Boys suffer in a culture without challenges

[stlukesguild]

You’re assuming only certain people get vouchers. I’m saying that everyone gets vouchers and the parents take that voucher to whichever school they deem best fits the needs of their child. Just like college students take that financial aid to the public colleges. No different. The public school system, if it even continues to exist, would have to establish a price and the parent would use that voucher at the school if they choose it. In this way, the schools would have to finally be concerned with accounting for the finances. And have to compete and show results.

AS I noted in the earlier post, Virgil, the idea sounds good on paper, but the result has repeatedly been that the schools exercise their option to refuse the more "difficult" students. This means that they refuse to accept students who have physical or cognitive (learning) disabilities, as well as students who have a history of discipline problems. Of course we can understand the logic from a purely economic point view: all of these students demand extra services and as a result they are effectively less profitable or even a financial loss. Thus these are the students who are repeatedly kicked back into the public schools where we are expected to teach them and to match the results of the private schools and charter schools who work only with the top students. The worst aspect of this is that following ADM week in which the state accountants count the student body and the money in released to the schools based upon these numbers, the charter schools begin to bump the worst of their students out and back to the public schools where we must teach them without any added funding... while the charter schools keep the funding for students they have removed. Makes a great game, eh?

Finally, I would like to transform the pre-college education system to reflect our university system. I am proud of our university system. It’s among the best in the world, if not the best. Why is our university system so good and our public school systems so mediocre? Think about it.

Of course the Universities and colleges, unlike the public schools, have the option to refuse any student... especially if the needs of that student are likely to be a financial drain upon the institution's resources. They also have the option to remove any student. Now the multi-tiered system of the past in which students were "tracked" by ability certainly approached this is that students with the highest abilities were put in the most demanding classes with the expectations that they would be the most likely to be the ones who went on to advanced college degrees, while the lowest were placed in an environment in which (ideally) the teachers were properly trained to deal with learning disabilities and behavioral issues, and these students were given practical work training leading to trades or professions such as auto mechanic, carpentry, electrician, plumbing, etc... As the system now stands we have still have a multi-tiered system... but one based largely upon economics. The students in the well-to-do districts are assured a quality education, while those in the poorer districts... the very children in the most need of help to escape the cycle of poverty... are given the worst. The reality is that the charter schools up until the present have largely been little more than a drain upon the resources of the poorer school districts offering false hopes and little in way of results. A student would be far better off attending school in any wealthy suburban district (but such is based upon residency) than attending an urban charter school. Indeed, now that testing scores are beginning to trickle in, we find that there is no real difference in scores, and in many instances the public schools are doing better.

Another thought upon colleges and universities that I have seen conveyed by any number of education leaders is the concern over lessening standards in these institutions. It has been pointed out that colleges, desperate for bodies and the money that accompanies them, have lowered admission standards and inflated grades quite a deal in the undergraduate level. As a result, it is not difficult for most students to get accepted into college... in spite of glaring lapses in reading and writing skills, abilities in critical thinking, study skills, etc... If these institutions followed stricter standards the result would lead to pressure upon the public schools... and ultimately appropriate funding to assure the access to appropriate materials and teachers. In other words... how long would the lax standards in the suburban districts last if suddenly we found that biff and buffy weren't making the grade enough to get into college?

And finally (a second "finally" ) that’s all I ever hear from teachers, maintain the status quo. As if the status quo is acceptable.

No... teachers are not against change. What they are against is the continual cycle of change for the sake of change without allowing for appropriate training or for time to analyze whether the new idea/course of study/methods actually work. Nearly every two years the big urban school districts throw out the old books, standards, curriculum, etc... and on the first day of school throw an entire new curriculum upon the teachers. The reality is that teaching must be learned as well as math or reading. Given an entire new curriculum and books and teaching methods the first time through each given lesson is a learning process for us as well. We find out what works and what doesn't work and we fine tune things so that the next time we teach it will run smoother. But there rarely is a "next time"... and many teachers begin to suspect that the continual rewriting of curriculum has little to do with what is best for the children and far more to do with keeping PhDs. in curriculum design and text-book writers employed. As the art teacher I am fortunate in that for the most part they really don't give a rat's *** about what I teach. As a result I have been able to build up a body of lessons that work and fine tune them while jettisoning those that don't work. Certainly, I bring current technologies (where available) and current concerns into the lesson... but the reality is that studies have found that a strict, conservative approach to education... utilizing phonics (sounding words out), rote memorization, drills, etc... are far more effective... especially with urban children. As a conservative, you might be surprised that the educational leader, E. D. Hirsch has built an educational theory in which he recognizes that the "liberal" goal of equal education and equal opportunity for all is best served by a "conservative" approach to education, rather than by a "liberal" or "progressive" approach. If you are really interested check out Hirsch's book, The Schools We Need, And Why We Don't Have Them or his web site:

http://coreknowledge.org/CK/index.htm

All I can say is, it’s the influence of the teacher’s union. I’ve never seen a more conservative (and obviously I don’t use that politically) institution in my life.

Nonsense. Without the union teachers would still be paid salaries equal to a McDonald's worker. The Union was behind setting standards for teacher certification including the appropriate college degrees. The school administrations are simply very good... especially during contract negotiations... at playing politics and at portraying the teacher's union as the great roadblock to progress. The manner in which the school administrations treat non-union employees (principals, office workers, etc...) is reprehensible... as are their own notorious records of theft, graft, nepotism, etc...

They had to come kicking and screaming to allow chartered schools. And forget about merit pay. That’s like sacrilege.

Of course. But let's face it... the school administrators are just as much against charter schools for the very reason (spelled out above) that these charter schools are competing with us for students... and ultimately for our jobs... and yet are competing on far from equal terms. As for merit pay... how do we measure who is or is not deserving of such? The common answer is that this is based upon student achievement... scores on standardized tests. But how is this managed in an equitable manner that truly awards those deserving? In many urban schools it is not uncommon for 30-40% of the students who were there in September to be gone by April or May when testing takes place... replaced by other students. How can a given classroom teacher be responsible for scores under such circumstances? How can he or she be held accountable when a large portion of his or her incoming students are 2... 3... 4 grade levels below where they should be? How can a teacher be accountable for classroom success when the class has 3 or 4 students who are serious discipline problems with parents who don't care or are openly hostile... with a principal who refuses to deal with them (whether through suspension or other means)... as suspensions and time spent out of the class by students are negative marks against him or her... and with an administration that refuses to deal with the problem as to do so amounts to 1. Spending money 2. negative publicity?

It’s all about what’s best for the teachers and not what’s best for the students. That’s exactly what you get under socialism; the customer has no recourse and ultimately no power.

C'mon Virgil... "Socialism"? Not that old bug-bear. We have endless aspects of socialism in our society: the police, the fire department, the utilities, the highway department, the military, etc... Even the higher education institutions that you so admire are seeped in socialism. Without the students loans and funding for state universities and community colleges higher education would be largely reserved for the wealthy alone. Yes, the teacher's unions are all about what is best for the teachers. That's what the role of the union is. I don't imagine that the UAW is deeply involved in what is best for the nation as a whole or for GM's administration. The reality is that the union is just a collective of all the teachers with a few elected representatives. As big as my school system is, we have only a few union officials who are not also classroom teachers. Certainly, there are instances in which the Union becomes too militant... in which incompetent teachers abuse the system by utilizing the union as a form of legal defense. Most teachers are adamantly against such abuses as they ultimately tarnish all of our reputations. But no system is perfect. The legal system of the US has the same forms of abuse. Certainly we all know of or have read of those who utilize legal loopholes to avoid consequences properly due. If the administration and the teachers were not placed in such adversarial roles... if administration worked one on one with the teachers (perhaps eliminating the giant top-heavy systems and replacing them with multiple neighborhood based schools) perhaps we might affect far more change... but the answers are not easy.

