Education
John Stossel writes an interesting piece on education.
My question is this: Why are the teachers and administrators in the present educational system so certain that, if choice is introduced into the system, parents will choose something other than the status quo?
Hmmm. Makes you wonder what they know that we don't, doesn't it?
4 comments:
Funny, I was just talking about this with my sister-in-law. My nephew is kindergarten age and she was inquiring at their local school about registering him. It was suggested to her to wait a year since he will not be 5 years old until May (the cutoff is September). She thought it was odd since there is no indication that he is not ready other than a May B-day. I had similar problems getting my middle child into kindergarten in Great Falls. She was 2 weeks pass the cutoff with a late Sept B-day. We had just moved here from NC where the cutoff is October and had already prepped her for kindergarten. We understood the School Districts concern because my wife is a certified teacher and at the time was working for the GF school district. All we wanted was for them to assess her to verify she was ready. We couldn’t get it done through normal channels. My wife then asked for a personal favor from an assistant superintendent she knew. He was hesitant until my wife told him we would be enrolling in a private school if the GF district wouldn’t work with us. He then agreed and told the school that had already turned us down to go ahead and assess our daughter. She easily tested somewhere at the middle first grade level and we promptly enrolled all our children in private school. We did this because our interaction with public school gave us the impression that children were not the priority.
Our daughter was not treated like an individual until it was thought we might leave the system or more importantly the additional tax money our children would bring would also leave the district. I also believe that the district pushes for kids to start later rather than sooner so that district’s standardized test scores will fair better at each grade level due to having older average ages. That’s the problem with “No child left behind”, it allows to much room for local school districts to try and game the numbers.
There are many more problems with NCLB than just the numbers and money part of it. It places so much emphasis on teaching ALL children the same when they are different, blanket test children and forces the teachers to teach to the tests insted of teaching to benifit the students. Students are loosing the most- good teachers are leaving.
Wolfpack and his wife are not alone when it comes to a teachers' family placing their kids in private school:
In the January 1997 issue of The Freeman (now named Ideas on Liberty), published by the Foundation For Economic Education (FEE), Irvington-on-Hudson, NY, Doug Bandow's essay "Replace Monopoly, Not the Superintendent", among other things, Bandow points out that " ... (C)ontrolling for income, public school teachers are four times as likely as private citizens to send their children to private schools."
See:
http://www.fee.org/publications/the-freeman/article.asp?aid=2878
It amazes me that liberals harp about market monopolies like Microsoft (which I obviously disagree with if you know my posts), yet they have no problem with gov't monopolies like education.
Say, Walter Greenspan, it's good to see that someone else is reading The Freeman (not to be confused in any way, shape, or form with the Freeman of Montana) put out by FEE. Please email me at siwelsc@hotmail.com.
Post a Comment