Depending on the way people voted, the town portion of the property tax could swing WILDLY. One year, somebody pointed out that if you buy everything up front (without floating bonds), you pay less overall because you don't pay interest. My mother, who was running the meeting, pointed out that it would work, but that initial hit would be quite high. Everybody ignored that and bought everything up front that year. Their taxes went through the roof, since the taxes had to be sufficient to cover all of the things they had voted for. The next year, people were so freaked out about how high their taxes had just gone that they voted against EVERYTHING, including a replacement for one of the snowplows (in NH, no less). They were willing to burn up a massively expensive road grader on one of the plowing routes rather than buy a plow.

But that's a digression. The largest of the three chunks was the school district, which was handled much like the town budget. School district meeting could fill the gym, the caffeteria, the theatre, and a few of the classrooms in a sizeable school. It was a total zoo, but democratic in the excess. People don't necessarily act either rationally or in their best interests, as the Athenians showed in the Peloponesian war.

I have no doubt that spending has exploded. It's hard for a technologist to say this, but I'm not sure the gadgets that have been added to schools have made the learning even slightly better. This state is going to give every student a laptop, then require a certain amount of on-line classes. The thinking is that it can reduce the number of teachers. I don't believe it. It's been many years since I've been in school, but I still remember it pretty well. I was a pretty good, though somewhat half-assed, student. Had I been given a laptop, I would have been an utter disaster. I even figured out how to make a shooter game on an electric typewriter....and promptly flunked typing. It was the only course I ever flunked, and I'm a very good typist these days, so it didn't hurt me any, but it sure shows where my mind was at back then.

[dilettante]

The people who want to tear down public eduation for idealogical and personal wealth reasons have also managed to force a bizarre dialog and direction toward "performance measurement."

This has resulted in a whole industry selling patent "coaching to raise test scores" suites as well as administering, grading, and reporting the tests and scores. These tools and services are not cheap, and were probably part of the hidden agenda behind the whole thing: a way to parasitize public funding and siphon it into private wealth for a few.

It robs budgets, classroom time, and mindshare to the general detriment of the educational process.

The technical gewgaws are another manifestation of private parasites on public education. The educational payback on these "investments" (which seem to have rapid turnover/replacement rates) is probably fairly minor and the costs of distraction are seldom discussed. It has become an "Emperor's New Clothes" taboo topic, and thus tons of resources get sunk into technology rather than taking a stand to limit it to things with demonstrable value. It doesn't help much that technology is basically magic to most of the population either, like some cantankerous Genie's Lamp.

Those who want to parasitize public education funding for private gain find many allies out among the sheep. A big one are religious fundamentalists who don't like what is taught to students. They cling to hopes to divert funding to potentially religion-based and easily browbeaten for-profit ("charter") schools.

[moonman239]

My friend posted a picture on Facebook. It's a cartoon. In the cartoon, there's a classroom. All the children except one are wearing brain-sucking helmets labeled "TESTS" and they're writing on a piece of paper. The one who's not is looking outside through the window. The teacher says, "Come away from the window. You don't want to be a Child Left Behind, do you?" The student says he's OK with that.

[Shaggy Hiker]

You sure seem bitter about those tests.

We used to take standardized tests every year from at least 4th through 8th grade. I never was sure what those were, or where they came from. Seemed kind of silly, really, but I suppose they did something for somebody. Then I got to HS, and had to take another series of tests to show I had some fundamental life skills. Competency tests, I think, though I don't really recall. Some were kind of odd, yet practical, such as ordering a pizza (never did get that darn pizza, though), and filling out a 1040 form. Others were pretty funny. I failed the oral directions test something like three times as a senior. The test consisted of this (though in spoken form):

Write your name on the top line
Write your age on the second line
Circle your age
Underline your name.


That was it. I guess I don't follow directions well. I also failed the basic math test a couple times. I could do trig, I could do algebra, I could do calculus, but when given a sheet of addition problems of no more than two digits, I would routinely screw up 10% of them. Pretty funny, really. I discovered a theorem in set theory (it proved to be a derivative of another theorem) and applied it for a problem on a test one time, but I couldn't do addition to pass a simple test. Of course, it never mattered.

[BlindSniper]

Our country's standard tests are a joke. This is the math test you must pass if you want to pass Grade 12(the highest school grade in SA). If you want to have a Lol read through some of the other Grade 12 Tests

[nemaroller]

I don't buy into the fact that training every student to be an expert mathematician (chemist, what have you) produces the best results. Some people have abilities/brain abnormalities that make them far better at math than the average person. If a country focused their efforts on those kids, they'd have 100,000's of Einsteins.