[Petrarch's Love]

And no one is losing now?????? Are you kidding? I find it hard to knock American anything, but the best I can honestly do is say the American public school system is at best average, but honestly it’s below average.

I'm not saying it's a perfect system by any stretch of the imagination. Of course there are kids who are slipping through the cracks and kids who have a slim chance in the current system. I'm not against some kind of reform. I'm just seeing that there is a group of kids who would get no chance, or next to no chance, in a privatized system.

So? Excuse me if I’m wrong, but private Universities get plenty of gov’t money from the tax payer. In my day it was called TAP and BEOG, I think. Can’t recall and it’s probably changed. What is financial aid but a voucher?

Yes, but the University system is an exclusionary system. That's what I'm saying. If we want to give government money to private schools because we think they'll do a good job of educating many kids, that's fine, but then we'll have to accept the fact that those schools may not accept all kids. More on universities in a minute.

No I don’t agree with that all. Competition will force the public schools to be better. More talented peers get scholarships into private schools now. That goes on all over NYC here. What you are saying is that the power of decision making should be in the hands of the school (and in effect it’s in the hands of the teacher’s union) instead of the parents to take their child to whichever school they want. I believe the parent should have power not the school.

I said in my post that I fully understand why parents would want to take their kids to a better school. I also said that the fact of the matter is that private schools can take or reject whatever students they please. Let's say that all the parents in a certain area want to take their kids to school X, but school X only accepts the top 50% or fewer of those kids--the ones who are bright/talented/hardworking/not goof-offs etc.--because they have lot of people eager to get in so they may as well choose the very best. Now you're left with the bottom 50% of kids whose parents may want their kids to go to a good school, but find they just can't get in. That bottom 50% are going to be stuck together in a school somewhere that absolutely won't be attracting the very best teachers to it or anyone's interest. It will also mean that there's no way that the bottom 50% schools can possible compete with the top 50% schools. There could be a lot of problems with this sort of two tier system.

You’re assuming only certain people get vouchers. I’m saying that everyone gets vouchers and the parents take that voucher to whichever school they deem best fits the needs of their child.

No, I'm not. I'm assuming that schools will be able to cherry pick and there will be a two tier separation. Sure, there will be places willing to pick up the money for the not so good kids, but what's to guarantee they'll give them any kind of reasonable education. Even if they wanted to, it seems unlikely that they'll be able to provide the same level of education as the places that have the top kids given that their classes are full of, not only the slower learners, but all the trouble makers and kids who are full of attitude, uninterested etc.

Just like college students take that financial aid to the public colleges. No different. The public school system, if it even continues to exist, would have to establish a price and the parent would use that voucher at the school if they choose it. In this way, the schools would have to finally be concerned with accounting for the finances. And have to compete and show results.

Finally, I would like to transform the pre-college education system to reflect our university system. I am proud of our university system. It’s among the best in the world, if not the best. Why is our university system so good and our public school systems so mediocre?

I can tell you why our university system is better than our public school system. Our university system is an exclusionary and non mandatory system while our public schools are mandatory and universal. Not everyone goes to college. Top public universities only accept a very small percent of their applicants. Universities pick the best and the brightest from our own country and from people all over the world, so they're able to do the best thinking, teaching, research etc. If our university system were suddenly required to accept every single person in the United States and every person was required to sit in university classes for four years whether they wanted to or not, then I guarantee you that we wouldn't have one of the best university systems in the world.

What I was saying in my post is that, sure, you can set up a system in which schools are able to select the top kids and reject the less desirable ones in the way that universities do, but then you'll have to accept that you're no longer giving all kids the same universal education. Whether you think it's worth it to lose some altogether in order to give others a better chance than they have now may be a good question (and whether private or charter schools will, in reality, give this better chance is another good question) but there's just no way that private schools are going to allow for continued universal education.

And finally (a second "finally" ) that’s all I ever hear from teachers, maintain the status quo. As if the status quo is acceptable. All I can say is, it’s the influence of the teacher’s union. I’ve never seen a more conservative (and obviously I don’t use that politically) institution in my life. They had to come kicking and screaming to allow chartered schools. And forget about merit pay. That’s like sacrilege. It’s all about what’s best for the teachers and not what’s best for the students. That’s exactly what you get under socialism; the customer has no recourse and ultimately no power.

You can call it socialist or whatever you want. The bottom line is that if you have a public education system then you can control whether all kids receive an education and have universal standards for teachers (which not only encompasses things like pay, but also the teachers' level of credential and education etc.), while under a competitive "capitalist" (if you will) system some of the people are going to lose out in terms of getting the top notch education slots. We're fine as a society with saying that if a kid just can't cut it for whatever reason then he won't get into university. Are we fine with saying if he can't cut it he won't get into high school? Or with saying that some kids will just get into a bottom 20% high school? I don't have a problem with you backing an argument in favor of "capitalist" competition among schools, but you need to at least recognize what the cost of such a system will be as well as the benefit. It may be that you're alright with saying that we don't want to be "socialist" so we don't care if education isn't universal and there's a divide between the high and the low. Historically, of course, universal education hasn't been the norm. Lots of people just went without education, often even basic education, or were simply poorly educated in the past because they weren't required to go and/or schools weren't required to take them.

I do think there are a lot of problems in our schools and would be open to thinking about educational reform. I just don't see how privatization is going to work if we want to maintain a universal system. I don't actually know a great deal about models that maintain a universal education system and are more successful than ours, but I would be much more interested in seeing such models and what the factors that can help improve a universal model might be.

edit: I see that St. Luke's has posted whilst I was called away in the middle of responding. Apologies for any needless repetitions in our respective responses.

Update on that interview: She took the job with the company but with a different division than mine. I’m pissed. This is not the first time that division has lured a good young job applicant from me. And I believe we do the more interesting work. It must be me. I scare them.

Sorry to hear that. I'm sure it's not because you're too scary. Maybe these youngsters just don't know a good division when they see it.

[Virgil]

Arrgh. I have no time to respond. Like I said, teachers refuse to change. As if the current system is any good. Go on with your monopoly. Only the kids suffer.

[Petrarch's Love]

No... teachers are not against change. What they are against is the continual cycle of change for the sake of change without allowing for appropriate training or for time to analyze whether the new idea/course of study/methods actually work. Nearly every two years the big urban school districts throw out the old books, standards, curriculum, etc... and on the first day of school throw an entire new curriculum upon the teachers. The reality is that teaching must be learned as well as math or reading. Given an entire new curriculum and books and teaching methods the first time through each given lesson is a learning process for us as well. We find out what works and what doesn't work and we fine tune things so that the next time we teach it will run smoother. But there rarely is a "next time"... and many teachers begin to suspect that the continual rewriting of curriculum has little to do with what is best for the children and far more to do with keeping PhDs. in curriculum design and text-book writers employed. As the art teacher I am fortunate in that for the most part they really don't give a rat's *** about what I teach. As a result I have been able to build up a body of lessons that work and fine tune them while jettisoning those that don't work.

Yes. Even if a person's willing to overlook the pretty low salary, the amount of bureaucratic meddling, testing, and constant shifting theories that teachers have to keep up with is enough to send a lot of potential teachers running the other direction as hard as they can. I can't imagine as a teacher finally hitting on a system that's working for me and then finding out that some theorist has decided to mandate that I should use some completely different system that may not work well for me and my class situation and may not even be very well proven in any classroom. I would be all in favor of slashing a huge number of those "academic" (and I use the term loosely when it comes to a lot of these educational theorists) bureaucrats and others and figure out a good solid system that allows teachers to develop a curriculum that works and stick to it rather than treating the education system like a giant erratic social experiment.

