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<tr bgcolor="666666"><td colspan=2 bgcolor="666666"><font face=Arial,Helvetica size=3 color=CCCCCC>LIBERTY AND DISCUSSIONS FOR ALL</td></td>
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<font face=Arial,Helvetica size=2>What is Libertarianism?</td></tr><tr><td bgcolor=FFFFFF><font face=Arial,Helvetica size=2>
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<b>Survey shows Americans prefer private schools</b><br><font face=Arial,Helvetica size=1>Posted on Friday, August 04 @ 12:12:23 EDT
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<P>A just-released poll from Rasmussen Research entitled "<A href=http://www.portraitofamerica.com/html/poll-1110.html>Public Schools Get Low Grade</A>" finds that 64% of parents with children in private schools rate the education their youngsters are receiving as excellent, compared to 76% of home school parents and only 27% of parents with children in public systems.</P>
<P>The study further finds that 52% of Americans think school selection competition would do more to improve schools than spending money, which only 27% prefer. The study is chock full of such interesting data, and shows a significant disparity between the opinions of private and public school parents with regards to private schooling, vouchers, etc.</P>
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<tr><td bgcolor="#333333" align=center><font face=Arial,Helvetica size=2 color="#FFFFFF">"Survey shows Americans prefer private schools" | <a href="user.php3"><font color="#FFFFFF">Login/Create Account</font></a> | <B>4</B> comments</font></td></tr> <tr><td bgcolor="#CCCCCC" align="center"><font face=Arial,Helvetica size=2>
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<a name="35"><table width=99% border=0><tr bgcolor="#CCCCCC"><td width=500><p><b>Re: Survey shows Americans prefer private schools</b> <font face=Arial,Helvetica size=2>(Score: 1)<br>by Brian_Carnell on Friday, August 04 @ 13:51:55 EDT<br>(<a href="user.php3?op=userinfo&uname=Brian_Carnell">User Info</a>) <a href="http://www.carnell.com/brian/" target="window">http://www.carnell.com/brian/</a> </font></td></tr><tr><td>I work for a group that does surveys like this, and one thing we find with charter schools, for example, is that parents at charter schools give their schools much higher ratings than parents at public schools even at those charter schools that are performing significantly below the local public schools. <br>
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One of the advantages you get with private education is less discipline problems. The surveys I see of charter and public schools the teachers main complaint is that they have children whose parents don't attempt to enforce any discipline. At the local public high schools, 1/3rd of the student body is absent on any given day, so you've got a lot of parent who really could care less about their kids education, and subsequently teachers and administrators end up spending all their time on these behavioral problems. <br>
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Private schools, of course, don't play that game. Continued behavioral problem students get the boot. <br>
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Here in Michigan charter schools are big and so far they seem to have spurred competition. Before the charter schools, for example, the public schools did very little to offer anything innovative. As soon as charters started arriving all of a sudden they're creating magnet schools all over the place.</td></tr></table><br><p><font face=Arial,Helvetica size=2 color=000000> [ <a href="comments.php3?op=Reply&pid=35&sid=28&mode=&order=&thold=">Reply</a> ]</font><p><ul><li><a href="comments.php3?op=showreply&tid=41&sid=28&pid=35&mode=&order=&thold=#41">Re: Survey shows Americans prefer private schools</a> by Anonymous <font face=Arial,Helvetica size=2>on Monday, August 07 @ 08:52:55 EDT</font><br><ul><li><a href="comments.php3?op=showreply&tid=56&sid=28&pid=41&mode=&order=&thold=#56">Re: Survey shows Americans prefer private schools</a> by Anonymous <font face=Arial,Helvetica size=2>on Wednesday, August 09 @ 08:38:28 EDT</font><br></ul></ul><hr noshade size=1></p><a name="55"><table width=99% border=0><tr bgcolor="#CCCCCC"><td width=500><p><b>Re: Survey shows Americans prefer private schools</b> <font face=Arial,Helvetica size=2>(Score: 0)<br>by Anonymous on Wednesday, August 09 @ 08:32:05 EDT</font></td></tr><tr><td>This only shows what parents (who may or may not have any training in education, administration, sociology, etc.) have to say about the schools that their kids go to. It says absolutely nothing beyond that. Speaking as a fairly liberal minded network administrator in a public school district (who's worked in others before this one) my opinion is that charter schools are no better or worse in and of themselves. They only let in the students that they want, which increases any ratings that they get while not actually improving the quality of the experience for the majority of students. In fact, this tends to make the public school system into a dumping ground of unwanted kids. <br>
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Add to this the lack of awareness (or perhaps lack of willingness to deal with difficult subjects) that most parents seem to have these days and you have a disaster waiting to happen. <br>
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Adding money to schools might help, but it doesn't do much by itself. (As a side note, I am tired of hearing about what schools won't do when they don't get the funding to do it.) <br>
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Adding compitition will make the problem worse, as each school tries to do its best to tailor their experience to one which rates the highest on the standerdized tests but isn't necessarily the one with the most positive impact on the childrens' lives. <br>
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In my opinion, the first step is to recognise that everyone and every region has different matterial that it needs to focus on. In my district, for example, we used to have less than 30% of our students go on to get college degrees. Now we have a much higher rate, somewhere near 80% I think. This was something that we needed to focus on and no standerdized test score was going to make that change. It took a change in focus that came from a change in administration. That same change in administration brought us lots of networking infrastructure which I'm now using to forge new venues for the students to debate with each other, science simulations, and advanced programming classes. In my rather rural district it is important that the children learn that black, latino, etc. children are just like them. How better than to allow them to debate in on-line (i.e. race-invisible) forums? It allows the leason to sneak into the mind of any kid who's willing to listen. Technology training gives them an idea of what jobs are out there and what they're like. Science simulations turn theory into real and observable things that they can change in order to answer their own questions. <br>
<br>
All of these things came from acknowledging our limitations. We still have issues to address, like our low math grades. My point here is that competing schools (as apposed to our current circle of peers) will go out of their way to look better than others and don't care if they actually *are* better than others. <br>
<br>
One last point. There was a school district (which I wish that I could remember the name of) that was forced by its local parents to give control of the district to a large number of administrative and educational experts who were full of theory and ideology. They were supposed to see the problems that the current staff couldn't see, fix the problems that were due to limited ideology, and so on. Or so went the arguement. By the end of that school year it was an exceedingly worse school district to attend. The fresh new minds all agreed that they didn't have what it took and that the pre-existing staff knew things that they didn't. Experience is nice that way, eh? :) Anyway, my point with this story is that while the current system might be failing, the new and trendy system is not necessarily better. Like an other structured relationship between humans, the school system needs review and revisment. Let's try to do that without the lowest-common-denominator effect of standerdized testing before we completely scrap the whole system.</td></tr></table><br><p><font face=Arial,Helvetica size=2 color=000000> [ <a href="comments.php3?op=Reply&pid=55&sid=28&mode=&order=&thold=">Reply</a> ]</font><p></ul><hr noshade size=1></p>
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