denisdman wrote:
long time guy wrote:
denisdman wrote:
I agree with that. But these movements toward charters, which are public, and tax credits for private schools is a direct reaction to the poorly run public school districts.
For high school, I paid $11,000 or so per child per year and received a $500 IL tax credit per child. The credit made no difference to me.
The performance of most private schools isn't that great and the cost for the better ones are astronomical.
The movement is mostly due to a larger movement to further privatize education. It's not because of the performance of public schools either. Private School performance once you get past the truly elite isn't particularly great either.
They have built in advantages which inflate their numbers. Just like Charter Schools do. Public Schools do not have the same advantages.
My mom worked in District 54 for two decades. It is one of the better districts in the state. The stories she would tell me about disengaged teachers, uncaring parents, and the inability to discipline students were very sad.
The private schools that my children attended were quite the opposite. Parents were heavily involved. Every student and parent signed a code of conduct. Teachers were very committed to the students even showing up to my son’s travel baseball games on their own time to watch him. Sure, it’s a self selected group. But we don’t have to deal with the nonsense that goes along in the public schools including girls who think they are boys peeing in the urinals at Dundee Crown.
I’d love to fix the public schools. But try to enact rigorous standards and real teacher evaluations and see how hard teachers and parents push back.
If they actually privatized schools to the level that you are advocating the overall quality of them would diminish too.
We work in a system which tells you that every child has to be educated. Private schools don't have that hindrance. When you have the ability to "self select" it makes a difference. You can talk about arbitrary things like standards but CPS has and has had them every year that I worked in it. It made little to know difference. The greatest predictor of achievement is the income level of the child's parent. That is what studies have shown.
We have to reform society first and then we can reform schools. I have worked in environments with extreme poverty. 95% plus poverty rates. I know what the challenges are which confront kids and teachers in theat environment. Kids I have worked with were sometimes shot or shot at as they walked to school in the morning. Parents non existent with many students in attendance just so that they would be guaranteed 2 meals (breakfast and lunch) per day. 15%-20% homeless rates.
The type of upheaval in their daily lives that you couldn't even imagine and amidst all of that they were expected to receive a "quality" education. They were the sort of kids that were invisible to the rest of society. Often times what they really and truly needed no school system was ever designed to provide for them.
And with all of this I will simply say that I would not have changed anything one bit. I preferred to work in that sort of environment because I truly believed that there was a tremendous need in them. You don't understand what teaching actually is until you have to teach in that environment.
_________________
The Hawk wrote:
This is going to reach a head pretty soon.