Certainly, I bring current technologies (where available) and current concerns into the lesson... but the reality is that studies have found that a strict, conservative approach to education... utilizing phonics (sounding words out), rote memorization, drills, etc... are far more effective... especially with urban children. As a conservative, you might be surprised that the educational leader, E. D. Hirsch has built an educational theory in which he recognizes that the "liberal" goal of equal education and equal opportunity for all is best served by a "conservative" approach to education, rather than by a "liberal" or "progressive" approach. If you are really interested check out Hirsch's book, The Schools We Need, And Why We Don't Have Them or his web site:

That makes a fair amount of sense. While I can certainly see integrating technology in teaching from the point of view of making sure that students are current with their ability to utilize computers etc., I doubt that the human mind has actually changed all that much. Things that worked for learning times tables a generation ago should probably still work now.

http://coreknowledge.org/CK/index.htm

[LitNetIsGreat]

Arrgh. I have no time to respond. Like I said, teachers refuse to change. As if the current system is any good. Go on with your monopoly. Only the kids suffer.

Teachers refuse to change!!! So you are blaming us poor foot soliders now? That's the cheap way out my friend...

[Petrarch's Love]

Arrgh. I have no time to respond. Like I said, teachers refuse to change. As if the current system is any good. Go on with your monopoly. Only the kids suffer.

For heaven's sake, Virg. I get the impression you haven't been reading what I'm posting. Or at least not very carefully. I did not say I am against all change or that I think the current education system is a shining beacon of strength. I would be happy to hear a suggestion of reform that sounds like it would work. It isn't as though there are only two options to have more of the same or to radically undermine our entire universal education system by paying out to private parties. We really aren't talking about a "socialist"/"capatalist" dichotomy. We're talking about what kind of system will best serve our goals for educating our children. Whether that is comprised of "socialist" or "capatalist" elements or based on another kind of factor altogether doesn't really matter to me as long as it works.

My argument was not that we have a perfect system now but that I think a lot more kids at the bottom would be really let go in a worse way than they are now in a privatized system. I think that this is a fairly reasonable and important objection to make to the approach to reform that you outline, and I think it's an objection that needs to be answered before we go full steam ahead with such an approach. I really want to know. Do you:

A) Recognize that this would be the dynamic and think that letting go of a universal system is worth it for the better education the top kids might get out of the competitive system? I haven't been facetious when I've suggested that perhaps you're OK with letting things fall into a two tier system. That radical a shift isn't something I personally favor, but I do recognize that there might be some very real benefits to that and I at least see how someone with different opinions might reasonably argue in favor of such a system. What is not reasonable is to say that competition is going to make everything great without even recognizing that there may be a cost to this competition in the form of losing a universal system.

B) Have some sort of suggestion for how we could get private competition involved and somehow still maintain a universal system. As I've said before, I'm certainly open to listening to logical arguments that can show how this might work well for everyone rather than leading to the exclusion of many kids from the "good" private schools (whether private is always better or not is another issue). I don't see how this would happen--indeed it sounds pretty much impossible to me--but I'm always open to the possibility that there are approaches to this I haven't yet entertained.

C) I really would be very interested in hearing about other countries that have maintained a universal system while providing a significantly better system than that in the US and what their model is. If Virg. or anyone else on this thread has more knowledge than I of such models I would be very interested to know of other potentially successful reform options that might not have the sort of cost to universal education that I'm identifying as potentially problematic with the voucher/charter approach.

[stlukesguild]

PetrarchsLove- No, I'm not. I'm assuming that schools will be able to cherry pick and there will be a two tier separation. Sure, there will be places willing to pick up the money for the not so good kids, but what's to guarantee they'll give them any kind of reasonable education. Even if they wanted to, it seems unlikely that they'll be able to provide the same level of education as the places that have the top kids given that their classes are full of, not only the slower learners, but all the trouble makers and kids who are full of attitude, uninterested etc.

This is exactly what is happening. I can tell you from experience as I am working in Ohio which is currently the leader in the charter school experiment. The best private schools gladly take the vouchers from the best students leaving the rest to be taught by the public schools. As you note, the public schools have no choice in the matter. They must teach any and all students by law. If we assume that their role would be replaced by private schools as well... schools willing to take on the challenge for the money we must recognize that teaching students with physical, emotional, and cognitive disabilities as well as severe behavioral issues is far more expensive. The class sizes need to be reduced, or teacher's aids employed to assist. Special aids and tools need to be purchased to deal with the limitations of a blind or deaf or functionally limited (retarded) child... a child with Asberger's, Autism, Terret's... or one diagnosed with severe behavioral or emotional issues... to say nothing of those who just don't care or try. How do those schools compete when the money coming in is the same as that of the schools who have been able to cherry-pick their students? The reality is they cut corners: unqualified or unlicensed teachers, over-crowded classrooms, buildings that do not pass the building codes. This is exactly what has been happening in the charter schools here that drew upon the urban students with false promises to the parents... and it has been allowed to happen because in many cases the parent of these students are not highly educated themselves, and the charter schools have been given a free reign without needing to meet the standards required of the public schools which the best private schools regularly exceed.

PL- The bottom line is that if you have a public education system then you can control whether all kids receive an education and have universal standards for teachers (which not only encompasses things like pay, but also the teachers' level of credential and education etc.), while under a competitive "capitalist" (if you will) system some of the people are going to lose out in terms of getting the top notch education slots. We're fine as a society with saying that if a kid just can't cut it for whatever reason then he won't get into university. Are we fine with saying if he can't cut it he won't get into high school?... I don't have a problem with you backing an argument in favor of "capitalist" competition among schools, but you need to at least recognize what the cost of such a system will be as well as the benefit. It may be that you're alright with saying that we don't want to be "socialist" so we don't care if education isn't universal and there's a divide between the high and the low. Historically, of course, universal education hasn't been the norm. Lots of people just went without education, often even basic education, or were simply poorly educated in the past because they weren't required to go and/or schools weren't required to take them.

This is exactly what is ignored by all the politicians and pundits when they rant on about the "decline" in American schools. The reality is that this "decline" is largely an illusion. Not too long ago... my own parent's generation... public school was not a universal right. My father only made it through the eighth grade. At that point he was no longer considered educable and so he was sent to work. This was not uncommon. The majority did not have a high-school diploma... let alone college. And let's not talk about the minorities: Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, etc...

Historically, the US government was adamantly against universal public education. Thomas Jefferson's modest suggestion that the country provide universal education for all children to an equivalent of the 4th grade, followed by guaranteed education to Latin School (middle school) for the top ranked student in each town who was unable to pay his own way, followed by guaranteed Greek school (high-school) education for each top student in need in the Latin Schools was met with absolute derision. The poor, after all, had no need for education. The French Revolution changed the thinking in Europe... especially in the German States... where it was recognized that a universal education would provide for the ability of all citizens to earn a living wage thus assuring that the disparities which had resulted in France would be avoided. There have been many in the US over the course of history who were of an opposite belief that the best way to maintain the status quo is to keep the poor where they belong. I greatly suspect there are still those who believe this, but I'll avoid getting into politics.

The two-tier system worked fine in my father's generation for the very reason that good paying jobs in agriculture and industry were plentiful. My father earned more working in heavy industry than did most college professors and most "white collar" workers. Having worked the job myself some summers paying my way through school I can tell you that the workers earned every penny. But the situation has changed. We are no longer in the post WWII world in which the US industries are the only game in town. There are no longer limitless high-paying job as available for those who don't make the grade in school. The two-tier system is no longer acceptable not merely upon ethical grounds... but for the security of the nation. Universal education at a minimum standard is a must if we are to continue to compete.