Germany seems to have had the right approach - focusing education on innate abilities, rather than trying to make people something they will never be.

American public schools are a diversity of results - some districts are unbelievably exceptional, and some are horrendous and dangerous. Federal laws try to even that out, but you can't legislate results. Then you have all the legal strangleholds in place now, and it's impossible to change the system.

I still believe they should not waste a dime on technology until the 6th or 7th grade. A 2nd grader doesn't need to learn on a computer, and it negatively affects their attention span anyway.

[dilettante]

Might have something to do with the fraction of Neaderthal or lower primate genes an individual is carrying.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...902037988.html

Then the question is whether more Neanderthal genes enhance or inhibit learning ability.

[Shaggy Hiker]

Focus education on innate ability? Considering that Congress just mandated that pizza can count as a vegetable, perhaps we should focus our attention on Sumo wrestling.

[dilettante]

Well they already do that for skills deemed valuable to the darker forces in society.

The short skinny guy won't get the same attention on development for basketball, football, etc. as those deemed worthy. Organized crime doesn't make as much money if they can't keep feeding the best cattle into the sports machine.

Maybe when people prove incompetant at core mission skills like readin', writin', and 'rithmetic they should be sidelined into agricultural and personal services careers and barred from anything academic?

[OhGreen]

That's high compared to the UK. Here, the government pays roughly £6k per year per student, and the top public schools charge about £10k per term, meaning that they get about £36k per year (including the government's £6k), or 6 times the state fees. Lesser public schools charge from about £3k per term, meaning that they receive about £15k per year, so only 2.5 times the state fees.

The point of independent schools is that they aren't government funded, so they don't 'include' that £6k...

There are few independent schools which are 100% tuition fee funded, instead they are a business which has investors. The £30k per annum will go towards the funding, however, there are frequent donations which add to this.

Obviously it differs from school to school, but you're still looking at ~5 to 6 times the amount a student is funded comparative with public schools.

[honeybee]

You don't want the government to interfere with businesses, education, food habits, health(s)care, you don't want the government to tax you, you don't want the government to spend that tax money, you don't want them to do anything. What should your government do then??

.

[szlamany]

I've been writing software for school districts since 1980 - both the student admin software and the financial software that school districts use. I've been intimately involved in budget prep for dozens of school districts for over 30 years...

The Fed should not be involved in public school - K-12 - policy. There involvement has led to public schools "teaching to the standardized" test instead of simply teaching. My kids are now in a parochial school because of the damage I've seen this do the public education at the K-12 level. In 5th grade they are learning a foreign language - have incredible access to technology - started playing the trumpet - all stuff that public school no longer have the time to include. They've been on field trips on boats in New Haven harbor. Public schools feel field trips TAKE AWAY from the education process - OMG!!! I've actually been asked to develop displays that show students taking too many field trips!!!!!!!

Public schools are forced to spend 3 months of every school year preparing students to take a test to prove that they are a "well performing" school.

That's because of Fed involvement.

I live in CT - my governor just decided that "towns" must pay $1000 for each student going to a CHARTER school. Wow - how incredible - Charter schools are run by "for-profit" companies - now getting local funds?

Where the he#@$@#ll are my $1000 vouchers for my two kids going to private school?

The State should stay out of education! A major failing city in CT (Bridgeport) is about to get a huge influx of state $$'s for education. Well that's sweet and all - but having better funded schools in a ghost town of a failed local economic policy isn't going to fix Bpt.

In CT the IT departments have to send data to the state on such a detailed level that we have created whole software platforms for doing so.

In PA the state data requirements are so absurd that I would imagine that staff spends 25% of the year doing prep work for the dozen transmission periods we have to live up to.

Why does the state need this info - to find failing schools to hammer them?

Just stay out - it's not going to get fixed by state level controls.

The real problem in K-12 education - and also in STATE PUBLIC COLLEGES is too much $$'s for adminstrators and overbearing teacher contracts that worked 30 years ago - but don't work now.

Christie in New Jersey is doing it right - breaking down all the old "rules" and making rules that work in today's failing economy.

The next debt crisis in this countries is going to be STUDENT LOANS - that explosion is just around the corner.

