Public Education: Vital for modern society or a scam?

[Lonestar]

There is a poster on this board(I won't name names, but he shares a name with a promeient member of the Galactic Republics Secret Police in the Star Wars movies) who wishes to do away with Public education. Coincidentally he works in private education.


Should Public Education continue?

PROS:

(1)If you have universal suffrage than the idea of uneducated voters is abhorrent
(2)There is not one industrialized first world country out there that has managed to get to where they were without making public education freely available.
(3)There's a reasonable state interest in fostering economic development, e.g. a educated workforce is more likely to be a more skilled workforce
(4)Education is not a right limited to the privileged few.


CONS:
(1)Uh well it costs a lot of money.
(2)It could be run better, therefore we should abolish it completely.




Thoughts?

[giblets]

Private School Civility Gap

Education reform is all the rage these days.

It’s no longer just the weighty obsession of parents with few options scrambling to get a child into a better school. It has also become the “it” topic of the cocktail crowd, including many parents with children who have never seen the inside of a public school. “Waiting for Superman” is the new “An Inconvenient Truth.”

This new discussion centers on the achievement gap in public schools. It’s an intractable issue and needs as much attention as it’s getting. But a study released on Tuesday highlights another subject that’s much less discussed: let’s call it the private school civility gap, particularly at religious private schools and particularly among boys.

This is a not-so-little, not-so-secret, dirty little secret among the upper crust.

I have a girl and two boys who among them have attended two great public schools and two great private schools. As any parent who’s been on both sides of the fence can tell you, the concept of community and how to exist in it vary wildly between these two groups, and one of the biggest issues I’ve noticed is the way these students deal differently with issues of tolerance.

Private schools by their very nature discriminate. Their students are literally the chosen ones — special, better. This sort of thinking has a way of weaving itself into the fibers of a family and into the thinking of the children, particularly young boys in a male culture where even the slightest deviations from the narrowest concepts of normality are heretical.

It is no wonder then that the study, which was conducted by the Josephson Institute Center for Youth Ethics of more than 43,000 high school students, found that:

• Boys who went to private religious schools were most likely to say that they had used racial slurs and insults in the past year as well as mistreated someone because he or she “belonged to a different group.”

• Boys at religious private schools were the most likely to say that they had bullied, teased or taunted someone in the past year.

• While boys at public schools were the most likely to say that it was O.K. to hit or threaten a person who makes them very angry, boys at private religious schools were just as likely to say that they had actually done it.

While some public schools have issues with academic attainment, it appears that some private schools have issues with tolerance. No person is truly better when they lack this basic bit of civility.

(This all assumes that these children told the truth. As it turns out, private school students were also the most likely to lie. According to the study, they were the least likely to say that they had answered all the questions “with complete honesty.”)

[giblets]

Public Schools Perform Near Private Ones in Study

Spoiler:

The Education Department reported on Friday that children in public schools generally performed as well or better in reading and mathematics than comparable children in private schools. The exception was in eighth-grade reading, where the private school counterparts fared better.

The report, which compared fourth- and eighth-grade reading and math scores in 2003 from nearly 7,000 public schools and more than 530 private schools, found that fourth graders attending public school did significantly better in math than comparable fourth graders in private schools. Additionally, it found that students in conservative Christian schools lagged significantly behind their counterparts in public schools on eighth-grade math.

The study, carrying the imprimatur of the National Center for Education Statistics, part of the Education Department, was contracted to the Educational Testing Service and delivered to the department last year.

It went through a lengthy peer review and includes an extended section of caveats about its limitations and calling such a comparison of public and private schools “of modest utility.”

Its release, on a summer Friday, was made with without a news conference or comment from Education Secretary Margaret Spellings.

Reg Weaver, president of the National Education Association, the union for millions of teachers, said the findings showed that public schools were “doing an outstanding job” and that if the results had been favorable to private schools, “there would have been press conferences and glowing statements about private schools.”

“The administration has been giving public schools a beating since the beginning” to advance its political agenda, Mr. Weaver said, of promoting charter schools and taxpayer-financed vouchers for private schools as alternatives to failing traditional public schools.