PL- Have some sort of suggestion for how we could get private competition involved and somehow still maintain a universal system. As I've said before, I'm certainly open to listening to logical arguments that can show how this might work well for everyone rather than leading to the exclusion of many kids from the "good" private schools (whether private is always better or not is another issue). I don't see how this would happen--indeed it sounds pretty much impossible to me--but I'm always open to the possibility that there are approaches to this I haven't yet entertained.

The only suggestion I have heard which makes sense (although it would need to be tried) is the idea that the amount of the vouchers be based upon the difficulty in educating a given child. A child with learning, or emotional, or behavioral disabilities would essentially be worth quite a bit ore to the school... thus spurring competition to meet that student's needs. Currently the opposite is true in that the more difficult students equal a far smaller profit margin... or even an actual loss. Of course one can immediately envision the abuses to this system as well. The reality is that any number of ideas would work... if the implementation weren't so imperfect.

I really would be very interested in hearing about other countries that have maintained a universal system while providing a significantly better system than that in the US and what their model is

Most of the more successful systems seem to have the advantage of avoiding many of the problems associated with an open and multi-cultural nation such as the US: racial tension, lack of a common heritage, extremes of poverty, gangs, respect for adults and authority, respect for education.

It is intriguing that this discussion initially began with Virgil drawing attention to certain aspects of education that have been thought to penalize boys. These aspects of education... the avoidance of competition and embrace of the "feel good" environment where there is no failure are part of the tradition of Liberal or Progressive education dating back to Rousseau. And they have been recognized as miserable failures for generations.

Building student "self esteem" has been a favorite concept of progressive education for ages. Unfortunately it ignores most facts: American students have plenty of self esteem. They think far more highly of themselves than students from almost anywhere else. The problem is that this self esteem is often disproportionate, misplaced, or undeserved. In one study example students taking a math test were asked before testing began how well they knew their subject and how well they thought they would do. The American students invariably stated that they knew their subject very well and would do extremely well while students from Korea, Japan, and Germany... all who actually did far better on the test... were far more honest about what they felt they didn't know.

This sense of false self esteem is in part the result of continual efforts of progressive educators to promote "feel good strategies" in which no one ever makes a mistake, gets something wrong, or fails. T-ball replaces baseball so that the kid who can't hit a pitched ball can still get a hit. Teachers are prodded to offer positive comments even on wrong answers or poor tests. Words like "don't" or "no" are to be avoided... even red ink should be avoided when marking wrong answers as they may demoralize the child. Absolute bunk... and the result is a false sense of accomplishment that has nothing to do with the realities all students will eventually face in the adult world where competition rules and corporations and employers don't give a rat's as@ about your fragile sense of self esteem.

Unfortunately, the abandonment of public education and the move to home-schooling or private schooling will only intensify the problem of the gap between the rich and the poor. Of course this solution is favored by many conservatives because it affords them an escape from the unpopular ideas presented in public schools (evolution, multiculturalism, religious tolerance). Public education also represents a huge potential for profit for those establishing large private schools. It is also political suicide. No politician wishes to get involved in such a way that any failings may come back to bite them.

E.D. Hirsch in The Schools We Need (and why we don't have them) argued that "liberal" and "progressive" theories of education simply do not work and that we must stop pushing them simply because we are afraid that the alternative would mean that the conservatives were right all along. Hirsch was a great champion of a liberal idea of public education... the notion that all children should be given an equal access to the quality education needed to succeed in our society. Hirsch, however, noticed that many of the liberal/progressive educational strategies (such as the "feel-good/no losers" approach) actually had the exact opposite effect... especially in the poor schools which needed education the most. Hirsch discovered that the Italian politician and theorist, Antonio Gramsci (imprisoned by Mussolini) had recognized the problem of progressive education as early as the 1930s:

"The new concept of Schooling is in its Romantic phase (ala Rousseau) in which the replacement of "mechanical" by "natural" methods has become unhealthily exaggerated... Previously pupils at least acquired a certain baggage of concrete facts. Now there will no longer be any baggage to put in order... The most paradoxical aspect of it all is that this new aspect of school is being advocated as being democratic, while in fact it is destined not merely to perpetuate social differences, but crystallize them in Chinese complexities."

The "romantic" progressive concepts of schooling avoid the learning of "facts" because it is feared these will perpetuate stereotypes... the notion that one writer, one artist, one historical personage is more important than another. This is then combined with the lack of any real federal or national standards resulting in a system in which almost every school has its own curriculum... makes its own choices about what books to read and what facts to present and when to present them. When this is combined with No Child Left Behind which led to schools focusing almost exclusively upon teaching strategies for taking tests, the result is an absolute mess in which we cannot be certain that a child in this school at this age will be expected to have mastered the same knowledge and skills as a student in another school just around the block... let alone across the country.

Hirsch recognized that in order to succeed in education and in our society one must accumulate a certain agreed upon body of knowledge. One cannot master reading... let alone "higher order thinking skills" such as analysis, comparison, synthesis, etc... without a body of concrete facts. Progressive educators argue that a curriculum based upon such facts is inherently bound to be racist, sexist, nationalistic. The problem is that the alternative handicaps those very students it claims to assist. The reality is that public education is not the end-all/be-all. Once a student has mastered certain facts, reading, math, etc... he or she is certainly free to branch out and explore other alternative ideas and voices... and certainly higher education should be expected to offer just that. At present, however, higher education needs to begin at a remedial level... teaching many of the basic skills and body of knowledge that should have been mastered in elementary and secondary school.

[Dinkleberry2010]

I do not pretend to know what the percentage is of incoming students into colleges and universities in the U.S. who are required to take remedial and developmental courses before they take the basic required courses. But I know that in a certain community college near where I live, more than twenty-five percent of incoming students were required to take remedial courses before they took Composition I which is the first basic course all students must take. To me, this is an astounding fact. 25%! Fully a fourth of incoming students had to take remedial courses before they even took the basic composition course. To me this shows that something is drastically wrong in the high schools in this area in the general field of English.

[stlukesguild]

I do not pretend to know what the percentage is of incoming students into colleges and universities in the U.S. who are required to take remedial and developmental courses before they take the basic required courses. But I know that in a certain community college near where I live, more than twenty-five percent of incoming students were required to take remedial courses before they took Composition I which is the first basic course all students must take. To me, this is an astounding fact. 25%! Fully a fourth of incoming students had to take remedial courses before they even took the basic composition course. To me this shows that something is drastically wrong in the high schools in this area in the general field of English.

I would not be surprised if the percentage in need of remedial courses was even higher... outside of the best or most demanding universities. I paid part of my way through college by tutoring such students in literature, basic study skills, and art history. Doing post graduate work in education... even taking courses simply to keep my license current I have been confronted with college admissions personnel who have informed me that I must take placement exams in order to assure that I can handle the course work.

There is no doubt that there are problems in education. Neither is there any doubt that there are even incompetent teachers... but to blame the whole of the failings of the contemporary schools upon the teachers... or upon the unions (which is just a roundabout way of blaming the teachers) is, as Neely suggested, like blaming the foot-soldiers. It is akin to blaming the assembly-line workers for the problems of the auto industry while ignoring the decisions made by the administration. Teachers can only work with what we have... with the curriculum that we have been told to teach... with the focus that the principals and other administrators have called for us to focus upon based upon their intuitions as to what will be on the stare standardized tests. A huge problem is the refusal of the Federal Government to establish clear national standards... not the vague nonsense written in indecipherable "educationese" that we currently deal with. We need something akin to E.D. Hisrch's core knowledge: a set of facts and skills that students are expected to master at a given grade level. As it stands now school administrators put forth the majority of their effort in attempts to cheat the tests by training students how to take the test and how to answer certain forms of questions rather than teaching them a clear set body of knowledge and then testing their mastery of the same with tests that are directly correlated to what they have been taught.

