John Stossel offers his thoughts on a fix to our public school system - more charter schools and eventually a "really free and competitive system". The numbers do not lie!
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2011/09/21/exciting_schools_111410.html
Stossel is basically a Libertarian which I tend to be at times, and sees problems with the current society very clearly. A fun guy to follow (he has a lot of appearrances on Fox and I believe a show. What do you think?
That article has some good points but also I have a few problems with it. First would be the comment on the increase of spending in schools over the past 30 years but with no improvement in scores. Is the author of this article taking the increase of technology used in the classroom coupled with the increasing numbers of students in schools into account? Computers and other technologies are more expensive than the chalk and slate boards used in classrooms 30 years ago. Does he take inflation into account? Colleges raise there tuition around 8 percent per year but they don't raise their productivity by those numbers...so why should public schools?
ReplyDeleteI won't try and argue the facts that smaller charter schools can out score the larger public schools. What I would like to see in a study is the demographics that makes up these charter schools compared to those in public schools. I would tend to think that you would see much fewer lower income students in the charter schools due to the cost of charter schools. Even in states, like Indiana, that provide grants for children to go to charter schools there is still a cost to the parents that is higher than public schools. Charter schools are great for students who can afford them. Having schools compete against one another in the classroom and not just on the football field is something that will create better education. Every citizen of this country is entitled to a free education and until a charter school can offer that, public schools will still have a need in our society.
I will continue this conversation with a comment on your last sentence:
ReplyDelete"Every citizen of this country is entitled to a free education..."
Please show me that entitlement in the Constitution of the United States.
I am an originalist so take my thoughts with a grain of salt, but your comment I read as the BRAINWASHING of our society by the left.
A free education is something we as a society decided early on to promote because it would pay great dividends for the growth of our economy and country - it is not an entitlement - it is the societies choice.
It has become a SYSTEM in place to take care of the federal Department of Education and all administrators and teachers, not the students.
At this website you can see how the $ expenditures have increased:
http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=66
The table takes inflation and # of student growth into account (since it is per student expenditures).
Enough for now - I will think about your technology question.