A spokesman for the Education Department, Chad Colby, offered no praise for public schools and said he did not expect the findings to influence policy. Mr. Colby emphasized the caveat, “An overall comparison of the two types of schools is of modest utility.”

“We’re not just for public schools or private schools,’’ he said. “We’re for good schools.”

The report mirrors and expands on similar findings this year by Christopher and Sarah Theule Lubienski, a husband-and-wife team at the University of Illinois who examined just math scores. The new study looked at reading scores, too.

The study, along with one of charter schools, was commissioned by the former head of the national Center for Education Statistics, Robert Lerner, an appointee of President Bush, at a time preliminary data suggested that charter schools, which are given public money but are run by private groups, fared no better at educating children than traditional public schools.

Proponents of charter schools had said the data did not take into account the predominance of children in their schools who had already had problems in neighborhood schools.

The two new studies put test scores in context by studying the children’s backgrounds and taking into account factors like race, ethnicity, income and parents’ educational backgrounds to make the comparisons more meaningful. The extended study of charter schools has not been released.

Findings favorable to private schools would likely have given a lift to administration efforts to offer children in ailing public schools the option of attending private schools.

An Education Department official who insisted on anonymity because of the climate surrounding the report, said researchers were "extra cautious" in reviewing it and were aware of its “political sensitivity.”

The official said the warning against drawing unsupported conclusions was expanded somewhat as the report went through in the review.

The report cautions, for example, against concluding that children do better because of the type of school as opposed to unknown factors. It also warns of great variations of performance among private schools, making a blanket comparison of public and private schools “of modest utility.” And the scores on which its findings are based reflect only a snapshot of student performance at a point in time and say nothing about individual student progress in different settings.

Arnold Goldstein of the National Center for Education Statistics said that the review was meticulous, but that it was not unusual for the center.

Mr. Goldstein said there was no political pressure to alter the findings.

Students in private schools typically score higher than those in public schools, a finding confirmed in the study. The report then dug deeper to compare students of like racial, economic and social backgrounds. When it did that, the private school advantage disappeared in all areas except eighth-grade reading.

And in math, 4th graders attending public school were nearly half a year ahead of comparable students in private school, according to the report.

The report separated private schools by type and found that among private school students, those in Lutheran schools performed best, while those in conservative Christian schools did worst.

In eighth-grade reading, children in conservative Christian schools scored no better than comparable children in public schools.

In eighth-grade math, children in Lutheran schools scored significantly better than children in public schools, but those in conservative Christian schools fared worse.

Joseph McTighe, executive director of the Council for American Private Education, an umbrella organization that represents 80 percent of private elementary and secondary schools, said the statistical analysis had little to do with parents’ choices on educating their children.

"In the real world, private school kids outperform public school kids," Mr. McTighe said. "That’s the real world, and the way things actually are."

Two weeks ago, the American Federation of Teachers, on its Web log, predicted that the report would be released on a Friday, suggesting that the Bush administration saw it as "bad news to be buried at the bottom of the news cycle."

The deputy director for administration and policy at the Institute of Education Sciences, Sue Betka, said the report was not released so it would go unnoticed. Ms. Betka said her office typically gave senior officials two weeks’ notice before releasing reports. "The report was ready two weeks ago Friday,’’ she said, “and so today was the first day, according to longstanding practice, that it could come out."

[germanos]

(2)There is not one industrialized first world country out there that has managed to get to where they were without making public education freely available.

Since attending school is obligatory (and rightfully so), the state better make sure public education is readily available.

[dannubis]

Education should not depend on descent. Therefore public education should exist. The fact it costs money is to be seen as an investment in the future of your society. Your other CON is a non issue...

[Al B. Sure!]

What? Is it 1850? How is this even a question for debate? I thought this was resolved conclusively in the 19th century along with things like slavery being wrong.

[Docfeelgood]

The education system sucks!
My wife is a teacher and to hear her frustrations is a real eye opener.

[Lonestar]

The education system sucks!
My wife is a teacher and to hear her frustrations is a real eye opener.