Even some of the better schools fail to meet standards that should be taught in the preparation of any student for college. My daughter, who eventually graduated summa cum laude from college found that she struggled he first year with literature because she had never been taught how to write an essay. She had written numerous book reports, but had no experience with a writing genre that I remember having been taught in middle school. She had no concept of a thesis and how to write supporting topic sentences, etc... certainly, one could blame the teacher or the school... but ultimately this was a failing on the part of those who establish the curriculum.

[Scheherazade]

Even some of the better schools fail to meet standards that should be taught in the preparation of any student for college. My daughter, who eventually graduated summa cum laude from college found that she struggled he first year with literature because she had never been taught how to write an essay. She had written numerous book reports, but had no experience with a writing genre that I remember having been taught in middle school. She had no concept of a thesis and how to write supporting topic sentences, etc... certainly, one could blame the teacher or the school... but ultimately this was a failing on the part of those who establish the curriculum.

I think the problem partially lies here and is part of my research as well. Most learners gain qualifications from one institution and proceed to a "higher" one only to realise that they are not equipped enough to deal with the requirements of the next one. "Remedial" courses are mostly needed because of the gap between highschool and College curricula and expected learning outcomes.

Ideally, I would like to see an optional prep class/year for students who would like to pursue higher academic studies (because imposing such a class on students who have no intention of going to university etc is unfair).

This year one of my students dropped out of College because she could not deal with the pressure/studies and it really broke my heart. She is a very talented and intelligent person; she started the College with the false assurance of the certificates given to her previous year but those do not prepare you for College level studies.

[Virgil]

Urrgh, there is so much here it will take me all evening to respond to everything. Let me quickly respond to these two and then I'll see what feasible to respond to the longer comments.

Teachers refuse to change!!! So you are blaming us poor foot soliders now? That's the cheap way out my friend...

Neely, my comments strictly pertain to the inadequacies in the US educational system. I have no idea how your system works or what it's needs and deficiencies are. And just to be clearer, it's not so much the teachers but the system and the atherosclerosis within the institution.

I think the problem partially lies here and is part of my research as well. Most learners gain qualifications from one institution and proceed to a "higher" one only to realise that they are not equipped enough to deal with the requirements of the next one. "Remedial" courses are mostly needed because of the gap between highschool and College curricula and expected learning outcomes.

Ideally, I would like to see an optional prep class/year for students who would like to pursue higher academic studies (because imposing such a class on students who have no intention of going to university etc is unfair).

This year one of my students dropped out of College because she could not deal with the pressure/studies and it really broke my heart. She is a very talented and intelligent person; she started the College with the false assurance of the certificates given to her previous year but those do not prepare you for College level studies.

Not sure if you caught it Scher, but the way it works here is that students graduate high school and then go to college only to find they must take remedial courses in college that basically reteach high school because they are not at a college level in skill. Those courses don't count toward graduation, but at least they offer a chance to build up what should have been learned in high school. This just goes to show how much of a failure our lower educational system is. I bet 25% is on the low side. I think more than a quarter of people entering college need to take some remedial class. And yet, there is an institutional resistence to change. Amazing.

[Scheherazade]

The same thing happens here too, Virgil. Even those students who get good grades at pre-College level, still struggle when they get to College because of the gap between the two curricula, which is why I often think a prep year or a separate course can help.

And we have similar classes exist here too; the kind they can take while still studying at the College but, in my opinion, those courses do not prepare them for the academic studies.

[Dinkleberry2010]

But that is my question: Why do more than a fourth of people entering college need to take some remedial class?

I was an average student in high school. I made average grades in most subjects. There was a seven-year gap between my high school graduation and my entering college. But I did not need to take any remedial or developmental course or class. I started right into the basic composition courses and the other basic required courses in college. And I passed those courses.

I am of average intelligence.

I simply do not understand why a fourth of people entering college need to take remedial classes.

[Virgil]

I tried to approach my rebuttal by replying directly, but that’s just not feasible. I’ll just list the themes that have cropped up and address that. I’ll look for a representative statement by one of you guys as a wall to bounce my thoughts off. (Lousy metaphor. I should say it’s a papier-mâché wall and my thoughts will perforate right through. )

One of the main arguments is that private schools will only accept certain students – the pick and choose argument.

AS I noted in the earlier post, Virgil, the idea sounds good on paper, but the result has repeatedly been that the schools exercise their option to refuse the more "difficult" students. This means that they refuse to accept students who have physical or cognitive (learning) disabilities, as well as students who have a history of discipline problems.

First of all, just like one can stop healthcare insurance companies from denying coverage with those with pre-existing conditions with a stroke of a legislative pen, so too one can stop voucher schools from denying anyone. Personally I think that would be a mistake. Schools would crop up to address the various types of students. This would be specialization and each school would find methods to address special issues, whether it be discipline problems or medical or problem learners or outstanding students. Specialization is a good thing. Right now good students are being dragged down with the bad and the mediocre students are not being taught in the optimum method for their abilities. Is it a surprised that the military turns hoodlums into people with skills? The military are gearing their teaching approach, a holistic approach, which satisfies certain individuals mind sets.

Another argument is that a two tiered system would be formed.

I'm assuming that schools will be able to cherry pick and there will be a two tier separation.

First of all, if it leads to specialized schools, as I preferred to call it, I think that’s a good thing. But there isn’t a two tier system now? Just look. We in NY have the super schools, not sure what else to call them, that only accept high performing students right now. And they are part of the school system. But even within any school you have (at least you did when I went to school) the better students segregated together and the not as good students. You had students that were college bound and that were hand skills bound. You have students like my sister that were allowed to skip a grade and those who weren’t. In NY State there are even two types of high school diplomas, a regents diploma and regular diploma, the regents being that you had passed specialized tests. And students who were regents diploma oriented were placed in the harder classes (chemistry and physics) and others weren’t. There is a two tier system now in the very school systems you defend.

Then there is the argument that poor kids will be funneled into the worse schools.

The reality is that the charter schools up until the present have largely been little more than a drain upon the resources of the poorer school districts offering false hopes and little in way of results. A student would be far better off attending school in any wealthy suburban district (but such is based upon residency) than attending an urban charter school.

That’s exactly right. The current system screws the poorer kids because they are locked into the neighborhood school. A voucher would allow that parent to send their kid anywhere. Compare a Catholic school kid from a poor neighborhood and a public school kid from that same poor neighborhood. Just compare how many ultimately graduate colleges.

Then there is the teachers are not against change theme:

No... teachers are not against change. What they are against is the continual cycle of change for the sake of change without allowing for appropriate training or for time to analyze whether the new idea/course of study/methods actually work.

I nearly laughed myself off the chair when I read that, but perhaps you’re right. I should draw the distinction between the teacher’s union and the educational bureaucracy as opposed to individual teachers. Though frankly whenever I have this discussion with any teacher they all defend the same status quo as the union, as you and Petrarch are currently doing.

All I can say is that no matter what comes up as an institutional change, the teacher’s union and the bureaucracy are always against it and have to accept it kicking and screaming, whether it be chartered schools, a school voucher experiment (yes even against experimenting with the idea), merit pay, firing poor performing teachers, No Child Left Behind standards, you name they are against it.