[Shaggy Hiker]

Nice rant. My objection to that is this (or, let me just say this about that): In many states it makes sense to get the feds out of any involvement with schools. In a few states, if you get the feds out, you won't end up with much of anything. The same problem exists if the state relinquishes control. Some towns will do an excellent job without any oversight. Other towns, and Bilgepot might be one of them, will work effectively only when cornered like a rat in a trap.

The difficulty is figuring out which places need supervision, and which do not, and at what level. This is something that can't always be done effectively by a single person, and I can't think of ANY situation where a sufficiently large group of people could do so effectively. However, I think that it is a problem that government can't ignore (it either lacks the capacity to ignore educational problems, or lacks the ability to do so). Therefore, it reacts in the only way that it can: By creating some kind of standardized metric to try to identify where to take action. This may be horribly inefficient, or horribly wrong, or both, but the realistic view is that if govenment will not be allowed to ignore the problem, then some kind of action WILL be taken. That action may be wrong or it may be right, and whichever one it is initially, it will eventually turn into the other....and then back. Objecting seems kind of silly, to me. Some significant segment of the population will demand that govenment take action, so it will have to. The actions the government can take have severe limits imposed on them by other significant segments of the population. The result you see is the product of those results mixed with the personal motivations of the people directed to make the decisions. This result can be good or it can be bad, but it will always exist.

[szlamany]

Our state - and many others - have REGIONAL AREA SCHOOL DISTRICTS. I personally believe that would be an answer to failing sd's - lump them in with area successful sd's. But NIMBY reactionaries wouldn't dream of it!

People like to say that they have the money to move to well-off towns and expect the education in those well-off towns to be better because they have the money - bit of a viscious circle leaving the not-so-well-off areas to suffer.

I mostly see budget cuts in the past couple of years - the town's mayor/selectman don't want to keep feeding the board of ed's - who have a huge appetite for salary/benefit dollars.

It's all like playing simcity anyway - isn't it? Except you can't hit re-start...

[Shaggy Hiker]

My mother was one of the selectmen, and was also some part of the school board (I was pretty young when she was involved with the school board, so I was never entirely clear what her role was, but I was older when she ran the town), so I got to see this one inside and out. The school district was the largest third of the property taxes, and much of it was set in a very democratic school district meeting. Those meetings were an eye-opening experience. When you get a large number of people together voting on things, they can be easily stampeded into doing things that are directly against their own self interests, no matter how you measure their self interests (real, imaginary, self-delusional, and so forth). It generally wasn't any member of the administration that led the stampede, either. Usually, it was somebody in the audience who got the herd moving, and once moving, it would charge headlong into folly.

You are right that reactionaries wouldn't stand for what you suggest. They might not stand for anything else, either. What I learned from those experiences growing up was this: In small level democratic politics, when the herd moves, it flattens all in its path. However, if the herd moves in a direction that will accomplish its desires, it happens more by chance than design.

The situation is as Churchill stated: Democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others.

[J.Steve]

Although the private sector is providing the education in a good way which is better than Government sector too but they have one motive to earn money so that is why Government has to involve in this.Government makes policies and regulate the other institutions too.

[NeedSomeAnswers]

The big problem with privatising schools is Private companies have to make a profit, so what happens to a school that is not doing to well, the easiest thing to do is start being more selective in which students you accept

All private schools that i have ever seen have some sort of test to decide entry whether they are fee paying or not. While this improves the schools results (which increases the schools profits) it doesn't help educate the population as a whole.

What happens to all the kids that the private schools dont want do we just not educate them?

or do we make private schools accept kids of all abilities, which is manifestly against how they work now?

[moonman239]

Just a thought, with no Government involvement who exactly will determine the various schools levels of achievement academically each year?

Okay that might be a Commonwealth thing where the Government administrates public examinations for state wide rankings - grades lead to acceptance at various tertiary institutions.

I think I'm quite happy with the Aussie "Free" education system, there's a choice of Private education of course for those that can afford it or disagree with current public education.

I just don't think the government knows enough about an effective education to regulate education. Besides, now they have rules regarding what parents can call "school lunch." The "lunch police" took some kid's sandwich and forced the mother to buy chicken nuggets. That is an example of the government abusing their power.

Oh, regarding the standardized test, I just took it in the beginning of this month. I later found out that the test was merely to ensure I had the skills I needed to get a job and raise a family.

[Shaggy Hiker]

Raise a family, or start one? The latter would be a pretty disturbing test.