"Therefore it should be abolished instead of reformed"

[Docfeelgood]

It needs to be seriously reformed.
The ranking of education of the US is very low on the chart of the world.
(I don't know off hand the exact standing with out looking it up.)
example.
The grading system of pub schools in Texas is based on a bell curve.
The lowest grade a child can make is a 55. Even if they donot anwser one question ( which should be a 0 ) on a test the lowest grade will be a 55.

[Lonestar]

It needs to be seriously reformed.
The ranking of education of the US is very low on the chart of the world.
(I don't know off hand the exact standing with out looking it up.)
example.
The grading system of pub schools in Texas is based on a bell curve.
The lowest grade a child can make is a 55. Even if they donot anwser one question ( which should be a 0 ) on a test the lowest grade will be a 55.

Fun fact, if you get 51% in a lot of European countries that's considered "passing", and it's as low as 40% in Japan. Both Japan and Germany segregate the top third from the rest of the "general population" further skewing rankings.

But bell curves in K-12 are stupid. Texas also has a rule that the top 10% of the graduating class get an automatic "in" to Public Universities, so if you got a C average and lead your class of 9 from West Bum**** it's Texas A&M for you!

[Docfeelgood]

Fun fact, if you get 51% in a lot of European countries that's considered "passing", and it's as low as 40% in Japan. Both Japan and Germany segregate the top third from the rest of the "general population" further skewing rankings.

I did not know this.


I was under the impression that A&M is a prestigious school.

[Al B. Sure!]

It needs to be seriously reformed.
The ranking of education of the US is very low on the chart of the world.
(I don't know off hand the exact standing with out looking it up.)
example.
The grading system of pub schools in Texas is based on a bell curve.
The lowest grade a child can make is a 55. Even if they donot anwser one question ( which should be a 0 ) on a test the lowest grade will be a 55.

What the hell?

Doc, the reason why teachers have a minimum grade is to not put a student in too much of a hole from one bombed or missed exam.

Let's say a student has 6 tests during a semester and scores 85, 90, 80, 95, 75, 0... that's a 71 average. The kid's 0 was an aberration and he's been a mid-B student otherwise. If you spot him those 55 points, his average becomes an 80 which is more appropriate. His average is still weighted down by the one bad grade, but he's not failing because a B student screwed up one time.

[Docfeelgood]

What the hell?

Doc, the reason why teachers have a minimum grade is to not put a student in too much of a hole from one bombed or missed exam.

Let's say a student has 6 tests during a semester and scores 85, 90, 80, 95, 75, 0... that's a 71 average. The kid's 0 was an aberration and he's been a mid-B student otherwise. If you spot him those 55 points, his average becomes an 80 which is more appropriate. His average is still weighted down by the one bad grade, but he's not failing because a B student screwed up one time.

Maybe bell curve is not the correct definition?
It is for federal funding.
If all test are 0's the lowest grade will be a 55, passing!
They have lowered the standards so that "no child will be left behind".
My wife has told me she has had to pass kids who could not read or do simple mathematics.


Our future leaders. lol

[Lonestar]

I did not know this.


I was under the impression that A&M is a prestigious school.

It is...

Here is the deal, the Texas Public University system stopped using ethnic quotas for entry sometime before I went there(so in the 90s). As a way to shift it purely to meritorious entry a rule(not sure if it was a "law", per se) was agreed upon that if you are in the top 10% of the graduating class you are automatically in at any Texan Public University.

I had a fish buddy in my cadet company who was the top of his class in his graduating class of 9 from some small town in South Texas. One night I crunched the numbers with him and we determined that he would not have gotten above a C in the Virginia school system(or at least the Fairfax County one).

[Docfeelgood]

It is...

Here is the deal, the Texas Public University system stopped using ethnic quotas for entry sometime before I went there(so in the 90s). As a way to shift it purely to meritorious entry a rule(not sure if it was a "law", per se) was agreed upon that if you are in the top 10% of the graduating class you are automatically in at any Texan Public University.

I had a fish buddy in my cadet company who was the top of his class in his graduating class of 9 from some small town in South Texas. One night I crunched the numbers with him and we determined that he would not have gotten above a C in the Virginia school system(or at least the Fairfax County one).

Wow!