Conservative approaches to learning have worked best:

but the reality is that studies have found that a strict, conservative approach to education... utilizing phonics (sounding words out), rote memorization, drills, etc... are far more effective... especially with urban children. As a conservative, you might be surprised that the educational leader, E. D. Hirsch has built an educational theory in which he recognizes that the "liberal" goal of equal education and equal opportunity for all is best served by a "conservative" approach to education

Of course I’m aware. 90% of all things conservative turn out to be best. This should have been a no brainer. It always amazed me that kids were supposed to learn math and grammar by osmosis, rather than constant exercise and homework. How this hippie mentality was ever given credence amazes me. As if regimented and disciplined exercises stunts creativity. What nonsense.
Teacher’s unions:

Without the union teachers would still be paid salaries equal to a McDonald's worker. The Union was behind setting standards for teacher certification including the appropriate college degrees. The school administrations are simply very good... especially during contract negotiations... at playing politics and at portraying the teacher's union as the great roadblock to progress. The manner in which the school administrations treat non-union employees

Nonsense. Engineers, scientists, business people, doctors, lawyers, none of them have unions, and they all do better than teachers. You teachers complain about low salaries, so what have the unions actually done for you? Anyway, that’s a separate argument, and we don’t need to get into that.

And where do the teacher’s unions get the authority to restrict institutional change? The union workers at a car factory don’t tell management what car to design and build. They are only involved in pay and safety and working conditions. Who made the teacher’s unions in charge of anything other than pay and working conditions?

Standards:

B) Have some sort of suggestion for how we could get private competition involved and somehow still maintain a universal system. As I've said before, I'm certainly open to listening to logical arguments that can show how this might work well for everyone rather than leading to the exclusion of many kids from the "good" private schools (whether private is always better or not is another issue). I don't see how this would happen--indeed it sounds pretty much impossible to me--but I'm always open to the possibility that there are approaches to this I haven't yet entertained.

Very easily. It’s done right now. It’s called college entrance exams and if students can’t pass them when they graduate high school, then they have no business getting a high school degree. It’s called establishing standards and all students from every school must be able to pass them. If we need inspectors going around the schools to verify the school’s level of competency, just like we have inspectors going around restaurants, then so be it. Private schools exist right now and they meet and exceed standards.

And finally the moral argument:

I said in my post that I fully understand why parents would want to take their kids to a better school.

That is absolutely right. I find it immoral to deny a parent from freely choosing to send their child to whatever school they wish. It doesn’t even matter which system is better. It is downright immoral to deny a parent the freedom to send their kid where they want. What is this, the Soviet Union? A parent is told that since you live here you have to send your kid to this school and if you object shove your objection up your behind. This should be unconstitutional. What kind of freedom is it when you have to accept the quality of your child’s education and have no recourse?

I probably skipped a lot. If anyone wants me to address something specific, address it to me.

The same thing happens here too, Virgil. Even those students who get good grades at pre-College level, still struggle when they get to College because of the gap between the two curricula, which is why I often think a prep year or a separate course can help.

And we have similar classes exist here too; the kind they can take while still studying at the College but, in my opinion, those courses do not prepare them for the academic studies.

In effect, that's what those students do, take a year of remedial. they do it at the college rather than the high school. I couldn't tell you if there is a difference. Intuitively I think i would prefer it at the college (though I know college professors hate it) because it makes the students feel liked they've moved up.

But that is my question: Why do more than a fourth of people entering college need to take some remedial class?

I was an average student in high school. I made average grades in most subjects. There was a seven-year gap between my high school graduation and my entering college. But I did not need to take any remedial or developmental course or class. I started right into the basic composition courses and the other basic required courses in college. And I passed those courses.

I am of average intelligence.

I simply do not understand why a fourth of people entering college need to take remedial classes.

It's amazing. I couldn't tell you either.

[Petrarch's Love]

I tried to approach my rebuttal by replying directly, but that’s just not feasible. I’ll just list the themes that have cropped up and address that. I’ll look for a representative statement by one of you guys as a wall to bounce my thoughts off. (Lousy metaphor. I should say it’s a papier-mâché wall and my thoughts will perforate right through. )

One of the main arguments is that private schools will only accept certain students – the pick and choose argument.

First of all, just like one can stop healthcare insurance companies from denying coverage with those with pre-existing conditions with a stroke of a legislative pen, so too one can stop voucher schools from denying anyone. Personally I think that would be a mistake.

To begin with, the analogy is not complete. Though is sounds like the new regulations may say insurance companies can't deny people for pre-existing conditions, from what I gather they say nothing about the amount insurance companies can charge people, so it seems likely they'll still be able to exclude most of the people they don't want by driving up cost sufficiently. Naturally, in the case of a voucher system, it would be much easier to attach strings to groups we're giving money to and tell them they have to accept all students etc. There are two reasons I don't think this would work:

1) There's no way the very best schools are going to actually be able to take all the students who want to get into them. This means that either a) They will just go ahead and take the best students anyway and flout the regulations citing the huge number of applicants. b) There will either be some sort of quota system to ensure a certain number of high and low students or they'll simply go back to saying that you have to take all the people in your given area (which is how this zoning requirement cropped up to begin with...it's intended to ensure a mix of students in the schools). This would essentially be turning the private schools back into public ones and get rid of the supposed benefit of competition.

2)Are you ready for this?...I agree with you. I don't think we should be meddling inordinately with private enterprise beyond the sort of trust busting and financial regulations that we've seen work in the past. Private schools should be able to choose who they want in or out. (Incidentally, though I'm for health care reform, I don't like the idea of the government meddling around with private insurance too much either. I think it will either lead to the insurance companies leaching public funds and laughing all the way to the bank, or a compromise to private industry. I'm much more in favor of creating a public option to compete with the abusive practices of many insurance companies, which would either drive them out of business or get them to up their game to continue to take peoples' money). That's why I don't think we should be giving government money to private schools unless we're really sure we're going to like what they do with it. Yes, we could say we're going to let this be a system like the university system in which the government will give people money to take to the school of their choice, but then we'll have to accept the fact that, like the university system, some people will get into top schools, some will get into OK schools, and some will then be left with only the least desirable schools to choose from.

As a side note, I think there's a big problem right now with the government money we're giving to college education. For some reason there seems to have been a real relaxation of what constitutes an accredited university and now there are a big number of schools from "The University of Phoenix" to much less reputable copy cats that are taking millions in government grants and loans. The problem with this is that many of these "colleges" purport to offer students a useful education, but in reality offer a pretty poor level of education. People come in hopeful that this is a way up, and come out with degrees that are more or less worthless in terms of either being respected by employers or, more importantly, having given the student the kind of skills employers are looking for. The student is also often left with a huge pile of debt to the government for loans taken out. These "colleges" are making huge profits off the fact that our government is willing to give the money and people from a poor or uneducated background who are not too savvy are willing to sign on without really knowing whether they're getting what they hope for. I don't know why the government's giving out this money so freely instead of restricting their funding to more reputable and strictly accredited schools, but it's the sort of dynamic I see happening if we were suddenly saying that government money for primary and secondary education could go to any private group. There would be plenty of sharks out there just waiting to snap up the public money without actually fulfilling any of the promises they make to gullible and hopeful parents.

Schools would crop up to address the various types of students. This would be specialization and each school would find methods to address special issues, whether it be discipline problems or medical or problem learners or outstanding students. Specialization is a good thing. Right now good students are being dragged down with the bad and the mediocre students are not being taught in the optimum method for their abilities.

I agree with you about the good students being dragged down with the bad and, as I've said many times, I can certainly see that a two tier system might help some of these students, and can see the appeal and value of an argument that suggests we should favor a system that will help these good students.

If we did decide that what we wanted a two tier system there's actually no reason to go through the whole complicated business of paying money out to private schools etc. We can just create different levels of schools that sort students according to performance and test scores within our own system and I guarantee you that the public schools with the top students will immediately begin to outperform current public schools with a mixed population of students. I would be in favor of this before I'd be in favor of the voucher route. If we're coming to the conclusion that our system is failing because it is attempting to be too equal in its treatment of students, then a hierarchical public structure would at least be a more straightforward way of managing things than this whole backdoor brain drain to private schools using vouchers. Also, since it would be consciously thought out move, it would possibly at least involve the attempt at a methodical anc controlled creation of vocational style schools such as the two tier system they used to have in England (though as our friends across the pond have confirmed, there were certainly a lot of issues with that system).

I am not as sanguine as you that with a privatized system there would be schools just jumping on the chance to address special issues for students who are slow learners, have learning disabilities, and/or have discipline issues. The last, in particular, I don't see anyone particularly caring about. First, as St. Lukes' has pointed out, it takes more money to deal with the disabled and troubled students, and there would be less money to go around for them if they're all lumped together in one group. In the second place, while specialization sounds like a good thing, I just don't trust that the majority of people are going to be so good hearted that they'll go out of their way to develop specialized programs for the bottom group of kids--especially the kids who are resistant, have major attitude problems, and tend to spit in the face of authority anyway. What will be the motivation for someone to go into teaching at a school that they know is full of nothing but kids who have been rejected by the "good" voucher schools, when they could just go teach the other group? What will be the motivation of a school to invest time and energy into this lower group when they have the same funding as the other schools but more costs for dealing with the problem group? How is a public system left with nothing but the kids the private schools don't want supposed to compete?

Is it a surprised that the military turns hoodlums into people with skills? The military are gearing their teaching approach, a holistic approach, which satisfies certain individuals mind sets.

I'll start by saying that I have a lot of respect for the training our military gives to young men and women, and I've certainly known many people who have had their life turned around by military training. Though it isn't the route for me personally, it is one I have recommended before to young people who I think could really benefit from it. I'll also say up front that I agree with you that specialized individual training could be a good idea, and there may be some approaches to that kind of learning that the public education system could pick up from organizations like the military and elsewhere.

It isn't fair, however, to compare the military system to the education system. To begin with, unless there's a draft on, which there isn't right now, people voluntarily sign up for the military (and in the case of the draft, obviously they have no choice since it's that or face the steep charges and consequences of being a draft dodger). In the second place, not everyone gets to enlist in the military. Unlike schools who must take everyone, the military can refuse to take people upfront because of things like certain criminal records and heavy drug use, or even things like medical condition, height, weight, etc. that may make that person unfit for active duty. Thus, a certain percentage of people (even in the case of a draft) don't make it through the recruiting office. Teachers are not looking at a group of people who already are there because the want to get in and they aren't then able to weed out the ones they don't think are going to be fit for active academic activity from the get go. Then, the military washes out a few more in boot camp. There obviously is no classroom equivalent to boot camp. Finally, once these people get into the military, their CO has control over every aspect of their lives. If they don't shape up, they can be tossed in the brig, made to do unpleasant tasks, have their leave and other privileges revoked, or be literally told to ship out. The military can do all sorts of things to a person to get that person to cooperate or can tell that person to get out altogether.

A teacher has none of this power or control. The teacher cannot refuse to teach the most problematic students or those who are less academically "fit" than others, and the teacher is very limited in terms of the kinds of punishments that can be in place. A teacher can try to lead by example, encourage the right behavior etc., but there is no way that anything a teacher does or says can actually stop a student from partying all night when they're home or from them doing drugs, getting into criminal activity or, even if they're not getting into this sort of thing, simply being lazy and blowing off school. And it may not be just because these are bad kids. In poor areas the reasons kids aren't performing well may have nothing to do with the teacher at all as much as it does with a bad home life, living in an area filled with crime, being on the edge--or over the edge--in terms of having a place to live and food to eat and other problems that are making that student pay more attention to issues of basic survival than to academic subjects. This again is different from the military system in which everyone of the same rank, regardless of previous background, is housed and fed in the same conditions and given the same pay and opportunities.

That’s exactly right. The current system screws the poorer kids because they are locked into the neighborhood school. A voucher would allow that parent to send their kid anywhere. Compare a Catholic school kid from a poor neighborhood and a public school kid from that same poor neighborhood. Just compare how many ultimately graduate colleges.

Again, yes, I agree that a voucher system might help the good kids from poor areas to get a better opportunity. I am not arguing that it is not the case that kids who go to the best private schools tend to do better. I am arguing that the reason they do better is not because private schools are innately better institutions but because they have the discretion to chose the better students. I have said all along that if you think it is worth it to get the good kids out of the poor neighborhoods in this way then that is fine and, I as I just mentioned above, there's no reason we couldn't do this within our own public system if we decided to sort kids in schools by ability rather than location. You just then need to consider what may happen to the kids who are not accepted by the good schools.

This brings us back to the question of how we deal with the top schools rejecting a certain number of students. You've already said that you think it would be a mistake to make private schools take all kids, and I agreed. So, let's say that a parent decides he wants to take his kid to a certain school and that school rejects his kid because the kid can't cut it. Now the kid's either back in the public system, which has now been drained of all the top kids and can't possibly compete with the private system, or some private school comes along that is willing to take the less desirable students, but may be primarily interested in scooping up the government check and providing a so-so education for this kid that is still inferior to the one at the top private school. This looks to me like a quick way to lose a certain percent of the bottom students. If that's a loss you're willing to take, then so be it.

Very easily. It’s done right now. It’s called college entrance exams and if students can’t pass them when they graduate high school, then they have no business getting a high school degree. It’s called establishing standards and all students from every school must be able to pass them. If we need inspectors going around the schools to verify the school’s level of competency, just like we have inspectors going around restaurants, then so be it. Private schools exist right now and they meet and exceed standards.

I don't get it. Not all people pass the college entrance exams. How is this answering my question as to how we would attempt to maintain a universal system? This would appear to argue that we should not maintain a universal system. A high school exit exam is another exclusionary measure. What you seem to be saying here is that we should give up on universal education and simply weed out a certain percentage of students with an exam. This might certainly solve a lot of problems, but I find it an odd statement from someone who started this thread with a concern that we're failing the bottom 20% of boys. This bottom 20% (of both boys and girls) is most likely to become the drop out figures for those who can't cut the mustard on the exam. Depending on what the exam would entail, it might mean a larger figure than even 20% can't get a high school degree. Again, we're willing to say that a certain percentage of people can't get into college or get a college degree. Are we willing to extend this attitude to high school education or below?

That is absolutely right. I find it immoral to deny a parent from freely choosing to send their child to whatever school they wish. It doesn’t even matter which system is better. It is downright immoral to deny a parent the freedom to send their kid where they want. What is this, the Soviet Union? A parent is told that since you live here you have to send your kid to this school and if you object shove your objection up your behind. This should be unconstitutional. What kind of freedom is it when you have to accept the quality of your child’s education and have no recourse?

Are you serious? Parents have the freedom to send their kids where they want if they're willing/able to pay the price. People can pay to put their kid in a private school, home school the kid etc. If they aren’t able or willing to do this then the state provides its option. If they are in the state run option then they are expected to go to the schools that the state designates.

You are partially right in that yes, we have a mandatory education policy in this country saying that all people of a certain age must go to school: this has been generally accepted as a degree of “socialism” that we seem to have felt was in our nation’s interest. This does mean that parents who are unable or unwilling to put in the time to do the home school option or pay the money for the private school option are, effectively, stuck with whatever the public option has to offer. So, the very first thing we could do if we seriously didn’t want a system that smacked in any way of socialism, if we wanted to give parents the most possible choice in a completely free market is to simply take away the mandatory education policy. Education has not been mandatory historically, nor is it universally mandatory in many parts of the world today. So, let’s say we’re so sick of the state system that we decide that we don’t want the state meddling and telling us where, how or if our kids should be educated. Now parents are not forced to put their kids in public schools they don’t like. They have unlimited choice to send their kids wherever they want, or to not send their kids to school at all. If we took this all the way, we could just say that the state’s out of it altogether. This would let the “customers” take their own money and make whatever choice they want for their kids. Or, if we didn’t want to actually bow out entirely we could have, as you’ve suggested, a non-mandatory system that functions much like our college system in that the state would provide some grants or loans to help people who want an education for their kids and have kids who are able to get into desirable schools. In either of these scenarios you’ll end up with a certain percentage of parents very happy with the choices they have and a certain percentage of people with little or no education at all. Perhaps you agree with this? Perhaps you don't think education should be mandatory? I think it's very much in our nation's interest to have compulsory education which insures that every child gets at least some sort of minimal education, but perhaps you disagree and think it would be better to let some go in favor of giving people greater freedom of choice.

However, at the moment we’ve decided as a society that, for a number of reasons, it is in our interests to require that every child be educated. So, if we want to keep education mandatory for all and preserve a publicly funded system for those who can’t/won’t take a private option, then we need to think about your “customer” analogy for a minute. In business the customer is the person who pays. Individual parents are not actually the people who are paying in this situation. The government is paying out of a public fund that the individual parent has contributed to along with a lot of other individual parents and community members. As the system stands now, we’re saying as a society that it’s in our interests to require every person to have an education so we’re going to use our pooled public money to provide an education system for those who can’t afford it and anyone else who would rather take that option than take their kids to a private school. We can change our minds as a group about how we want to organize that system, what sort of curriculum it should involve, how we deal with poor neighborhoods etc., and I think all these concerns and more should be addressed.

When you say that some parents should be able to take public money and go spend it in another system, however, then you’re no longer talking about a pool of money going to provide a public education option. You’re talking about public money going to private enterprise and you’re directly undermining the dynamic of the state offering its own option distinct from that offered by private schools. If we use your “customer” analogy: yes, it may be better for parent X to be able to take a part of this pooled money and go to a top private school. What about parent Y, however, whose kid couldn’t get into that good private school and is now left behind in a school that is bound to fail because it’s full of all the failing students. Parent X may be a satisfied customer, but parent Y is not, and parent Y has just as much at stake in the shared funds as parent X. If you truly want parents to be like customers then you need to just make them customers spending their own money in a non mandatory free-market system as I’ve outlined above. I don’t have any interest in legislating what people do with their own money, apart from what we all pay in taxes for programs the majority of the nation have agreed are important for the public good. If, however, we’re talking about spending public money for a universal program that the public wants then we need to think about spending in a way that is best, not for specific individual parents, but for the group as a whole. I would never for a minute claim that there isn’t a lot of inequality in the current system due to the conditions in impoverished areas. You’re right that there are deep problems with the system we have now. However, there will also be deep problems with a privatization move which will take the form of some kids missing out on any hope at all of getting a decent education. The voucher approach isn’t a reform of the public system. It’s giving up on the public system altogether and throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

E.D. Hirsch in The Schools We Need (and why we don't have them) argued that "liberal" and "progressive" theories of education simply do not work and that we must stop pushing them simply because we are afraid that the alternative would mean that the conservatives were right all along. Hirsch was a great champion of a liberal idea of public education... the notion that all children should be given an equal access to the quality education needed to succeed in our society. Hirsch, however, noticed that many of the liberal/progressive educational strategies (such as the "feel-good/no losers" approach) actually had the exact opposite effect... especially in the poor schools which needed education the most. Hirsch discovered that the Italian politician and theorist, Antonio Gramsci (imprisoned by Mussolini) had recognized the problem of progressive education as early as the 1930s:

"The new concept of Schooling is in its Romantic phase (ala Rousseau) in which the replacement of "mechanical" by "natural" methods has become unhealthily exaggerated... Previously pupils at least acquired a certain baggage of concrete facts. Now there will no longer be any baggage to put in order... The most paradoxical aspect of it all is that this new aspect of school is being advocated as being democratic, while in fact it is destined not merely to perpetuate social differences, but crystallize them in Chinese complexities."

The "romantic" progressive concepts of schooling avoid the learning of "facts" because it is feared these will perpetuate stereotypes... the notion that one writer, one artist, one historical personage is more important than another. This is then combined with the lack of any real federal or national standards resulting in a system in which almost every school has its own curriculum... makes its own choices about what books to read and what facts to present and when to present them. When this is combined with No Child Left Behind which led to schools focusing almost exclusively upon teaching strategies for taking tests, the result is an absolute mess in which we cannot be certain that a child in this school at this age will be expected to have mastered the same knowledge and skills as a student in another school just around the block... let alone across the country.

Hirsch recognized that in order to succeed in education and in our society one must accumulate a certain agreed upon body of knowledge. One cannot master reading... let alone "higher order thinking skills" such as analysis, comparison, synthesis, etc... without a body of concrete facts. Progressive educators argue that a curriculum based upon such facts is inherently bound to be racist, sexist, nationalistic. The problem is that the alternative handicaps those very students it claims to assist. The reality is that public education is not the end-all/be-all. Once a student has mastered certain facts, reading, math, etc... he or she is certainly free to branch out and explore other alternative ideas and voices... and certainly higher education should be expected to offer just that. At present, however, higher education needs to begin at a remedial level... teaching many of the basic skills and body of knowledge that should have been mastered in elementary and secondary school.

I have long agreed with this. I have no idea why there's this perceived link between analytical skills and "progressive" teaching and fact based skills and "conservative teaching." Factual learning and analysis are simply two different steps in the learning process and have nothing whatever to do with a political agenda either way. I can only guess that it is because some of the more “progressive” thinking about, for example, the role of minorities and women in history has come up more recently as a result of critical and analytic thinking at the academic level, and so people simply associate these things with being tied to “analytical” thinking and the older perception of history they’re rejecting as being tied to the sort of “fact based” learning they did in school. In any case, it’s simply common sense at any level of education that you cannot get to a critical, analytical or higher conceptual level in a subject without first having a certain foundation of facts that you can criticize, analyze and conceptualize. Trying to introduce facts and analysis together for the first time just doesn’t work for people, and I was aware, even at the time, that this was often a problem in parts of the curriculum in my own education that were trying too hard to be “critical” or “complex.” This is something that is true of any level of teaching. For example, I’m teaching a group of masters students this term, who are all obviously bright people and knowledgeable in their own fields, but whom I can’t expect to provide a cogent analysis of the literature of the Elizabethan age without me first informing them about a lot of facts concerning the time period and the poetry of that period. Children, who have no factual treasury to draw on at all going into school, obviously need to build up a lot of factual knowledge before they’ll be able to analyze that knowledge. Naturally subjects like history must be simplified to a certain extent in order to be taught factually, but this has always been true and has nothing to do with conservatism and progressivism. The content of what is included in the streamlined view of history and the facts we teach might shape the things children learn in a certain way. If we want to add or take away certain figures, events, movements etc. from the fact based curriculum because we think it offers a more representative view of history, then that’s fine, but to expect students to take in an enormous amount of information that no one could remember or keep track of if presented with it for the first time and then to have an opinion about it is ridiculous.